Time to build palaces, baby!

Enter the Nurburgring Nordschleife, the craziest race track in the world. It’s so fearsome, that single-seater cars are forbidden to race at it since Niki Lauda’s infamous inferno in 1976! On the simulator, if I race with a high downforce F2 or F1 type single-seater, it’s the single most exhilarating experience you can have inside the walls of a home besides having a foursome with model bodied girls. Well, it’s certainly better than sex with some boring girl! Your senses are at their peak, the time has stopped, no second thoughts, it’s one focus. It’s survival. You forget about the world. Flow is all you have. Flow is all there is.
There have been moments, especially with the McLaren 650S GT3, where I’ve felt so invincible, that I start thinking I can’t crash. Your confidence levels are sky-high. It’s dangerous, even the most unruly car suddenly develops understeer. Your subconscious is driving the car. At times you’re amazed by your reflexes, but then you take it as normal. You’re watching yourself driving in amazement. The car is not enough for you. It can’t kill you, it can’t hurt you. You’ve mastered it. It’s so dangerous that seasoned Nordschleife drivers stop themselves from achieving this state to such extreme, because at that moment… it might truly kill you! It’s called the Green Hell for a reason.
It’s the best place to learn a new car on the sim, because it’s corner after corner and there are all types of corners. At the end of one lap, you’ve experienced the car in all possible conditions.

It is Sir Jackie Stewart who called it the Green Hell. 176 turns and out of them, a lot can kill you! Here is Sir Jackie at the Nurburgring in the wet in ’69, he won famously in 68 by 4 minutes, but in ’69 he was slowed down with gearbox issues. Another wet master, Jackie Ickx won in ’69. That was the last race before the track was rebuild. At the time it didn’t even have Armco barriers. Drivers were crashing airborne into the trees. A brave bunch.

Why am I talking about a race track when I want to build palaces? Well quite simple.
It all comes from mnemonics. I had previously played and used mnemonic devices a lot. But I’ve been a student of Tony Buzan. I’m speed reading, using his techniques to memorize shopping lists and I ADORE mind mapping! iMindMap is always open. That’s where I put most of my notes when I’m researching a subject. Only lately, I’ve been inspired to write summaries or articles here on this blog in order to improve my writing skills, but also because it has some memorization benefits.
The problem with Tony Buzan’s books, which I’m recommending wholeheartedly, is that the techniques are simply not the latest. Mnemonics is a field that is improving at a very fast pace. Mental athletes(yep, there are such) are inventing new ways to remember faster and more every single year. They’re improving at gigantic steps. This is something that I didn’t know until I read this book:

It’s got a cool easy to remember name. It’s the story of how a NYT journalist went into the world of memory champions and in the span of 1 year became the best in the USA. Yes, admittedly the US championship wasn’t anywhere near the top, but still, it’s a remarkable achievement. The guy with the best memory in all of the US of A.
As with Tony Buzan and mind mapping, the concepts are super easy. Mental palaces is actually a forgotten ancient technique. People back in antique times were using it to remember because they didn’t have paper to write down! It got very developed in the middle ages when Matteo Ricci published a book on how to build memory palaces and went to teach the Chinese these techniques. He was a very famous scholar at the time and he’s very much respected in Chinese culture.
So what is the technique? First, you need to develop a great imagination. This includes imagination that is full of colours, feelings, and smells. An easy and fun way to do this is visualization of driving a lap in your mind. All racing drivers prepare like this. If you are not into racing, well… the most popular form of visualization is sexual fantasies. You can concentrate on the colors, the details of the female body, the sensations of touch and smells. Visualization can be all sorts of dreaming. It’s the most fun one can have by himself or herself ;) Once you have this imagination developed you can start attaching characters and building stories into your memory palaces. Most memory champions use their homes, buildings, and streets as memory palaces. For whatever reason though, I don’t find these very inspiring. I find them boring and repetitive. That’s why I prefer race circuits.
For example: Moonwalking with Einstein is used for remembering cards. It’s a story. but let’s say we need to remember just the phrase(yep, it’s quite catchy). How do you do that? You imagine your home. Right now, I can imagine Einstein with his crazy haircut listening to a funky tune and entering my room while moonwalking on the floor. It’s a story and it’s absurd! That’s why you’re remembering it. Just like in humour, you’re searching for the absurd, the unexpected. Because if it is ordinary, you won’t remember it for long. But since it’s so weird, you can always remember Einstein dressed in hip-hop clothes with a cassette player on his shoulder like in an 80s music video and moonwalking(that’s a type of dance technique) under the tunes of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Joshua Foer has been building his memory palaces always inside his home or the homes of friends and families. I just don’t find them very interesting or inspiring.

So why the Nordschleife? Because while I drive I get sensations and feelings. Every corner has a story, different feelings to it, different problems and requires a different technique. It’s the longest circuit on Earth, I’ll have lots of space to remember things. Out of 176 corners, all have character and character is what I need! I need to have something to which to connect my memory palace ideas. Something that invokes an emotional response in myself, because when you add emotion/feelings to what you want to remember, then you remember it far more easier. Basically, dopamine, serotonin or cortisol acts as confirming agents in your brain’s memory. Further down the line, hopefully, I will be able to imagine castles and palaces like the ones you can see on top of the article from Pinterest and use them reliably for memorization. But right now, I might get lost and when you get lost, you’re losing the thread. You don’t remember the correct order! On the Nordschleife, I can’t get lost because I can drive or watch an onboard lap whenever I want.

Check out this crazy lap of Kevin Estre, he’s fully committed and taking big risks:

 

I think memory palaces are a very powerful idea and it’s something I need to work on a lot. But I’m most excited about combining mind maps with mental palaces. For this though, I will have to practice a lot with my imagination. It must be as wild and vivid as possible.
Overall, speed reading(the true one, not skipping!!!), mind-mapping and memory palaces are techniques that we should have been taught at school. They can make our lives much, much easier and the childhoods of all kids a lot more enjoyable :)

Chasing Perfect – the life of Frank Stephenson

I got a stomach bug and temperature, felt sick and I don’t like feeling sick. It means I’m weak, I’m a man, I shouldn’t feel weak or at least I shouldn’t do anything and pray on medicines. I hate being unproductive or not having great fun. This space in between these two states is useless to me. So, I found this incredible documentary and watched it while Wim Hof Breathing.
Time well spent. Frank Stephenson is an incredible blend of a masculine personality with a feminine side. The yin and yang. His father was as tough of a man as they get. WWII veteran and sailor. Felt in love with Frank’s Spanish mother and stayed in Spain. He was pushing Frank and his brother to the limit in everything.

There is a very powerful story in the documentary about Frank and his brother playing baseball with their dad. He was so demanding, that he was asking them to get 10 consecutive strikes while pitching! Apparently, even the baseball greats couldn’t do that. Their father was doing it for one reason only. He was teaching the boy to never ever give up. Sadly, Frank seems to have survived and understood the lessons of his dad, but his brother didn’t. He was prone to developing bad habits and died from lung cancer. 

Frank, on the other hand, got obsessed with performance, in his teenage years, his father pushed them to be as strong physically as possible. In his late teens, Frank started motocross. In no time, he was at world championship level! Usually, to be at world championship level you should have started before your teens and it takes a looot of time. Still, Frank was top 10 rider, but his father one day told him. Frank, if you don’t win, you retire and go to school. Why? Because apparently if you don’t win, but you’re 8th or 4th, nobody remembers you. People only remember the winners. Who is remembering Ricardo Patrese for being 2nd to Nigel Mansell in F1 1992? Or who remembers that actually Jenson Button was 3rd in 2004 beaten only by both Ferraris? Few do. Everybody knows Jenson as the 2009 champion, but few remember he was 3rd in 2004, arguably a no less incredible achievement.

It isn’t fair, but people only remember the champions. As Ayrton Senna once said: Second is the first of the losers!

Frank had to step it up and perform, but his massive lack of experience obviously was too much to be overcome with sheer determination and he went to study design in LA. His mother was an artist, always painting. She taught him about art and love. He went to LA and combined the lessons of both his father and mother to finish top in class and was right away recruited by Ford!

The first car Frank had the chance to work on at Ford was the rally homologation version of the Escort – the legendary Cosworth! It’s still one of the best looking rally cars, this car was incredible and Frank actually wanted to have a 2 decker rear wing! But they thought it was too much, too costly. So it was just a single-element wing. Still, the Escort Cosworth is one of my favorite cars ever. Francois Delecour could make it dance, sadly Francois had an accident with a Ferrari and couldn’t become champion with the car. But the car became an icon in 90’s rallying… countless national and regional championships. Not only that, the road-going version was just fantastic to drive. It was made for drivers, direct steering. Of course, it never achieved the same status as the Lancia Delta, but it’s probably the 2nd most popular car from the group A era of rallying after the Deltona.

Then he went to BMW and there his never give up relentless attitude combined with his artistic talents delivered. He was put in charge of a fast-tracked project for BMW’s first SUV – the X5. He had to design it in WEEKS and present it to the board. Usually, car designs take years, not months, years. So, how did he do it? In Germany it’s against the law to work on weekends, so he had to go to Italy and get some locals to help him. He got the same people who did the Lamborghini Miura to make the clay model of the car.

The CEO of BMW at the time saw the end result and bluntly said: This goes into production.
Then he had the luxury to do the new Mini, but this was on a normal schedule, so he had the chance to break the norms and created an avantgarde car that was still in the spirit of the original Mini. The original design of the reborn Mini is still almost the same now 20 years after the premiere in 1999.

One who was never shy of challenges, he went to Ferrari and he was duly given an ultimatum to create the FIAT 500. They needed a car to save the company as it was close to bankrupt. The FIAT 500 saved FIAT and Frank was the person in charge of that mission. He delivered. It’s a boutique car with incredible handling. One of my favorite cars to drive, it’s capable of cornering at incredible speeds for a car of that size and height. But he didn’t have time to do any development. This time, he had to find a way to create a masterpiece using whatever models FIAT had as the basis. This had to be done in months and he had to find ways to cut time as much as possible. So, how did he do it? He took the FIAT Panda of all cars and then changed the bodywork and the interior. The 500 is 100% the same as the Panda. One is ugly, the other is gorgeous. Same body, same car underneath. It’s an incredible story.

After Ferrari, of course, Ron Dennis would call. He took him and he designed the MP4-12C and then the P1. IMHO, the McLaren P1 is the most beautiful car of this decade and maybe even century so far. It’s something more than the rest, something special. It’s like a provocative woman. Still, the first time Ron Dennis saw it he asked what is the front and what is the rear? He put Frank under tons of pressure at the wrong moment. Of course, he is an artist, but not an ordinary highly emotional artist. He’s a world-class athlete capable of withstanding pressure. But when you combine pressure at work with family problems and show no understanding to the person… one must be mad to stay with such a boss. Ron Dennis is famous for being incredibly insensitive to people and this time, again, he went too far. At the time Frank had both his brother and mother ill. Still, he delivered one last time. And delivered he did. This car is absolutely gorgeous, it’s like the girl you see at a party and you remember her after 1 year and many other girls. One of a kind.

What I learned from this documentary is that this romantic concept of how great artists are supposed to be melancholic and chaotic and waiting for inspiration. That’s bullshit. If you are an artist and you love what you do, then you do it as often as possible no matter what. You can be human, loving and tender, yet… just like in yin and yang… you can be tough as nails, but never be an asshole. If you’re in a creative field, you should embrace these feminine qualities to create the concepts that will lead you to success, but you should also use your masculine nature, not over imposing, but determined to reach success. The masculine decisive drive that never tires in the chase for perfection.

After the movie finished, I checked my temperature. From 38.4 to 36.6 thanks to the breathing :) Oh, and btw, a week after my flu I understood that apparently the pill I took which I thought was Paracetamol was actually Aspirin and I’m allergic to Aspirin. I can get anaphylactic shock. So, quite crazy! :)
Next morning’s temperature check: 35.8 C! Ready to rumble.