Free The Power of Forgetting by Mike Byster Page B

speaking a language intuitively. Anyone who has mastered a second language knows what it’s like to go from thinking through every sentence and grammatical rule to letting the tongue just rattle off whole paragraphs in another language. At some point the brain takes off and knows how to navigate on its own. It hits cruise control, forgetting the nitty-gritty details. That’s the power of intuition, which is also among the most underappreciated and underdeveloped skills in the learning sphere.
    Perceptual training goes far beyond adding a layer ofpractical context to abstract principles. It also prepares us to apply such principles in other situations, an ability known as transfer. This happens all the time when we’re not even aware of it but can gain a huge advantage from increasing our ability to literally transfer knowledge—even if it’s just a perception—from one subject area to another. You can, for instance, transfer a knack for cooking to a talent for improvising in a creative session at work during which you’re ill prepared and asked on the spot to offer ideas. Or you may find yourself transferring an innate skill in understanding esoteric financial data to an ability to give practical advice to amateur investors who need your help in picking stocks. Indeed, most of today’s entrepreneurs and business professionals owe their success to perceptual learning in some area. Their ability to leverage that skill through valuable products and services that others need is key.
    Although it’s argued that we don’t know the best way to provide training in perceptual learning, I disagree. The six skills you’re about to hone in these next chapters are not labeled “perceptual learning skills” per se, but I believe that if you practice them you’ll simultaneously be developing your capacity to establish habits that reinforce perception and pattern recognition.
    If you can make a habit of noticing and perceiving patterns everywhere you look and even in how you think, your success rate will be all the better for it. And for those of you who worry that you don’t have the eye to identify patterns, try the following exercise. Pick two people you interact with on a regular basis and allocate some mental energy over the next week to pinpointing specific patterns in those individuals. These patterns can be anything—from what they wearto how they comb their hair, which foods they typically eat, how they walk, their habits, and so on. Make it a goal to come up with at least three patterns in each person, and if possible, find an additional two that are on the “unusual” side, such as your friend always twirling her hair in her fingers when she’s bored or nervous or your brother routinely saying, “I’ll let you go,” when he’s trying to end a conversation and hang up the phone. Maybe you’ve got a boss who leaves the office at precisely 5:20 most days but for some reason leaves at 5:45 on Thursdays.
    People’s behaviors are often a great starting point for noticing patterns in everyday life. We all communicate with other people on a daily basis, and being able to recognize and respect the patterns in our relationships is an essential first step toward having a constant awareness of and appreciation for all the patterns in our world, including those that are more subtle, obscure, irregular, and rare.
    Once you’re more naturally inclined to discern patterns, you’ll soon find yourself picking out patterns that few others can see and that give you an advantage that will accelerate your success overall.
    And that’s what patterns really provide: access to greater understanding and greater success … for those who take notice!
    Now that your brain is primed with a new understanding for patterns and habits, it’s time to turn to the next part of the book, which will teach you to trust and tune your perceptual intuition using six important skills. This will ultimately help you develop the mental habits of