Genius Dojo is—a book, a series of memory and creativity training games, and a multi-decade research and experimentation project. It is rooted in the traditions of:
The Genius Dojo book is the user’s guide to human memory, mnemonics, and enhanced creativity. Also how the arts are employed to invoke your genius, and to create and sustain culture. The book includes: a new radical paradigm of memory; the practice of visual-perceptual mnemonics and meta-learning; with references and stories from sciences and cultural traditions; also including original training games, how to spark-sketch; and fantastic illustrations.
Dave Baumbach is a writer, illustrator, and digital-web-media designer/developer, specializing in elearning and human memory. For more about the author see: exographic.com
email for more info about Genius Dojo:
dave@geniusdojo.art
Genius: Exalted mental ability—to go beyond yourself, transcend your limits—to invoke your genius. A genius is something greater than your self—the genius is outside and beyond yourself. Really, it is not a person but a process, a mode of activity.
Dojo: A room to practice a discipline in—the greater room where the genius resides. So Genius Dojo is a place to practice the techniques of invoking or manifesting your genius. Practice the techniques and develop new habits that you will use in your creative work and ongoing learning.
At the core of Genius Dojo is a set of twenty-three rigorous free-spirited training games—a psycho-nautical Lego set. As you begin to play the games, they introduce tools that train and expand your memory and creativity. This becomes a new way of thinking. The sequential games gradually reveal the whole system. The levels of difficulty are progressive and adaptable—so the gameplay can be tailored for children or the most sophisticated adults.
The crucial component of learning any new skill or attaining expert performance in any field or discipline, is the training of perceptual imagination through visual-spatial and sonic-temporal memory. Genius Dojo is a cognitive training system that can transform learning anything (even the most boring and difficult information) into a lively, inspired, and humorous play. Your imagination is ignited through spontaneously occurring puns, symbols, and koans—giving you a whack on the head, and tickling your funny bone.
There is no magic pill, or intimacy with electronic machinery, that can give you the ability of memory and creativity—it must be practiced. Like a form of athletic training or a martial art, the muscles of your mind are strengthened and your proficiency escalates. It’s not even a “Memory Palace,” it is a “Genius Dojo.” Through practice, the difficult becomes habit, the habit easy, and the easy beautiful.
Game-playing is about simulation in relevant scenarios with low-stakes testing. Essential to learning is the freedom to fail and try again—experimenting in playful simulations without excessively negative consequences. How do you create new habits? Playing, learning, and the arts are closely related and inseparably intertwined. Interaction and enactment is the key to creating new habits. The goal is not only new knowledge, but also the development of new habits and even “generalizable cognitive skills,” which can then be applied to new situations. Game dynamics can serve these goals. These games also are a medium of learning and teaching, and a structure for people to co-create.
Play alone like solitaire or with other people very much like Charades, Pictionary, or Improv Theater. There are word games, visualization games, story games, brainstorming games, sketching games—taking turns, co-creating, moving game-pieces, combining images, racing to beat the clock, gesturing, describing, competing and cooperating. Hack the Matrix of learning and creativity like a Jedi-Ninja in a Monty Python movie.
Long-Term Memory is served best by visualized access cues, repeated recall, and also physical interaction and expression. Through the use of visual-perceptual mnemonics, core knowledge becomes instantly available via intentionally constructed visual-spatial and sonic-temporal cues.
The practice of visual-perceptual mnemonics was an integral part of education in the Ancient Greco-Roman world, and many other ancient civilizations. During the Middle Ages, and particularly the Renaissance, this discipline was practiced and evolved—then it was suppressed in the late sixteenth century—so it is generally not taught in our modern educational institutions. But in our century it has persistently resurfaced: Psychology and Cognitive Science are rediscovering many of its principles. International Memory Competitions are regenerating an interest in the training of mnemonic techniques. Genius Dojo is an optimal expression of essentially, a form of lost Ancient Wisdom.
A large part of the Genus Dojo games are about constructing clusters of images and stories. These clusters are humorous and highly intelligent memory cues made of visual images and perceptions. The techniques encode information through rebus, puns, and homophonies in the technique of key-word and key-image. These artfully encoded key-images are rendered in your minds-eye like 3-D computer graphics. They are arranged in clusters and scenes, and then anchored around a room or along a journey in different spatial locations and contexts. This keeps the information distinct and yet connected into sequences.
To recall the information, you take a walk along that route, in your imagination, and see the images placed there. The images act as cues, and you may feel like Sherlock Holmes meeting Leonardo Da Vinci as the encoded information pops into your mind. It seems like answers are whispered in your ear—from books, lectures, documentaries, or any source—like a form of paperless-note-taking that is always with you, and always on the tip of your tongue. It is faster and more dependable than searching the Internet, because you have actually learned the material. It's always instantly available to weave into your conversations and creative work. No matter what your field or domain of interest, this visual-perceptual mnemonic system can facilitate true expertise, easier and faster and with greater longevity.
Playing the training-game cycle is like learning to ride a bicycle. An untrained ordinary memory may be common, but it is not natural. A trained memory exploits the brain-mind’s native cognitive processes. It's like the difference between crawling and riding a bicycle. Visual-perceptual mnemonics is the bicycle you ride, when you want to learn, invent, communicate, and remember.
Commonalities are discovered from many arts and sciences—there is a universal process. Yes, the domains are distinct with their own specific requirements. The creative products: a painting, a mathematical model, an engineered technology, a piece of writing—all require domain specific skills and training. However the core creative process is essentially universal. The most productive approach to innovative thinking in the arts and sciences is to distinguish clearly between disciplinary products and trans-disciplinary processes. The process that leads to the generation of creative ideas is the same in arts and sciences.
Learning in school, learning for work, learning new technology, learning a new language, learning a new subject—and then expressing that learned knowledge, communicating it to others—speaking, writing, enacting, inventing, making, and teaching. Whatever your age or circumstance, learning and teaching are important, and memory and creativity are important.
Genius Dojo embodies the core principles and techniques and integrates them into an optimal system of twenty-three training games. The games amplify motivation and enjoyment, enable social participation, and engage the development of new habits. These types of disciplines of learning and teaching, of consideration and discourse, of experimentation and discovery, of co-creation and cooperation are essential to our true humanity.
© 2023, David Baumbach, Genius Dojo ®, all rights reserved