Take the relationship between working memory and intelligence.
Intelligence is statistically the most direct predictor of success in the course of a person’s lifetime. And intelligence is correlated with working memory capacity.
This is scary to think about: something as simple as how many numbers you can hold on to in your head at the same time is a reliable predictor of lifetime success.
This has far-reaching consequences, considering that working memory capacity is extremely limited: typically around 4-5 items of information at any given time.
Think about it: if you could increase your working memory capacity by a single item – a single unit of information – that would amount to almost a 20% increase in total capacity. How many other things can you think of that have such a profound effect on anything?
It turns out that you cannot increase working memory capacity – can’t increase the number of registers on your onboard CPU. What you can do is bring to bear more of your existing registers, on the task at hand, with magical consequences.
And we’re going to see how we can do that shortly.
