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What Happened To All The Country Profiles?
I’ve decided to separate out my “normal” blog posts here on Dropping Keys from the country profiles, so I’ve created a new blog just for the profiles.
Head on over to http://memorizetheworld.brooksduncan.com if you’re dying to see a new Wikipedia ripoff every day.
Why Am I Memorizing All The Countries Of The World?
I’ve decided to set a goal for myself that has nothing (directly) to do with business, money, or anything related to the normal sort of things that people set goals for.
I’ve decided that I want to memorize all the countries in the world.
Why On Earth Would You Want To Do That?
It’s not a bad question. There are a bunch of reasons why. A small subset of them are:
- As Chris Guillebeau says in his excellent post Why Focus On The Numbers?:
Pursuing something meaningful and keeping track of it with numbers is fun and addicting. The numbers help to keep things in context
- When I was a kid I used to be really, really into geography and it bothers me a bit that I have lost that
- Once in my old job while meeting with a very, very, senior executive, we were talking about a country in Africa and I was upset to realize I didn’t know where it was
- I once bought Lonely Planet’s The Travel Book as a Secret Santa present, and found myself wanting to keep it for myself
- I just want to. Isn’t that reason enough?
How Do You Define Countries?
Another excellent question. Since I have to pick some criteria, I’m going to go with the list of United Nations Member States.
However, since that list doesn’t include Taiwan and I have many Taiwanese friends, I will include them too. :)
What Will You Use To Memorize Them?
I probably won’t be doing any fancy mnemonic tricks, though I am sure that would help.
What I’ve decided to do is do little mini blog posts on each country in the world, and then test myself using Lizardpoint’s geography tests or something similar.
Why the blog posts? I am someone that learns by writing, so I figure why not write about each country. Seems like a fun project. They won’t be indepth in any way (I don’t have time for that), but hopefully writing each one out will beat them into my brain.
The blog posts will be a on Memorize The World, the Tumblr blog I have set up for this project.
In case you’re wondering why I am posting all this at all, I figure that if I do this process in public, I’ll force myself to stick to it. So you all have permission to mock and shame me if I fall off the rails.
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Photo: Chuck “Caveman” Coker
