Do you get overwhelmed and frustrated every time you need to come up with new ideas when using memory techniques as part of your brain training? Especially when learning a foreign language?

You know what it’s like struggling to come up with mnemonics. It can feel a bit like pulling nails out of dead wood with a pair of rusted tweezers.

And what really makes the pain so bad is that you know that your brain is teeming with ideas.

Great ideas …

If only you could catch them.

Here’s the good news. In this unconventional brain training post I’m going to teach you how …

 

You Can Catch More Great Ideas Than The Most Successful Fishing Fleet In The World (Catches Fish)!

 

Just pick and choose from these super simple brain training activities and start with the most appealing. We’re going to go deep into each one so that you’ll have the fullest possible understanding.

Add one or more per month over a year’s time and you’ll enjoy an overflow of ideas so powerful it will take ten lifetimes and thousands of employees to handle them.

 

Just Kidding – Most Will Be …

 

Crap. Seriously.

As awesome as having boatloads of ideas can be, the real power comes from the refinement brain training brings. We’ll talk about that too a bit further on so your ideas will always come out shining.

But here’s the important thing for now: You can’t refine what you don’t have.

And you can’t get more ideas to refine if you aren’t already producing a lot of ideas in the first place.

That’s why you need an unending flow of ideas that you can turn on at will and focus into form with laser intensity whenever you choose.

Here are 3 unconventional ways how brain training can make that happen.

 

1. Milk Your Mind For Ideas Each And Every Morning

 

Most people flush their most vibrant ideas down the toilet as soon as their feet hit the floor.

It’s true.

By the time you hit the head, you’ve forgotten most, if not all, of a valuable stream (pun intended) of ideas you’ll never get back.

I’m talking about your dreams.

Of course, most of what we dream makes little sense, at least not without practicing the art of dream recall. Even then, dreams remain fundamentally surreal and devoid of fixed meaning.

But just because they may be meaningless, doesn’t mean your dreams can’t help you create meaning.

Au Contraire!

 

Since the early beginnings of literature, for example, Daniel in the Bible, making dreams meaningful has been a practice powerful enough to direct the choices of kings.

And with The Interpretation Of Dreams, Freud created an entire industry by empowering people to interpret their dreams and generate ideas about what to do and how to live in the world.

You don’t have to use the dreams you remember to influence world leaders or deal with childhood trauma. You can simply jot down what you remember and then free-associate to the images and vignettes.

Here’s a quick way to get started with this form of brain training:

1. Get a dream journal and pen/pencil. Make it exclusive to your dream capture practice.

2. Place the journal where it’s impossible to miss near your bed. You can even date it before you go to sleep and leave it open at the page you’ll write on.

3. Make the commitment to remembering your dreams. Just say your personal version of, “I remember my dreams. I write them down.” That mantra in itself will serve as powerful brain training.

4. Free-associate to one or more of your dreams. It helps if you get relaxed first. Let ideas come to mind and jot them down. Don’t think about it or try to guide them. Let them breathe.

If you recall no dreams …

 

No. Big. Deal.

 

Write down, “no dreams” and perhaps a few notes about how you slept. Before you know it, you will start remembering your dreams with depth and intensity. And when you practice associating with these dreams, you’ll always be able to come up with new ideas.

The best part is that you’re journaling your dreams. This brain training practice means that you don’t have to associate only with recent dreams for new ideas.

You can go back through those pages for as long as you’ve been journaling. You’ll have a treasure trove of images, narrative snippets, and longer sequences as often as you please and always find some new angle on the material.

To give you an example, years ago I dreamed about the pyramids. I saw them filled with a scented lava that poured down the sides, creating a river.

When I finally got to visit Egypt, for some reason, I remembered the dream and started to explore it for ideas. I was there to research ancient Egyptian culture for its relationship to memory and reincarnation, past lives, etc.

That was all fine and dandy and I learned some great stuff in some of the museums I’ll be telling you about soon. But the fact that I remembered this dream and the lava was scented led me to think about aromas, and I wound up wondering if there is a relationship between scent and memory.

It turns out there is. I have found a wealth of research material on the matter, much of which centers on the use of oils in mummification – one of the most memory-centered activities in all of history.

Would I have thought to connect scent and memory without this dream that helped product it?

Maybe yes.

Maybe no.

But the point is that without the practice of dream journaling as a form of brain training, I probably never would have thought about scent and memory in the context of mummification and essential oils in Ancient Egypt.

Deliberately remembering your dreams is a way of engineering happy accidents and generating new ideas that come power packed with resonating value. It’s easy, fun, quick and easy to do. It creates long term value and can change your life in many other ways too.

 

2. Brain Training Pulls Ideas Out Of Thin Air
Like Pushups Pack Muscles On Your Arms

 

If dream recall doesn’t appeal, there’s always brute force.

And that’s the way the following approach may feel at first.

But once you get into it, things get faster, easier and more interesting.

You just have to be willing to train your brain.

Here’s how it works, as adapted from the original exercise taught by James Altucher in Choose Yourself:

Write down ten ideas every day.

The benefits of completing this exercise will become plain. Just like doing consistent sets of even just ten pushups on a daily basis cannot help but strengthen your muscles …

 

Writing Out Just Ten Ideas A Day Will Pump Up Your Thinking Pipes

 

Will the ideas be any good?

Many times no.

But that’s not the point. And often enough, the ideas will be good. Or they will become catalysts for betters ideas, or at least be amusing. As with pushups, so long as you keep good form, you can’t go wrong.

Interested?

Good. Here are more specific instructions.

1. Get a special notebook and pen exclusively for this brain training exercise.

2. Write 1-10 along the side of the page.

3. Don’t overthink the process. Start with the first blank space and write something down.

4. Write another idea down and keep going until you’ve reached 10.

As with nearly every exercise you’re learning now, coming with a relaxed body and mind will make a huge difference. By meditating first, or running in place, or even after performing some real pushups, your brain will be bursting with oxygen.

In this state …

 

You Can Experience Monumental Levels Of Creativity

 

More importantly, the volume of your critical voice will go down, if not disappear altogether.

You know the voice I mean.

It’s the voice that says, “I can’t. This is stupid, pointless and useless. Why bother?”

 

That Voice Is A Brain Training Killer!

 

When it comes to listening to this voice, why bother, indeed? Didn’t this voice already batter you with these same enthusiasm-destroying sentences yesterday?

Meditation will help get that voice out of the way, letting new ideas flow with greater ease.

For bonus points, you can use the same notebook you use for dream journaling. Just imagine compounding the value of the ideas nature gave you during sleep with your Altucher-style brute force ideas.

Quite frankly, the value of combining the two is awesome.

What’s that? You want an example?

 

Well … okay …

 

Here are three of my ten ideas from earlier this morning. Remember, I don’t judge these or even think about them too much. Just as with pushups, I’m concerned only with executing the moves with good form. In this case, good form means nothing more than …

Doing. It.

1. Construct a highway from the earth to the moon out of Levi jeans. People will travel to the moon in vehicles made out of zippers and buttons. The speedbumps will be made from pockets and stitches, and all traffic lights will be made from the red Levi’s tag. But they will never mean stop, only, “go faster.”

2. Professors who shoot pancakes from maple syrup guns get arrested by the Spatula Police and taken to a prison made from sticks of butter.

3. All the American presidents in history suddenly appear in the present and start tattoo parlors that specialize in squeezing the Declaration of Independence onto the surface of any body part you wish.

Silly stuff, right?

Of course it is.

But as goofy as these ideas may be, they came lightning fast and in multilayered formations. Speed and depth come from nothing more than making idea generation a daily brain training practice. It’s both an art and a habit. There are no true Eureka! Moments in creativity, only ongoing processes.

The longer, the better.

And so whether you want to have more ideas for working with mnemonics, your work or building a better future, all you have to do is start by writing down nothing more than ten ideas.

You can get started with this form of brain training today.

 

3. Copy, Amplify, Transform, Delete Or Downright Mutilate And Abuse The Ideas Of Others

 

If for any reason you can’t come up with any ideas at all or hit a dry spell, no stress. The world is filled with ideas already put out there. Sure, they’ve poured their heart and soul into creating them, but that’s no reason not to …

 

… Mess With Them!

 

Think of Banksy. He’s a master at monkeying with logos, brands, royalty and all manner of preexisting images. He copies, transforms and sometimes deletes parts of images to create new effects that lead to new feelings and ideas.

Let’s go through each of these approaches and see how you can make them work for you and your brain.

 

Talent Borrows, Genius Steals, Creatives Copy

 

Have you ever studied music? If so, then you’ve probably played compositions written by someone else.

If you’re an artist, or tried to be one, then you’ve probably copied at some point the works of a pro.

But if you’re a writer …

Copying the works of others is the last thing you’ve ever wanted to do.

Enter Kenneth Goldsmith. In this video, he talks about “uncreativity” and why you should copy, word for word, the works of other writers the way musicians and artists so all the time. (I’ve fast-forwarded the video to the interesting part.)

Notice that Goldsmith isn’t talking merely about copying the works of others. He’s talking about training your brain by analyzing your choices. You get an education from writing about what you copied and how the exercise made you feel while at the same time imprinting your mind with the rhythms and metaphors of writers you admire.

In other words, by studying your choices, you get ideas.

Incidentally, Goldsmith’s “uncreativity” exercises may sound controversial in the world of literature. Copying the writing of others to write at a higher level and produce stunning writing without hesitation has been on the radar of marketers and copywriters for decades.

You can read about Gary Halbert’s “neurological imprinting” and how to dig the writing of others even deeper into your mind here.

But as with Goldsmith, the point of such exercises is not to clone. It’s to train your brain to find connections and spontaneously produce new ideas of great wealth.

For more on writing, consider Ambidextrousness and Memory: Can Dual Handedness Boost Your Brain?

 

Cut Out The Best, Mess With The Rest

 

Sometimes the best way to milk existing ideas for new ones is to cut them to pieces.

Take Dan Walsh’s Garfield Minus Garfield, for example.

What makes Walsh’s work so brilliant is the consistent comedy gold he mines from a preexisting comic strip simply by removing its famous namesake. You get a completely different reading experience, and your perception of John completely shifts.

To take another example, try and find The Matrix DeZionized. Some people wanted to like The Matrix sequels but found the representation of Zion to be a deal-breaker. So instead of griping about it, they put all three movies together and removed Zion entirely.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that creates new ideas about The Matrix series that I couldn’t have had otherwise. Just watching it serves as a kind of brain training.

How do you use this technique to create an endless stream of your own ideas on demand?

Easy.

Pick your favorite novel or movie and then think about what it would be like without the lead character or some other critical element.

What would Superman be like without Lois Lane? How would Anne of Green Gables play out if the Cuthberts hadn’t adopted her? How would Columbo endlessly introduce himself back into the lives of his suspects if he couldn’t say, “Just one more thing”?

In some ways, this exercise relates to the “how many uses can you find for a paperclip?” game. But instead of adding ideas, you’re deleting them.

And when you delete, you can transform through replacement.

Imagine, for example, if the “creator” of Garfield — had replaced the cat with Conan the Barbarian. Or James Bond? Or Julia Roberts?

Okay, So Brain Training Made You Creative …

Now What?

 

By now, you’ve got a wealth of procedures, games and activities you can use to make your mind a machine of perpetual ideas. And you’ve done it all without playing any time-wasting brain games.

Rest assured, the powerful effects of exercises like these don’t stop here. These creativity drills infuse with everything else you do throughout the day. You will notice constant creative energy as new ideas show up left, right and center.

Of course …

 

With Great Ideas Comes Great Responsibility!

 

After all, these ideas are like your children. It would be criminal to neglect them.

That said, you do need to get rid of every idea that doesn’t scale.

Or rather, reshape it somehow.

Instead of thinking of the culling process as tossing your children out into the cold, just imagine that you’re trimming their hair.

That’s all it is. Shaving wool from a flock of sheep, weeding out the dud strands and using the rest to knit …

 

A Wearable, Warm And Wonderful Idea Sweater

 

The question is … How?

Actually, this form of brain training is quite easy …

Assign each idea with a value.

To keep things easy, create three categories. 1, 2, 3. Green for “go,” yellow for “caution,” red for “forget it.”

Or you can use a gold coin, silver coin and a copper coin. I like this model in particular because ideas are currency. Whether it’s a scratched up penny or a hundred dollar bill, you can spend all your ideas somewhere, sometime, somehow.

So here’s an experiment adapted from something Dean Jackson talks about in his amazing 50-minute Focus Finder video:

Using the idea generation techniques you’ve just learned, get out three envelopes and three coins.

Next, stick those envelopes to the back of the door in your workspace or on a wall or any place you’ll regularly see them. Stick one coin on each envelope to indicate their value.

Then, using index cards or slips of paper, sort your ideas into the envelopes based on how much value you’ve attached to them.

You’ll have to decide on your own valuation system, but …

 

Keep It Loose And Flexible

 

Flexibility means that you allow your ideas to appreciate. What starts off as a copper coin could easily wind up becoming silver or even leaping straight up to gold.

Likewise, ideas that may have seemed gold, may downgrade over time. But no matter how things evolve on the Stock Exchange of your ideas, all of them can stay in trade and hold potential.

And anytime you feel like you’re lacking in ideas, you’ll have three heavy bank accounts from which you can draw.

Just as you can get more out of having more memory memory training techniques from around the world in your toolbox.

You know that you can become more creative right now … right?

Good. Then go out there, gather some ideas as part of your brain training and make something special for the world.

Do it now.

The post Brain Training: 3 Unconventional Techniques Guaranteed To Help You Conjure Your Best-Ever Ideas appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Here’s a great question about how to memorize textbooks I received from a Magnetic Memory Method fan:

What if I wanted to memorize a chapter in a textbook so I could ace a test on that subject?

That would be cool, wouldn’t it?

Good news: It’s 100% possible.

No Joke

When I was studying for my doctoral examinations and later for my dissertation defense (rigorous 2 hr. + grilling sessions in front of a committee of 4-7 accomplished professors), I read a total of over 500 books and articles.

I’m not kidding. I almost broke my back at the library on several occasions!

Here’s exactly how I used to operate – and still do when I’m conducting research or just want to memorize the contents of a book using memory techniques. It’s an ongoing memory improvement project to continue learning from textbooks and it all begins with this important step every time:

 

Leave Your Fear At The Door:
These Details Will Show You How To Memorize Textbooks

 

Unfortunately, a lot of people get hung up on the details when learning how to memorize textbooks.

For good reason:

There are some operational factors in what I’m about to describe that might not seem to involve memorization.

Trust me: Each step is essential as you learn how to memorize textbooks. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have included it.

Before I take any of the steps that I’m about to describe, I always begin with a carefully defined Memory Palace. As I talk about in all of my trainings, I always make sure that each Memory Palace involves a location that I’m intimately familiar with.

If you’re having a hard time finding good Memory Palaces, check out the MMM Podcast episode: How to Find Memory Palaces. It will help.

Plus, make sure that you have the free Memory Improvement Kit so you can use the worksheets and videos as a guide.

 

Create Limited Set Memory Palaces Based On The Textbooks
You Want To Memorize

 

I always chart out between 4-10 stations within each room of that Memory Palace. In the past, I usually made more (like 50 or so, often with between 30-50 stations within a single room). These days, I’m more focused on small sets of information.

Why?

Because I find that leads to more meaningful quantity over time with my current Mandarin Chinese learning project.

For more information on how to create a Memory Palace, get my free memory improvement kit:

Next…

 

Create The Right Mindset

 

This is important:

Decide to work with the correct mental attitude. For example, when sitting with a textbook or journal article, I need to have the attitude that I will walk away with the most essential information firmly magnetized into my mind.

You should do this too.

 

Then Chillax

 

Seriously.

Take a moment to relax.

I recommend that you adopt a traditional meditation pose on the floor, or lay down for awhile and do some progressive relaxation. Either way, I spend time practicing a bit of pendulum breathing and maybe even the Human Charger.

With those operating procedures covered regarding how to memorize textbooks, let’s get into further detail.

 

1. Look At The Book And Read The Conclusion First

 

When approaching a new book, carefully examine the front cover and the back cover.

Next, read:

• the colophon page
• the table of contents
• the introduction
• the conclusion

Finally, scan through the index (if available).

The scholar Gerrard Genette calls these parts of a book the “paratext,” (the text beside the text). This step takes about five minutes and effectively trains your brain to understand the scope and dimension of the book with respect to its topic.

Why read the conclusion first? Part of the reason is to judge whether or not the author’s conclusion about his or her own subject was profound enough to warrant reading all of the steps needed to arrive at it. The introduction and conclusion also give clues regarding which chapters of the book might be the most important to focus on.

 

2. Manage Index Card Mania

 

It’s important to decide how much information you want to take away from a textbook in advance. That way, you don’t overwhelm yourself.

And you can start in a structure manner. Like this:

Take out an index card and write down the name of the author, the title of the book and all of the bibliographic information.

Number this card “1” in the top left corner. Before starting with a book, I tend to decide in advance exactly how many pieces of information I want to retain from it. This is the principle of “predetermination” that I discuss throughout the Magnetic Memory Method training. Often, I default to three facts or details per chapter, but always keep enough index cards on hand in case I want more.

The reason for deciding these matters in advance is because

a) failing to plan is generally planning to fail (especially when it comes to structured reading), and

b) predetermination prevents overwhelm.

Remember:

Less is more. When you use the Magnetic Memory Method for something like foreign language learning or studying, you’ll find that by focusing on just a few key points, a lot of the surrounding information will automatically “stick” to the memorized material.

Try it. It just happens.

 

3. Get Started

 

The beauty of having operating principles is that you never sit around wondering how to get started. You just dive in.

So after reading the introduction and conclusion, you should now have in mind which chapters you want to read first. Just get started with one of them.

If you’re having decision anxiety, just go in the order they appear in the book from beginning to end. Don’t let thinking get in the way of forward progress.

 

4.Think In Threes

 

Here’s the deal:

At this point, you know that there are three pieces of information you’re going to walk with away from each chapter. You’ve got your index cards ready to go and can start gathering the information.

It doesn’t have to be a limit of three. You might want to go for five or ten. The important point is to pick a structured operating principle and go with it.

 

5. The Ownership Mindset

 

Since you’ve already adopted the attitude that you’re going to succeed and literally “own” the key information in the book, it’s time to play a game totally unlike other brain games I teach. This game works especially well if the book is boring or completely outside your interest.

Pretend that you’re the talk show host of a program and later that evening and you’ve got to interview the author. Millions of people will be watching, so you really need to the book. And you need to read it fast.

What this mindset allows is for you to ask questions while you’re reading. You’ll get really curious, and instead of reading passively, you’ll actively engage with the writing.

Also, ask “else” questions. This means that instead of stopping after a round of:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How?

You add “else” to each one:

• Who else?
• What else?
• Where else?
• When else?
• Why else?
• How else?

This technique will help you create new knowledge as you learn.

Try it. You’ll love it.

 

6. Categorize Every Gem
(Studying Is A Numbers Game)

 

When y0u come across a gem of a detail, write it down on the index card. Write down the page number where you found the information on the bottom right corner.

Do this regardless of whether or not you’ve jotted down a quote. Should you ever need to find that information again, you’ll know where to go. If you have any secondary ideas, use the back of the index card to capture them.

At this point, don’t do any kind of memorization. You’re familiarizing yourself, learning, connecting the details with information you already know and gathering new facts and details. That’s it.

So let’s assume now that you’ve read a book that has ten chapters and you’ve got three index cards for each.

Each card is numbered, meaning that you now have 30 index cards. All you need now is to be prepared with 30 station in 1-3 Memory Palaces that you’ve hopefully already assigned to the book.

 

7. Start Memorizing (Magnetically)

 

Your next step is to simply start with card #1. You want to remember the title of the book and the name of its author. That information is memorized at station #1.

If you happen to know the title of the book already by heart, then you don’t need to use the first station in this way, but it can still be useful to do so, and here’s why:

8. Use The Author As A Visual Element

 

You can use the author as a “lexical bridge” or “Bridging Figure” to move from station to station as you learn how to memorize textbooks.

See if you can find a picture of the author online. Let’s say that you are reading the book Paratexts, by Gerrard Genette.

I’ve Googled him up and Genette looks like this. Gerrard Genette reminds me of Gillette razor blades, and so I see him shaving in that first room. To remember that it’s Genette and not Gillette, I see him shaving away a beard of Ns growing crazily out of his face. For “Paratexts,” I could ease either a pear bouncing up and down on a textbook, or a can of Para Paint splashing over a book – there are always options.

Here’s another option you can try for finding memorable characters to use as you learn how to memorize textbooks:

 

9. Exaggerate Everything

 

Now let’s say that card #2 says: “A text does not exist outside of the text itself.”

That sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

Maybe, but we don’t often think about the fact that until someone comes along and reads a book, the book essentially doesn’t do anything. There are billions of books standing unread on shelves around the world that only “exist” when someone is reading them or talking about them. This is what Genette means when he says that “a text does n0t exist outside of the text itself.” Our minds are a kind of text, so when we are reading, two texts are intermingling.

To remember all of this, my second station will feature the book Paratexts itself. I imagine it as an object in the Memory Palace I’m using.

On that specific station in that specific Memory Palace, words are trying to escape from the book, and there’s poor Genette trying to beat them back in because, according to him, there is no text outside of the text itself. He needs to get all of that text back in!

As always, the images are big, bright, colorful and filled with exaggerated action.

To get some of the other concepts in Genette’s thinking that I’ve just described, I might see Genette giving up the battle, and then opening up a lid in his head, which is also filled with words, and allowing the words from Paratexts to mingle with the words in his mind.

From there, on to the next index card.

Now that you know how to memorize textbooks, you can model this process to remember any point, historical date, or formula in a book!

 

10. Test Yourself Before The Teacher Does

 

The final step when learning how to memorize textbooks is to test your memorization of the details, facts and concepts you have memorized from the textbook.

I recommend writing a summary from your mind and then checking it against the index cards. One of my supervisors required me to submit summaries to prove that I was reading the books on my list, so I got into that habit and have always been grateful for it.

If you’re a student, I highly recommend that you take this step now that you know how to memorize textbooks. It will not only deeply immerse you in your topic area, but it will provide you with material that you’ve already written when it comes to composing essays, pieces for publication and even your dissertation further on down the road if you decide to complete a PhD.

Also, be sure to revisit the information in your mind following a procedure like the Rule of 5 or the more rigorous Recall Rehearsal procedures of the Magnetic Memory Method. It’s by rehearsing the information into long term memory that you really make it your own.

The best part is that the more you read, the more connections you naturally make, reinforcing what you’ve already learned. Now that you know how to memorize textbooks, you’re going to be a Magnetic powerhouse of information!

 

Learning How To Memorize Textbooks Is Fun!

 

What happened during my doctoral examinations? Instead of being stressful as they are for nearly everyone else …

They were fun!

I had been in a relaxed state while reading and memorizing the material, and complimented this by spending a bit of time relaxing before attending the exams. I literally threw myself into a state of self-hypnosis in the corridor outside of the examination rooms.

When I was asked a question, my mind zoomed to where the material was stored in one of my Memory Palaces. Once I found the information, I was able to talk at length about, whether it was Gerrard Genette’s idea about “paratexts” or Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship in The Nichomeachean Ethics.

In case you’re wondering what I did with all those index cards:

I used to wrap them with an elastic band, one per book, and then store them in a shoe box. Somehow, index cards and shoes boxes were made for one another. But all those index cards are gone now and so I enjoy having nothing to do but go through the Memory Palaces in my mind. And thanks to the memory techniques and ongoing memory improvement work I do, that step is often unnecessary.

But it’s fun. And I’m confident it will be just as much fun for you.

Further Resources

Check out this infographic from How to Memorize A Textbook, a similar episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.

 

 

 

 

 

The post What If I Wanted To Memorize A Chapter In A Textbook So I Could Ace A Test On That Subject? appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

This Man Shows You How To Unlock The Extreme Power Of Your Memory

 

Interested?

I thought you might be.

The man in question is Nelson Dellis. He climbs mountains,memorizes playing cards underwater and works to solve Alzheimer’s by collecting data through the Extreme Memory Challenge. Take it now.

Not only does Nelson use his memory talents to create good in the world, he’s also on a mission to help and inspire you to do the same.

Because the fact of the matter is, when you have improved memory skills, you won’t be able to stop yourself from contributing to the world at a higher level.

Just remember …

With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

Please enjoy this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast by downloading the MP3 and listening to it. You’ll find the full transcript down below with some links throughout to help continue your education into the world of Extreme Memory Improvement.

Let’s get started and feel free to download the entire transcript as a PDF to your desktop for future reference.

Anthony: Nelson, it’s great to be able to speak with you. I’ve been following some of the things you’ve been doing for quite some time. Maybe, just for people who don’t know you, give a brief overview of what got you interested in memory and how you came to achieve what you’ve done and take it to the level of basically bringing social good out of the achievements you’ve had with memory.

Nelson: Yeah, you know this all started back when my grandmother was struggling with Alzheimer’s as she lived in Europe. I wouldn’t see her all the time but I think that made a bigger  impression on me because I would go visit every six months to a year and she had drastically changed, deteriorated immensely. That made a big imprint on me. Then she passed away the summer of 2009.

At that point, I had kind of dabbled in memory. I decided to take what I had read about and really drive it home and see if I could, at a young build a strong memory, a healthy brain, and I set the goal of myself winning the memory championship. That seemed like a good milestone to try to get to and to judge, test, and base all of my training scores on. I did, and I got very good at it and all motivated by my progress and eventually I ended up winning the U.S. Memory Championship four times. That’s now what I do. I teach people how to unlock their memories.

Anthony: That’s very cool and you know one of the things that is so extraordinary is that you also turn it into social good, which we’ll talk about. Talk a little bit about the book that you’re working on and who it is for and why developing memory abilities is so important for the audience that you’re creating it for.

 

What If Memorizing Could Be The Most Exciting Activity In The World?

 

Nelson: You know I still get a lot of people who approach me and talk about their father, their mother, or grandmother has early onset or has Alzheimer’s, and they ask me if it’s something that I can train their parents to improve their memory. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about that. In my opinion, I think learning these memory techniques is a habit thing. You’ve got to learn it, I think, at an early age. That is something that just sticks with you.

When you go into your higher education, you already know how to memorize. It is a skill that you were given in school. Right now, obviously, you see if you have a class or a teacher who gives you tips on how to improve your memory you just do it. Memorize this song. You go home. You struggle with it. You repeat it over and over and then you come back and you’re excited and it’s the most frustrating process.

What if you lived in an age where your teachers actually had a class or spent some time teaching you memory techniques at a young age? When it would come to that poem or med school textbook that you’ve got memorize, you would have some toolbox in your brain to figure that out faster and more efficiently. I’ve been working on a book. I actually wrote a book, it’s not published yet for normal people of normal age.

The one I’m really excited about is this one I’ve been working on for kids which is teaching them memory techniques at a very young age. It’s geared towards a first grader in a picture book style. Because I feel like if you can get that in the head of a kid who already has a fantastic imagination and memory, that those things could stick with them and help them be successful throughout life.

Anthony: I think that’s fundamental because often adults feel that they have lost their creativity somehow. It’s pounded out of them through work or whatever the case may be. How do you think the people could resuscitate creativity if they felt that they have lost it?

 

The Truth About Memory Techniques And Creativity

 

Nelson: I know that feeling. I have felt it myself over the years. A lot of people tell me creativity is hard for me. It is hard for me to do these techniques, for example, which take a lot of creativity and imagination, but I honestly believe that anybody can do this. If you’re not good at, or if you think you’re not good at being creative, I think it’s one of those things it is practice.

I was always pretty good. I was very artistic, but I would still say I’m not the most creative person. I knew a lot of people who were a lot more creative than me. When I first heard about these techniques, a little bit skeptical and maybe thought okay this might not be up my alley or something that I might be good at, but with all the practice I’ve done, yeah, I’m practicing memory techniques, but for sure I’m also practicing creativity techniques. My mind is, I feel now, way more creative than it was six or seven years ago when I started this.

Anthony: I’m curious about your process if we can talk shop a little bit. One of those issues really is being creative. I’ve always thought that, and I encountered this in Harry Lorayne is you’re just doing associations. At so many levels, creativity really isn’t the issue. It’s more of being able to pool associations together so like famous actors or politicians or football players or whatever. I’m just curious to what extent you rely on information that you already know like pop culture images, or whatever the case may be, as opposed to things you invent on the fly or fantasy images that are not really reality so to speak.

Nelson: Well, when I train for these memory competitions there’s a few events. One of them is the deck of cards. How fast can you memorize them? They give you a massive number and you’ve got five minutes to memorize as much of it as you can. For things like that, I have systems where they are already set out. I sat down one day and decided to give each three-digit number 000 to 999 a specific person.

When I came up with that list and when I use it, it’s all celebrities, fictional cartoon characters from books, shows, people, friends that I know. They’re all associations to things that I already know. There are other events where you have to kind of make stuff up on the fly, for example, a list of words or names. Most of that is where you have to be very creative because you don’t know what you’re going to get.

You’ve got to come up with the pictures, but what I do is I’ll look at a pair of words or a name and a last name, and I’ll come up with that association to something I know but on the fly. If I can’t, then I break it down into something smaller that is recognizable. That’s always the process  is to break it into something I know. It’s still a creative process whether you already have associations to things or not because you still have to interweave those images with, for example, a Memory Palace or some narrative that is totally make believe.

 

Why You Should Go Climb A Mountain If You Want To Find More Memory Palaces

 

Anthony: To what extent do you prefer Memory Palaces based on real locations you’ve actually visited to just made up Memory Palaces, or even based on places that exist but you’ve never been to.

Nelson: Right. I know some people who do all those that you mentioned. I’m more of the real places that I’ve been to and had a memorable experience there. To me, I love going to these places. I climbed Everest a few years ago, and I have a Memory Palace where I’m on the mountain going through base camp and the higher camps and all that. I love the fact that when I train I get to go to that place. I think that’s very important at least for me to make my memories, when I memorize stuff, that much more memorable. I do know some people who use video game settings or even fictional rooms. They maybe design them on their computer or draw it or whatever. It is not a real place but it works.

Anthony: One question a lot of people have is can you reuse a Memory Palace and what’s your experience with that?

Nelson: When I’m training, I do multiple decks a day so I’ve got to have a large collection of Memory Palaces. If I were to have just one and I use it over and over and over again, I’m going to get some echoes and some confusion. I’m sure if you practice, you could probably eliminate some of that. I like to have fresh Memory Palaces come competition time. I’ll use a few and then leave those alone for a few days while I use other ones and then cycle back to them so that they empty themselves out.

That being said, if I have something that I want to memorize forever  so this is what I’m talking about for training is temporary. I’m memorize a deck of cards, I recite it and then I don’t really care to keep that particular deck of cards any longer. It’s meaningless almost. That’s why I cycle through them. If it is some trivia set or something for school or something really important that I want to keep forever, then I typically take or design or find a Memory Palace specifically for that information and I use it only for that. I would never tape over it. I’ll just use it as this hard drive, external hard drive, if you will, to store that piece of information.

Anthony: How often do you feel you need to revisit or rehearse that information or to keep it fresh and overcome the forgetting curve?

Nelson: You know, probably when you start out review is essential frequently, but over time it’s something I – maybe every six months I’ll go back and check it out. If there are gaps in it, I can go back and kind of relearn it just to solidify it.

 

Why The Real Magic Of Memory Is In Keeping It Real

Anthony: Do you ever experiment with adding a condition to a Memory Palace so you can reuse it? I’m sure you are familiar with the procedure of taking an original Memory Palace and then having a version made out of ice, a version made out of wood, grass, or maybe there would be a blue version, a red version and a yellow version. You ever mess around with that stuff?

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve heard of that. More like you make it big or you imagine yourself miniature inside of it or something. I’ve heard of that. I’ve never actually tried it. I don’t know. I just like to do it as real as the place is.

Anthony: Right, that’s exactly how I like to work as well. One thing too, just if we can be nerdy about this a little bit more, I’m curious do you see yourself walking through the Memory Palace? Do you have a first person viewpoint or is it like a bird’s eye view of a blueprint? How is it working for you, or do you do all three in different situations?

Nelson: I’m not there. I guess its first person but looking at a location in this Memory Palace and something is happening there. It’s not like it’s me seeing it. It’s just like a security camera.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s cool. I mean that is just one question that I get again and again is how that people are supposed to navigate it and how they’re supposed to see it. I often try to encourage them to not see it at all but rather think of it as a star in a constellation that you’ve carefully crafted and reduce the reconstruction of the Memory Palace to the bare minimum so you can focus on those weird and crazy images that you’ve put there.

Nelson: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. I don’t really think about whether I see it or who is seeing it or what angle it is. It’s just I just think of that slot, I create the image, and I move along.

 

How To Snag Anything You Want To Memorize By Associating It With Feelings

 

Anthony: That must be important for speed since you’re often engaging in speed drills.

Nelson: Yeah, when you first start out you linger and you make sure you have it in your head, but as you try to cut down your times to get faster at this process you really have to, like you said, cut these images down to their bare minimum where it’s almost just a fleeting part of that image. We were talking about it last week. There was a UK Championship and some of us were saying that it’s almost a feeling. When you get fast at it, and that’s honestly, we go really fast and sometimes we forget things.

When you have a really good run through say a deck of cards and it’s fast, what you’ll find is like the images that you were picturing were just all feeling. There’s my dad at this location. It’s not him per se at this point. It’s the essence of him or I guess how he makes me feel when he’s in my presence. Whatever, but he’s there. Which is interesting because when I first tell somebody how to do this technique, I tell them to sit there, close their eyes, really imagine your dad, if that’s what you’re picturing, his hair, how he smells, how he talks, all these little details to make that image memorable. Once you get faster at it, you’ve got to cut some of that out and really just cling on to the things that are what make it stick.

Anthony: One of the things that I think pushes people away from these extraordinary techniques is the element of let’s call it rigorous cartoon violence. To what extent do you find that’s necessary or are you able to use softer, gentler imagery to trigger the target information.

 

How To Safely Use Your Taboos For Extreme Memory Boosts

 

Nelson: Yeah, it’s funny. I did a talk once, and I feel like a lot of my images are violent/sexual. I’m not a violent person by nature but my images they tend to be. I was leading an audience through an example and one woman just couldn’t get it, and she was like I just can’t picture gruesome things. I just can’t do it. What she did from then on, she was a very spiritual person, she kind of related it all back to religion and that seemed to work for her.

What I pull from that is that everybody’s minds are different. I often encourage that you should go for pictures that are bizarre and silly, over the top and if you can, sexual or gruesome, grotesque in nature just because those stick because of them being so out there and loud. For me, I think that’s an important part. For numbers and cards, I have actions that are violent or sexual for sure.

Anthony: But you still manage to be a good citizen of the planet?

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve heard people say I don’t want to do that because I feel like it will take over my mind and I’m going to become a bad person, but that never happens.

 

Is Every School In The World Evil For Not Teaching Memory Techniques To Children? 

 

Anthony: Going back to the book for young people and the issue of getting them young to at least have exposure to these techniques, a lot of people ask me and have probably asked you. It’s one of the biggest questions. Why aren’t these memory techniques taught in school? It’s really easy to fall back on the idea, and there’s probably a truth to the idea, that we are stuck in a Victorian education system that was designed to create obedient factory workers and so forth. What’s you’re take on it?

Nelson: It’s interesting because on the flip side every time I go up to a school or university and I demonstrate or I talk to someone who has seen what I can do and they want me to come talk about it at the school, there’s always an excitement for it. They can’t believe it’s not in their school, that kids don’t know about.

But then what happens is, we get down the road, conversations, I do a few little talks and there’s times maybe working together involving these techniques into the curriculum and then it falls flat. I don’t understand it. It recurs a lot.

It’s just a funny thing. I guess memory because it’s so abstract I guess in a way and it’s not as tangible as say math. You can write your solutions on the board and then the work can stepped out. Whereas memory is very – everybody like I was talking about before is very different. You can’t really see how another student is memorizing. You guide them and hope that they’re following along.

I don’t know if that’s the reason why it still hasn’t caught on. I’ve been at this for a number of years and I’ve had so many people interested and promises and ideas and they just – some have gone through of course but not as many as I would like.

You know at first I did this just because it was a personal thing. I wanted to improve my memory and my brain health. Then I realized it’s a bit hard to train when you don’t have kind of the end goal. With memory improvement, if I want to have a competition what am I really training for? Yeah to improve my mind, fine, but I’m a very quantities person so how do you measure that. When is it good enough? To be honest, I don’t know actually have the answer. But at least with the memory championships I knew numbers and times that I had to achieve in order to be competitive for the title. That kept me very motivated in terms of driving me to compete.

 

Why Advanced Memory Skills Are The Best Addiction You’ll Never Want To Kick

 

The thing is this stuff is so addicting. Once you realize you have this power to memorize more than you ever thought you could, and then you train and get even faster it, it’s a hard thing to let go of and then when you see other people in your circle, your memory circle improving you want to stay up with them especially when you are already at the top. That’s my problem right now. I won it four times, and I keep saying I’m going to stop because I don’t want to end up losing. I always wrestled with that problem. Do I keep training? And if I do, I’ve got to train harder because the competitive levels keep rising versus just calling it quits. I’m just doing it for myself.

Anthony: Have you ever plateued?

Nelson: Oh yeah, I’m at a pretty big plateau or I have been this past two years. I think a lot of it has to do with difference in motivation from previous years. Whereas before I never won, I wanted to win, and then I won. I wanted to win again and then I lost the next year so I wanted to come and win that time. Now it’s like okay four is a good number. Why would five be any better? Do I really have to train that hard anymore? When you have that feeling that’s when you plateau. You’re not really trying to find new avenues to get better because where you’re at has been good enough. I don’t know how I won the U.S. Championship this year because – well I did very well in the names, but something I used to be the best at which is numbers and cards I was okay. Lance Tschirhart, another American, he broke the U.S. record 29 seconds in cards which is crazy. I’ve done that once in training. Then 360 digits, I’ve done that in training but never in competition. I need to push forward to break this plateau. I’m kind of where I was  around 300, around 30 seconds for cards. I need to change some things, which I’ve started to do and I’m seeing improvements now. It’s been a lot of work to break this particular plateau.

Anthony: What does a typical training session look like? Is there a fixed daily routine or how do you drill yourself to reach something like the 30-second area for 52 cards?

 

The Best Memory Routine Advice You’ll Ever Get

 

Nelson: It depends on where I am in terms of what’s coming up. Is there a memory competition down the road or is it off-season so to speak. I used to just train always. Like four to five hours a day, I’d do sets of numbers, cards, names, words, just every day. Then I pulled back a bit. I think after I won in 2014 it was the first time I took break and I didn’t touch anything for like six months, which made it really had to get back into.

Now that I’m training for The World Memory Championships, which has more different or varying disciplines, I have a lot more to train. I’ll kind of split up my weeks by Monday/Wednesday, Tuesday/Thursday and then Friday and one of the weekend days I kind of leave for experimenting and working on systems. All the days I will usually do speed numbers and speed cards, just memorizing cards and numbers.

Then on the Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll work on the longer disciplines. In the World Championships, they test you for an hour on how many numbers you can memorize and how many packs of cards you can memorize. I work on that. It just ends up being, when I’m really down to it, a five-hour training day.

Anthony: Wow! That sounds intense. Given that amount of investment, do you think memory competitions should be included in the Olympics, or do you have any ideas why it isn’t already in the Olympics?

Nelson: Yeah, I think so. I think the reason why it’s not though is because it’s horribly boring to watch. That’s not to say that you can’t make it exciting. I’m working on that, but the World Championships is extremely boring to watch. I love to compete in it of course, but compared to staring at someone for three days straight for eight hours a day watching them stare at a piece of paper taking tests.

 

How To Make Dudes And Dudettes Memorizing Stuff Look Sexy, Stimulating And Exciting As All Hell

 

That’s not the most exciting sport to watch but there’s a memory tournament that I created two years ago called the Extreme Memory Tournament and we try to make it somewhat of a spectator sport. I think we’re doing a good job so far.

The XMT, as we call it, is a two-day competition and everything is digital first of all. It’s all one-on-one matches. Everybody who is competing is split up into groups kind of like the World Cup. On Day 1, you play everybody in your group in each of the disciplines. There are cards, numbers, words, names and pictures. They are all short disciplines like one-minute memorization.

The cool thing is – so I’m going up against you for example. Let’s say we’re memorizing a deck of cards. Here we are on our laptops racing through this deck of cards as fast as possible and on the screen it’s broadcasted to the audience so people can see exactly how fast I’m going through my deck of cards versus you. Who finishes first and then during recall while constructing those decks, trying to remember their correct order, it’s who can get the most right. If we both got it right, who did it faster? It makes it very visual. It’s short. It’s exciting. It’s this battle. It’s not so much test taking anymore versus  there’s a little bit of strategy involved and it’s a lot more exciting that way.

Anthony: That sounds like it would be very exciting. Like speed chess basically.

Nelson: Yeah.

Anthony: Cool, well speaking of the word extreme, and your predilection for names talk about the Extreme Memory Challenge and the research that’s going on that you’re involved in.

 

Are There Genetically Superior Memorizers Roaming The Planet?

 

Nelson: Going back to this tournament, we started it because this company called Dart Neuroscience, they’re in San Diego. They were doing some research with Washington University in St. Louis, and I was part of that study amongst other memory experts. What they’re trying to do is to try to find and create a drug that improves memory and brain health and cognition. Not an easy task, but they have a lot of their funds going into a lot of universities for research and they’re doing their own research as well. I’ve worked with them obviously to help put together the tournament.

They were the key sponsor those two years we ran it. They are also working, and I’m helping them with this because I totally want it to succeed, is they developed a memory test. It is long-term memory test, and they’re just trying to get a million at least, honestly as many people to take the test as possible. The idea being we’re trying to locate or identify people who have naturally good long-term memories. That’s a very rare thing to find. Maybe not even somebody who we’ll find, but you will only know if you get enough people. Once we find those people, we’ll be able to do a lot of DNA testing to figure out what separates these people from the norm. That’s the idea.

It’s called Extreme Memory Challenge. It’s a pretty easy fun test. It doesn’t hurt. It’s easy. You’re helping research and if anybody is listening to this, I would love for you to just take the test and share it. The more people that take it the better and you can actually see how you compare to me. I’ve taken the test as well.

Anthony: We know that there are people who are extraordinarily good with mnemonics, mnemonists, and are you split testing them so that you have results from people who aren’t using mnemonics compared to those who are to take the test.

Nelson: At this point, we’re just honestly getting as many people to take the test. Once we have people who have scored highly, we’ll be more careful in how we weed those people out. That’s when we’ll investigate further whether they were using memory techniques or not. The goal is to find the people who were not using memory techniques. Right now, we’re just trying to get people to do well on the test.

Anthony: What do you think about the claims and the studies that say technology is now doing so much of our memory work that we’re going in the opposite direction where our memories are degrading? Have you found that for yourself and had that observation?

 

The Most Outrageously Powerful Definition About Memory Is Just One Word Long

 

Nelson: Definitely. The one thing I’ve learned about memory through this whole journey is that it’s attention. That’s all it is. When you talk about techniques, Memory Palaces and number systems all you’re doing at the very basis of it all is paying a lot of attention to something. You’re building this elaborate system for one specific thing. You’re sitting there thinking about it really hard. That’s paying attention to something and that’s what memory is. If you’re not paying attention to something, somebody says something that you should remember you’re not going to remember it.

This era is all distractions. Just think of when you’re out having a conversation with a friend. You usually have your phone out, whether it’s on the table or in your hand or in your pocket. It’s going off, it’s lighting up. Maybe theirs is lighting up to, versus when you would actually go out with someone back in the day, and you maybe didn’t have text messages awhile back. You’d have to say we’ll meet here at this time. You did and then actually paid attention to that person. That exchange was probably more memorable or easier to remember than ones you have these days because of that technology. I definitely believe that this day and age it is so hard to pay attention to things.

We’re constantly being bombarded. It’s just making memory that much more difficult. We don’t have to use it as much as well, so all that together just kind of makes our memories so along this journey as well I try to figure out a way to give back and to educate people on all the things I have kind of figured out.

As we talked about before, it’s shocking that this stuff isn’t in schools and that people don’t know about it. We all can do it. It’s all latent within us, the skill. I tried to figure out a way. How can I share this with people? I thought okay maybe I can create a blog/website where I post all these kind of tips and talk about memory and how do I make it a little more exciting. I tied it to another passion of mine which mountain climbing.

 

How To Memorize Safely – With Almost No Oxygen In Your Brain!

 

That’s where Climb for Memory came from. I started climbing mountains and updating my blogs about my trips and photos. I was trying to get people to be drawn to the site. Climbing Mt. Everest, things like that, things that people are kind of fascinated by and don’t always get the opportunity to learn about. It’s kind of a diversion. It’s like hey look here, but what you’re really looking at is this cause I’m climbing for, which I also happen to know a great deal about it. Here’s how you memorize this and that and keep your brain healthy. It was an effort to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s and also funds as well.

Anthony: If I understand correctly, you’re also doing some experiments and as you climb with different altitudes and how your memory responds or is that something you’re starting in the future.

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve done that on some of my higher altitude climbs. Since I train all the time. I kept doing it on these long expeditions. For example, Mt. Everest, not many people know but it’s a two-month expedition, so you’re at high altitude, 17,000 feet or higher for about six weeks there. Your body goes through some serious changes and near the top of the mountain, you’re getting a third of the oxygen you would at sea level. You need oxygen. Your body needs oxygen to function properly and to think straight.

If you ever see these videos online of pilots, they simulate oxygen just dropping. They test them and they just become idiots within seconds. It’s crazy. They can’t put a square peg through a square hole. They put it through the triangle you know something like that. They can’t do basic arithmetic.

For climbers, we spend a lot of time acclimatizing so that when we do get to the top we’re not like that. That’s not to say we’re not stupid but we can think a little better. I’ve have been testing that with memory. What’s surprising to me is I’ve actually done as good or better as I went up in altitude. I have no idea why, but I just love to test that kind of stuff to see how these techniques fair with the elements.

Anthony: They say that norepinephrine is produced in novel situations, which is thought to be an aid to memory, that chemical in the brain.

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve had some thoughts about it, and that’s the one that’s come up. It’s the most extraordinary experience being up there. You put yourself in some really memorable hairy, scary situations constantly for six to eight weeks. You walk away with an experience that is super memorable because of how novel it is, and I’m sure that plays into all your thoughts while
you’re up there including when I would do my memory training.

 

How Big Is Your Memory?

 

Anthony: Now you know personally the size and the dimension of Mt. Everest, do you have a sense or a feeling of the size of your memory?

Nelson: No, I don’t think so. Obviously, it’s contained to that thing that’s inside my head which has a finite size. But in terms of how many Memory Palaces I can have and how many bits of information I can store there, I have no idea.

I mean there can always be some way that I can press information into bigger chunks and Memory Palaces that, like you said, you know you alter things in your Memory Palace and you can memorize something totally new inside of it. Where is the limit?

These memory competitions are a great example because when they first started in the early 1990s the records there were, at the time, very impressive, but now they are a joke. At the time, you thought okay you can’t really go that much faster with a deck of cards and then somebody broke a minute. Now people are getting under 30 seconds like it’s the easiest thing in the world and people are approaching the 20second, people even in training getting 19, 18 seconds.

 

 Breaking The Speed Limit Of Memory One Card At A Time

 

Now you’re like, okay I don’t think you can get much faster than that. Who knows, at some point somebody is going to come up with something that allows you memorize a deck of cards in 10 seconds, which is crazy. When does it end? Obviously, you’ve got to look at the cards so there is a limit to that, but in terms of how much you can store and how limitless the memory is, it’s crazy to think about.

Anthony: I have an interview on the podcast with Phil Chambers who is chief arbiter of the World Memory Championships …

Nelson: Sure, yeah.

Anthony: He said that they’re working on an app (I guess it would be) that’s going to be able to show the cards faster than the human hands can move, which it sounds like you already have some version of that if you’re doing a digital read of the cards in your competitions.

Nelson: Yeah, I mean that’s what that would be, right. It’s a digital version that you could just click through. There another couple of training sites online that people use, and when we talk about personal bests, who has been able to do this a lot of them are doing faster times on the digital format because you don’t have to like thumb through the deck. You’re just moving an arrow, clicking an arrow to go to the right and you can go a lot faster.

Anthony: I think what he was talking about is that they would set a speed so you would not have any manual control over when or for how long the cards were displayed. Do you think you would be able to handle someone else controlling or an automatic process controlling the duration of the exposure?

 

It’s All A Matter Of Training

 

Nelson: It’s all a matter of training. If you tell me you’re going to show me a deck of cards, one every quarter second, okay, I’m going to train that. Maybe I can’t do it immediately. Maybe I’ll train with – well I can do it in about 30 seconds, so maybe that’s approaching a half second per card. I would start there and cut it down.

When you put these boundaries and these limitations is when people suddenly improve. You see somebody run the 4minute mile for the first time and then suddenly you can do it as well because it’s possible or it’s a barrier and now people have something to work towards. I don’t think it’s too hard unless you just don’t practice.

That’s it. I do a lot of cross training and some of these guys that end up winning, there’s a guy named Rich who won four times in a row. I mean these guys just work day in and day out lifting, working out crazy. I love watching videos of him  just how he trains and his mentality through it. I think that’s the only way to get better is practice with anything, honestly and that’s the biggest thing with memory.

People think it’s a natural thing or I have some talent for it naturally. Honestly, I don’t think so. I think it’s training. Yeah, maybe some people need less training to get to where I am or to get even better than me. If you train and you are gung ho and so motivated to do a certain thing, you can do anything.

Anthony: Do you have a favorite quote?

Nelson: Favorite quote? Yeah, I think every year before the memory championship I always Tweet and stuff. Let me see if I can say it right. It’s dumb, it’s so dumb, but it’s from, what movie is that? It’s one of those movies that came out in the 1990s. It’s a spoof.

Anyways, this guy is going out on the football field and he’s kind of down on himself. He doesn’t believe in himself, whatever. He sits on the bench and Mr. T comes up to him who is this high school janitor and he says before he goes out, he like “Believe in the ball and throw yourself.” Which you hear it and it’s like he’s just saying it backwards.

The guy looks at him kind of confused, but I always loved that because it’s kind of true. I think usually you’re supposed to say believe in yourself and throw the ball, or whatever it is, and that’s how you succeed. I think when you want to succeed you’ve got to train a lot. You’ve got to practice properly. You’ve got to really make this your life if you really want to achieve it.

When it comes down to performing in a competition, it’s not about believing in yourself, it’s believing in the thing that you know instinctively. You just believe in the ball and you just throw yourself into it. That’s what I was saying before. When I memorize and I get a really good time, it’s when I thought or memorized the least. It’s like I didn’t even feel like I was memorizing. It was just so natural. That’s what you strive for through your training. That you’ve done it so many times that it’s just a matter of throwing yourself out there and doing what you know.

Anthony: Something really interesting came up when you were searching in your mind for the quote and even the movie that it came from, and I was interviewed myself last night and there’s slips of the mind that come. Well, it some book I read at some time at some point, but people seem to expect that people using mnemonics wouldn’t have these same lapses.

 

There’s No Such Thing As A Bullet Proof Memory Champ

 

Do you ever prepare yourself for social situations? Like I presented about language learning and memory techniques at the polyglot conference in Berlin, and I went there prepared because I knew people were going to come up to me and give me some crazy phrase and I would be put on the spot. Of course, I want to demonstrate the validity of these techniques so I was really on the ball. It was successful the whole weekend, but there’s this pressure of performance. Do you ever have that or people throw you curve balls to see where you’re at? They somehow like in an example where you can’t quite recall the name of movie they say come on. What’s your experience with that kind of stuff?

Nelson: Yeah, over the years I’ve been caught off guard and kind of made a fool of. I’m not a tape recorder. A lot of these things and you can attest to this, is you’ve got to turn it off. It’s to me a memorizing machine. You’ve got to be actively doing it. Sometimes I just don’t want to do it. I’m tired and don’t want to focus and pay attention. I just want to veg out. When I have these talks I have to be on because I want to practice what I preach and I have little tricks that help me.

You know people catch me off guard. Most of all it’s just I turn it off. I really focus on being on point. If somebody comes up where they’re like hey what was your favorite movie and I’m like oh the one with the memory and I can’t remember. It’s just I feel like a situation like that kinds of make me seem human and normal which is what people want to see as well. It’s nice to see someone who seems superhuman, but on some level if there’s too much of that then you almost feel like I can’t do that. I think that’s actually maybe good to motivate someone. It’s like okay. I can do that. It doesn’t seem like he’s 100 percent but it’s still very impressive.

Anthony: Speaking about that, a lot of people they doubt themselves, they doubt that it’s possible for them. What do you think is just one little thing that a person could do that would give them a quick victory so they have a taste of what’s possible?

 

Two Ways To Turn Your Memory On And Keep It Humming

 

Nelson: I’ll give you two things. The first one is pay attention. It’s the most elementary thing of course but if I’m telling you that most of memory is paying attention, and you go out and say you have a meeting or a party you’re going to, and you tell yourself I’m going to pay attention and remember ten people’s names.

That’s my goal. Make it a game or something. You will. You will just from the fact that you’re telling yourself to do that. You’re wired, you’re turning it on to complete that particular task. You will perform 100 times better than if you just hoped to remember people’s names and you didn’t really think about it.

The second thing is the Memory Palace. Think of your house. It’s a quick thing. Think of your house. Start at your front door and whenever you want to memorize a list of things just picture each item along a path of your house. Then when you want to recall it, you just imagine yourself through that house and like you said, you can’t forget how to get from your front door to your bedroom or whatever. You will remember what was there. It’s surprisingly simple and surprisingly powerful as well.

Anthony: What’s the one question you wish that someone would ask you about memory that no one ever seems to narrow in on?

Nelson: Oh, that’s good. Another question that people should stop asking me and that’s do you play in Vegas? I don’t. I don’t think it would be much of a help to have a good memory there. What’s the one that I hope they would ask me is when can we start training?

Anthony: Very good. This has been a wonderful experience getting to speak with you and I know the people who listen to this podcast are going to love it and find it very inspiring. How can people who want to learn more about you, about Climb for Memory, about the Extreme Memory Challenge and your upcoming book, how can they find you online and get in touch with you and maybe there will be some people who love to ask you about hiring your help as a personal trainer.

Nelson: Yeah, the easiest way is to Climb for Memory. You can contact me through there. There’s a lot of information on there about memory and my climbs and stuff like that. Then I have my YouTube channel where there are a lot of videos of my climbs and little snippets of memory talks that I’ve done. There’s a lot if you just Google memory. You can throw my name in there too if you want to look at something specifically for me. Otherwise, there’s a lot of memory resources out there these days, there’s no shortage of it.

Further Resources

Nelson Dellis on Twitter

Man With The World’s Strongest Memory Crusades Against Alzheimer’s

USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis On Memory, Tenacity & Conquering Anything on Jonathan Levi’s Becoming Superhuman Podcast

Nelson Dellis Interview On The Jeff Rubin Show

The post Extreme Memory Improvement With Memory Champion Nelson Dellis appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Have you ever purchased something and hated it? And yet, for some reason, you gradually …

… started to love it?

Or have you seen a movie that thrilled you, only to find that your opinion suddenly sours?

If so, then it could be that …

 

Someone Is Seriously Messing With Your Memory!

 

And there’s bad news. The people involved in changing how you feel about products and media you’ve consumed hold more than one weapon of memory destruction.

Let’s look at just one of the ways advertisers manipulate your memory. But please understand that I am in no way talking about subliminal advertising. The tools we’ll explore rely solely on images and procedures that rehearse, train and retrain how you think by accessing your memory in particular ways.

One tool, for example, involves …

 

Blatant And Phoney Misinformation About The Competitors

 

Do you remember the Pepsi Taste Challenge? How thinly they disguised the fact that they were testing Coca Cola with the poor citizens they ambushed on the streets with Coca-Cola? How Pepsi used to call Coke, “the leading cola?”

By representing their main competitor in these challenges by association, Pepsi was capitalizing on the fact that human memory is constructed. Our memories don’t come from one location in the brain, but several.

This means that as our memories come to the fore, they can be changed by the catalyst responsible for summoning them. And because the advertisements make use of nostalgic images, rousing music and cleverly placed sound effects that also invoke nostalgia (the sound of a soda can being cracked open or bubbling pop snapping against ice), they create feelings.

These feelings cause your brain to associate positive experiences with the product and negative feelings with the competition.

Because as this documentary reveals, it’s not about selling a product. It’s about selling an idea:

At least, that’s the theory. Scientists and marketers call this effect “memory blending.” At its highest level, the injection of blended memories into your mind makes you think that you’re the one who formed your preferences.

And if advertising can change how you feel about something you’ve purchased in the past, you can be led to buy more and …

 

… Think It Was Your Idea!

 

Soda companies aren’t the only ones to use product comparison and misinformation to create blended memories. Many companies do, including airlines, stereo and speaker manufacturers and fashion designers.

The craziest part of all is that in so many cases, the difference between the products is marginal to none. If information is to be perceived by consumers …

 

It Must Be Done By Advertising

 

And because what matters most in these advertisement campaigns rely on how we feel about past experiences, advertisers constantly make references to childhood experiences. Playing with toys, camping in the woods, munching on cereal. You might see a mother with a child, a doctor with a patient or athletes with their trainers.

Or the ads may feature running on the beach, playing tennis or eating in a restaurant. These iconic, universal cues apply to almost everyone living in the West. Even when traveling in countries like Egypt, I have seen ads nearly indistinguishable from those we see in North America and England.

 

Two Routes To Radical Memory Change

 

Let’s look deeper at how all of this memory change works.

As we’ve already discussed with the Pepsi Taste Challenge example, the ads work at altering your subjective experiences if the past.

Secondly, the ads change how you think about an objective experience from your past.

Many ads, especially the Pepsi challenge, blend the two together.

To take another example, let’s look at an interesting experiment conducted by Kathryn Brown and reported upon in 1997.

In the experiment —- demonstrated that consumers will take second-hand information and use it to reconstruct memories of past experiences. They will do this completely outside of conscious experience.

Here are the basics of the experiment:

2o female and 30 undergrads at a university in Iowa were shown the trailer for a Johnny Depp movie called Nick of Time.

https://youtu.be/3ylx6aTM2hU

The researcher chose this movie because:

1. The plot and marketing were shaped to appeal to Generation X.

2. The movie had not been released in Iowa, reducing the likelihood that students were aware of it.

After viewing the film, the researcher asked the students to give their opinion of the film. They were asked to rate the trailer on traits such as acting, directing, pacing, etc. Brown also asked the participants if they would like to see the film in the future.

The researcher then thanked the participants for their time after a twenty minute period given for watching and rating the film. For all intents and purposes, the participants thought the experiment was over.

Next, however, the students were given reviews of the film to read. Although the reviews were professionally written, students were not given the names of the reviewers or the names of the newspapers or magazines from which the reviews were taken. Students, for example, might have a positive association with Rolling Stone magazine that could influence the experiment.

The reviews given to the students were either thumbs-up with 5 stars or thumbs-down with 0 stars.

After reading the reviews, the students were given a surprise memory test. The test asked them to reevaluate the movie trailer and then talk about how much they felt the reviews affected them. Although it was an option to say that they couldn’t remember their previous evaluation, less than a measurable percentage took this option.

As a result, students who received the positive reviews shifted to more positive evaluations the second time around. Likewise, students who received the negative reviews downgraded their opinion of the film.

Overall, when questioned, most participants believed:

1. That they had been consistent with their original evaluation.

2. Their original evaluation had not been affected by the second-hand information.

The results of the experiment suggest one thing:

 

Your Memory Of Opinions You Once Held Can Be Eradicated!

 

Not only that, but in addition to changing your thoughts about past opinion, your future choices can be altered too. Those who said they would like to see the film based on the trailer but were given negative reviews tended to change their mind.

And we’ve probably all had this experience. I remember being very excited to see Jupiter Rising after watching the trailer at the Sony Center Cinema in Berlin. But the reviews completely decimated that desire and to this day, I’ll never really know whether I might have liked the movie or not until I maybe one day watch it.

All this said, there’s one big fat white elephant in the room …

 

Is This Experiment Valid?

 

It seems so, but we need to question:

* The likelihood that they would not have seen the trailer on a national TV station. They do not appear to have been quizzed about their television viewing habits.

* They were university students, so we can assume that at least some of them came from another state. We do not know when they might last have traveled to another state.

* When people can’t properly remember their previous opinions, how can we trust them to remember whether or not they’ve seen a movie trailer before, let alone the entire movie?

Nonetheless, as worthy as these considerations are, I don’t think these problems affect the experiment too deeply.

But everything we learned about today does raise one very important question …

 

Is Selling Evil?

 

One of the world’s most successful marketing “gurus,” Dan Kennedy, often says that people selling products need to come to grips with one essential fact:

Marketing is always manipulation.

However, the extent to which manipulation to buy through the use of product comparisons, nostalgia and reviews is unethical or even insidious has much more to do with the product than the marketing.

Joe Polish sums it up best when he said in a video that …

And so if the product is crap – and let’s face it, soda pop does rot your body – then the marketing of the product may well seem to be evil.

But if the product is awesome and makes your life better, than you may have had that experience of saying, “I’m glad I saw that ad.” And in fact, here at the Magnetic Memory Method Headquarters in Berlin, hardly a day goes past when I don’t get an email that starts something like, “thank god I found you.”

So even if the quality of products may differ, the tools of effective marketing – the written ads, radio jingles and video presentations that get you itching to buy …

 

These Tools Of Unabashed Manipulation Are Exactly The Same!

 

And so at the end of the day, you’re truly on your own. You can do nothing more than decide for yourself.

And that’s why guarantees are so essential in today’s world. Whether it’s Amazon’s 7-day return policy or the Magnetic Memory Method 1-year guarantee, not trying items is that interest you is relatively risk-free in today’s world. Just don’t be a jerk and ask for a refund when you’ve used a product and gotten value from it.

In the words of the Fonz and one of my favorite marketing mentors (Frank Kern) …

Always.
Be.

Cool.

And if you’d like to grab my four free video series and Memory Improvement Kit, then you’re more than willing to do that. I promise, I’ll improve your memory, not bend it.

And once you’ve done that, I guarantee that between now and the next time we meet, it will be easy-peasy for you to keep your memory 100% Magnetic.

The post The Darkside And The Brightside Of How Marketers Manipulate Your Memory Every Single Day appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Memory is not what you think it is.

Whereas we often use the word “memory” as if it’s a singular, globular entity, memory is more than one thing. It’s a collection a multiple entities that deal with different kinds of information, even …

 

Information About Things That Haven’t Happened Yet!

 

First we have, prospective memory. Prospective memory is that wonderful device that helps you remember tasks you need to complete and events you’re booked to attend in the future.

The only problem is …

… prospective memory isn’t necessarily all that good.

For example, how many times have you forgotten an appointment, to take a pill, to wash the shampoo from your hair?

These slips happen, but even more interesting is how prospective memory tends to fail us most in areas that it should be the most reliable.

I’m talking now about routinized tasks.

For example, most of us do our own shopping. And yet, why is it that we so often forget items we need and know we need?

Even pilots have this problem. Without checklists, even the most routine – and absolutely necessary operations for flight safety – would be forgotten as easily as you can forget eggs or milk.

 

Spend One Dollar And Benefit From This Memory Exercise Forever 

 

For prospective memory to work, you also need retrospective memory.

Retrospective memory helps you recall information that you learned in the past. Your home address, directions to a restaurant or where you put your medication all rely on your ability to recall where things are located in space. Without this kind memory, even if you do remember to take your pills, you won’t have a clue where they are.

Prospective memory and retrospective memory work together, and it’s quite easy to keep them fit. Here’s a fun exercise:

Go to a dollar store and buy an object. It could be a ball, a pack of clown stickers or hair elastics.

Next, visit a friend and ask them to let you hide the object in the back of a closet or somewhere deep beneath a bathroom sink. The more of the home you must navigate to reach the object, the better.

In other words, don’t put your object in the hallway closet directly inside the entrance. Put it down in that creepy basement bathroom where a hole in the wall exposes all those rusty pipes.

Then make an appointment to come the next day, the next week or even the next month to reclaim the object.

When you get home, replay the entire journey in your mind. See the entire path from your home to the store to the creepy basement in your friend’s home.

At the same time, see the object you placed in the home and nourish that image. Make it big, bright and colorful. Infuse it with a crazy energy, almost to the point of bursting.

Then, use the Major Method in combination with Dr. Jim Samuels‘ method for memorizing appointments and associate the object with the date and time of the appointment you made for pickup.

To complete the exercise, keep your appointment and claim your object. Then go hide it somewhere else and repeat the exercise as often as you like.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Not really.

It’s the way you use to exercise your memory as a kid, after all.

Only back then, you called it a treasure hunt.

 

And Now For Another Episode Of The You Show On The Brain Channel

 

Having gone to the store and the secret hiding place, you now have a nice little story in your head.

Your ability to recall that story is called episodic memory. Always connected to time, episodic memory makes it possible for you to recall elements of your last vacation, going to the movies and just about any expanse of experience that features a beginning, middle and end.

Then there’s semantic memory. This kind of memory trades in general facts that aren’t bound with time (as such). Vancouver, for example, is a city in British Columbia, one of several provinces in Canada.

Of course, if you’re a historian and can rattle off the dates of when Vancouver was founded and when British Columbia became a province, then you might be blending in a touch of imaginary episodic memory,

For example, when I think of places like Vancouver becoming a city, a little flash of story enters my mind. I see stiff European dudes with quills and parchment tricking the Natives into giving up all that precious territory for a few bottles of whiskey and a stack of shiny dimes.

To take a more practical example, if you know that Vancouver is in British Columbia, Canada and Seattle is in the American state of Washington, and you’re also aware of the fact that a ferry runs between them …

… you can take the ferry and then use episodic memory to recall all the beauty you saw along the way.

But here’s the weird thing …

 

Episodic Memories And Semantic Memories Are Stored In Two Completely Different Parts Of Your Brain!

 

Do you remember that interview on the Magnetic Memory Method podcast with Dr. Gary Small?

In that interview, he told us that our memories go into different neighborhoods of the brain. In those neighborhoods are tiny little houses in which parts of memories live.

In order to simultaneously remember facts about places and episodes of time that you may have experienced, your memories have to leave their respective neighborhoods and come together in yet another part of your brain. It’s like having a family reunion where everyone comes in from different cities to eat at Recall Restaurant on the tip of your tongue. (link to tip of tongue podcast)

And last but not least, there’s a very strange kind of memory, a kind of memory that often …

 

Doesn’t Require Your Conscious Awareness!

 

We fall this mysterious form of recall “procedural memory.”

Some experts disagree whether it is a kind of memory all on its own, or a subset of semantic memory.

I don’t know about you, but the ability to ride a bike without thinking about it seems quite different than the semantic knowledge of how and why bicycles work as they do.

The same thing goes for guitar. Knowledge of where to find notes on the fretboard and how to form chords requires a different kind of memory than the procedural memory that takes over when some maestro is ripping it up on the stage.

Of course, even though procedural memory can be accessed without conscious awareness, episodic memory can intervene.

For example, your mind can wander during rehearsal or performance, breaking the flow of the song and causing you to mess up.

Likewise, bike riding on autopilot while daydreaming can cause you to sail through a stop light or crash into another cyclist.

And then these too become episodic memories. Like, for example, the time I was hit by a car crossing an intersection on my bike and how vomited into my mouth the last time I performed on stage because my joint pain had gotten so bad.

 

Fun Stuff All This Memory Business, Isn’t It!

 

It sure is.

And now that you know about these different kinds of memory, you are truly empowered. You can exercise each of these special memory types and improve them.

And if you use the Magnetic Memory Method, you can probably already see exactly how my unique approach to encoding, storing and recalling information lets you harness the power of each kind of memory you’ve just learned about.

But if you don’t know about the Magnetic Memory Method, why then now is your chance to avail yourself of my special Memory Improvement Kit and 4 FREE video series. Grab hold of the magic of these truly special memory techniques right here.

And until next time …

Keep Magnetic!

The post These 5 Kinds Of Memory Make The World Awesome appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could experience memory improvement …

… almost on auto-pilot?

Here’s the good news:

Even if you don’t use elaborate memory techniques and mnemonics, the following 5 ways will help you improve your memory almost without effort.

 

1. When Darkness Falls …

 

Go to sleep with the sun.

Seriously. What have you got to do after dark anyway?

Netflix? How boring.

Drinking in bars? How destructive to your memory.

Playing Scrabble? Well … okay. That’s at least halfway good for your brain.

But the reality is that we’re killing our memory by stating up late and waking up early.

And when you kill your memory, you murder something else too:

 

You Murder Your Intelligence!

 

And as with all acts of murder, you will get caught and you will be sentenced to life in the prison of stupidity and forgetfulness.

Mark my word.

Next to getting more sleep, it’s essential to …

 

2. Keep Your Brain Moist As The Soil Of A Mighty Rain Forest

 

That’s a fancy way of saying, drink lots of water.

All too often we forget to imbibe the world’s mightiest drink.

Oddly enough, some people don’t even like it. This strange, but true fact is responsible for forgetfulness around the world.

But it doesn’t have to be you.

And if for any reason you struggle to remember to drink deep from the tap in your kitchen, the solution is simple enough. You can create a visual mnemonic by placing a big fat bottle of water on your desk. Or you can print out a picture of a bottle of water and stick it on the wall or window directly behind your computer.

In addition to this …

 

Use Every Bit Of Technology You’ve Got To Remind You

 

Smart phones …

Dumb phones …

Computer calendars …

All of these of these come equipped with programmable alerts. Most of them can be set to repeat every hour on autopilot.

It’s easy enough to ignore these alerts, however, so it helps to get theatrical. Instead of “drink water,” program in something like:

 

Drink Water Or Else All The Cats On YouTube Will Suffer One Thousand And Seven Deaths!

 

If that doesn’t get your attention, I’m not sure what else will.

Well … maybe this:

 

 

3. Funnel Words Into Your Mind Like The Wind Shapes The Desert

 

One of the beautiful things about living in Berlin is that they still have bookstores all over the place. Not only that, but you still see people reading books too.

Here’s a quick guide on how to read a book:

Buy a book. No, it doesn’t have to be a book by me.

Whatever you read, by all means read on Kindle or some other digital reader, but I recommend also holding a physical book in your hands once in a while. As this article suggests reading books instead of Kindles can improve your memory, concentration and good looks.

Reading in general helps improve your memory because you hold the details of a story in your memory over an extended period of time. You also retain and maintain details about characters, objects and locations.

But you can also deliberately memorize elements of the books read by using memory techniques. For example, instead of relying on bookmarks or dog-earing pages, you can memorize the number of the last page you read before pausing. This provides you with delightful memory exercise.

Speaking of which …

 

4. Get Your Fat Butt Into Gear

 

Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your memory. It sends oxygen rich blood to your brain and brings fitness to your entire body.

Awesome, right?

You can also use your exercise time to reminisce over the books you’ve been reading. If you’re not a reader, you can play movies you’ve seen beginning to end in your mind (link to breaking bad movie post).

And if you use Memory Palaces (you do use Memory Palaces, don’t you?), then what better time to practice Recall Rehearsal than when you’re out and about, huffing and puffing and sweating up a storm?

Exercise also improves your mood, and when you use memory techniques, your mood improves even more. Nothing feels better than combining jogger’s high (wiki link) with the edification of recalling foreign language vocabulary. Or mathematical equations, song lyrics, professional terminology, or whatever else wets your whistle.

 

5. Stop Rolling Like A Stone And Gather A Bit Of Moss For Once In Your Life

 

Meditation makes everything in life better, including your memory.

The problem is … most people have been misled by weird definitions.

For example, many people think that they’re supposed to sit like a stone. And like a stone, they’re not supposed to have thoughts.

No, dear Memorizers. No, no and a thousand times no.

As the great Alan Watts pointed out …

 

Sitting Like A Rock Is Boring, Useless And An Utter Waste Of Time!

 

Instead of eradicating thoughts from your mind (which is technically impossible), don’t bother doing anything with them.

Watts most famously said that the best way to practice meditation is to sit just to sit.

Don’t “try” to do anything. Just sit there on the floor. Let your mind wander. Be mindless as you sit and float around in fantasies about the future, alternate versions of the present and strange wishes about an alternate version of the past.

Maybe not the first time, but eventually you’ll wake up from the mindless fantasies that have your mind the vice of your grip. It’ll go something like this. When you’re sitting there, all of a sudden you’ll say …

 

Holy Moley! I’ve Been Sitting Here On The Floor Lost In Thought And Didn’t Even Realize It!

 

Nothing will prepare you for the enlightenment that follows. It might not last for long, but the edification you feel will stay with you and bring a completely new shape to the contours of your day.

Not only that, but the experience will be hard to forget. And then the more you meditate, the more you’ll remember that you’re seated on the floor, sitting just to sit. Your periods of mindfulness will lengthen and you’ll take these levels of awareness deeper and longer into your days.

And the more mindful you are throughout the day, the more you’ll pay attention. And the more attention you pay, the more naturally and effortlessly you’ll remember the events and facts you experience as you go through life.

 

How To Be A Memory Scientist In The Laboratory Of Your Mind

 

You’ve now had just a taste of some of the ways you can increase your memory by barely lifting anything heavier than a book or a bottle of water. In the case of sleeping more and practicing meditation, you don’t have to lift anything at all.

Go ahead and give these few simple techniques a try. Keep a memory journal as you experiment so you can analyze the results. By measuring what you’re doing and when you’re doing it, you can create a picture of your daily life and how your memory serves you throughout.

And analyze every Memory Palace you create. By taking time to go through them, you’ll deepen your familiarity with each and every one. Memory Palace work, even without memorizing anything, is great mental exercise.

But …

 

The Easiest Way To Experience Massive Memory Improvement Is …

 

… do daily memory drills. An easy and compact way to do this involves a tiny set of objects known as playing cards. All you need to do is mix them up and use the Magnetic Memory Method to memorize them in ever knew arrays of random order.

And if you want to learn how to do that, then I invite you to join the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. But start by grabbing my Free Memory Improvement Kit in order to make sure that the Masterclass really is something for you.

If the Masterclass is something for you, then I want you to join it.

If the Masterclass isn’t something for you, then I don’t want you to join it.

Nothing could be simpler than that, dear Memorizer.

And so until we touch base again, never forget to keep yourself well-rested, well-hydrated, well-read, fit and fully meditated. Oh, and of course, always …

Always …

Always keep Magnetic.

Further Resources

The Amazing Doctor Who Wanted To Cure His Patients By Memorizing A Deck Of Cards

The post The Five-Fold Path To Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.