There’s No Way Of Learning Chinese With A Messy Mind!
Or …
Is there?
Actually, yes. There is.
No matter how manic, no matter how depressed, no matter how much I’ve got on my plate, ALMOST every day, I fit language learning into my schedule.
One of my best tricks is this:
Win The Morning, Win The Day
Do you reach for your cell phone first thing?
And are you making the mistake of using it as an alarm clock so that you have no choice but to check it first thing?
If you’re serious about learning a language, checking your messages and farting around on social media first thing in the morning is a big no-no. That’s true even if you want to learn languages online.
Think about it. How many times have you gotten caught up in the “Twilight Zone” of Facebook only to notice that 15 minutes … 30 minutes … even an entire hour has slipped past.
For nothing!
So don’t do it.
Here’s How To Get Language Learning In First Thing So You Feel On Top Of Your Progress All Day Long
I hate having that feeling throughout the day that I’m neglecting what I love: memory and language learning.
So in addition to winning back oodles of time by not looking at my “dumb phone” and not turning on the computer, here’s what’s going on right now:
It’s a book written in German that teaches how to write the Chinese characters. Tucked inside the book is the notebook I’m using to draw the characters.
I don’t get out of bed until I’ve spent as long as it takes to practice drawing 8 characters 8 times.
Why 8?
No idea. That’s just the number that came to mind. It’s just part of what I’ve learned from Olly Richards:
You Must Have A Language Learning System!
Seriously. You must. Languages don’t get learned Helter Skelter. They get learned based on consistent efforts executed consistently.
That’s the first part of my system and a huge part of The Big Five Of Language Learning.
Next, I pop in my Human Charger and meditate. I do this for exactly 9 minutes.
Why 9 minutes?
Because that’s how long it takes for the Human Charger to shoot its light into my ears. You may have heard me talk about other, more relaxed meditation approaches in the past, but I’m experimenting with this one and it works really well.
Next, I knock off another of The Big Five language learning activities:
Spend Time Listening To Your Language Every Day
Listening to Pimsleur language learning programs (Pimsleur for Mandarin Chinese no less) used to bore the snot out of me. Sorry to be vulgar, but it’s true.
Think about it: You listen to this guy promoting you in English to say stuff in the language you’re studying again and again and …
… again.
It’s Like Pounding Nails Into Your Head!
But then I had an idea:
What if I “fuse” listening to Pimsleur recordings with the Magnetic Memory Method.
Oh ho ho, Magnetic friend. That’s when Pimsleur started to get really interesting.
This might sound complex, but it works.
Get a notebook. Reserve it for your MMM Pimsleur experiment. Then get out a pen and pop on your headphones.
Next, make a couple of columns:
English (or mother tongue) Homophonic transliteration Mnemonic Imagery Words Notes
Also, leave space to draw a Memory Palace on the page. Draw one out using all the principles of the Magnetic Memory Method you’ve learned from one of my books or video courses.
If you don’t know how to make a Memory Palace, get this:
It’s all very easy peasy and, yes, even lemon squeezy (as one MMM student once put it).
Now you’re set. Keep the pause button handy and then press play.
When the man introduces how to say: “Excuse me, may I ask?” pause the recording and write this down in your English column.
Then, after you hear the native speaker say it in your target language, write out what you hear in your own spelling. Say it out loud and spell it in whatever way seems best to you.
Don’t Make The Mistake Of Overthinking This For Mandarin Chinese (Or Any Other Language)
And don’t worry about standardizing your homophonic transliterations. You’re just helping your mind understand the sound and meaning of the phrases using multiple senses and muscles.
Seriously. I can’t tell you the dozens of different ways I’ve spelled different phrases and it doesn’t matter. I can speak them in the target language, in this case, Chinese.
Next, think up some imagery that helps you memorize the words. Whatever comes to mind.
And if you’re following along, the brief meditation will have you calm, relaxed and juiced up with creativity.
Once you’ve got that whipped up, stick it on, at, beside or even under your first Memory Palace station.
Finally, press play again and carry on.
What Will Happen To You Next Is A Language Learning Miracle
Soon the Pimsleur guy will ask you to say that phrase for which you just created mnemonic imagery.
Press pause and then look into your imagination (not at the page!) and “decode” the image you placed on your Memory Palace station.
Got it?
Of Course You Get It!
Because the reality is that if you know mnemonics, there is never any problem with them.
Never.
Anyhow, I do this until I’ve filled out one page of my notebook.
Can You Guess How Much Time This Costs Using Mandarin Chinese Mnemonics So Far?
Go on, have a guess.
Nope.
Still no …
Getting closer.
Oh, all right, I’ll tell you.
15-20 minutes, more or less.
All thanks to cutting out morning social media and 3 little systems:
8 x 8 characters 9 minutes meditation 1 page of MMM-ified Pimsleur
Do this for a month and you’re further along than most people will get in a lifetime of starting and stopping.
But Wait! There’s More About Memorizing Mandarin Chinese I Want To Teach You!
So far we’ve covered 4.3 of The Big Five. We’ve got:
Writing
Reading
Listening
Memorization
… and a touch of solo speaking.
That’s where my Mandarin Chinese speaking partners come in.
You Can’t Expect To Learn A Language Without Actually Speaking It
Now, sometimes what I do with my Mandarin Chinese speaking partners is rather elaborate. More on that in a minute.
The important thing is that I speak with these people. Plain and simple.
Doesn’t have to be perfect. Doesn’t even have to be right. It just has to be time spent speaking.
I do this at least two times a week, ideally three.
This Approach To Learning Mandarin Chinese Is Almost 100% Introverted!
Yes, okay, talking with speaking partners online is technically communicating with other human beings.
Technically.
But it’s still too solitary.
This is why I propose that there’s a sixth component that needs to be added to the Big Five:
Socialization
Think about it.
Are you going to go through all the work of learning a language just to speak with people online?
Of course not.
You want to be able to strike up conversations with the locals when traveling. Order a memory-friendly drink in a restaurant, either in a local restaurant or abroad. Flirt with cute members of the opposite sex, maybe even find the partner of your dreams.
I know I do. So please stay tuned for more language learning for introverts and socialization secrets coming soon.
Further Resources
In the meantime, check out some of these previous Magnetic Memory Method podcast episodes with other great language learners for in-depth tips and training:
Can This Incredible Memory Champion Teach You How To Memorize 52 Playing Cards In 17 Seconds, Ace Med School And Get The Upper Hand On Learning A Language?
Have you ever wondered how the world’s top performers manage to pull off their tremendous feats?
I’ll bet you have. I’ll bet you’ve even felt jealous, and all the more so when it comes to memory champions.
But as Alex Mullen reveals in this exclusive Magnetic Memory Method interview, you can build your memory skills to epic levels with a shockingly small budget of time.
For an hour a day or less, Alex demonstrates that you can learn to memorize a deck of cards in 17 seconds.
You can win a Guinness World Record for memorizing the most digits in under an hour – Alex clocks in at 3029!
And the best part is that you use the powers of memory you develop to sail through your studies. As a John Hopkins University grad with degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Alex is living proof that you really can squeeze it all in and have an excellent memory too.
Currently a medical student at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, Alex is not only a two-times World Memory Champion. He currently holds the record for scoring the most points since the competitions began 24 years ago.
So what are you waiting for? Tune into this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. Download the audio and transcript to your desktop and follow through on the suggestions in this action-packed session with one of the world’s greatest living mnemonists.
Episode Transcript
Anthony: Alex, it is really great to have you on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, and actually a real honor because you have achieved so much and really at a young age. Maybe tell people what age you are here in 2016 and a little bit about your first memory of being interested in memory.
Alex: Sure, well let me say first of all, I am happy to be here. It’s nice to be talking you. I got interested in memory back in March 2013. That was sort of the first time, at least that I can think of, that I was introduced to the techniques. At that point, I think I was either a sophomore or junior in college. Up to that point, I had done things like using acronyms and some basic mnemonic stuff, but I really didn’t know about Memory Palaces. I didn’t know about any visual mnemonic strategies, anything more advanced than that.
How To Get Your Foot In The Door With Mnemonics
My first exposure was this TED talk by Joshua Foer called Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do. It was a short TED talk but that just really got me hooked. I was blown away about what he talked about in that talk. I ended up reading his book. He had this TED talk and then he wrote this book, a pretty famous one called Moonwalking with Einstein where he goes into his journey as memory athlete, learning the techniques, competing at the USA Memory Championship. That was really what got me interested.
I tell you, in terms of what was going on in my own life, like I mentioned, I was a student at the time and I probably, and it’s hard to remember ironically, but I’m pretty sure I probably felt like I was struggling with my own memory in school. Not really feeling like I was learning in the most efficient way, forgetting things all the time. Seeing these techniques, obviously as many people do, it struck me as something that I could use to improve my academic life. That was really the original motivator for me using memory techniques. I didn’t really think about competitions. I didn’t really think about memorizing numbers and cards. I really just wanted to use it for school, and that was my initial sort of entry into the world.
Then, once I read his book I got interested, and I figured why not make a system for numbers, make a system for cards, and then at least even if I don’t compete, I can use those to practice techniques and get comfortable with them. That’s what I did. I ended up reading a few more books: Dominic O’Brien‘s Quantum Memory Power, Ron White‘s Memory in a Month. I got through those and just made my systems. I started making a PAO system for numbers, a PAO system for cards. Then I just kind of started practicing and doing the events at the competitions and then trained for about a year. My first competition was the 2014 USA Memory Championship.
The Minimalist Guide To the PAO (Person Action Object) System And Beyond
Anthony: There is so much to talk about with what you just said but maybe if we just jump into the bolts and the mechanics and so forth. When you’re talking about systems and PAO, what are you referring to? I think one thing that is supper important in what you’re saying is you’re talking about creating systems. A lot of people look for a system in someone else’s mnemonic strategy, but you’re talking about creating your own. Why is that important? What do you mean by system? What does it mean to create your own?
Alex: Right, well, when I say I created a PAO system, I was just looking to, as most memory athletes do, create a system that translates numbers or cards into a predetermined image. PAO stands for “person, action, object,” and that means, for instance, for numbers you take every 2-digit number and associate it with a person, an action and an object. When you memorize numbers, you take like say 6 digits at a time, you look at the first 2 digits and you would say who is the person associated with those 2 digits. You move to the second 2 digits and you would say what is the action associated with those 2 digits. Then finally the object for the last 2 digits and then you would string them into this story of this person doing this action or an object. Then that would represent a 6-digit string.
That’s not something I invented. That’s a technique that was around since something like the 2000s or something like that of people the using in competitions. When I say I created my own system, I didn’t invent the system. What I did do is choose which people, which actions, which objects I was going to use in my systems. That’s something every memory athlete or person who wants to use systems to memorize numbers or cards or whatever has to make themselves, because they need those associations to be personal and strong for them.
Like I said, I didn’t I didn’t invent the system but I had to make these images, and I had to choose things that will be personally strong for me. Just talking about systems in general I think is a pretty interesting thing. One thing I do think that I’ve sort of learned, through memory sports, competitions, etc., is that systems can be somewhat complicated to begin with. Then, once you put enough work into them, they really sort of pay off in the end.
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I’ve since moved on from the PAO system. Now I use a 3-digit system to memorize numbers where every 3 digits becomes some sort of image. If you think about that, having to think of an image for every single 3-digit combination, that’s a thousand images, you know that sounds really complicated. I would not advise that many people to do that unless they want to compete, but it’s something that, with enough practice, works really, really well for me. I think it’s an interesting lesson that if you put in enough work up front, it can really sort of payoff down the line even if it seems complicated up front.
Anthony: Yes, I think that’s an important distinction that there is a lot of self-creation even if you’re adopting preexisting models or whatnot. What I wonder is, I mean this is certainly the case for me, I have certain characters that are relatively fixed for cards, for example, but there are times when actually I need to switch between two symbols that I have for the same card. So I use major method for cards. In other words, the queen of clubs can be either a chain or it can be like the queen of clubs literally with a chain, or it can be Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies because of all his double chins, or it can be, you know there’s a couple other variations. Are you really fixed, or do you have some wiggle room in case it just doesn’t work a particular thing that you’ve created for three digits or cards or whatever the case may be?
How To Reduce Luke Skywalker To The Basics And Remember Anything
Alex: That’s a good question. I’d say it’s relatively fixed. I don’t think I personally really do anything that similar to what you said where you have kind of two separate actual things. I mean the furthest I would go I think is, let me think of an example, for me 570 is Luke Skywalker from Star Wars obviously. Like for him for instance, that pops up you know sometimes I might picture Luke Skywalker using his blue lightsaber and you know doing something with it. If it works better, occasionally I’ll just use the lightsaber itself, and he won’t even be part of it.
I do make sort of adjustments in the moment like that just depending on how it fits into the story, but it’s not quite what you’re talking about I think. That said though, when I am using memory techniques/Memory Palaces for learning things in school, I’m a medical student right now, and I will sort of have sometimes occasionally, I try not to do this too much, but I have two different images for certain things. Like sometimes, I am trying to think of an example, sometimes I’ll represent like a white blood cell, this is kind of a weird example, but a white blood cell could be Luke Skywalker actually, and then sometimes depending on just, I guess it’s sort of hard to explain, but sometimes if it’s a little better I’ll use Stephen Colbert, and he also would represent a white blood cell, but I do kind of use one or the other sometimes just depending on what which fits better to the story.
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Anthony: What interests you in medicine and what brought you to that particular field as opposed to any other course of study?
Alex: I’ve been interested in medicine for a long time since high school really. Part of the reason was pretty simple. I just like science. I was kind of a science nerd. I like the kind of problem solving aspect of it. I didn’t like the fact that it was sort of more practical and you could sort of directly influence people rather than being like an inventor. How do people use what you invent but not really having that personal connection.
I mean, yeah, those main things were sort of what got me interested, and then when I was in college, you know I did some shadowing. I followed some doctors around. I did some other things too. I tried to do research, things like that and medicine was just sort of, you know, being a physician was sort of just what struck me as most interesting.
Why Memory Techniques Are Something Everyone Should Learn
Anthony: Intuitively we know there’s so many ways that memory techniques can help physicians. I wonder if in the future you think that there may be a possibility at some point that in a program like medicine, or any program in law school or whatever the case may be, there might be a place for mnemonics as a course of study or an elective that people could take while there while they’re studying a big subject like that?
Alex: Yes, I mean I think, obviously I’m a little biased here, but maybe we both are. You know I think that memory techniques is something that everybody should learn. You know medicine, medicine or not, but medicine especially just because there really is just so much information that you know you have to memorize. I mean obviously the best way I think most people would argue to learn information is to really understand what’s going on. If you have a really deep understanding, you will remember it.
I mean, unfortunately, that’s just not the case in medicine. There’s so much information that you can’t possibly try to find some sort of root understanding in everything. There’s just not enough time in a day. You have to memorize things, if that makes sense. I think memory techniques are something that really can make students learn more efficiently to be able to retain the information longer.
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Do You Make The Mistake Of Cramming?
You know just like cramming and forgetting is such a huge thing for the average med student’s life. They cram for tests. They forget it in two weeks, that kind of sucks you know. It’s not a very good model. I think that memory techniques can definitely help with that. I’m certainly trying my best to use them in my own career to do that, to learn, to keep things more long term. Yeah, I do think that medical students should learn about memory techniques.
Actually, there are already programs out there. There are web sites or courses for instance that incorporate mnemonics that a lot of medical students use that are actually already very popular. For instance, there’s this program called SketchyMicro [now called Sketchy Medical] that uses sketches. So like drawings of places and then they will images, you know mnemonic images into things to teach you about different bugs in microbiology. It is visual learning and it does incorporate pieces of Memory Palace ideas even though you aren’t really using your own personal Memory Palaces per se.
Those have already become quite popular in just a few years. You know I think it is starting to take a little bit of a foothold already. It’ll be very interesting to see where that goes.
Anthony: Cool. I wasn’t aware of that program but I’m always kind of amazed at the requests that people have for ready-made mnemonics as such. You know images that are created by someone else. I wonder what your genuine take on that is. Is that a is that a winning long-term strategy?
Alex: That’s a good question.
The Question That Plagues All Teachers Of Mnemonics (Solved)
Anthony: Is it a point of entry that is legitimate someone could take so long as they develop the ability to create their own images or are you better off, you know, from your own pedagogical opinion, are you just better off just learning the nuts and bolts of making images right from the get go?
Alex: You know that’s a question that I really struggle with a lot. I’m not sure what the answer is. There have been many people that I’ve you know tried to teach memory techniques to for learning specifically, and you know it’s just sort of a fact that a lot of people will try it, probably hit a few road blocks and then just sort of give up. I mean, obviously, myself I’m a “memory athlete” and so it was a little easier for me to just be able to do it, and then also to kind of kick myself in the rear enough to keep trying it to make sure it works.
How To Memorize Medical Terminology Fast
In that sense, my point is that maybe it is better to give people these pre-made mnemonics. That’s what SketchyMicro [Sketchy Medical] does. That’s what these other programs like Picmonic do. People really seem to respond to those because they are very low barrier to entry type things.
You can still get a lot of benefits of mnemonics, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them without really doing much upfront work yourself. It doesn’t have to be a very active process. You just watch these videos and they sort of come to you.
That said, like you said, obviously there are benefits to making your own palaces. There are benefits to making your own images. The personal connections are stronger. You can use memories from your own life which make things more memorable.
Even myself, I sort of do a combination of both actually. I personally use SketchyMicro to learn microbiology. Then I use my own images and palaces for the other courses that I’m taking right now like pathology or pharmacology. Then I also do certain things to still take what is happening in the SketchyMicro world and incorporate into my own personal palaces. SketchyMicro has videos for all these different say bacteria or a video for this type of bacteria or this type of virus or whatever. Then I use my own Memory Palaces. I take the images from those videos and put them in like sort of an organizational palace.
I use my own palace and say okay here are all the gram-positive rod bacteria. Here are all of these. I can sort of see the whole structure using my own Memory Palace. I guess my point is that I’m sort of using a hybrid of my own images and their images. This is my roundabout way of saying that I think there are benefits to both. I think definitely it helps in a sense to get people through the door, so to speak, to give them premade images like SketchyMicro, because it is, in my experience at least, it can be difficult to get people to use the techniques because it is a very off the wall, sort of unintuitive – you know it’s intuitive when you’re using it, but it’s an off the wall thing and people struggle. People run into roadblocks. Hopefully that answers the question.
Anthony: Yeah, I mean it’s something I struggle with just how to teach it, how to actually make it palpable for people because so often it sounds like you’re giving the instructions for how to build a jet engine.
Alex: Right.
Anthony: But I think that you and I both know and other mnemonists know that it is so elegant once you know what you’re doing. There’s like an artistry to it, hence art of memory, but it’s kind of ballet. It is just sort of like a kid with a remote control who is up, down, left, right, right, whatever that was – A, B, B, A on the old Nintendo Select Start routine – and there’s just a kind of fluidity to it once that you get rolling and so I think that one of the hallmarks and one of the things that I admire about you is that you’re not just using these, you’re actually teaching them and you have videos now.
Alex: I’m trying to yeah.
Anthony: Well they are excellent and one video in particular, if it’s cool with you, to put it on the page for this interview.
Alex: Sure, yeah.
Can’t Keep Up With Language Learning? Get Hold Of These Crazy Memory Secrets (That Go Way Beyond A PAO System)…
Anthony: You talk about one of the biggest things that people struggle with in memory in general, apart from medical school, which is foreign language vocabulary acquisition. You can watch that video, but what’s your key strategy there?
Alex: I just use sort of the same Memory Palace (a.k.a. Mind Palace) technique that I use for medicine or whatever. Generally, I should probably look into more of some of your stuff. I don’t think I have palaces organized quite the way you do. I just sort of do it haphazardly. What I do is I’ll start in a Memory Palace, choose one and then for vocabulary I’ll just choose locations along the way. I just sort of do the standard mnemonic thing. Create an image for the foreign language word. Create an image for the definition in English, and then have them interact in some way on that locus. That’s really it.
Personally I used mnemonics to learn Spanish and also to learn Chinese. Every language obviously presents with its own unique set of challenges. Chinese is obviously much different than Spanish. I do a couple of different tweaks and nuances to learn the Chinese things. It’s still all pretty much the general idea of palace images, same idea.
Anthony: Are you doing Mandarin or Cantonese?
Alex: It’s Mandarin.
Anthony: All right, we can trade notes because I’m doing Mandarin now too. It’s really fascinating.
Alex: It’s challenging.
Anthony: There is this absolute relationship between what you can do with Spanish and what you can do with Mandarin, but one thing, and maybe you can add your insight, that I find so fascinating, is I actually find Spanish harder with mnemonics than I do Mandarin because there’s so many cognates and I want to get lazy with the cognates and there’s an overwhelming amount of them.
Alex: Yeah, that’s true.
Anthony: And then there’s the 11 cognate rules and it’s just like, “Oh my goodness, do I really have to go through all this?” Whereas there is something so fresh about Mandarin and the tone challenges and so forth that just almost makes it like putting a knife through warm butter. It’s not as resistant because it’s so different.
Alex: Let me ask you this. So for Mandarin are you learning the characters also?
Anthony: Yes.
Alex: Okay. I’m curious how you would do that. When you do the pronunciation and the character do you sort of have it all in a similar location?
How To Invent The Solutions To Your Language Learning Problems
Anthony: Well I’m sort of “inventing” the process as I go along. One of the first things that I did, and I actually started this with Japanese and then I switched to Chinese, but I memorized the radicals in the Hanzi. That was four Memory Palaces to put together. I’ve got some repairs to do because it’s actually quite a challenge, but I didn’t do any sounds associated with any of them whatsoever, but this practice allows you to see the actual Hanzi characters in a very different way. There are sometimes often logical relationships. Like words that have to do with cooking that will have for example the fire radical in it, often you can even tell how that word is supposed to be pronounced, or you can make really educated guesses.
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Alex: I definitely found that to be the case with Chinese (learning the characters, building the radicals) a lot of it makes logical sense.
Anthony: It’s weird. It’s like learning how to see more than it is learning how to read in some way. So there’s different levels of procedure. So there’s that, and then I never thought I would do this, but for the characters in and of themselves it’s really useful, just hard rote with, with memorize. I haven’t quite figured out how to add a mnemonic component because I just ignore the mnemonics that other people use. I just really don’t connect with them.
I just sort of, partly as an experiment, I just resist using them to see what happens and the character recognition builds really nicely. Then for the actual mnemonic strategy, what I’m doing, and I don’t know why I never thought of this before, but I got Pimsleur for Mandarin Chinese 1, 2 and 3 (much better than Pimsleur Spanish), and so I went to a cafe and I started to write out by hand my own homophonic transliteration as I call it, which is just to spell it the way I want to spell it, and made lots of mistakes. I was saying like tway-bo-chi when it’s supposed to be more like dway sound with like a “D.” But who cares about that initial error. You can’t correct yourself if you don’t have it in memory. You need it to be in memory to even make proper mistakes.
So then I would just would write a Memory Palace beside that in an Excel file. I’ve got columns. I’ve got a column for the English. I’ve got a column for my homophonic translation. I don’t bother writing down the meaning and then I make a little Memory Palace. I draw the Memory Palace. One case it was the city library here in Berlin or the Stabi as it’s called, the Staatsbibliothek and just go from there.
Then, listening to those repeitions in the dialog from Pimsleur is not using rote learning to pound stuff into your brain. It’s atually, like I press pause after each sentence, I produce the information from the imagery, I decode the imagery, so I’m actually practicing the art of memory as opposed to using it for rote learning. I’ve memorized now 11 dialogs and it’s really fast and it’s cool.
Alex: That’s great.
Anthony: It’s Pimsleur-speak but it’s something. I know this is your interview, but just sharing with you.
Alex: That’s okay I’m thrilled.
Anthony: The next thing that I do is I have two different speaking partners and I record the calls and they write the characters. One of them just writes characters. One writes Pinyin numbered and so I have those and I watch them typing this on the screen and it’s recorded and I go back. Then I just make Memory Palaces and memorize the vocabulary that came up. Like we did the months which is never on Pimsleur and we did things like, “I’m going to the park” and “I’m going to this with a friend” and then we do substitutions. “I read Shakespeare.” “Every day I read Shakespeare.” “I love to read Shakespeare.” These kinds of things work and it really builds quite quickly and then the next speaking session we go through what we did the last time and I produce it from memory and then get the corrections in pronunciation and it’s beautiful.
But I have to apologize! I completely skipped off what we were talking about. What are you doing with Mandarin?
How Alex Mullen Ethically “Steals” Memory Techniques
Alex: Yeah, so I wrote like a blog a while ago about it. I’m sort of ripping off this technique from a guy I found online. That’s just sort of what I do. I rip off people’s techniques. It was an interesting strategy and I didn’t really think too hard about it.
It sort of appealed to me at the time. I originally saw it a few years ago and I didn’t really put it into practice until sort of recently. The technique is different from the Spanish for me in a sense because when I do Spanish I sort of just look at the words and then I sort of just think of the first thing that comes to my head.
Like for instance, and this is an example I gave in some of my videos, if the Spanish word for apple is manzana, I sort of look at that. Maybe I would break it down and it kind of sounds like “man sand.” I might think of a man with a bag, like a big sand bag or something like that. That’s what I do for Spanish. I just look at the word and think of something that will remind me of the Spanish sound.
But for Chinese, I found that to be, at least personally, difficult. Because it’s very dissimilar to English and a lot of the sounds will trigger English words, but then I’ll very easily forget the nuance of the Chinese word. There’s just sort of all these like these different sounds that are very distinct in Chinese obviously, but sort of when I try to translate them to English words, it doesn’t really work quite as well. At least, that was my personal problem.
To get to what I’m actually doing, the technique takes advantage of the fact that Chinese words are monosyllabic and there’s sort of this finite set of beginnings and endings to words. What the technique does is it takes a person and there’s a predetermined person to represent every possible beginning. So for instance, one beginning sound is a ja sound and so for me that’s George Costanza from Seinfeld. Another one is the ba sound and that’s James Bond for me.
Then there’s endings, like for instance “a” or “i”, so then you can put the “ba” and the “i” and get “bi.” The endings I represent with places.
Then the way I do the tones is I sort of pick four different areas in those places. To be more specific there are 12, assuming I got this technique right, there are 12 different endings and so I have 12 different palaces for each of those endings and then within each of the 12 palaces there are four regions. The first region within Palace 1 will represent that ending and it will be the first tone for the first region if a person is in that region.
For instance, let me see if I can think of a good example. Okay, let me see if I can get this right, for instance so “bank” in Chinese is (loosely transliterated) “yinhang” I think, if I’m remembering it right. For the “yin” part the first sound is a “yi” sound and so for me that’s my grandmother. I call her Grandmother Eddie and so the “ed” kind of sounds like “yi” in Pinyin so that “yi” and then the ending is sort of an “n” ending. So it’s “in” and that “n” ending for me is the Old Miss campus which is in the town where I grew up. The second tone, because it is “yinhang,” is this sort of sports complex area. So I have my Grandmother Eddie for “yi” in this sports complex and that’s the “n” ending with the second tone and then she’ll be doing some sort of bank related thing in there.
This kind of goes back to what I’m was saying about systems. Because this sounds very complicated, it took a little while to set up, but I find that I’m able to do that relatively quickly. I can the “yi” think of my Grandmother Eddie and, see the “n,” think of the place, think of the region for the tone and it works pretty well. That’s one example, but hopefully that makes sense. That’s sort of the technique that I use.
Anthony: That’s cool. I’m going to get tons of emails asking me for the link to that blog post or that site that you are referring to. Let’s make sure to link to that (see the resources section below).
Alex: Yeah, I’ll send it to you.
Anthony: That would be cool.
Exactly How To Know When You’ve Got The Best Memory Technique
Alex: I don’t know if it’s the best technique. I don’t know if it’s the best technique for me. It seems to work so far. Yeah, I just wanted to add that qualifier.
Anthony: I always tell people that it’s the best technique relative to the outcome that it gets you.
Alex: Right.
Anthony: Is medicine a foreign language would you say?
Alex: In a way, yeah. I mean there’s certainly lots of terms to know. One thing I always try to be careful about is, and this is something I’m guessing other people struggle with and I certainly struggle with it myself. When you’re using a lot of mnemonics, you just need to be little careful, a little wary about not, I guess, losing the forest for the trees in terms of focusing too much on the memorization and sort of maybe missing out on some of the underlying concepts going on.
I don’t think that’s too big of a problem. I think it’s relatively easily combated just by forcing yourself to actively think about it. For instance, whenever I’m trying to recall something from a palace, I will always try to prompt myself by asking, “Okay, what’s going in real life?” Not in the palace, like visualize what’s happening in the body for instance and then just sort of always trying to ask myself why is this happening, what’s going on, how can I explain this in terms of cause and effect, I guess.
I think that to me is sort of the difference. I mean, obviously, there are concepts and grammar and things to learn for foreign language, but I found myself needing to be more careful about the understanding in terms of learning medicine.
Anthony: This leads me to something interesting that we haven’t talked about yet which is you mentioned being a memory athlete. The reality is that you are more than a memory athlete. You’ve won the World Memory Championship. Right? (Update: Since this interview was recorded, Alex became the 2x World Memory Champion!)
Alex: Right.
Anthony: We all appreciate modesty and that’s fantastic but I mean that’s the World Memory Championship and we’re talking about a deck of cards in 17 seconds. What does that feel like first of all?
Alex: Yeah, it feels good. It’s hard to say. I’ve been a memory competitor for a long time, about 3 years going back to the time March 2013. I had progressed a lot, obviously, and I felt good about where I was at, but even going into the competition last December, I didn’t feel like I was going to win by any stretch of the imagination. I knew that I could kind of compete for the sort of top couple spots if I really did my absolute best in everything, but I didn’t that was going to happen. It sort of was what happened, luckily for me. Definitely, the whole thing was surreal experience and it just felt like things kind of were going my way the entire time.
When it actually ended up happening, and I ended up winning on the last event, I didn’t even really know how to react because I hadn’t really mentally prepared for it. It feels great and I love the fact that hopefully it gives me a little bit of credibility in terms of being able to spread the techniques. I love competing but that’s really where my passion is at I think. I want to help people use the techniques especially for learning applications and for students or people in daily life as well to learn languages, etc. I personally like to focus on students, because there are so many inefficiencies with the way learning is done today, and I just think it needs to be done.
What A Card Memory Master Can Teach Us About Our Fitting Memory Fitness In
In terms of cards, cards is my favorite event. I love them because I like the sort of manual feel of the cards. It’s kind of random but that’s really one of the reasons I like it. Just being able to sort of speed through the deck by using your hands very quickly. I just like how it’s a fast event. That speed cards event, just memorizing one deck of cards as quickly as you can, has really kind of been like a big part of me doing memory sports. Because it’s very easy to just pick up a pack of cards and just go through it quickly, take a pack of cards with you on the train, the bus or in the car or wherever. I really like that event. Hopefully that answered the question.
Anthony: Yeah, it’s amazing. I’ve gotten just over the 3-minute mark myself and to me that’s really, really amazing.
Alex: Yeah, it is.
Anthony: The most I’ve done in competition, and I only ever competed once, but that was I did 14 cards in 2 minutes. So 52 in 17 seconds! But in my particular case, having never competed before, I didn’t even know we were going to play rock-paper-scissors and then alternate the cards. It just totally blew my brain that I had to sort of compensate for what the other person was doing and track whether they made a mistake or not. It was really kind of juggling. The recall was on the clock also. Very fascinating experience and so I can only imagine what that must of been like to be able to pace through a deck that fast. Take us through how you prepared for that. What’s an average training day like?
Alex: I try to keep my training sessions pretty short. Being in med school obviously I don’t have a whole lot of time to train a lot. I do my best to make each session as efficient as I can. I try to train sort of throughout the day. I mentioned maybe bringing a pack of cards while you’re going somewhere or doing it in sort of these transitional periods. That’s how I try to get some training in to not really add the extra time to my day.
How To Create Your Own Schedule For Memory Improvement And Mastery
On a daily basis I would say I train somewhere between 0 and 60 minutes a day. It tends to be in that range. Then I like to do a lot of speed drills. I will take a deck of cards and sort of go through it and see my images, like visualize my images but not actually put it in a palace and try to recall it. I just sort of see it and try to go as fast as I can. To get to something like 20 or 17 seconds, you need to be able to see the cards and translate the images pretty much instantly. That’s really the essential skill in terms of getting fast. That’s personally what I train a lot of.
I try to keep it pretty short on a day-to-day basis and that I think helps because I don’t feel like I’m spending a whole lot of extra time training. I don’t really feel like I’m getting tired of training. It doesn’t ever feel like a slough, because every day it’s kind of little burst of training I can do and it’s always very exciting for me.
Alex: I do. I have sort of a weekly schedule that I try to adhere to, trying to get through all the events in these competitions out of the way. It would be something like cards every couple of days, numbers every couple of days, names and faces, words every couple of days, just something like that. I sort of spend some of the time each day doing speed drills, just going through cards or going through numbers and just try to see my images. Then part of it is just doing the actual events in the competitions, spending 5 minutes memorizing numbers and then another 10 or 15 minutes recalling it. I try to stick to that schedule.
Anthony: I think scheduling is really powerful even just for memorizing like knowledge, for example, for studies and so on to have a sift and sort pattern so to speak. You offer coaching on your site. What would a person expect if they came to you for coaching as ground zero or Session 1?
How To Know That You’re Doing It Right
Alex: You always are sort of wondering, “Am I doing this right?” Like okay, is there something or is there one little thing that I’m sort of missing that’s going to be the difference between getting it to be really successful versus not. I think just being able to talk to somebody else, hopefully somebody more experienced than you about it, is very helpful. But in terms of the ground zero student, I would just start with the basics. Try to go through Memory Palaces, the basic ideas of creating images and how doing certain things can really do a lot to make those images stick better in your palaces. Going through the importance of review schedules or like using spaced repetition. I think that’s very important obviously in terms of learning. I just sort of try to cater to whatever the student’s needs are. If they’re interested in competitions, if they’re interested in learning, I would started with those basics and sort of move forward depending on what their questions are.
Anthony: I would imagine that by going to these competitions, you get coaching by default because you’re around all these great people who have this similar interest or is it completely the opposite? The reason why I’m thinking that is I was watching a lecture by a magician the other day, and he said that going to like FISM (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques), which is a magic organization with a competition, is one of the best things that he ever did because all his best friends he met at the competition, and they actually help each other get better at magic. I’m just kind of curious about that.
Alex: Yeah, I definitely think that’s the case for memory. Most people, for sure, are willing to talk about the techniques they use, discuss their strategies, their ideas for what works and what doesn’t. I’ve definitely found going to competitions to be very helpful to learn personally. Also, just the memory competition sort of community in general has been very helpful, because you meet some of these people at competitions or you just meet them online and you can communicate online very easily and I do that a with different people. That’s always very helpful.
Anthony: You know one thing that I think that is really key, and I’m sure you have insight about this, is that a lot of people get this. They understand it. They don’t feel like they’ve had a jet engine described to them. It just snaps. They are like okay make a Memory Palace, location dependent mnemonic, we put this image here, we go back, we recall it, and decode it. This is not rocket science to them whatsoever.
Alex: Yeah.
Anthony: However, they find it really boring. They’re not in love with it so to speak. Is there a way to fall in love with mnemonics? Is there a way to become so passionate about it that even if they don’t want to go compete, they are able to apply it to the information that makes a difference in their life, or just something that creates pleasure, which also makes a difference to your life?
How To Crush Boredom And Make Memory Development The Most Interesting Activity In The World
Alex: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s the case. I think the great thing about mnemonics is you can really make them as personal as you want to. So whatever you’re interested in, you can sort of adapt your images or your stories to sort of match that.
I think one thing that’s important, for myself and for others, is to really try to focus on making something that’s interesting to you. Sometimes I’ll get a little bored at memorizing numbers or whatever, and then I always try to take it back and force myself to think about, “What can I do to make these stories more interesting?” I always sort of see two images together on one locus when I memorize numbers. I always really try to do my best to make it seem interesting and doing that and just sort of focusing on making something funny or interesting in that way is enough to kind of keep me interested even if I’m having a bad or a boring day.
My advice really is to think about what you find interesting and really try to capitalize on that when you’re using mnemonics.
Anthony: Now to take this from the other angle, what about somebody who really is interested in this, but they don’t get it all? They are just hearing all this stuff about Memory Palaces, crazy images, PAO, numbers, three digits per, –
Alex: Yeah it’s a lot to process.
Anthony: You mentioned Dominic O’Brien’s book and Ron White’s book and so forth, what would be your go to manual besides your website which I actually highly recommend to everybody to go check it out. It really is awesome and the videos that you put together are very clear and distinct. Let me ask this a different way. Who is your hero in the world of memory?
Alex: I really admire a lot of different people. I guess one of them would Nelson Dellis from the U.S. He’s done just a huge amount just to promote the techniques here, and he’s obviously a very talented memory competitor. In terms of the world, I guess if you ask me in terms from a memory competitor standpoint it would have to be the German guy Johannes Mallow because he’s the No. 1 ranked memory athlete in the world right now. The way I created a lot of the systems that I use now for cards and numbers, I sort of stole from him and adapted to my own benefit. In that sense, he’s definitely my idol because I really tried my best to copy him and emulate him.
Anthony: I really want to thank you for being on the podcast today. It has been incredibly inspiring.
Alex: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Anthony: It’s been insightful and I hope to speak again. So you’ve got your website and a lot of great trainings there. What else is coming up next for you and how can people connect both on your site and perhaps elsewhere with social media and the like.
Alex: One thing I guess I wanted to mention was you talked about how for some people having the experience of it being something like putting a jet engine together. Talking about my site also, the way I’ve sort of found is the best way to combat the problem is to sort of just have them do it themselves. Just go through one example and have them do it and see what it’s actually like to do it. On my website I have something I came out with called the 20-word challenge, that’s I call it. It’s just memorizing a list of 20 random words. What I do, it’s a video, and I’m in this place that we’ll use as the Memory Palace and then I go through 20 different locations in that palace and memorize a list of 20 words.
That’s something I like to do with people who struggle initially just to show them that they really can do it and it gives them some confidence and also just an idea of what the techniques are actually like. I just wanted to bring that up real quick.
In terms of contacting me, a lot of the content that I put out is on my site, on the tutorials. A lot of what I focus on is trying to explain the basics but then also give people some examples of how to actually use techniques of learning. That’s something that I sort of couldn’t really find when I was trying to learn these techniques and use them in my life. I wasn’t really able to find a lot of learning examples or people explaining how to use them in medicine effectively for instance.
If people want to go to my site, that would be great. There’s a contact page on my site. They can always contact me and ask any questions that they have. I’m also on Facebook or Twitter at Mullen Memory, you can contact me there as well. All those places are good places to get in contact with me.
Anthony: Very cool. Well thank you so much and thank you for being a leader in the field of memory techniques.
Alex: You as well.
Anthony: One last question. Are you going to compete again and can you beat 17 seconds?
Alex: I would love to compete again. I’m still training right now. I took a little bit of a break after the competition but I’m back in it again. I couldn’t put it down for too long. I want to keep competing as much as I can. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I would love to break 17.
Anthony: That’s awesome. Nelson has been on the show twice and he told me one of the best things that you’ll ever do is go to a competition. I didn’t believe him but almost by accident I wound up at one, and it really was the greatest way to learn so much.
Alex: Yeah, it’s a good experience.
Anthony: Thank you again for being inspiring on that account and I hope that people listening will go and check out Alex’s website and really take the time to study your approach and learn from you and listen to this interview again because it is just filled with great information.
Alex: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Further Resources, People and Items Mentioned in the Podcast
Amazing Language Learner Olly RichardsPulls Back The Curtain On Exactly How He Learned 8 Languages In Record Time – With More Than A Full-Time Job Crowding His To Do List … Tune In To Learn How You Can Do It Too!
This call is pre-recorded, so you can register anytime. I’m on the call as both moderator and student advocate, so you won’t want to miss a moment of this call. We go deep into what it takes to learn a language and you’ll take away a lot of actionable tips.
After registering for the call, come back and listen to each and every word of this special podcast and you’ll learn:
* How to find words and phrases that you ACTUALLY want to speak when learning a language.
* The power of setting a “crazy goal” for motivating yourself to take action and make targeted strides, even if the language you’ve chosen is difficult.
* How to elevate your thinking about the art of language learning so you get maximum results in minimum time.
* The best ways to “wrangle” your speaking partners and tutors into shape so they help you study what you need to study instead of wasting time on willy-nilly activities that won’t get you anywhere.
* The essential questions you should prepare yourself to answer when studying your dream language.
* How to develop a list of topics that you’re likely to talk about so that you’re not chained to the next page of your textbook.
* The new – and BETTER – way to think about rote learning for getting traction when learning a language.
* Why memorizing is just one part of language learning and how to identify and isolate the other parts to boost your success.
* The one thing that keeps Olly up at night when learning a language. Solve this one worry for yourself and you will never run out of steam.
* The scheduling secret Olly uses to “oblige” himself to attend lessons. You can uses this approach too – even if you’ve got a zillion things to do. Heck, the dude even shipped himself to Thailand when he wanted to learn to speak Thai.
* The absolute best time of day to study your target language so that you always feel like you’ve made progress and build your sense of accomplishment.
* How to avoid letting the great get in the way of the good so that you can start from a place where speaking practice is always good not matter how unprepared you might be. Use this approach and you can literally get prepared on the fly.
* The ultimate motivation secret for getting yourself through multiple lessons and find language teachers you will genuinely love learning from.
* The untapped power of hypothetical questions and role play in your language learning practice that you’re not using – but should be!
* Olly’s take on using mnemonics for individual words and when you should be focusing on them instead of entire phrases. In fact, you should be encountering them inside entire stories. Here’s an example from Olly from his Spanish Short Story collection:
* Textbook tactics for shopping and getting the most out of every resource you buy.
* How to avoid tourist-speak so that you aren’t limited to ordering food and asking directions to the hospital for your cat (yes, you will be led into these dead ends if you don’t take Olly’s advice).
* Exactly how to deal with introversion so that no matter how shy you might be, you can eliminate random social unknowns and learn in a safe and practical environment.
* … and much, much more.
This is the kind of episode you’re going to want to save and keep returning to again and again. And if you interested in memorizing the key points, How To Memorize A Textbook will help you master this simple skill and put you in a position to memorize vocabulary and phrases at a higher level thanks to your practice of the art of memory.
The picture above is from the May 2015 Polyglot Gathering in Berlin. From left to right you see myself, Olly, Richard Simcott, Kris Broholm, Brian Kwon and Jan van der Aa.
From the same event, Benny Lewis, myself and Olly. Somehow they manage to just look crazy. I took first prize for psychotic.
Mark Channon discusses memory techniques and the good habits needed to make massive strides with them at Magnetic Memory Live in London 2015.
Olly’s Memory Palace based on his apartment in Cairo. Top notch work and it was very cool that I could see the place with my own eyes more than a year after he sent me this drawing.
The list of words in Egyptian Arabic Olly used the Memory Palace to memorize.
In Egypt, Olly introduced me to the Nile in style. A sushi bar.
My last day in Cairo, we played with hiragana and katakana and Olly drew a diagram of exactly how languages get learned at the highest possible level. I won’t mentioned the memory-unfriendly Guinness we were swilling – because we truly weren’t.
Quick Summary Of Things Olly Taught Me
At the 2015 Polyglot Gathering in Berlin, Olly noticed the benefits, but more importantly, the deficits of my flirting around with multiple languages. Talking about this issues, we were talking along a street in Prenzlauerberg when he gave me the excellent idea of directing the Magnetic Memory Method back at just one language.
But this time, instead of starting from scratch with a new language, he suggested I focus on using mnemonics to dramatically improve my relatively advanced German skills.
And so that’s exactly what I did. Here’s how:
First, I immediately hopped on italki and found a German speaking partner. I’ve had a few since then, and each has been a blessing. Olly’s guidelines for getting the most out of a speaking partner are golden, and he talks about them in detail in the episode of the podcast you can download at the top of this page.
To maximize the value of the sessions, I always ask my speaking partners to use a Google spreadsheet for each lesson. This lets me isolate the new vocabulary, arrange it and even drop in a scan of the Memory Palaces I use to rapidly learn and memorize the sound and meaning of each word I’m encountering, often for the first time.
Then, I write sentences around the words after pulling them from my memory – away from the source of the spreadsheet. Only later, do I check them against the record and troubleshoot when necessary.
A second trick I learned from Olly is to record all my sessions. That way I can go back and hear exactly how the speaker pronounced the words. I can also hear my own pronunciations. This process is super-painful, but it helps immensely.
Third, I follow Olly’s advice to forbid (as much as possible) the speaking partner from using any English. This practice can be frustrating, but stick to it and you’ll be amazed by how quickly you outpace yourself.
Caution, however. This is advice Olly gives for when you’re at an intermediate level with a language. At the beginning stages, it can be very useful to have your instructor explain certain features of a language to you in your mother tongue. Just don’t let that be an excuse for not diving in to the language. You also shouldn’t get in the habit of using it as a crutch. Learn how to say, “I don’t understand” and “please say that in other words” a.s.a.p.
Fourth, I begin each new speaking session with a review of everything I memorized from the last one. But I don’t cheat. The original spreadsheet is on another tab and I honestly work from memory. This allows me to benefit from any mistakes I make. And again, this is recorded so that I’ll be reviewing the process again later.
You might be thinking that hearing mistakes made grounded on false moves with the Memory Palaces would just lead to confusion, but it’s quite the opposite. The entire process only gets stronger.
Finally,here’s a fun – but rigorous – technique I added on my own:
As part of my reading practice, I choose three new words from each page. Never more and only less when I don’t find a max of three new words on a page. Then I memorize them using the room I’m in as the Memory Palace and follow up by writing sentences around them. A book with an average of 300 pages read over the period of 6 – 8 weeks = 900 new words inside of two months. With an 80% retention rate, the results are impressive.
The only problem I’ve found in the past is that I wind up learning a ton of words that no one uses. However, that’s an interesting problem to have, fun for my philological yearnings and thanks to the practice I’ve found an interesting solution that puts a bit more bang behind this unusual outcome:
I read books written only in first person and in one of the Berliner dialects. This choice increases the chances that I’ll learn words that people use around me and teaches me a lot more about one of my favorite cities in the world and the people who call it home.
Thanks again to Olly for the solid lessons and for being on the show – see you soon!
It’s a curious thing that human beings, and most other animal species, are driven to regular periods of inactivity and unconsciousness. What could be less evolutionarily beneficial than a stretch of eight hours during which you can’t hunt, defend yourself, or reproduce? Not to mention working on your memory improvement.
All jokes aside, the fact that we are driven to sleep is an indication that sleep has an important purpose in our biology.
And yet, the precise mechanisms of sleep remain largely mysterious. The exact reasons why we require sleep, and what happens during sleep, are areas of current research.
One thing is for certain: lack of sleep leads to an array of social, financial, and health-related costs. Indeed, the fatality rate of sleepiness-related car crashes is similar to that of driving under the influence (Goel et al 2009). What’s more is that prolonged sleep deprivation leads to death for many studied species (and presumably humans) (Cirelli et al. 2008).
Despite these realities, a full 20% of adults are not getting enough sleep (Goel et al 2009). It’s a common practice in our culture to praise those who can work the most and sleep the least.
However, research indicates that this attitude is misguided. Lack of sleep has important negative implications for cognition. Sleep deprivation puts pressure on your entire cognitive apparatus, and has the potential to affect your memory.
After this article, you may be convinced that a nap is in order.
What Exactly Is Sleep?
Over 85 years, an average person will sleep 250,000 hours, which is equal to 10,000 full days (Scullin et al 2015).
But what is sleep, really?
It is commonly believed that sleep is a continuous period of a complete loss of awareness. But in actuality, sleeping is not one continuous state and a sleeping person does not lose total awareness. Instead, they alternate between reduced awareness of the external world and a complete loss of consciousness (Gudberg et al 2015).
From here, sleep is typically classified into two categories. The first is non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep and the second is rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep (Bryant et al 2004).
NREM sleep happens during the early moments of falling asleep. As the name suggests, there is little to no eye movement during NREM sleep. Dreams are rare during this stage, your body is not paralyzed as in REM sleep, and mental activity is still “thought-like” (Bryant et al 2004). This is the stage during which some people will sleep-walk.
The role of NREM sleep is to conserve energy, cool the body and brain, and promote immune function.
Following NREM sleep, a person will fall into REM sleep, where rapid eye movements can be observed. This is where the majority and the most vivid dreams occur. Your body is paralyzed, which is an adaptation to prevent you from acting out your dreams. You will periodically wake up – which some researchers feel serves as a way to survey the environment (Bryant et al 2004). These mini-awakenings are typically not remembered.
The Devastating Consequences Of Sleep Deprivation On Memory Revealed
As you sleep, you will cycle between NREM and REM sleep four to five times during the night.
By understanding our sleep patterns, it becomes evident that there is much more that happens during sleep than simply being unconscious. The broad overview given here just scratches the surface of the complex world of sleep.
For all of its complexity, sleep serves essential functions. For example, a sleep-deprived person suffers from many ailments, including:
A weakened immune system (Bryant et al 2004).
Reduced wakefulness – microsleeps during wakeful hours after sleep deprivation (Cirelli et al. 2008).
Compromised cognition.
The compromised cognition experienced during sleep is all too familiar for many of us. We all know that after a poor night’s sleep, we are groggy and we tend to think more slowly.
When it comes to memory, the essential role that sleep plays is more pervasive than most realize.
Sleep Plays a Key Role When it Comes to Your Memory
There are three basic memory stages.
The first is called acquisition or encoding. This is the process of collecting the information or processes that you’d like to memorize. An example could be re-reading the dates and prominent figures in a history book. This is called “declarative” memory, and is the memory of facts and information. Another example of memory is procedural memory. This is memory of how to do something. This could be anything from learning how to ride a bike or learning how to play the piano.
The second step is consolidation, where the information you’ve absorbed become stable in your mind. It is at this stage that memories are formed in your mind.
Finally, you must be able to recall memories for them to be useful. Thus, the final stage in memory is remembering something during your waking hours.
Numerous studies have indicated the importance of sleep for the second stage, memory consolidation. A good night’s sleep can help you recall facts and information, as well as solidify skills that you’re trying to learn.
Under the current scientific understanding, sleep is absolutely essential to memory. We require sleep to file information collected during our waking moments, in our minds. In doing so, we are able to recall newly acquired information (Ellenbogen et al. 2006).
For example, learning the guitar requires that you memorize hand movements as well as notes. This is called procedural memory. Long term sleep has been specifically found to help with procedural memory formation (Diekelmann and Born, 2010).
Sleep Shifts Info Around In Your Brain
Sleep also serves to reorganize new memories. During sleep, the brain will access new information and make links with previously absorbed information. This helps segment and associate relevant parts of a complex memory to previous memories. While solidifying new information in your mind, this aids in the creativity process. This is because the brain will sometimes associate new information with old information in unexpected ways, thereby leading to novel insights (Diekelmann and Born, 2010).
Scientists also believe that we “replay” our previously learned information and skills during our sleep. Experiments have been conducted on animals and humans after they have been trained on a particular task. During sleep, the same parts of the brain that were active during the training exercises, were active while sleeping as well. This is because the brain will repeat the actions during your sleep (Diekelmann 2014).
Sleep is essential to memory. One study not only found poor memory recall in sleep deprived individuals, but also found that they recalled false memories. That’s right, you are more likely to remember untrue information following sleep deprivation (Diekelmann 2008).
In other studies, those that slept, recalled more and performed better on cognitive tests than those who stayed up. Looks like those all-nighters weren’t the best idea after all.
How to Use Sleep For Memory Enhancement
Getting a good eight hour sleep has been shown to benefit memory (Diekelmann and Born, 2010). But what about sleep that occurs outside of your regular nightly routine, such as power naps?
Good news nappers! Research has also pointed to memory improvement even for shorter naps.
In a study of 29 undergraduate students, one hour naps were found to benefit factual recall. However, the memory of procedures, that is, memory of how to perform actions, was not improved. The study concluded that more complete periods of rest were necessary for the proper learning of memory (Tucker et al 2006).
Even more stunning is that even very short naps seem to have a positive effect on memory of facts and information. A study compared different nap durations, as well as staying awake. They found that even a micro-nap of six minutes enhanced memory recall. The study concluded that although longer naps improved recall more than very short naps, very short naps still have significant benefits (Lahl et al 2008).
Ultimately, it seems that if you’re looking to improve your memory of facts and information, naps are in fact helpful. However, if you are trying to learn the keyboard, a longer sleep time is what you really need.
In terms of the optimal or minimum amount of sleep that you’d need, that is still unclear. More research is needed.
However, if for whatever reason you can’t afford a full-night’s rest, a nap might help to keep you going.
How to Get a Good’s Night Sleep
Now that we know the importance of sleep, you may be wondering how you can get the absolute best sleep possible. After all, most of us do not have the benefit of being able to sleep and take naps whenever we’d like. That’s why it’s important to learn how to get the highest quality sleep during the time you have available.
Here are some tips to improve your sleep and help you get to sleep faster:
Only use your bed for sleeping and sex. Try to avoid using electronics, watching TV or eating in bed. This might associate these activities with being in a bed and prevent you from being able to fall asleep.
Avoid long naps during the day. Although I’ve mentioned that naps can enhance memory, it’s important to restrict napping because they can also prevent sleep. Take no more than a 25 minute nap during the day, or avoid them altogether.
Remove all lights and sounds from your bedroom. Buy light-blocking curtains if necessary. Use a regular alarm clock instead of your cell phone.
Do not drink or consume caffeine for at least six hours before bed. Be careful, coffee isn’t the only substance that contains caffeine. Tea, soda, and even chocolate contain caffeine that you should avoid before trying to fall asleep.
Memory enhancement is a tricky business and there are a myriad of ways you can do it. Whether it be food, meditation, or drugs, everyone has a preferred method.
Regardless, everyone needs to sleep. Since sleep plays such a key role in memory retention and recall, you might as well make the best of it. Make sleep a priority in your daily life.
Contrary to popular belief, sleep isn’t for the weak. Sleep is for those with great memory improvement goals.
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Diekelmann, Susanne. “Sleep for Cognitive Enhancement.” Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 8 (2014): 46. PMC. Web. 18 Jan. 2016.
Diekelmann, Susanne et al. “Sleep Loss Produces False Memories.” Ed. Jan Lauwereyns. PLoS ONE 3.10 (2008): e3512. PMC. Web. 18 Jan. 2016.
Ellenbogen, Jeffrey M, Jessica D Payne, and Robert Stickgold. “The Role of Sleep in Declarative Memory Consolidation: Passive, Permissive, Active or None?” Current Opinion in Neurobiology (2006): 716-22. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.
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Gudberg, Christel, and Heidi Johansen-Berg. “Sleep and Motor Learning: Implications for Physical Rehabilitation After Stroke.” Frontiers in Neurology 6 (2015): 241. PMC. Web. 18 Jan. 2016.
Lahl, Olaf, Christiane Wispel, Bernadette Willigens, and Reinhard Pietrowsky. “An Ultra Short Episode of Sleep Is Sufficient to Promote Declarative Memory Performance.” Journal of Sleep Research J Sleep Res (2008): 3-10. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.
Scullin, Michael K., and Donald L. Bliwise. “Sleep, Cognition, and Normal Aging: Integrating a Half-Century of Multidisciplinary Research.” Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science 10.1 (2015): 97–137. PMC. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11, 114-126 (February 2010)
Tucker, M., Y. Hirota, E. Wamsley, H. Lau, A. Chaklader, and W. Fishbein. “A Daytime Nap Containing Solely Non-REM Sleep Enhances Declarative but Not Procedural Memory.” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (2006): 241-47. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.
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It’s a curious thing that human beings, and most other animal species, are driven to regular periods of inactivity and unconsciousness. What could be less evolutionarily beneficial than a stretch of eight hours during which you can’t hunt, defend yourself, or reproduce? Not to mention working on your memory improvement.