The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Chinese poems thrill poetry fans around the world. They've been translated into umpteen languages and create wonderful images in the mind. Here's something even cooler: As a student of the Magnetic Memory Method, it's easy to encounter a new Chinese poem just once and memorize it with a high level of recall. We're talking 92-95% accuracy after 24 hours, with 98-100% accuracy thereafter using MMM Recall Rehearsal. And the best part is: Each Poem Is Easier To Memorize Than The Last! So by now you're probably asking … How does the Magnetic Memory Method work for memorizing Chinese poems? And how can I do it too? I'm glad you asked because the steps are clear, crisp, clever and concise. 1. Get some Chinese poems (Duh!) In this regard, I'm the luckiest man on the planet. I'm married to a woman who knows a bunch of Chinese poems by heart. But even if you don't have a Chinese speaker in your life, it's easy to find someone using a learn languages online service. The important thing is to choose poems that are short, sweet and simple. This helps reduce the cognitive overload at the beginning. Songs work too. Like this one: 2. Have More Than One Memory Palace On Hand It's no secret that I teach the Memory Palace technique as a skill of multiples. One is the most dangerous number when it comes to memory, so make sure that: 1) You always have more than one Memory Palace ready to go. 2) You have the ability to create an impromptu Memory Palace on the fly. With these two abilities, you can either use a pre-existing Memory Palace or just whip one up on the spot. In this case, each of the Chinese poems I've learned are only four lines each. I used a new Memory Palace for each. I created the first two Memory Palaces on the fly, one in a hotel room, the other in an AirBnB. The third was in my current kitchen, a Memory Palace I've been using and reusing for Chinese since I started learning the language. 3. Create Your Associative-Imagery Word For Word, Line By Line Nothing creates more fun than creating associations that let you recall information like the lines of Chinese poems. I like to get a sense for the word and let my mind do the work without force. Daily meditation helps because I'm relaxed, but I also tell April to give me a second when she feeds me the lines. In that second, I'm breathing and accessing the deepest reservoirs of relaxation I've cultivated over the years. I also do a quick body scan and squeeze all my major muscles. This calms and centers me. My ego gets out of the way and all forms of resistance slip away. Please don't laugh at the meditation and relaxation. They are key to the success of most memorizers and memory competitions incorporate a version of it into the events. The "Buttock Squeeze" Memory Technique You Should Not Dismiss I'll never forget the Amazon reviewer who dismissed one of my books because I talk about relaxation and memory – including squeezing your buttocks. It was a seriously strange review. But here's the thing: If taking a second to clear the mind and body good enough for memory competitors who demonstrate intense memory feats like memorizing a deck of cards in under 20 seconds, it's good enough for my simple goal of memorizing some Chinese poems. Don't discount the power of relaxation in your memory practice. It makes a huge difference. And yes, squeezing each muscle in your body – including your rear end – helps. Try it before you knock it. 4. Keep Your Mindset Intact As April feeds me the lines, I see Han Solo, Dee Snider and Shania Twain interacting in uncouth ways with Horton from the Dr. Suess book. I see my friend Shayne strangling Jar Jar Binks and Bruce Lee fighting a Chia pet. And that's just for starters. Are all these images a lot to juggle? Not really. I do it all the time, as you can see on my Basic Chinese Phrases and Mandarin Mnemonics playlist: And the truth is … I don't even really see the images. It's somewhere between sight and sense using all the Magnetic Modes. I made this infographic to help explain what I mean: In such, the Magnetic Modes are entities of thought that have specific locations in a Memory Palace. Like Carl Jung dumping sand on my mom's old friend Sandy. Where else could that be taking place except over the garbage can in the kitchen? That where else question is one of the most powerful tools in mnemonics you'll ever use. But even if this jumble of characters and actions were challenging to keep moving in the air, it's all a question of mindset. Think of it this way: If the people who built rollercoasters said, "Woah, that's WAY to much track to erect in the sky," there would be no amusement parks. Same thing with using a Memory Palace. If you tell yourself it's too much to handle, it will be. But if you take it just one Memory Palace Station and one word at a time, you'll have no problem memorizing Chinese poems. 5. Make Sure The Images Are Strong Enough When memorizing Chinese poems in a hurry, it's tempting to use the first images that come to mind. But that's not always a good policy. For example, in one line I saw a guy I used to know named Dan doing … … something. The reason I couldn't see what that something was? Because the image wasn't strong enough. I had to crank up the volume on whatever forgettable image I'd seen before and see him stomping on a record from The Who with Roger Daltrey and crew screaming in protest. Yes, screaming. It's the exaggeration that makes it more memorable. Plus, Dan's a big music fan, which makes the image incongruous. Because he would never actually destroy music, the image of him harming an album is that much more memorable. 6. Rehearse According To A Plan Sometimes I can get away with just encoding the Chinese words and leaving it at that. But usually not and it's stupid to take the risk. Instead, I rehearse the words of the poems according to a plan. In the Magnetic Memory Method, it's called Recall Rehearsal. Recall Rehearsal is based on a few things: 1) The Primacy Effect 2) The Recency Effect 3) Von Restorff effect 4) Dominic O'Brien's Rule Of Five 5) My stubborn insistence on using internal repetition cues rather than SRS to learn.* * The exception is that, in the spirit of Ebbinghaus, I sometimes complete n=1 experiments with various software as part of my memory research. So far, none compare to the power and the glory of memory techniques – at least not for me. 7. Speak And Write The Chinese Poems Although I rehearse the Chinese poems quietly several times, nothing beats reciting them. Getting them out through the mouth creates muscle memory and helps with general pronunciation practice. Likewise, writing puts the words into the muscles of the hands, arms and eyes as you see the words. Together, you are giving your memory the highest possible chance to succeed. 8. Memorize More I also memorized Chinese phrases, individual words, some numbers and an English poem during the same period. This extra activity is not necessary, but I like to do it. Why? Because it's like being a chef. Normally, I'm an expert with cooking eggs, but to get better at cooking eggs, I also need to make the occasional soup or steak or some other complimentary dish. Variety enriches and enlivens the core skills. And that's important for all of us as we live our lives using memory techniques. Memory improvement is the most critical activity in the world, especially now that we're relegating so much of our memory needs to machines. Be it math, Chinese poems or some other information that will make a difference in your life, following steps like the ones I outlined above will keep you in good stead. Memory improvement is fun, easy and you can use it to recite Chinese poems – or anything you like – at any time. Isn't that exciting? The post The Steps I Took To Memorize 3 Chinese Poems In 2.3 Weeks appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Life is good, isn't it? You bet it is. But for some reason, when times get tough, without knowing a thing about the Prime Ministers of Canada, people around the world throw up their hands and say, "It's time to head to the Great White North." Here's the thing: You'll find some beautiful terrain and plenty of peace-loving citizens. But as a nation, we do not lack our own host of colorful characters. So if you're coming over for a permanent BBQ in response to US election results or some dictator who's been giving you the squeeze, it's time to learn how to memorize the Prime Ministers of Canada. It's important to know what you're getting into, after all. Beginner's Guide To Memorizing Any List The first thing to understand when memorizing the names of the Canadian Prime Ministers is that you're dealing with a list. We're talking about discrete units of information. Like, Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891). The best way to rapidly memorize any list is to create a Memory Palace. All Memory Palace creation takes is a simple drawing and a list of your Magnetic Stations charted out in a strategic way. Creating an effective Memory Palace reduces your cognitive load to a bare minimum. That reduction forms a huge part of the secret behind how memory techniques like a Memory Palace work: You use a location you already know to place information you'll Magnetically encode with imagery you already know onto a station so you can retrieve and decode what you want to know later. Curious about correct Memory Palace creation? Here's a Memory Palace walkthrough based on a Memory Palace submitted by a Magnetic Memory Method student: A Small Set Of Super Important Information In this case, we have just 23 names for the Prime Ministers of Canada. When it comes to memorizing them, you have options. 1. You can create one Memory Palace with 23 Magnetic Stations exclusively for remembering them. 2. You can create two Memory Palaces with 12 Magnetic Stations each. In either case, you 'll ideally use Memory Palaces with more Magnetic Stations than you need so that you can use more than one station per name if needed. Or, if you're already experienced with memory techniques, you can experiment with the Magnetic Memory Method "passing the baton" technique, which allows you to memorize more than one name per station. That's for advanced memorizers, however, and even then, it's good once in awhile to stick with the basics. And that's ultimately what I recommend so that you can add the dates of the Prime Ministers later using the Magnetic Chaining memory technique. The Art Of Embarrassing Politicians Let's assume you've got a Memory Palace with a bit more than 23 Magnetic Stations to give you wiggle room. Next, you need your list of information. The Wikipedia Prime Ministers of Canada page is as good as any. Whip that little darling open and look at the first name. The trick to memorizing anything is association, also called encoding. It's easy, fun and with a bit of practice using special exercises I've created for you, unbelievably fast. John A. Macdonald, for example, brings to mind a picture of my friend and fellow mnemonist, John McPhedrine to mind. You've heard him on the show talking about memorizing German and music before. I see John at the first station of the Memory Palace I've created with a giant letter 'A' in his hands. He's using this to smash my MACbook Pro, which is playing a video of Donald Trump singing "Old Macdonald Had A Farm." Plus, as an advanced memorizer, I've got Trump's hair as the tail of a dog swatting at a bat. Why? Because that additional imagery helps me remember the dates of this Canadian Prime Minister. How does that work? It sounds complex, but it's actually simple: Using a special memory technique for memorizing numbers, 15 is "tail" and 91 is "bat." I've got an entire course in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass about all the ways you can remember numbers, or you can just check out this post on the Major Method. It's a great way to instantly memorize any number, and not just short ones like historical dates. The Prime Minister Who Built Walls You Can Be Proud Of Wikipedia tells this story about Alexander Mackenzie: Once, while touring Fort Henry as prime minister, he asked the soldier accompanying him if he knew the thickness of the wall beside them. The embarrassed escort confessed that he didn't and Mackenzie replied, "I do. It is five feet, ten inches. I know, because I built it myself!" Little anecdotes like this can be fun to remember when memorizing a name. Plus, it's interesting that Mackenzie was three times offered knighthood, but refused each time. To encode all of this into memory, it's a simple matter of seeing Alex from A Clockwork Orange taking … certain liberties with a former high school girlfriend of mine by the last name of Mackenzie against a section of the Berlin Wall now fixed on station two of my Prime Ministers of Canada Memory Palace. (Phew … that was a mouthful.) But the Mackenzie I used to kiss so gently in high school fights back by trying to knight him with a giant camera that he beats away with a pamphlet printout of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Why a camera and this bizarre retaliation with an ancient allegory? You've probably already guessed it by now. It's our old friend the Major Method, which tells me that "cam" decodes to 73 and "cave" to 78, the same years Alexander Mackenzie served as one of the Prime Ministers of Canada. Isn't That Just Too Simple? It really is, and that fun simplicity explains why so many people who get into memory techniques email and ask me … Isn't this … cheating? Absolutely not. And here's why: It's one thing to create the Memory Palaces and have fun dreaming up weird images and vignettes. Long Term Memory Requires Recall Rehearsal But you've also got to replay these stories and decode them in your mind over time. Skip this step and the information might still get into long term memory, but I wouldn't bet on it. Luckily, setting up a Magnetic Memory Method Recall Rehearsal routine is easy. Just go over the information you've memorized about 5 times before the day is through. Make one of those times right before bed to help consolidation. But here's a warning: Some recent research evidence suggests that older people don't get the same memory consolidation benefits as younger people do. It's good to keep that evidence in mind, but also be your own scientist. As you can see in this video on making boring information more interesting, I got away with a high recall rate after far fewer Recall Rehearsal sessions. But I would have done better if I'd repeated the poem more often. The Rule Of Five That's what World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien calls it and The Rule Of Five holds great power. If you're feeling overwhelmed or wondering where you're going to find the time, don't stress it. The important thing is just to get started. Memory techniques are a skill you'll want to use for life and the Prime Ministers of Canada is just the beginning. I hope you've seen how you can not only memorize a long list of names, but also add historical dates and facts. When I look at station two of my Memory Palace of Canadian Prime Ministers, it's easy to see a movie character and person from my past interacting with a few select symbols that help recall an interesting scenario and numbers. Wrapping It All Up With A Magnetic Little Bow Here's a summary of all you have to do to experience great success: 1. Create a Memory Palace for the Prime Ministers of Canada. Remember to pad out your Memory Palace so that you have a few extra stations in case you need them. 2. Have the names prepared. You can do it directly from a Wikipedia page, but you're better off printing the list out and encoding the names to your Magnetic Stations somewhere you won't be bothered by notifications. Being tempted to skip around on your browser isn't helpful either. Like I said last time about boring information … Instead of taking it in small doses, make it exciting for yourself. It's not that hard! 3. Practice Recall Rehearsal diligently. The Rule of Five is great, but take it on principle, not as dogma. Always test and never hope that five repetitions is enough. It might become more than necessary once you get good with mnemonics, but it will never be too much. Every time you enter a Memory Palace and practice the beautiful art of memory, you get better and better with the best asset you've got: The ability to learn, remember and recall anything. Now then … How about that Canadian anthem? The post Prime Ministers Of Canada: How To Memorize Them All appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Studying about boring topics you don't give a hoot about sucks, right? Especially when you're in a rush. Especially when all you want is the grade, the certification, the knowledge. Well, I can't make any promises, but there might be a way to help make any topic much more interesting to you. At the very least, we can remove the sting of boredom. At best, we can make any topic we want 100% Magnetic. 1. Warning Signs That Your Mindset Is Off I know, I know. You're tired of hearing about mindset. But let's face it. We have minds. Every day we wake up with more or less the same world outside the window. Just like we have to make our beds so that the sheets won't be sprawled all over the place, we have to set up our minds for success. But that's the problem, isn't it? Lots of people are happy to leave their beds messy all day long and then crawl into the unkempt mess at night. It's cold because the mattress has been exposed and probably a bunch of insects have settled into the dune-like patterns. Sure, you might fall asleep okay, but there's nothing like slipping into a made bed. You know it's true. It's The Same Thing With Your Mind! Sure thing, you can get through life without setting up your mind for success, but it will be cold and exposed to the elements. The bugs will crawl in and lay their eggs, and you'll never get the warmth you deserve. But take just a few moments to tidy up and you'll reduce the suffering that comes from studying things you don't like. Because that's just the thing: A lack of mindset is probably the thing that got you into a position where you're studying things you're not passionate about in the first place. You're probably studying material that produces no great excitement because you're chasing after hopes and beliefs and dreams and wishes – not what you really want. How To Set A Powerful Mindset For Learning Whether you're trapped or not, the process works the same. The best way to get your mindset in order is to set it each and every morning. As I talked about in the Mandarin Chinese Mnemonics And Morning Memory Secrets episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, having morning rituals is a killer way to conquer the day. When it comes to creating a mindset for making the material you're studying vibrant and exciting, all you have to do is write down in a journal how exciting it is to be studying and how grateful you are to have the opportunity. And it's true: Not everyone has the learning opportunities you do. A massive percentage of people in the world don't have access to the Internet, schools, books or anything even remotely related to helping them develop their knowledge. But you … You've Got Everything You Need So take a moment every day to recognize what an amazing opportunity you have. If that isn't a recipe for injecting excitement into a boring topic … I don't know what is. If all else fails, here's what to do if you or someone you love is considering not completing their high school diploma. They may have already left school, but it's not too late to go back. I dropped out of high school myself for awhile, but I'm so glad I returned. Best decision of my life. 2. Be An Info-Completionist Okay, so now that you're plump with self-hypnosis induced excitement for the privilege of study, you still have to sit down and learn the stuff. The question is … How? A lot of people ask me how I manage to read so much, and the answer is simple: Get a book. Find a place to sit. Read the book. Repeat until you're done. I don't say that to be flippant, but it's the truth. If you're trying to read in a place filled with distractions or on a device that encourages you to skip from tab to tab and answer notifications … Stop Trying To Read Like That! Seriously. It's not a recipe for success. Plus, you want to read in a way that helps you isolate the information you want to memorize. I have two posts with podcasts and videos that show you how to realistically memorize a textbook. Just check out the video for now: If you want more information, listen to How to Memorize A Textbook and study the infographic. True, my approach to realistically memorizing textbooks involves a bit of setup, but people who give it a try usually find that the process makes reading and remembering the key points of even the most difficult books much easier. The best part: By having a dedicated strategy for reading books, you make it a lot more fun. Like having a mindset, having a process you can follow without having to think about it makes everything more fun and interesting. Having operating principles and guidelines reduces cognitive load, and like Tony Buzan said when I studied with him, the rules set you free. 3. Look For The Parts That Do Interest You One thing that you'll learn from my training on (reasonable) textbook memorization is how to skip the parts that don't interest you. No, you can't always do this. There are times when you have to slog through boring stuff you don't care about. But here's the thing: by knowing what you do care about, you get more interested in things that connect with it. It happens automatically. And when interest doesn't spontaneously erupt, you at least get a clearer picture of why those other elements are necessary. The more you know about a topic changes the nature of what you don't know. It makes it more attractive, more Magnetic. And that which becomes more Magnetic is easier to attach to memory because you're simply more interested in it. 4. Invite Information Into Your Memory In other words, use memory techniques. You knew this was coming, didn't you? Let's face it: The best way to make dry and boring information more interesting is to make it part of your memory improvement lifestyle. That means organizing the information so that you can rapidly absorb it into a Memory Palace. To do that, you get to invite the information into a place you've created in your mind. I don't want to sound woo-woo, but there's something ritualistic about this. It's like anointing information, blessing it or touching its shoulder with the edge of your sword as if you were knighting it. Once anointed, you start looking at the information through mnemonic eyes. You're looking for how you can attach it to associative-imagery and place these images on your Memory Palace stations. You're already getting excited about revisiting your Magnetic Stations and decoding the imagery to ease it into long term memory. And before you know it … The information isn't boring any more. Far from it! That information has become … The Most Interesting Information In The World! This is without a doubt the finest thing you can do for the life of your memory and overall intelligence. When you privilege information and stop demonizing it by framing it in negative ways, it will want to enter your mind. Even better: If you've invited the information in just the right way, it will want to stay. 5. Bore Others To Death With Your Boring Topic Just kidding. By the time you've made the information interesting to yourself, you'll be excited to talk about it and to do that, you should have something already in place: Community. Remember how I told you should be grateful for having the opportunity to learn in the first place? And how you can use your gratitude as a tool for generating excitement in even the most boring topic? Well, you also have the Internet and thousands of groups people have created for discussing topics that they either find really exciting, challenging or want to kvetch about. You can find these groups meeting on forums, on Facebook, G+ or just shooting the breeze in YouTube comments. Maybe there will be some interesting discussion on this video I put together to accompany this post, for example: Let's say you're studying cognitive therapy, something I've recently gotten interested in studying. The first thing is to show some gratitude for having the time and opportunity even to do so. Write that down in your daily gratitude journal. Then, hop on to Facebook and search for groups that are already discussing this topic. Ask to join. For example, you can ask to join my Learn German Memory Hacks group, or even the Magnetic Memory Method Private Facebook Group. Have fun once you're inside! But Proceed With Caution! Don't overwhelm yourself with this. Just pick one or two that looks like it has enough members for finding a decent amount of discussion in process. Introduce yourself once you've been admitted. Tell them a bit about who you are and why you're interested in the topic. Make friends with the group admins and shoot them a note to thank them for taking time to put the group together. Probably no one else is doing that so you'll be on their radar and recognize your name later. Why would that matter? Easy. Because when you get bored or stuck somewhere in your reading, you have a place to go and post where at least a few people are going to know your name. Knowing that you have a place to go and share ideas in advance is a great way of making sure a topic never becomes boring to you. Of course, the dark side of this technique is that you'll get swept away doing a thousand other things online, but we all need to learn how to balance these things. I'm writing this post now in a library where getting online is too much of a pain – deliberately so that I have no distractions. Because here's the core of the matter: If You Really Want To Get Ahead, You Will Find A Way And with that monster of a headline, we've circled back to mindset, something you can get started crafting or refining right now. Exciting, isn't it? Now get out there and tackle some uninteresting information you using these tools. I dare you to be bored! Oh, and if you're still skeptical, check out these 3 Reasons Why Skeptics Succeed With Memory Techniques Better Than Anyone Else. The post 5 Ways To Get More Interested In Boring Topics You Have To Study appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Want to improve your ability to use memory techniques almost overnight? I promise it's super-easy. All you need is the willingness to support your nearest art gallery and your awareness of the following 17 reasons going to an art gallery is good for your memory. 1. Art Inspires Your Visual Imagination When you're using memory techniques, you draw upon visual imagination. Even if you're only using words in your mind when developing mnemonics, you're using visual words. The more visual iconography you've seen in your life, the more potency the visual words you use will hold. Exposure equals experience. Experience leads to substance. When you use the words "run," "hit" or any other verb, the more art you've seen, the great depth of meaning these words will have. 2. Art Depicts Words Used In Visual Ways If you've been to an art gallery lately, you've undoubtedly seen how modern artists use words. Pop artists use comic strips. Futurists made a big deal out of typefaces. You don't even have to enter an art gallery to see words used in graffiti on nearly every street in your city. Looking at art and paying attention to how artists use words is especially great for inspiring how you can use your visual imagination to memorize foreign language vocabulary and phrases. Next time you're in an art gallery, pay particular attention to how words appear in the exhibits. 3. Art Helps You Make Mental Connections Between Space And Material Objects Looking at art is never just about "looking." As your eyes meet the graphic displays, ideas emerge. In fact, "art" happens the moment that you start thinking about what you're looking at or noticing your emotional responses. You can become conscious of what you're thinking and feeling and use your awareness to become more visual. Reflect on how the visual experience has triggered your thoughts and responses. Also, journal what you've thought while at the gallery. By writing down your responses, you access your memory. Accessing your memory exercises your mind, which helps keep it fit. 4. Visiting Art Galleries Makes You Aware Of World Geography It's not just that art often depicts different parts of the world. Art galleries also exhibit art by international artists. Pay attention to the international names and locations of where the art originates. This will exercise your geographical imagination and give you more facts to remember. It's also great memory exercise to remember the names of the artists you see and include their home countries. For bonus points, you can also use the Major Method to add the dates of their lives and when they created the pieces you're admiring. The more experienced you become with memory techniques, the more information you can memorize at a single go. Plus, the location of the art itself within the gallery amounts to a Memory Palace station. Using the location gives you great practice at using your spatial memory in addition to all the other tools mnemonics draw upon, such as association, semantic memory, episodic memory and the like. 5. Art Galleries Are Depositories Of History Yes, you can memorize the raw data of dates when going to an art gallery. But you also expose your memory to information about historical periods. Artists love to reference other eras and historical events. Some artists have even made careers out of referencing history. Fluency in art equals fluency in history, which is always good for your memory. 6. Art Galleries Exercise Your Ability To Create Meaning Let's face it: A lot of art doesn't make much sense. At least, that's until you give it some thought and learn about how to interpret art. Believe me. Interpretation matters. After all, a huge part of art interpretation is creating meaning. To have created meaning, you have to remember the meaning you created. Ergo, going to art galleries and interpreting what you see is good for your memory. And if you're practicing memory techniques, handling abstract ideas your mind is perfect for practicing the art of remembering challenging and abstract ideas. Art history is loaded with them. 7. Art Galleries Give You The Experience Of Puzzlement Being puzzled by something is different than having to create meaning. To be puzzled, after all, you must have already understood something. Two (or more) things are separated and you know they go together … You just have to figure out how. Visiting art galleries gives you that experience and to fit the pieces together, you need to hold them in memory. The benefits of being puzzled are massive because it always exercises your memory as you work things out. Even if you give up before you're satisfied, your memory abilities will have grown. 8. Art Galleries Create Enigmas That Carry On Throughout Life Looking at art not only forces you to create meaning and solve puzzles. It also creates unsolvable mysteries that you will carry throughout your life. Take "The Persistence of Meaning" by Salvador Dali. What exactly does it mean? No matter how many times you see this painting, it still mystifies. The enigma of surrealism persists precisely because it resists meaning. And yet, we can continuously connect to the enigma and try puzzling out new meanings even if we know we'll never come to a conclusion. In Critical Theory, this is called "indeterminacy" and it is a powerful tool in art, cinema, theatre and literature. Try This Simple Memory Exercise For a cool memory exercise, take a painting like "The Persistence of Meaning" and try to remember the first time you saw it. Even if you're wrong, right down your earliest memory. For me, my earliest memory is in Collier's Encyclopedia. I believe it was in black and white. My next memory is seeing it in a book in high school. After that, I remember buying an art book, cutting it out and hanging it on my wall. Although I surely saw it countless times after that, my next memory is seeing the painting itself in Manhattan. My most recent memory is in seeing watch sculptures in Zürich-based on the melting timepiece in the painting. And that triggers my memory of hearing Alejandro Jodorowsky tell me about the time he met Dali as a boy and the story of finding a watch in the desert. You don't have to use "The Persistence of Time" when you do the exercise, but give it a try. List as many exposures to the artwork as you can and then free associate. You'll find that your memory expands the more you use it, and all the more so as you engage in memory games of this sort. 9. Looking At Art In Galleries Creates Conflicting Opinions Even if you go to art galleries alone, you'll often find yourself in disagreement. Many artists go out of the way to polarize audiences, and using tools like "indeterminacy," they often pull your heartstrings in opposing directions. Conflicts like these are perfect for memory because you'll remember how you felt looking at the painting at a deeper level. You'll have more interesting inner dialogs which also encodes longer term memories. If you want to help yourself remember more, keep a journal of the conflicting opinions you experience while looking at art just before you sleep after visiting a gallery. The reason to do this before you go to sleep is that memories consolidate during the night. Some studies have shown that the closer to sleep that you review information, the more likely your brain is to consolidate it into long term memory. 10. Art Gallery Gift Shops Have Memory-Inducing Books After you've looked at the art in the gallery, you wind up seeing a lot of it over again in the bookstore. Don't get annoyed at the upselling. It's good for your memory. Plus, there are often cool books you can buy and read to learn more about the art you've encountered. Interview books with the artists themselves appeal because you find out more about their personal stories, theories and opinions at the same time. It's a very cool way to make sometimes difficult information more concrete. One of the reasons interviews with artists makes the ideas easier to remember is because you get stories and examples, but also the questions of the interviewers. Interviewers bring particular perspectives. If you pay attention to them and absorb their character, their attitudes instantly make the ideas under discussion more memorable. 11. Art Galleries Make You Look At The Outside World Differently Often artists use everyday objects within the art gallery to change our perspective of the outside world. But when you deliberately remember more of what you've seen inside the gallery, you will find that you also see the outside world differently. For example, I just saw "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" by Jeff Koons for the first time in Oslo. You often read about the effect that it has in art criticism, but it's not until you've seen it with your own eyes that the kitschy art in stories takes on the intended effect. 12. Visiting Art Galleries Inspires New Ideas Art galleries are idea-generating machines. After all, every piece of art started with an idea – even if it was just the idea to throw paint at the wall. The more ideas you encounter and the more you play with those ideas in your mind, the more likely you are to come up with ideas of your own. Plus, you might walk away with the idea of actually creating some art. If you do follow through, that might be the best idea of all. No matter what happens to the art you create, you learn so much just by taking action. 13. Visiting Art Galleries Gives You More To Talk About Be honest: You wish you were a more interesting person. I know I do, and the secret is in always feeding yourself new and exciting things to discuss. "Hey, did you see the new exhibit at our local gallery?" is a powerful conversation starter, for example. Plus, you'll be supporting art in your community by inspiring others to see art and helping them experience a better memory in the process. 14. You Can Make A Memory Palace From Each Art Gallery You Visit Art galleries don't always make the best Memory Palaces, but you can still use them for the exercise. Plus, as I mentioned, each piece of art automatically provides its own station. As with historical sites you encounter while on vacation, I recommend that you make your art gallery Memory Palaces as simple as possible. Use the entrance, one or two simple rooms and the exit only. You don't want to overwhelm yourself with multiple floors, stairways and those weird nooks and crannies. Unless they're crucial to your success, skip the complicated parts of art galleries and focus on the parts that are dead simple to remember. 15. You Can Take A Guided Tour And Develop Your Concentration All of us struggle with not having enough FOCUS. So if the art gallery you visit offers a guided tour – take it. One of the best ways to extend your concentration is to focus on lectures filled with data. I like to repeat the information I'm hearing in my own voice to help extend my focus. It's perfectly fine if your attention wanders. Just gently bring it back and enjoy how with practice you can extend the amount of time you hold focus during the tours you take. For another kind of memory exercise, you can record the audio presentation and later use the How To Memorize A Textbook training to get the key points rapidly into long-term memory. You might even want to give tours or your own by taking friends to see the art gallery later. You can practice your memory in a substantial way by telling others what you've learned and sharing your conflicting opinions. Listening to their responses is another great way of practicing focus and developing your memory. You cannot lose by taking and giving art gallery tours. 16. You Might Even Meet Artists During a recent art gallery visit in Helsinki, I met an interesting landscape artist. She gave me a personal tour of her works in the gallery, explaining her thoughts about color and telling me where exactly she was when creating the art. Not only did this make the visit to the gallery more memorable to me, but I had the chance to ask her about her own memory. She said that she can paint from memory, but prefers to compose in the environment so that she can respond to the present moment. Fascinating ideas like these make living a life devoted to memory even more interesting. 17. You Can Experience Fear In Art Galleries And Still Be Safe At the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, I almost crapped my pants when I saw Zhou Tao's ""Chicken speak to duck, pig speak to dog." It's a video installation with a weird dude yelling and squealing while up in a tree. I had a hard time figuring out what it was all about until I read the title and description, but the combination of emotion, enigma and solving the riddle by reading the information consolidated the experience in memory. Even better, I'm practicing what I preach right now by writing about the experience as my last job before going to bed, all of which will help consolidate the memory of this experience. For Memory's Sake, Visit An Art Gallery Soon There are loads more reasons why going to art galleries can improve your memory. You see so much art in so many different mediums that it gives you an incredible amount of exposure to vibrant information that you'll want to remember. Are some of the pieces you'll see meaningless fluff? Perhaps. But it's all part of experiencing the world of art and expanding as a visual person. And the more visual you become, the easier it is to use memory techniques. Give yourself the gift of visual exposure and plan to visit an art gallery today. Seriously. In most cities, it doesn't have to cost a dime. Usually, art galleries open their doors once a week for free. Plus, your city might have local galleries featuring independent artists. Restaurants often feature works by local artists. You can even arrange viewings of private collections in the homes of collectors with a simple Google search. Trust me. It's worth it and will make your life more memorable. The post 17 Reasons Going To Art Galleries Will Improve Your Memory appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Memory techniques work by dressing up information in costumes. Sound weird or confusing? No worries: One of the best ways to understand this concept is by having a system for remembering cards. Consider the following when it comes to using memory techniques in your quest for total memory improvement: Dressing information in costumes is at least 90% of what's going on when you develop a system for remembering cards (or any information). Often, this practice is called "association" or "encoding." Tim Ferriss has used the term "converting" for memorizing a deck of cards, and many other terms abound. Don't get caught up in the terminology, however. That risks missing the math, because … The other 10% of memory success belongs to the Memory Palace and how you use it to store and practice recalling information. Since you need a means that will help you get good at remembering numbers, check out this video: Since it's in the storage and recollection practice that helps you guide the information on playing cards into long-term memory, you'll want to know how to memorize numbers with letters to make the process fast and easy. When you know how to "hack" your memory, you know that it's actually in that 10% of the process where most of the memory magic happens. It's in the process that you're harnessing the power of the primacy effect and the recency affect. But the memory magic happens only … If You've Got The Skills Needed For The 90% Under Control And if you want to get that 90% humming along for yourself in record time, then there is one crazy memory exercise you can do that will completely train your brain so that your memory operates at a shockingly high level. Sounds Stupid, But Memorizing Playing Cards Is Still The Best Memory Exercise Ever I know, I know. Unless you're a magician or memory athlete, memorizing a deck of cards does sound like a meaningless skill. Yet, I can tell you with absolute certainty that all of my success with memory comes from, is maintained and continually improved by this seemingly stupid stunt. And 90% of it involves little more than dressing up each card in a costume using the Major Method. And to convince you that you should have a system for remembering cards, I'm going to show, you 13 reasons why you should memorize playing cards as part of your memory practice. 1. You Experience Overall Memory Improvement Obviously, memorizing playing cards improves your overall memory. How could such intense memory practice not improve your memory abilities? After all, the best way to improve your memory is to use it. I normally say that you should always practice your memory by using it to remember information you can use to improve your life in a substantial way, but card memorization is the one exception. And since there is ALWAYS an exception to every rule, this one is worth your close attention. The rest of the points I'm about to share explain in detail why card memory is so powerful even if it amounts to memorizing information you cannot and will not use in any immediately practical situation (outside of card magic). 2. Having A System For Remembering Cards Improves Your Memory For Numbers Not only that, but you wind up with a neat way of remembering a lot of different kinds of numbers. So long as you don't let yourself get overwhelmed with excitement by your super memory powers (like I sometimes do), you'll have the ability to memorize any number after picking up this simple memory technique. 3. You'll Get Good At Memorizing Long Lists After all, what is a deck of cards other than a list of job positions in a unique order? Learn to remember the order of 52 cards and you'll instantly know how to memorize 52 of anything. And with a few simple expansions and some practice, you can repeat the process or hundreds if not thousands of lists. It's easy and fun. 4. You'll Develop Killer Abilities With Memorizing And Managing Abstractions People find memorizing concepts amongst the most difficult information types in the world. The symbols on playing cards are downright abstract themselves, so this skill will lighten the load on other abstractions and arbitrary associations you encounter. One trick is to simply stop convincing yourself that concepts are different than any other kind of information. Training with card memory will teach you how to stop making that mistake because it levels the playing field. Just like a rose is a rose is a rose, so does all information share certain core tendencies. When we focus on the differences between information and levels of difficulty, we trick ourselves out. When we zone in on the similarities and refuse to privilege information by placing it in hierarchies of difficulty, we win. 5. Remembering Cards Improves Your Imagination Just about everyone wishes they could be more imaginative. With the ability to memorize a deck of cards, your imagination can grow on a daily basis simply by carrying a deck of cards in your pocket. Or, if you don't want your memorize a deck of cards mnemonics linked to a physical deck of cards, you can use a memorize a deck of cards app. 6. Memorizing Cards Helps With Language Learning To be honest, I've only used the card memory application to language learning with the tones of Chinese Mandarin. But darn if this approach to memorizing Chinese tones with the Major Method isn't a humdinger! Anytime you can put a number or image on how words should be pronounced in any language, you'll almost certainly find assistance from this skill. Plus, I'm convinced that regular card practice has developed my speed and agility with coming up with mnemonics for memorizing vocabulary in any language. 7. Card Memorization Improves Your Critical Thinking Imagine being able to see more angles to different arguments and manipulate information in your mind. It might sound unrelated to card memorization, but I'm confident you'll find yourself more capable of manipulating ideas once you have this simple skill. Why? You experience boosts in critical thinking from using memory techniques in general because you're combining spatial memory with the manipulation of perspectives and scenarios. When you're using Bridging Figures, for example, you spend time considering what it's like to act and react from different perspectives. Plus, you're continually diving deep into your imagination which makes it easier to penetrate other topics imaginatively. You should find that you start thinking at a more engaged level by default. 8. Memorizing Cards Is A Cool Party Stunt This reason isn't as lame as it sounds. After all, when those other dudes are winning bets by balancing quarters on the edges of their beer mugs, you'll be demonstrating real miracles. Seriously. People will start looking for mirrors. They'll look at the back of the cards to check if they're marked or gimmicked. Recalling a deck of shuffled cards in perfect order is such a stunning feat to watch that it's hard to believe what's happening, even if it's the hundreth or thousandth time you've seen it. If you're not doing card memorization as a memory stunt, you can also learn to false shuffle cards and perform magic tricks that play like miracles. Provided that you can pull off false cuts and shuffles (it's not that hard), tricks that use a memorized decks are probably the most powerful you can ever learn. 9. Card memory is a legitimate sport. If you aren't a physical athlete, but have always felt that lust to compete in some area of human performance, card memory is a great option. The memorize a deck of cards world record list is stunning, inspiring and … frustrating. It's hard to not want to beat it. And if you ever give it a try, at either a local, national or international level, you'll meet a lot of cool and interesting people. And if you attend events like the World Memory Championships, you'll meet absolute masters of the art. Just listen to Tony Buzan talk about that on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. 10. Having A System For Remembering Cards Is A Transferable Skill I've already got this point covered, but it deserves its own category. You really can use this technique to remember a large assortment of numbers and experience powerful applications in language learning and more. Having a set of mnemonics for memorizing a deck of cards gives you improved abilities in all areas of memory. And even if you're already good at memorizing cards, you can always get better. Alex Mullen may currently hold the world record for memorized cards, but someone will eventually take this title. It could be you and the transferable skills you'll build along the way will be invaluable. 11. You'll Experience Untold Waves Of Accomplishment From Card Memorization When was the last time you felt proud of yourself? I mean, really proud? Be honest and don't worry if it's been awhile. With card memory skills, you can feel proud each and every day of your life. I know self-pride strikes some people as fickle, but it's not. The normal need for self-confidence is what extraordinary people use to keep their memory sharp and help fend off "digital dementia." I'm in no way claiming that mental exercise medically prevents brain disease, but it's positively logical to assume there are physical benefits at work. 12. You Become More Mentally Agile When You Practice Card Memory Not only do you experience physical brain benefits, but you strengthen your memory skills across the board. It's like getting better at skipping rope can make you better in the boxing ring. Think about your memory in terms of space. You have warm and cozy places of familiarity and outer regions of cold and darkness you rarely visit. By taking on a simple new skill, you bring heat to more parts of your memory. That means new civilizations of information can move in, giving you the chance to practice managing diverse data as part of your personal and professional growth. Just imagine being able to juggle facts in your mind, knowing each one in crisp and sharp detail thanks to the well-lit fires in your mind. In fact, you'll be like the expert juggler, each piece of information like a burning torch you can expertly spin through the air and effortlessly catch in a display of memory mastery. Plus, the ability to memorize a deck of cards teaches you to create a system for remembering cards based on classic memory methods. You can the practice you'll get creating and using the system you create to help you create other memory systems. It's in this ability to create memory systems out of an understanding of universal principles of memory and methods that you develop amazing powers of mental agility. 13. You Can Excel At Card Games Like Bridge, Poker And Blackjack Imagine being able to remember every single visible card in play during a card game. Do you think that would give you a competitive edge? It certainly would, even though most experts agree that it would only amount to a 2% advantage. ONLY. If you know your numbers, then you know that a 2% advantage in any game is huge. And if that game involves bets with money, be it pennies or dollars, your earnings could be huge. I myself don't gamble, but I can tell you that the pleasure I take in playing no-stakes games using memory to my advantage is a lot of fun. And it's always amazing exercise as one of the most powerful brain games you'll ever play. Of course, you don't have to use memory techniques for gambling games. The "memorize a deck of cards game" world is full of non-competitive "find 'em" variations that have no stakes involved whatsoever. You just lay out card pairs and practice remembering locations so you can match and remove them during game play. Should You Use An App For Memorizing Playing Cards? A lot of people ask me to recommend my favorite memorize a deck of cards app. I always tell them to simply carry a deck of cards with them. It's the best deck of cards app on the planet in my view because it gets the muscles of your hands, arms and eyes involved in card memorization at a much deeper level. No, I don't have any direct research to make claims that you get a memory advantage when using a real deck of cards. In fact, using a memorize a deck of cards app, provided it includes such functionality, has the advantage of tracking your results on autopilot. By the same token, you get equally great results by tracking your results by hand, including developing the discipline of monitoring results based on a tracking system of your own creation. Ultimately, if you take the art of creating a system for remembering cards seriously, you'll eventually create your own tracking methods anyway. If you come to rely on a memorize a deck of cards app, you won't be able to modify its tracking modifications to your needs. But you'll likely have become habituated to using it, which means you may be less likely to evolve. Or maybe you'll be more likely to evolve … it could go either way. One of the memorize a deck of cards app you can try that can give you tracking options if you're a premium member is the Memrise deck of cards course. What I like about the course is that you get some good ideas for images for each card. However, you aren't getting training in the universal principles of memory, nor are you creating your own system. The relationships are not arbitrary, which is good, but they're also not based on the Major Method, which means that you don't have functionality beyond the card memorization for numbers. But as far as a kind of deck of cards memory game, the Memrise deck of cards course is worth taking a look at. It gives you something different to try. However, taking this course risks creating some confusion if you have an existing set of memorize a deck of cards mnemonics in mind. It will also not give you a system for remembering cards in the true sense of a "system" you get when basing your card approach on the Major Method. By the same token, it can be a great memory challenge to have more than one system for remembering cards in mind. Juggling multiple memory methods and the systems you create from them is for advanced stages of the game, however. It's best to master one memory skill first and then move on to the next. Should You Develop A System For Remembering Cards? Absolutely. Again, I know it sounds like remembering cards is a useless skill on the surface. However, if you're serious about memory improvement, you'll be glad I twisted your arm into learning it. Once you've recalled even just 1/4 of a deck of cards, you'll be convinced of how much potential your memory holds. This simple feat of memory accomplishment will create energy and inspiration that keeps you moving forward. Once you've accurately recalled just a few cards you'll know just how easy it is to learn, remember and recall anything. It's a life changing experience and I can't wait to hear your story of success with developing your own system for remembering cards! The post System For Remembering Cards? 13 Reasons You Should Have One appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Travel is awesome, right? You bet it is. The only problem is that most people don't maximize the value of their vacations. Instead of going in prepared to remember as much as humanly possible, they accept what they can get from the default settings of the muscle sitting between their ears. Well, it doesn't have to be that way for you. Here's how to travel differently so that you remember more, enjoy more and get to take your vacations again and again with the vibrant recall of an intense dream. Infinitely Increase The Value Of Every Hotel Room With A Simple Memory Palace One of the first things to do is draw out a quick sketch of your hotel room. It's simple to chart a well-formed Memory Palace journey using such a small space. Even if the Memory Palace only has four or five stations, you're already ahead of the game because your mind is in memory mode. Here's an example of a quick hotel Memory Palace in room April and I shared on our honeymoon. We were taking the ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm: As seen in the video, you can also create a Memory Palace of the lobby, the hotel restaurant, gift shop and any other rooms you spot that look manageable. If you're comfortable using outdoor Memory Palaces, parking lots and the hotel entrance can be powerful resources. Of course, to draw Memory Palaces, you'll need a Memory Journal. How To Keep A Memory Journal Memory Journals are great for a number of purposes: Drawing Memory Palaces Describing mnemonic images Testing recall Troubleshooting Tracking results Recording thoughts and impressions When traveling, your Memory Journal will also let you make notes about what you did on each day of the trip as you make quick sketches of the places you visit. To get started, buy a simple notebook. It can be lined or unlined. I recommend that you decorate the cover and then get started listing out as many potential Memory Palaces as you can. If you need help, check out the episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast called How to Find Memory Palaces and make sure that you have the MMM Worksheets that come with my FREE Memory Improvement Kit. Gather Maps, Floor Plans And Think Strategically You're traveling to enjoy yourself, right? Who wants to sit around drawing squares all day? (Except me?) Luckily, when visiting many parks, museums and historical locations, you don't have to spend your time this way. Instead, you can grab up brochures with mockups and floor plans of museums, churches and art galleries for reference later. If your Memory Journal has a storage pack, you can bomb these inside for reference later. The important thing is that you think strategically when entering the location. Note the corners of rooms and the best areas for Memory Palace creation. You can already start constructing it in your mind. If you're experienced, you can also start using the Memory Palace right away. For example, using the Major Method, you can memorize the date of a painting along with its name. If you're learning a foreign language, this is a great way to pick up new vocabulary. Use The Memory Improvement Power Of Photography Taking photos of your loved ones and the main attractions is an important part of traveling. But you can get your camera into the Memory Game too by taking photos of building layouts. Hotel beds, for example, make excellent micro-stations in Memory Palaces. Using PowerPoint software, you can reconstruct the Memory Palace from your photos. For many people, this simple process makes their Memory Palaces much more vivid and useful. You can also use the software to impose information directly onto the Memory Palace stations for Recall Rehearsal. However, please note that although this kind of activity is acceptable at the beginning stages, it will not strengthen your memory in the same way that drawing Memory Palaces and then using them from your imagination alone achieves. Work towards creating and using tech-free Memory Palaces and your skills will soar. Think of it as the difference between doddering along with training wheels and the freedom of riding a bike assisted only by your instinctual knowledge of balance, velocity and the physics of pedaling. The only difference is that in matters of memory and the mind, you never need to work up a sweat to get the benefits. But if you do need some assistance, here's an example of a Memory Palace station and directionality I created using the Midland Hotel where I stayed during the New Media Europe convention in 2015. As you can see, it's easy to place the station number and a direction signature for later use as you scroll through the PowerPoint (I used Keynote in Mac): As a final camera tip, photograph street corners and use them as Memory Palaces for memorizing street names. It's a wonderful feeling when you can recall intersections, not just for finding your way back to places, but for giving recommendations to other travelers. Yes, it's an ego boost too when you can show off your knowledge of cities around the world. Just don't let it get to your head and never forget that with great power comes great responsibly. Teach what you've learned about memory techniques to others by telling them how you memorized street names. Make Videos For Review Later If you've been following my YouTube channel, you've probably seen some of the videos I've been putting out about creating Memory Palaces along the way. I even got April into the memory improvement game while visiting Prague: Part of what I'm doing by making these videos is teaching what can be done to create an impromptu Memory Palace. But I'm also practicing my own memory as I teach. You don't have to do anything so elaborate as posting your personal travel videos on YouTube, but the act of shooting the Memory Palaces you want to create will not only make your trip more memorable, but aid you in the creation process. It's also a fun way to create images of yourself that ideally won't lead to the corrosion of your memory. The Forbidden City: My Most Challenging Memory Palace A lot of historical sites offer fodder for Memory Palace creation, and many are straightforward to navigate and commit to memory. Other historical locations, however, are so sprawling and complex, it's difficult to know how to use them. I found this to be the case with the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. It's not just that the Forbidden City is labyrinthine. There are also many large spaces inside matched by contained areas. The temple structures within each area differ in shape, size and purpose. A few sections feature trees, ponds and fountains. Plus, there are gift shops throughout, many difficult to distinguish from each other. Rather than take the Forbidden City as one entire Memory Palace, it made more sense to prepare for the creation of three individual Memory Palaces: The front entrance The largest structure (name) The exit By breaking the Forbidden city down in this way, I can capitalize on two of memory's biggest assets: The primacy effect and the recency effect. Although not always true, we tend to remember the elements of a sequence we encounter first and last the best. For example, the one and only time I participated in a memory competition with Dave Farrow during the playing cards event, I remember to this day the first few cards and the last few I memorized. I can pick out a few in the middle, but most are hazy. (If I'd used Magnetic Memory Method Recall Rehearsal, I could have overcome the forgetting curve that wipes out the middle part of sequences, but I normally save that process for important info like foreign language vocabulary and names). Study The Layout In Advance To Maximize Memory Potential Knowing that I'll be limiting my choices to these areas in advance, I studied the layout on the map before entering the Forbidden City. With a plan for using only a few select spots, I released my mind of the burden of capturing it all and absorbed most of the site on autopilot. For the entrance, core building and exit, however, I photographed and sketched the layouts to help substantiate them in my memory. The most important step? Follow-up. What does follow-up involve? Rehearsing the Memory Palace right away using the tools of Recall Rehearsal, followed by using the Memory Palace to memorize some information. For example, as soon as possible after leaving many Memory Palaces on our honeymoon, I asked my fiancee to help me understand some new Chinese vocabulary and then used the new Memory Palaces to encode the sounds and meanings of the words. I sometimes did this fully impromptu without creating a Memory Palace first, which is also an option: This Memory Palace Technique Is Good For the Entire Family Whether you're going to the Acropolis or the Empire State Building, there's a way to efficiently turn these locations into Memory Palaces without disrupting the flow of your vacation. If you have children and are interested in memory techniques for kids, you can set the foundation for a life of learning with greater ease by helping them maximize their impressionable minds with the global real estate travel puts in their hands. And if you use the Memory Palaces to learn elements of the local language while visiting the city, all the better. Bilingualism is good for your brain, after all. Heck, even if you just learn how to say good morning, good afternoon and good evening to the hotel staff, you'll make your vacation much richer. Seriously. Memorizing a few niceties for use in restaurants will endear many staff members to you and this leads to better advice and more patient explanations when you have questions. You'll also have more fun on your trip. Or you can follow the steps I took to memorize 3 Chinese poems in 2.3 weeks for other interesting things to memorize. The trick is not to get nervous about making mistakes and simply open your mouth and speak from your beautiful powers of enhanced recall while your newest Memory Palaces are still fresh. I hope you take these tips to heart and start enjoying your future vacations at a deeper level by making them both more memorable and more suitable for servicing your Memory Palace needs for years to come. The post How To Remember More Of Your Vacations With A Memory Palace appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Learn how to create an impromptu Memory Palace, use it in different environments, and effectively memorize information. Discover the principles of the Magnetic Memory Method and the benefits of targeted memory training. Get tips on creating mnemonic images for language learning and using familiar locations. Join the ongoing email conversation with Barbara Oakley and start using impromptu memory palaces for successful memorization.

Are you interested in learning how to learn at a higher level? I'm talking about mastering math, sailing through high-pressure exams and making the most of your study time. Every time you sit down to learn. If knowing how to do that sparks your interest, in this special interview, bestselling author and world famous video professor Barbara Oakley shares her best study and memory tips. Plus, as the author of some interesting works on human nature, you'll discover some of Barbara's most powerful insights about altruism and memory that you won't soon forget. Here is the transcript of the interview as a PDF for printing and future reference and you can read the text in full below. Plus, please be sure register for the next free session of Barbara's popular course, Learning How To Learn and make sure to follow her on Amazon for the latest news about her incredible books. How A Former Math Flunky Changed Her Brain And Created A Mind For Numbers Anthony: Barbara, thank you so much for being on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. One of the things that I wanted to begin with was your first memory of being interested in learning as a topic, as a subject, even at a meta level where you're aware of this as being a concern, an issue, and something that you can optimize. Barbara: Oh, it's funny because I think there are two kinds of people who are teachers. There are people who are teachers because they really love teaching. There are people who are teachers who really hate teaching. They're very shy about getting in front of a bunch of people, and they only do it because they feel it's so important to communicate what they're trying to communicate. I fall more or less into the latter category. I never envisioned myself becoming a teacher or learning about learning or anything of that nature at all. It wasn't until I was probably, well, about five years ago, four years ago, something like that, one of my students asked me. He found out that I had been a formal math flunky. I had flunked my way through elementary, middle and high school math and science. Which is really kind of ironic since I'm now a professor of engineering. He asked me, "How did you do it? How did you change your brain?" I wrote him a little a page of information about how I had been a linguist in the Army. I've always loved languages and that's all I thought I could ever do. How did I gradually shift? Well, not so gradually but with a lot of work, to being able to assimilate and master math and science. I wrote him this email, and then I thought well, you know, how did I really do that? That's a very good question. I started looking more deeply into it. A Mind for Numbers grew out of that. I thought, oh you know that's a very straightforward thing, I'll just kind of put together some of the good insightful research and talk a little bit about that. Of course, it was far more intensive than I ever might have dreamed. The Biggest And Best Permission You Can Give Yourself As A Learner I think it was just such an interesting experience to realize that I'd never really thought about learning even though I remember when I was growing up. I was like man, you know, isn't there an easier way to learn these things because I do these stupid things like reread a page over and over and over again. Then finally I would flip the page and there the answer would be. If I had just turned the page earlier, I would have kind of figured it out. Anyway, I backed into it I think. But, I do notice that when I'm in front of my classes. I think because I'm very empathetic, I'm always looking at them and going you know they didn't get that. I know they didn't get that even though I explained it very clearly. A lot of learning is just growing out of wondering about how other people learn. Anthony: That's very interesting. I think so many people they wind up getting into teaching as an art itself by having that experience of being asked how did you learn that and coming from a space where they weren't masters of something first, or that not even close to mastery, but actually flunking in that area. I wonder what lessons you might give to someone in sort of number one thing you have to realize if you're failing right now in something like math, that someone struggling with could see that turn around perhaps in the future. Barbara: Probably the biggest thing that if I had known back in the day when I was trying to retool my brain and actually learn math and science, and even before when I was just plain flunking it, the biggest thing that I could have done was to realize that it is quite all right to not understand something the first time you see it. I always thought I must be an idiot because these other people are all understanding what's going on and clearly I'm not. I'm just really slow. It is quite all right to not understand something the first time you see it.Click To Tweet If anything, the only reason I persevered was I would just kind of say well I don't care even if I'm really slow and it takes me more time than everybody else, I'll just try to hide that and I'll still learn it anyway. Of course, to other people it just looked like I was really doing well. But behind it was a lot of work because I'm not one of those naturally gifted, really bright learners. But in the same sense I think because of the that, when I learn something I really learn it at a very deep level. I think it's that way for many people. They think they are not very bright, but actually the way they have to learn it because their brains may not be like swift moving, that they can actually learn it much more deeply. The Magic Of Concentrated Effort For Creating Impetus Anthony: I read somewhere someone made a mathematical proposition that something like 98 percent of people just give up after the first resistance that they come across. I wonder how did you develop in yourself this stamina or what would you call it this ability to give yourself that permission to have it okay that you didn't get it the first time. Barbara: I think what worked for me is to be successful in something that did require some learning, some concentrated effort in other words. Whether that something is learning how to play a musical instrument, or learning to sing, or learning to play soccer, or learning any number of different kinds of things, if you learn one thing so you are successful at it, then that gives you the impetus to think you know maybe if I just stick with this next thing I can be more successful. I think that's probably the thing. For me, I joined the Army and learned Russian. I just learned step by step how do you practice and really learn a language well. In doing that it sort of taught me meta skills about learning and that has served me in good stead in math and science. The Special Meta Skill That Links Math And Language Anthony: As a linguist, do you see a relationship between math and language? Barbara: Oh, very much so. There's a sort of an expert on experts. His name is Anders Ericsson, who works out of Florida and just wrote a great book called Peak on becoming an expert in virtually any topic. Often what you're doing when you're learning a language is you're not just memorizing a bunch of vocabulary words although that actually is an important part of learning a language. You are learning to think in a different way and to be able to process that information in a very different way so you cannot just spew out a bunch of vocabulary words, but you can bring out the grammatical structure and do it quickly. That is a big part of what's going on in math and science. You're bringing out a new numerical structure, and you have to be able to do it fluently. If you haven't practiced enough, you have nothing, no patterns to pull into your working memory to make things easier. You're just doing everything de novo in your working memory and it's too hard to do. I think there are great similarities and I think part of the reason may be, in this country, many engineers are from other countries besides the U.S. Part of that is that there is a big need for engineers and there's not enough engineers in this country. I think part of it too is that those coming from outside the U.S. they know how do we learn because they've often had to learn English. That has, I think, been a meta skill that has transferred to their ability to also do well in math and science and engineering sorts of topics. Anthony: That's a fascinating point. I think one thing that I observed when I was studying German is that the Russian learners, particularly the Russian learners, seemed to get German articles a lot easier. That seemed to have something to do with the fact, this is just my conjecture, but it seemed to have something to do with the fact that they didn't have to deal with articles. When they came across articles, they got them the first time because it was just the sort of new sort of thing. For an English speaker, where we do have articles just not of the gendered kind, the brain wants to get lazy and sort of ignore that. We're not really thinking of it in quite the same way as people who don't have articles. If that if that makes sense as a kind of observation of how learning another language can then give you a skill that can transfer over to it to something else like math. How To Learn A Language – Even If You Have Limited Working Memory (Hint: Almost All Of Us Do) Barbara: I think that's a very interesting point. Well, let's say you learn –I'm studying Spanish now. I am a slow learner, but I'm going to be using your techniques to help speed things up. When you're learning those kinds of things, you're working away at it and cognitively I have a very limited working memory. What that means is that things fall out of my working memory very easily. But because some things fall out, other things come in and that is correlated with perhaps why I might be considered more creative. When people say, "Oh man, I have to work so hard to keep these things in mind. What's going on?" They often think, "Oh I must be so kind of dumb because I don't have a steel trap mind like some people." They are often more creative people and so it's actually a talent that they have. I try to remind myself of that when I'm when I don't have a steel trap mind in memorizing vocabulary and so forth. Barbara's Take On The Ancient Art Of Memory Anthony: What you say is your number one technique that you go to when you really need to remember something? Barbara: Trying to equate something with something extremely off color. If something happens to come to mind that is either just really wacky or else something that's not repeatable in the public forum, it will stick. I mean whether I like it or not it'll probably stick very well. Indeed, the old memory experts from ancient Greece often said the same thing that if you use unrepeatable sorts of things to help you remember things that can be helpful. But just wacky images sometimes. My challenge, and if I can turn the question around to you, my challenge is I'm really slow. Let's say I'm trying to remember a Spanish phrase. How can I put that in my mind other than repeat it a whole bunch of times and hear it? It is hard for me to come up with some kind of wacky sort of mnemonic that would help me more easily place it in my memory. Anthony: Well there's a lot of ways to skin that cat. Phrases are an interesting thing because I always try to work from a word and then add a phrase to a word. If you had a key there like token, for example, and you had a Memory Palace a location where that were token was, and then you already knew conjunctions for nosotros, then you could encode an entire phrase around that mnemonic for token. You could think of a number of ones and use that Memory Palace where you had that word to make a number of phrases with the word token for example or we and token. There's that option. I like to bulk things up so it's never just about like one phrase but multiple phrases for a single word. If that makes sense. The Energizing Way To Learn Pronunciation Using Memory Techniques That's kind of related to the theory of substitution in language learning. Right now, I'm learning Chinese and my biggest problem with Chinese is not memorizing vocabulary but actually reciting the tones. I learned, let's see if i can get this right, and people will listen to this and correct me I'm sure if i didn't. Winter, and now i feel on the spot so I am going to try and get this, but I member it is, oh how did this go. There's a tree with a number nine and a yoyo that is smashing a teacup with yen that's burning inside of it. That's not winter that's fall. Sorry, winter is a different, that's autumn right but I'm getting that mixed up because right beside that is another tree that represents winter. Then I have spring and summer. They all end with 天 tiān. Now, I have to remember that almost all of these are words that have the first tone. One of them has the fourth tone and the first tone. Now, I have a frog there because I'm using the major method to remember the tones. I have the number nine because number nine is 九 jiǔ or something pronounced like that. It's like a lot of confusing stuff. This is my challenge as a teacher which is one reason why it's very interesting to speak with you because I'm always trying to think of how can I teach this stuff better. Because mnemonics are insane. You are saying well there's a frog and then there's a teacup with yen burning inside of it to remind me of 天 tiān. I don't know the best way to teach these crazy images to people in a way that really makes sense, when it makes sense to me. I have a basis now to recall that again and again without any flashcards. I just have to remember that it's something like 天 tiān. Then, when it comes to substitution, I would say to my speaking partner 我喜欢秋天 which means, "I like autumn." Then I want to be able to say, tomorrow I will also like autumn, or next week it will be winter and I will like winter. Start changing the phrase so that it is today I like autumn. Tomorrow I will like autumn. Next week I will still like autumn, or I will like winter, or it will be autumn after winter. This is sort of like the substitution thing. If you just have that one word, then you can play with the phrases around it. I have a park that has the four seasons. It's just a matter of practicing those pronunciations. I go in my mind. I see the tree. I see the images. I know some basics of phrases, and I just start drilling different phrases around that. How To Deal With Learning In Little Snippets Barbara: That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to incorporate that into my Spanish practice. It also relates in a way to the concept of interleaving. This is something that is frequently spoken of in the context of math and science learning. I teach statistics and probability. I have my textbook and it goes through chapters one by one of the various aspects and it kind of builds up. Often what is in chapter four is rather unrelated to chapter six and unrelated to chapter eight. You learn everything in these little snippets. You learn chapter four and you can do the techniques of chapter four. Then chapter eight and you learn those techniques and so forth. But the only time you ever see them all at one time is during the final examination. People sometimes say 'oh I just don't know how to do this stuff' because they haven't learned how to pick out one thing as a one technique as opposed to a different technique because they're taught in different chapters. What you're doing is you are using a commonality, a word or a concept, but then you're saying oh but you can use it this way. Then there's another way to use it. You are kind of interleaving at the same time that you're bringing everything together with a single word. I think that's really cool. It's a great approach to learning. Anthony: I certainly have a lot of fun with it and one of the questions that I'd prepared to ask you relates to this. You talk about index cards, how to optimize the index cards process and how that revisiting information absolutely is critical. I'm the kind of student, and I always have been, with language study in particular, I'm not the kind of person who's going to ever use them. I'm not going to use spaced repetition software. I think that is what has appealed to people about my books. They are often attractive to people who are also not ever going to use that. But knowing that they are effective and knowing that spaced repetition that is assisted by software is also effective for creating a long-term memory, I wonder what other alternatives you might suggest to people who also aren't going to go that route but do need to be revisiting information. The Power of Learning In Spare Moments Because the example that I just gave you, the reason why that I can remember it today, noting that my pronunciation isn't perfect yet, is because I've repeated it in my mind several times. I just haven't done it with index cards in front of me. Barbara: There's several different ways that you can approach it. Maybe a good way is to just use those spare moments to recall what you can of whatever you're trying to work on. That effort to recall will actually do a good job. Whatever you can recall, that's going to imprint that ever more deeply on your mind. We do want to let our minds wander some. We don't want to use every spare second. "Oh, I'm going to the bathroom now. I'll conjugate my verbs." There are lots of spare moments. When I go for a walk, sometimes I'll practice to become more fluid at certain phrases. I'll be walking along, and of course my husband is like what are you doing. I'll just be doing something perhaps in my mind or saying it out loud. The Great Thing About Sticky Notes And The Annoying Thing About Flashcards Using those kinds of moments. If it's really important, it can't hurt to take a sticky note and stick it on your mirror with whatever that phrase or whatever is going on. I often will tell my students in my face-to-face classes, see this point right here, see this equation. This is such an important equation that you should put it on a sticky note on your mirror and memorize it. It can't hurt to take a sticky note and stick it on your mirror with whatever that phrase or whatever is going on. Click To Tweet Whenever you go in front of that mirror, see if you can remember it and then check and make sure you got it right. That's a good technique. What I find annoying about flashcards is you get it in your mind faster than you can flip the flashcards. It's like is this sticking? It's like you know where you are going already and you just want to go right through them. Of course, it would be quicker to have something like Anki or something like that. A lot of the time I don't want to take the time to type it all in manually. I will do some by handwriting. I often like to have sheets of paper where I just write on one side. I'll write the words that I'm trying to remember in English and on the other side in Spanish or Russian or what have you. When I kind of get familiar with the page, I'll put the page aside. I have a big collection of pages. That makes it really quick to go through. Often the kinds of things that you're trying to remember are related to one another and you want to see the patterns for how they change. It's hard to do that with flashcards. If you write them on pages, you can see the relationships between different tenses say or that kind of thing. It doesn't seem to me to matter so much that I'm able to mix them up with flashcards, that's the one advantage of flashcards, but they're so much faster to quickly review something. Even the act of writing it out, of course, is helpful. The Amazing Genesis Of Learning How To Learn Anthony: Thank you for those great thoughts on memory that's very useful. I wanted to talk as well about a great course that you have on Coursera called Learning How to Learn. This is something people can find on Coursera and it's a free course. I just wonder, what's the evolution of that course? How did it come into being? What does it mean to learn how to learn? Barbara: I sort of backed into doing the course. It's kind of funny, my husband and I were down in the basement filming the course. We were just kind of going, gosh, is anybody ever even going to watch this? Why are we doing this? It was like we have to do this. We just have to do this because it has a lot of helpful information and we feel it's really important. Now it's the most popular course in the world. It's about 1.6 million enrolled students so far. People just really love the course. They find a lot of value. It's people from all walks of life. Five percent of the learners have their Ph.D.'s. I got an email from a fifth grader about 12 years old who says oh I took a course with my mother. You know I never realized that professors could be so witty. I was like well if you knew how long I worked to try to be witty. Then our older daughter was at that time in med school. She was sitting in her class in med school and being taught by a preeminent specialist in southeast Michigan. He suddenly, there's seventy medical school students, and he suddenly stops the class, points right at her and says you. You're the girl in the MOOC, the massive open online course. Here's this preeminent specialist taking this course of on learning so that he can be a better specialist at what he's doing. But I think what can happen just willy-nilly in any discipline is that it grows this the sort of structure that is sort of haphazard. It's a cruise through history. What You Really Need To Learn When Learning How To Learn For example, people now will say, oh man anybody who did a course on learning that's what a no brainer it's going to be the most popular course in the world. But I would beg to differ. I would venture to guess that if let's say that you happen to go to a school of education and you said you know I want you to do a course on learning. They would have immediately said great. You know teachers really need a course like that. Then you no, no, no, that's not what I want. I want a course on learning for people in general. What you would have gotten was an online course that would have had two or three weeks on the history of education. Two or three more weeks on educational theories and then how babies learn and then maybe a little bit on the end about how people might learn a little effectively with maybe a lecture or two on neuroscience. But that's it because it's really tough and we can't go there. If you can see that kind of structure, which is a very natural structure, it would have grown because there are all sorts of different groups in education. They all have their approaches and their desires. I teach the history of education. You have to cover my material in your MOOC and so forth. My co-instructor in the course Learning How to Learn is Terry Sejnowski. He's the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute. He's one of only ten living human beings who is simultaneously a member of all three national academies. The approach that we took was just to upend everything. To say now wait a minute. Let's start from what do we really need to know about how our brain works, I mean truly from a neuroscientific perspective in order to leverage that to learn more effectively. We don't have to start with here's a neuron. Here's how a neuron works. We can take the fundamental key ideas and bring those forth and explain them using metaphor so that people can easily grasp some key approaches about how their brain works. The we can use that to build on all sorts of different aspects of what cognitive psychology and neuroscience are revealing about how you learn effectively not just in the humanities and social sciences. As important as those are, but also in the sciences which I think a lot of those who teach about how to learn don't have a solid high caliber professional expertise in a mathematical or engineering or technical type of discipline. It is sort of like what they're teaching actually doesn't really apply to how you learn effectively and learn science, technology, engineering and math. The way we're teaching is in a way that is meant to be encompassing of all disciplines. Of not just more of the soft sciences side of things, but everything. I think when you look at meta learning in that fashion you can really enhance people's understanding of their brains and their limitations and how those limitations can also simultaneously be strengths. Anthony: Is there a sense that by learning something, at least on the surface seems more difficult, like engineering and science than a liberal arts topic, is there a sense that greater rigor makes it easier to learn in the humanities if you have learning experience and meta learning understanding from something like engineering to transfer over? The reason why I ask that is because I have a liberal arts background and I can juggle continental philosophy quite well. The Truth About Learning As A Transferable Skill But when I look at something like engineering, and I'm now actively learning math with the help of your book, because I've been one of those people who sucked it algebra. But I still look at all that stuff, and I don't feel like I have those tools. I talk to a lot of engineering and mathematical people and they're like oh that's easy. They just sort of get it but that stuff that I had to be trained to get. You know what I'm sort of saying? Is there a transferable skill from the technical sciences to liberal arts that isn't transferable the other way? Barbara: I believe so, but I also believe that there is important and, in fact, vital value to the social sciences and humanities they can be lost if you use solely focus on a technically mathematical. There are many things that can be grasped more easily if you do have an engineering or science kind of background, a mathematical background. But at the same time, you have to be really careful because you don't want to say well yeah, I can do anything because I've got this great science background. No, you can't! You also want to be keeping your feet in both worlds I believe. I learned math and science. I started learning it when I was 26. Because I started learning it at an older age, I feel as if I speak it with a bit of an accent. I'm not as fluent as somebody who was a whiz when they were kids and they always studied it and so they became a professor of engineering. They are just naturally good at the numbers and so forth. I can be very good at them, but it's not like it flows quite so easily. By the same token, I think that I often think more creatively about things because I am much more aware of the structure because I had to learn it as an adult. I guess the best thing I could say is yes I do think math and science gives you a transferable skill that can make some things in the humanities and social sciences easier to learn. But, you can get those transferable skills in math and science at any age. Why You Need To Learn An Entirely New Way Of Thinking It's just that it is kind of like learning a language in that you're not just memorizing vocabulary. You're learning a new way of thinking and it's that new way of thinking that is what provides for some of the transferable skills. Anthony: I think of it in particular because I was trying to go back to school and I wanted to go into an M.A. program, and I have a Ph.D., M.A. in science here in Berlin and they said oh no you'll have to go back and get a B.A. in science. But, looking into it you know it is I just don't have that grounding even though I have some understanding of the concepts and so forth. But they simply won't let me in without having done that groundwork first which makes sense given what you're saying. Barbara: I can add a sort of a side point. There are some programs where you can take tests and test into master's programs without having to have the bachelor's degrees and some people are using MOOCs, massive open online courses to train themselves, and then they're taking these tests and going directly. They are getting that undergraduate degree equivalence without having to pay enormous sums of money, and, also giving up big parts of their life. Then just leaping right into the master's programs. The Darkside Of Altruism And Its Connection To Your Memory Anthony: I want to shift gears a little bit, because one of the things that I get to do in my job as in interviewer people about learning and memory is also talk about some of their other interests that connect maybe in a different way to memory and a shared interest that we have is altruism. As I shared with you, I did my Ph.D. in humanities, and I wrote about friendship and had something related to something you've talked about in a book called Cold Blooded Kindness. You edited a collection that is called Pathological Altruism. I have since had some similar ideas about how that altruism has a dark edge to it. I wanted to ask you a few questions about that especially in the age of online education and so forth where there seem to be so many people doing things altruistically. First of all, what is altruism and then we'll go from there. Barbara: Well, that's an open-ended question. I wrote a book many years ago with the intentionally ironic title of Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. It was about why do nasty people do what they do. It got great critical acclaim. I was really surprised. It did very well. Steven Pinker wrote a really nice blurb for it. What came out of that was I begin to realize certain people will come up to me and they'd say well Hitler, he may have been evil, but all Germans weren't evil. How come they all climbed on board with him. I mean that was a very good question. I thought a lot about that and began to realize that the best way to get people on board with things is to claim you're doing something to help others. That's really how Hitler came to power was he'd say it's when I appeal to their best traits, that's when I've got them. Whatever political persuasion you might have, you're immediately thinking no it's that other one. That's the one. They're doing that. They're appealing to people. But each side is actually saying the same thing. I think it's important as critical thinkers to also step back and look at both sides, be able to do that and not look at the other side through the lens of the things that people on your side say about them. Because she was like I know all about them. I heard it. I read these articles. But they are articles framed by people on your side. Critical thinking means you actually go in and look at it from other people's perspectives, from the perspective of the people of that side. The Counterintuitive Reasons Why Altruism Can Be So Dangerous You could look at all the definitions of altruism, but when I really begin studying altruism, what I finally discovered is altruism is whatever you want it to be. It varies by culture. It varies by what your intentions are. It varies. If you're a rather narcissistic individual, you will believe that whatever you're doing is altruistic. It's by definition. If it's good for you, it's good for everybody even if it kills millions. Altruism is the most dangerous – it's the best trait and also the worst trait of humanity because it can be so easily used to seduce us into doing really bad things. Look at all the terrorism going on now. It comes out of people who are, at least superficially and I think in large part, actually very much willing to give their lives, because they think that they're helping some in group of theirs. Altruism is a very dangerous thing and it's a touchy thing to talk about because among many deeply well intentioned people it's practically a religion. You never question altruism. It's like it's like questioning the most fundamental tenet of your sacred approach to life. People really get upset about that kind of thing. I'm always just a bit wary in talking about pathological altruism because the most pathologically altruistic of people are the ones who get really touchy about you ever questioning their altruism. Anthony: I think people are touchy. I mean I wrote about friendship as being potentially pathological. I just called it hypothetical consent which was I actually got the term from a philosopher, David Benatar. It's not in my dissertation. If people ever look that up and they're searching for hypothetical consent it is not there, but it's what I came to call after my dissertation was written. It's the idea that in friendships we assume hypothetically that we can do certain things because that person is our friend. Because they are our friend we can do certain things. There's like a tautology there. That's one of the things that got me very fascinated about what you were talking about with pathological altruism. A little bit different, but it is sort of this kind of thing that as you said a person will tend to think that whatever they're doing is altruistic because they see themselves as altruistic. They assume hypothetically the consent to act in particular ways. I wanted to ask you if you see a connection there to memory. Because I see a connection to memory that is a bit vague, but it seems to me that so many people become memorable to us because of the altruistic things that they do. That seems to be a way that we encode ourselves on other people's minds. I just wonder if you have any thoughts about that in response how that your idea of pathological altruism touches memory, just memory as such as a cultural phenomenon, a biological phenomenon, a thing that happens to us and that we can do to ourselves and have done to us by others. The Fascinating Truth About Bill Clinton's Memory And Altruism Barbara: You bring up so many interesting ideas with that. People will often say Bill Clinton is just an extraordinary person. He's such a people person. You immediately get this feel that he cares about you as an individual when you meet him. I've known a number of people who have met or have known him. One of the things he does that's quite remarkable is that he remembers you. For example, I met a friend at the Clinton library who five years before had met Bill Clinton, and her husband had been sick that day, he wasn't able to come, but she'd met him. Just recently, right before I met her, she had met him again. He remembered her by name, remembered her husband had been sick, asked if he was doing better. I mean there's this utter charm when you can remember someone's name that it breaks through everything. People are charmed, I think, by Bill Clinton. Part of it is, he'll walk into a room and he hasn't seen people for a year, and he'll go around and greet each person by name and shake their hand and so forth. There is this sort of wow. If you look at great leaders through history, part of a common thread is that they had extraordinary memories. They could remember. People like Hitler had an amazing memory. He could remember all the armaments, all the names from different divisions and so forth. Franklin Delano Roosevelt same thing. Jimmy Carter same thing. Ronald Reagan same thing. Why People Like It When You Remember Their Name Having a powerful memory is a great tool to help you get to leadership positions. In part, because people, I think, they really like it when you can remember their names. Of course, it has many other added values sorts of things as well. Having a powerful memory is a great tool to help you get to leadership positions.Click To Tweet I do think even though the simple act of remembering a person's name is a like a kindness. I think for Bill Clinton, it's easy. There's some research on memory and some people just plain have incredible memories. I think Bill Clinton is one of them. I don't think he has to use any kinds of things more ordinary people like me often use. It's kind of an amazing thing how memory can be such a powerful tool, but part of it is people like you because of that. But also, I do think that's the kindness of remembering their names. But like when I'm teaching a class, I take great care to memorize all my students' names. Very quickly the class becomes like a family. I think it's because I took the care to memorize the names. That's an act of kindness, but I think other acts of kindness can also help people stick in your memory in a good way. Is that pathologically altruistic? I guess it could be. It sort of depends on what your intentions are. Altruism And Education In The 21st Century Anthony: Another angle that I wanted to go through quickly with the pathological altruism is online education especially outside of the traditional university relies so much on giving away something for free, building an audience, and then essentially pitching somebody on a product. That seems to be a working model that works very well. But I wonder are our educators in the twenty first century online being in any way pathological in their altruism as you have gone through it in your studies and other authors that you've read on it. Is there a problem in online education that you see emerging as an online educator yourself? Is it more or less a safe sort of thing to do? Do people need to be worried about navigating online education in the future because of this way that altruism can have a pathological aspect to it? Barbara: The reality is that online education – well let's put it this way. In the 1950s people started playing basketball better. I mean they just did. They start playing basketball. Why did people suddenly start playing basketball better? It's because there was television. Suddenly people could see for themselves what the moves were that some of the top basketball teams were making. If you're some kid at home, you can try it out. If you are a basketball coach at a high school, you can encourage your students to try it out. Television actually provided this new way of learning about a sport that really improved the sport altogether. I think that online learning is going to do the same thing. What it does is it showcases a lot of different people. Some of whom do it for free. Some of whom do it because they get they get might get some remuneration. Some because their arms are twisted by their universities to make this course because otherwise you won't get tenure or something like that. There's all sorts of reasons people do it. Basically, what that is doing is getting out into people's eyes all sorts of different ways about how you can teach effectively. I mean nobody's going to watch a television show, or not a lot of people are going to watch a television show about in-depth physics, or how to do electronic circuits, or something like. There's just not a big enough market to make big television shows. What Makes A MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) Succeed They are kind of like not the same as a classroom. But a MOOC, a massive open online course, it shows a teacher. It gives active learning sorts of exercises similar to that in the classroom. You can watch some of the world's greatest teachers, not all of them. It's sort of a little bit of a random funnel. Just because you might be at Princeton or Harvard or Yale teaching doesn't mean you're the best teacher for that topic. But even so you get all these great courses. The really good ones sort of stand out. They get great reviews. What that means is for us as teachers, we can go and look at these courses. We can improve our own teaching as a result. I think online teaching is whether or not sometimes it might be just somebody doing it because they just feel an urge to do it. I mean that's why I did the course in the first place, Learning How to Learn, I just thought I just have to do this. I didn't think there ever be any royalties or anything. I thought it was all just all for free. Later on, I found out there are there are small royalties that do accrue for certificates. At the same time though, anybody who wants to you can take the complete course for free. Only if you'd like to get a certificate for the course, is it paid. You can take everything for free. It's the best of all possible worlds. I can give this material completely for free to anybody who wants it. Some people because it is kind of on the collect the certificates. I know because I collect some of the certificates. It's like yes, I learned that subject. If I'm reading something really dry at night, I will fall asleep. if I'm watching a MOOC, it somehow it's like a got a teacher. They are making it more exciting. It's really more cool. I really like it. Taking MOOCs is a lot of fun. How To Find The Perfect Learning Environment Anthony: Speaking of your own way of taking courses, and it's exciting to hear that you also take MOOCs which is interesting, one of the things I was curious about is where do you learn best? Both when you're taking an online course and when you are learning in a more paper, book-bound way or for your Spanish learning or when you learned Russian, what were some of the environments that you learned best in? What characterizes them that people might be able to reproduce so they also can learn better? Barbara: This actually relates to my next book, which is going to be coming out in spring. It's going to be one of the lead titles on Penguin Random House. It's called Mindshift. I'm really excited about it. They even asked me to do the audiobook. I'm going to read the audiobook. I told him I said you need to get somebody really good. They said we are going to. They didn't tell me it was me. One thing that people often don't understand is when you're when you're memorizing, it's often very good to have a very quiet environment. I mean like if you're really doing something totally need focus for, then a very quiet environment can be helpful. Although, if you want to have a little music, it kind of depends on you. Whatever you want. If you like having music, you can find research that says music is beneficial. If you don't like music you can find research that says it's not. If you're learning how to learn something that involves concepts, say you're trying to learn how the structure of how the heart works, how it pumps and all the different motions and movements that are going on with the heart, that's not something you can just memorize. You actually have to think about how the parts all connect. Why Memory Techniques Don't Apply Equally To All Topics It's interesting. Sometimes people in med school, they are like ace memorizers. They can wait until a few days before the exam, a day before the exam, memorize all these anatomical terms, and boom they do great. These same students do terribly when it comes time for the cardiology exam. It's because the same techniques just don't apply. You can't just sit there and memorize parts of the heart and answer questions about how the heart actually functions. To do that kind of learning, it can often be helpful to go to an environment like a coffee shop or something where there's like a little bit of disruption here and there. Because that little bit of sound disruption actually puts you into a different mode of thinking momentarily. It forces you just step out and step back, use more default mode momentarily. That puts you into broader connections neurologically speaking. That can help you see the bigger picture of what you're working on. You're going back and forth between a past positive focus mode work and then then stepping back into more diffuse networks and alternating between that can help you when you're learning kind of difficult and more abstract kinds of learning. Anthony: That's fascinating to think that one could have permission to study in a slightly distracting environment and still be able to learn effectively. That's a good tip. Now here's a test of my memory. I wanted to ask you what's coming up next for you and I believe you said the upcoming title of your new book is Mindshift. Barbara: Yes. The Global Scope Of Learning How To Learn And Experiencing Your Own Powerful Mindshift Anthony: My working memory is intact and that's very exciting. Is there a release date that people can look forward to? Barbara: Actually, you can go to Amazon and you can preorder it, which my publisher always likes. The actual publication date is April 18, 2017. It's doing really well. It is going to be translated into simplified Chinese. It's already going into translation. Because of Learning How to Learn, I was able to travel all around the world, talk to learners and kind of get insights from many different perspectives about the best aspects of learning in different parts of the world and kind of bring them together. Even at the same time that I'm talking about the science of learning and things like going to a coffee shop for certain types of learning, it was just marvelous fun to work on the book. In some sense it's sort of a sequel to A Mind for Numbers and Learning How to Learn. I'm thinking that that if it goes much bigger in scope. It's worldwide in scope. I think it's not very often you find a sort of a combination of travel log with science book with just insights about the human psyche. I am hoping that people might find it of interest in their own lives. Anthony: I'm glad it's already available for preorder. I will definitely go and check that out. Just a tip for people, you can go on an Amazon authors page and be notified when new books from them come out. I just learned this myself the other day. That's something people should definitely do is go and find Barbara Oakley on Amazon and make sure you click that so you know when new books are coming out and check out Mindshift. Add it to your collection so it just gets zipped into your Kindle device when it's available. I'm going to go over after this interview to do that myself. Barbara: I have to laugh, because I just followed you on Amazon. Anthony: Excellent. That's how I found out about it. Someone else said that they had followed me and so a new thing that I just sort of put out on a whim there. I also want people to check out your other books about Pathological Altruism and the material that you have there. I personally find it super fascinating. Like I said, I sort of had an ulterior motive because I've written in my dissertation on a similar topic. I hope one day to turn that dissertation into a book as well. I wanted to get a chance to speak with someone who has been in similar territory. I didn't mean to cut that short but also get back to the subject of learning. I think I could talk certainly more about that at a different occasion and hopefully have you again maybe some months after Mindshift is available and people have read it to do an interview specifically about that book after I have had a chance to read it. Barbara: I'd be absolutely delighted. In the meantime, I can hardly wait. I'm going to be ordering a lot of your books. What a treat to meet. Thanks for reading and listening! Are You Ready To Take Your Memory To The Next Level? If so, click here to download my free memory-improvement kit and get access to a 4-part memory-boosting video series designed to take your memory to the next level. Further Resources Barbara Oakley's personal website Learning How To Learn On Twitter How To Improve Focus And Concentration With Joanna Jast Jonathan Levi On Reducing Your Resistance To Learning 15 Reasons Why Learning A Language Is Good For Your Brain The post Learning How To Learn: On Altruism and Memory With Barbara Oakley appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

It sucks to think about death, doesn't it? You're busy enjoying life, after all. Or are you? Admit it. It's not always fun and games. Sometimes life really gets you down. That's where thinking about death can be strangely uplifting. In fact, there are powerfully positive and empowering things that can happen when you put time into the notion that one day, you're not going to be here anymore. For example, by putting your affairs into order, you can live better now because you're free from worrying about what will happen after you die. Not enough people put time into this, leaving chaos after their demise that tears families apart. And that can make the memory of your life a bitter pill to swallow for years to come. But that's not the direction I want to take us in. Rather, these three simple activities will make your life more memorable starting now. All you have to do is give them a try and you'll be amazed by how they help. 1. Imagine Your Funeral Sounds grim, I know. But once you get into it, seeing and hearing your friends, family and colleagues acknowledge your passing creates perspective and insight that can improve your happiness. This brain game is best played with pen and paper. Make a list of two friends, two family members and two colleagues (or fellow students if you're still in school). Next, write down in their voices one positive memory each person will share about you at your funeral. It could be a story or just a description of an attribute. Focus on the positive. Don't invite haters to your funeral. Really feel the positive sentiments and enjoy the warmth they create. I read this weird little exercise in Richard Wiseman's 59 Seconds. It's highly recommended if you'd like some of the scientific background behind this positivity technique. 2. All Life's Profoundest Pleasures Are Found Here You probably already know The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost: TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. There's Mathematical Truth To Frost's Claim: You're much more likely to live a more interesting life simply by taking alternative paths. And the sooner the better. As we age, many of us grow more conservative. Not because getting old switches on some kind of political gene. It's because the more assets we gather, the more protective we become of them. And the biological need to protect the status quo can be irrationally strong. So strong that people have refused to flee volcanic danger zones driven by conservative inertia (this problem relates to social inertia, which is well worth learning about). Live Life Like It's A Gameshow The Road Not Taken principle relates to something called The Monty Hall Problem. It refers to situations of choice in which it is counterintuitively beneficial to change your mind. The core issue isn't the math, however. The real point of interest is that most people will stick with their original decision despite the benefits of traveling the road not taken. I've seen this play out hundreds of times as a magician with a simple question that leads over 90% of people to stick with their original decision. Merely by asking people if they'd like to change their mind and even offering them handsome sums of money if they do, I create the illusion of complete and utter free will because I know that the vast majority will stick with their original decision. When The Sane Choices In Life Are Actually Insane … I've seen The Monty Hall principle play out in my personal life too. During a difficult time when I couldn't find a university teaching gig, I applied to get high school teaching certification and did the necessary voluntary teaching in schools to qualify. As a former university professor, this is not what I wanted to do in life, but I felt driven to teach. And it was taking action, which was far better than sitting around and biting my fingernails. Then, out of the blue came the invitation to rejoin The Outside, record an album and go on tour. At that point in my career, doing something like that was insane. Nearly every person I talked with about the option agreed, and yet I knew the Monty Hall Problem and let it guide me. And the reality is that the traditional path was truly the insane one. Plus … The Sane Choice Would Have Been Totally, 100% Forgettable! Think about it: Had I gone the traditional route, I would have taken on student debt and locked myself for years in classrooms with students unprepared for the kinds of thoughts I think. It would have been bad for everyone, and that's not to mention all the teacher's strikes and worries about a pension I'd go through. But conservative forces in society were so strong that I almost went for the traditional career. Because I changed my mind, however, I've wound up still getting to teach, but in multiples I never would have imagined possible. I've been around the world and have over a million free downloads, a dozen bestselling books and tens of thousands of people studying and using the Magnetic Memory Method every single day. I don't say that to brag. It's just the consequence of making a counterintuitive choice that was mathematically bound to create a better outcome. And I'm facing another in the near future that involves living in yet another country. This time I may decide for the conservative choice, but … Probably not. 3: This Simple Exercise Will Stop Your Life From Being Boring One way to instantly make your life more memorable is to document it. You can use writing, podcasting, video or various combinations of media. The point is to get it down. Even if it's boring. And quite frankly, it might just be boring at the start. If you've never done it before, talking about yourself might seem excruciating. But the reality is that by going through the exercise on a consistent basis, you'll develop a talent for spotting the memorable. And there are many things happening every day worth your attention. For example, two days ago April and I heard a cellist playing Bach in an art gallery. The next day I noticed a store I'd never seen before. Just a few hours ago I observed a heavily tattooed man, including much of his face, playing with his kid in the park. I wrote all of these things down. And the act of writing the observations down spawns more observation which in turn creates more things to write about. All wealth comes from writing, so please be sure to take up this practice. Along with envisioning your funeral and taking the roads not taken, observing and writing will help you live a more memorable life. The best part is that you can also journal with your friends. Jonathan Levi and I have done that recently in Israel just to talk about our memory improvement projects and memorize together in real time: But whether you journal on paper or video, with other people or alone, put all of the exercises you've just learned together and you truly will have an amazing life. One worth remembering. The post 3 Simple Exercises That Make Your Life Worth Remembering appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Lots of people do brain exercises, often in the form of brain games. You've probably even tried a few, right? That's all fine and dandy, but there's a catch: Playing brain exercise games on your "smart phone" is not necessarily brain exercise. Not by a long shot. Brain Exercises Or Brain Thinners? In fact, some of those brain games don't exercise your brain at all. You don't have to take my word for it either. Just check out all the people on this live call who totally agreed: Instead of helping you, those apps train your brain to get good at completing tasks within the world of those apps. The mental fitness doesn't apply to other parts of your life. And as we discussed in the video above, your memory and brain fitness exercises need to be both the dojo and the exercise. Use Concrete Brain Exercises And Avoid Abstract Ones Bottom line: If you're exercising your brain on an abstract level but not directing the fitness at specific life improvement goals, you're missing out. Your brain fitness must be targeted at specific goals so you get tangible results. And if you'd like brain exercises that do improve your mind and give you a great mental workout that matters, give the following easy exercises a try. I promise they'll be fun and give you a memory improvement boost in a short period of time. By the way, if you also want a detailed list of methods that will improve your memory and help you remember everything better, please check out: How to Remember Things: 21 Techniques For Memory Improvement. And in case you weren't aware that you can listen to me narrating this post, click play here and I'll happily speak to you as you discover these powerful brain exercises. 1. The 4-Details Observation Exercise Gary Small talks about memorizing four details of people you encounter out in public. For example, let's say someone is wearing a gray sweater, black hat, red belt and green shoes. The goal is to observe the details first and then recall them later. Some scientists call brain exercises like these "passive memory training." They're passive because you're not using any special memory techniques. You're just asking your mind to do what it was designed to do: remember. Why does this matter? It matters because we don't ask our minds to practice observation enough. For that reason, we fail to observe. We also fail to observe things that we aren't seeing, such as by making visual images of movements we hear in other rooms. I teach about how to complete this simple visualization and memory exercise in this video. If you'd like to be a better observer of the world around you, this exercise will help. It's also scalable. You can start with observing just one person per day. Once you've gotten good at recalling four details of just one person, you can add more information or more people (or both). If you like, you can also notice details about buildings, cars, movies or series, foods that improve memory, etc. But focusing on people is the more potent. Being observant of others around you is a great social skill. 2. Number Brain Exercises That Skyrocket Your Concentration I can't emphasize this enough: numeracy is a powerful skill. It's something I work on myself as often as possible, both with and without memory techniques in play. "Add 3 Minus 7" is a fun brain exercise you can try today. To get started, all you do is pick any 3-digit number. Then, add 3 to that digit 3 times. Then minus 7 from the new number 7 times. Repeat the process at least 5 times and pick a new 3-digit number the next time. You can also start with a 4-digit number and use other numbers to play with. For example, you could start with 1278 and add 12, 12 times and minus 11, 11 times. It's up to you and the amount of numbers dictate the level of challenge. This brain exercise also strengthens your working memory because of the amount of detail you need to hold in mind to complete it. 3. Repeat What People Say In Your Mind We all know in our hearts that no one is really listening when we speak. And that's sad. But here's the good news: You don't have to be another person who is just nodding your head like a puppet while actually thinking about something else. You can train yourself to focus on what people are telling you and remember everything they say. It all begins by creating presence in the moment in an easy way: Follow the words being spoken to you by repeating them in your mind. For example, imagine that someone is saying the following to you: "Tomorrow I want to go to a movie called Memory Maverick. It's about a guy who cannot forget. He's hired by a group known only as 'The Agency' to infiltrate a competitor. But once the hero learns the secrets, he doesn't want to hand them over. But since he can't forget, The Agency starts making his life miserable." All you would need to do to complete this brain exercise is repeat everything in your mind. You'll automatically remember more by doing this. Visualization Secrets Of A Memory Maverick To remember even more, you can create pictures in your head. For example, you might see an image of Mel Gibson as he looked in the movie Maverick trying to remember something. Or you might get a picture in your mind of an agency building and scenes of evil men in suits torturing the hero. Any images you create will help you become a living, breathing mnemonics dictionary. It can be a bit awkward to repeat back information like this to people to practice your concentration and memory powers, but you can write an email later from memory: "Hey, did you manage to see Memory Maverick? That whole thing with infiltrating 'The Agency' for those secrets and not wanting to hand them over sure sounded cool. What did they wind up doing to make the hero's life more miserable?" For more brain exercises on remembering what people are saying, check out this interview with Jim Samuels on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. He has some great ideas and the benefits include: Being more present. Remembering more of what was said. Showing people that you're interested in them and their lives. Easing conflicts when they arise because you remember the issues in greater detail. Take this training seriously: You'll feel better about your connection to people because you're really with them. 4. The Metronome-Clapping Exercise Back in grad school, I had a great professor named Matthew Clark. For some reason, he told our class in Classical Literature about a great concentration exercise that I've practiced ever since. It's simple: You put on a metronome at a slow speed and then practice "covering the click." I don't think this brain exercise helps memory in any direct way, but it's excellent for improving concentration and presence. Both concentration and presence are skills we all need and the more we have, the more we can remember by default. The better you get at this exercise, the longer the amount of time between clicks you should place. To accurately cover the metronome with a minute between clicks would be impressive! 5. Create A Memory Palace The ultimate brain exercise on the planet is also the easiest. It involves nothing more than a simple drawing that follows some simple principles. Why is creating a Memory Palace such a powerful exercise? Take my free memory improvement course and find out for yourself: First, creating a Memory Palace draws upon your spatial memory. It's also a great recovered memory and autobiographical memory exercise . As far as brain exercises go, the Memory Palace training exercise works kind of in reverse. Why? Because you're accessing cues that are usually blueprinted on your mind outside of your awareness. Think about it: You've rarely gone into a new home or store with the conscious intent of memorizing its features. Yet, if you think back to the last home of a friend you visited, here's a fact: Most people can recall an insane amount of detail. Creating a Memory Palace lets you exercise that inborn ability. You can even use it for memory and learning stunts like memorizing all the Prime Ministers of Canada. Second, creating a Memory Palace is creating a tool that you can use for life. Once you have one and you've mastered using it, you can create dozens more. And if you can do that, you can do great things with your memory, like how Matteo Ricci learned Chinese in record time. You can also remember names at events with ease and accomplish any goal in which memory plays a role. And what goal doesn't involve memory? If you'd like to learn how to create a Memory Palace following the good rules of the Magnetic Memory Method, my FREE Memory Improvement Kit will take you through the entire process. It includes videos, worksheets and more to get you up to speed on this important talent. Improve Your Mind With Brain Exercises And Conquer Any Problem At the end of the day, brain exercises are best when they help you solve problems. Forgetting important details, for example, harms us day in and day out. You now have a brain exercise that will assist you with that. Not being able to focus on numbers leads us into making all kinds of mistakes. The simple game you've just learned is just one step towards improved numeracy skills and a better memory. You've also learned to listen better, be more present and develop concentration for extended periods of time. In many ways, repeating the words of others in your mind or "covering the click" are forms of meditation, a skill known to improve memory. You Now Have The Best Of The Best Finally, you have the opportunity to create a Memory Palace. This simple, ancient invention will also improve your concentration while letting you remember anything. I'm not sure I believe in left brain exercises versus right brain exercises, but I'm confident that if such things exist, the Memory Palace covers them both. Combined, all of these mind fitness activities will improve your life. They all serve as great brain exercises for kids too, so please pass them on to the young people in your life. On that note, they're also great brain exercises for seniors, so don't ignore that branch of your family and social circles either. People of all ages want to keep mentally fit! Turn Your Dream Of Operating A Fully Fit Mind Into Reality When you regularly complete brain exercises, you'll feel filled with pride. Few people have the gumption to take consistent action, after all. Your commitment to what Tony Buzan calls "mental literacy" means you should celebrate. Consistently completing brain exercises should be rewarded, so be sure to factor that in. You don't have to think hard about giving yourself the perfect gift, though. The brain fitness that comes from regularly completing brain exercises is its own reward. It's not just about "brain" activities either. Asking questions about ambidextrousness and memory can help too. For example, I've practice juggling, writing with both hands and writing backwards to involve both my brain and body. I also make sure that I don't fall into the traps of smartphone addiction. Sure, you can get some great brain fitness reading from the Kindle app. But if you're constantly interrupted by notifications, you're probably damaging your focus and concentration more that helping improve it. Oh, and here are a few more brain exercises for when you're feeling depressed: What are your thoughts about the principles discussed in this post? Do you think these are activities you will bring into your life? Is there anything I'm missing? Let me know in the discussion area below and I'll gladly respond and update the post. The post 5 Brain Exercises That Ensure Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.