The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Have you ever wondered if mnemonics and memory techniques are for everyone? Or maybe they just didn't feel right for you? Here's the thing: They might not be. That's just one of the unexpected answers you'll hear in this podcast and read below. Let's get started with a wonderful letter I received from a student in the Netherlands: Let me introduce myself. I am Timo, a Dutch high school student. Nowadays I am preparing for my finals, but besides that I am also working on a final paper about the human memory. To be honest, last year I failed to pass my exams, so I decided to learn differently this year. During my summer vacation, I came across your website. While listening to your podcasts, I realized that this would be the best way to learn for me. That I eventually picked out this subject for my paper was a coincidence. Back to the story. The last months I have read many books and scientific articles about the method of loci (or the Magnetic Memory Method). There are not many articles about this matter. These articles suggest that the method of loci is an effective way, but they are written by psychologists. Most of them are sceptic to use this in classrooms. You are, on the other hand, the expert for teaching this method to students. I assume that you use this method almost every week. My practical part of my paper is an experiment with high school students. (This is required in The Netherlands.) Last week I finished teaching them the basics and how to apply the method to a list of random facts and vocabulary words. Now they are preparing to make a test, which I prepared. A university researcher helps me to process the data from these test results. However, I met some resistance with some of the students. They think that this is too time consuming. The teachers are, however, enthusiastic about my research. They want to know more about this subject. Therefore I am considering writing a much shorter paper for all the teachers to explain my findings. Assuming that you are the only one, who gives these kind of courses, could I ask you humble opinion. Most of the books and articles do not give a clear answer, whether or not this method is effective on large classes and is better for the knowledge of the student (long-term memory). So here are my questions: Is the Magnetic Memory Method a skill that everyone can develop? No. The Magnetic Memory Method, any mnemonics or set of memory techniques are exclusive to a particular kind of person. First, the person must be open to experimentation and implementation. These personal characteristics appear not to be present in everyone. They require learning a set of tools that must be used in order to truly understand them. Think of a computer keyboard, for example. Anyone can look at the keyboard and understand a description of what it is supposed to do. But without putting their fingers on the keys and learning to press the keys to produce words, words will never form. And the exciting thing about typing is that, once you've started learning it, you can learn to write very fast. Not only that, but you've become so familiar with the keyboard that you can type entire books without even looking down at the keys or your fingers. Memory techniques are like that, especially if you're using Memory Palaces. The Memory Palace is a kind of keyboard you build yourself based on a manual like the Magnetic Memory Method. The information you want to memorize forms the keys and the associative-imagery are the sentences you write on the paper of your imagination. And of course, no one types an entire book without making mistakes. But editing is a minor feat and quickly accomplished simply by scanning the record and compounding your associative-imagery or making the necessary changes. The keyboard metaphor is not perfect, but it gives a sense of how mnemonic approaches like the Magnetic Memory Method work. Other metaphors have been given, such as the wax tablet and bird cage metaphors given by Aristotle. In sum, not everyone can develop memory techniques because not everyone will take action. Seriously. Some people prefer crossword puzzles. But even with games and puzzles, a large percentage of those who do get started with memory exercise and other forms of mental training will, unfortunately, abandon the task at the first sign of mental effort. This premature departure is unfortunate because incredible successes are usually just around the corner. Again, memory techniques are best learned by doing. The real job of an instructor in the art of memory is, therefore, inspiring people to take action by learning the techniques and then continuing to take action as a kind of scientist. As a scientist, you create the basis for an experiment based on a clearly defined outcome and track your results. When the results don't match the desired outcome, you analyze the mnemonic procedures you used and the Memory Palace itself and make the necessary changes, try again and once again track the results. Like many things in life, they who test win. Is the Magnetic Memory Method worth learning? Yes, but ultimately that is not up for me to decide. Learning is just one part of the process. You must implement the memory techniques, not just learn them. Knowing what they are and how they work without using them is like holding your fingers over the keyboard but never typing anything. The same holds true of any other memory training you might pursue. I personally believe that everyone should read as many books on memory techniques as possible, but only if they're willing to try things out. To this day, I continue reading every book on mnemonics I can find. Almost every single one of them has a new angle on an old technique or something entirely new. I always give these new approaches a try and sometimes they become part of what I do in my personal memory practice. How much time does it take to master the Magnetic Memory Method for tests (and eventually final exams)? Mastery is not the issue. It's results that matter and these often arrive fast and hard when people learn the techniques, follow the instructions and implement based around topics they're passionate about and that will make an immediate difference in their lives. When I say "instructions," I'm not talking dogma. The Magnetic Memory Method is called a method precisely because you need to come with a spirit of experimentation. It's not a system and it breaks my heart every time I hear someone talk about their "memory system." There are no universal systems and you cannot truly use the approach of someone else. Rather, people need a method that helps them create their own, highly personalized system , remembering that flexibility is a requirement as they experiment with making the Magnetic Memory Method their own. You need to understand that the map is not the territory and results only happen when you're with the rest of us mnemonists down in the trenches and doing the spadework. All that said, people typically learn and prepare themselves for the Magnetic Memory Method Are there any requirements to make the Magnetic Memory Method easier to learn? The only requirements are a willingness to learn and experiment with the techniques. It helps a great deal if you also come with a topic you're passionate about, but that's not strictly necessary. Even the most boring information from the driest topic in the world can be made thoroughly exciting using a Memory Palace and the other tools mnemonics offer. How can someone test, whether or not the student has learned the Magnetic Memory Method? Testing is simple. The student either correctly produces the memorized information or not. That said, unless you're competing, 100% accuracy is not always necessary. You can create a huge advantage for yourself simply by covering 50%, 35%, 25% or even less of the material on a test. The important point is that you direct the memory techniques where they are needed. Some people pick up lots of information without the need of any technique. Others, for various reasons, are desperate for something – anything – that will get more information into long-term memory. Whether one uses memory techniques or not, testing offers the only means of discovering how much and how deep into long term memory information has gone. The best part is that we know that as memories age, they move into different parts of the brain. (Gary small link). These memories may even be segmented into different pieces that are stored in different places. In this way, the remembered material becomes connected to other pieces of information, leading to what can be considered the formation of knowledge. So it is not uncommon that a person using mnemonics will seek a single piece of information and wind up uncorking a powerful flow of related information. This effect takes place often when the remembered information involves philosophy, history and material from subject-based textbooks. Here's a quick training on how to memorize a textbook. Testing is a tremendously exciting part of the Magnetic Memory Method because it not only demonstrates that the techniques are working. Merely by testing recall, you strengthen your memory. You also discover more about the techniques and create deeper familiarity with them, ingraining them deeper in your being. In principle, without testing, which amounts to recall, you aren't really using memory techniques. This is why I talked in this video on card memorization about how memorization really only takes place during recall, and we must take the time spent during memorization and recall together to form a proper assessment of the time investment. Is your method age restricted? Is it easier for younger students? I do not believe that memory techniques are any easier or harder for younger students than any other age. The one advantage young people have is a lack of inhibition and a fresh connection to play. However, adults, when they can get their egos out of the way, have the advantage of discipline and focus. They can, by and large, sit still at will and channel their energies towards the imagination. They can also practice meditation and analyze the kinds of imagination they have at their disposal with greater insight. Could information that someone learns, interfere with other information? For instance, would Latin vocabulary interfere with biology terminology? One kind of information can interfere with other kinds. This possibility is called either "ghosting" or "The Ugly Sister Effect." These tend to arise when people use the same Memory Palace more than once without cleaning it first. If the information is too similar – such as when memorizing French and Spanish vocabulary – the interference can be severe. However, Spanish and Russian vocabulary are sufficiently different, something that reduces, if not eliminates jarring effects and confusion. In either case, with a bit of practice, neither need be interruptive. Once you understand the Ugly Sister Effect, you can bend it to your will and make it advantageous. Do you think that this method is an essential skill in our digitalising world? People are nowadays more depending on their mobile phones than their memory. Is it really true that people are relegating more and more information to their memory? Or is it possible that they are freeing it up so they have more space and time to learn and memorize more important things? Long before computer technology, people suffered from unexercised minds. We sometimes have a false vision of the past in which all kinds of people were running around with superior memory abilities. Many scholars, yes. But the average Joe? Hardly. More everyday people use memory techniques around the world than ever before. No, it is a lame and technologically deterministic view that blames technology for human laziness. It is the same technological determinism that blamed cars for more sex amongst teenagers and now blames cell phones for sexting. Believe me, young people had lots of sex with each other before cars appeared and many lewd notes were passed from student to student in the absence of cell phones. What is interesting about technology is that it is at the precise moment that it became so central to our lives that a mnemonics Renaissance took on full force. I believe there is no mistake that the World Memory Championships, mind-mapping and a global interest in memory techniques surged as computers grew in popularity. But I do not believe this occurred because human memory was being replaced and weakened. I believe the mnemonics Renaissance began because technology has freed the human mind to remember much more valuable things. For this reason, I often berate those who teach the memorization of shopping lists. What a waste of human imagination and mental energy! No, if you want to truly learn mnemonics and feel their awesome power from the first moment, memorize something that will immediately improve your life, or at least please you. Memorize something in line with your passions, something you cannot relegate to pen and paper or a computer. It's for remembering these daily concerns that technology exists. Save your memory for the information that matters. Do you think that the Magnetic Memory Method is a necessity for all students around the world? No. Some students do perfectly well without mnemonics. I believe they would do even better with them, but what matters is the results they want and the results they get. Should education institutes implement the Magnetic Memory Method in the classroom? How could teachers successfully teach this skill? Yes. However, I do not think the MMM or any form of mnemonics should be crammed into the classroom with other subjects. Mnemonics is a subject on its own. It has history, and like math, has different forms. If math has addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, mnemonics has linking, association, rhyming, keywords, abbreviations and the mothership that bears them all, the location-based Memory Palace. If schools were to create a semester-long, or even a year-long course in mnemonics, our world would be a much different – and better place – almost overnight. We would be faced with an information revolution far more powerful and interesting than the computer revolution because more people than ever before would be using the software in the hardware of their heads at the highest level ever in the history of humanity. How often do you use the Magnetic Memory Method, and what for? I use memory techniques nearly every day of my life. When I meet people, I memorize their names. When I study a language, I memorize vocabulary and phrases. When I read books, I remember dates and facts. When I study music, I memorize scales and lyrics. When I sit in lectures, I memorize the messages in real time. When I warm up for memory projects, I memorize short runs of playing cards. Above all, I spend the first minutes of nearly every day practicing dream recall. Even if I can't remember a single dream, I make a note of it to help stimulate recall the next night. And nearly every day, I spend a small amount of time writing in my gratitude journal. It is a powerful means of never forgetting just what a wonderful life I've got. No matter where we live or who we may be, our existences are tied deeply to memory. And where memory is absent, the mindless void of forgetfulness and repetitive fantasy and negative messages persists. Only by focusing on strengthening our memory can we remember to be present with higher and higher levels of clarity. In this way, using memory techniques are a powerful form of meditation and perhaps the ultimate path to enlightenment. Further Resources If you're interested in developing your memory by using Memory Palaces so that you can create genuine knowledge and achieve your most precious goals, you'll love the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass that you can try completely risk-free. I'd be honored to be the one who helps further your education in mnemonics and get you the results you seek. The post 11 Unexpected Answers To Your Questions About Mnemonics appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, USA Memory Champ Nelson Dellis teaches you how to win the USA Memory Championship. Take it away, Nelson! So you've read a bunch of books on memory skills. You may have even listened to all the podcasts on this site. But although many of them have helped your memory tremendously, there might be some of you out there who want to use your techniques to compete in (and possibly win) the USA Memory Championship. As a 4x USA memory champ (and before you think I'm cocky, also a 3x USA Memory Championship loser), I know the ins and out to winning this competition. Surprisingly, becoming a memory champion is not necessarily all about memory. There are a lot of other subtle things that go into making it to the end and winning the USA Memory Championship. And I'm going to explain to you exactly how. Here we go. Step 1 – Sign Up This first point is dumb and obvious, but I've met a lot of people who talk about the competition as if it's this Holy Grail that awaits them … … once they are truly prepared. To them I say, f*ck it. Just sign up and compete. There is nothing better than getting the experience of a full competition under your belt than actually competing. I hate to say this but, no one (well except for the very first winner, Tatiana Cooley) has won this thing on the first try. You could argue that Joshua Foer won on his first go, but technically he was there the year before as a journalist. Sure, he didn't compete that first time, but he dug himself deep into the competition for his article. Scott Hagwood, Ram Kolli, Ron White, Chester Santos and myself, we all lost before we won. Even this year when I took first place, I honestly believe I won based on competition experience. There were some competitors with better-trained memories than me, but less competition knowledge and experience. So, bottom line, it's about getting competitive experience. If you want that edge, just sign up and compete. It's worth gold. Go for it! Step 2 – Make It To The Second Round The USAMC is split into two parts. The morning events: * Names & Faces * Speed Numbers * Speed Cards * Poetry The afternoon playoff events: * Spoken Words * Tea Party * Double Deck O' Cards. Making it to this afternoon second round has a lot of parts, because you need to score well in each event to make it into the advancing top 8. Not as well as you might think, but decent enough. The scoring works like this: With each discipline you get a score based on how much you memorize correctly according to the rules. Then, that score is turned into a championship score, which is a weighted score based on a curve. The best score is 100 pts and then everyone scores comparatively. Statistically over the years, you need about 200-250 out of 400 pts to make the cut. But standards change over time and it is harder to get a score that high than ever before. But the nice thing is that even if there are a couple people hitting some awesome scores, there are a lot of people with mediocre scores. Until everyone in the USA is amazing at memorizing (which they're not … yet), this fact will be your savior. The mediocre scores are there because it often ends up that there are one or two, at most three front runners who are in another league compared to everyone else in the top 8. The rest are good, and still better than the remainder, but not that impressive comparatively to the top. So the bottom line is that you need to score consistently mediocre (or better) across the board to make the top 8. You used to be able to pass to the second round by being amazing at just 2 of the events. But agian, that's getting harder to do. And if you are great at only one event but none of the others, you're chances are nearly zilch. In other words, sorry to say, but there is no real shortcut here. You gotta be "good" at all four disciplines: names, numbers, cards, and poetry. But the good news is, you don't have to be that good. Step 3 – Play Strategically Through The Playoff Rounds Okay, you've made into the top-8. Maybe not top ranked, but you're in there. The nice thing about the afternoon playoffs is that it is all strategy. The chances for anyone to win at this point are all pretty much even. You could be the worst of the 8 (i.e. Ram Kolli in 2013) and still end up beating 1st place (me) and become the champ. SPOKEN WORDS They take you backstage to memorize 200 words (or as many as you can of those 200) in 15 minutes. Then, recall takes place back on stage, in order of the list, alternating between competitors. One slip-up and … … you're out. The round ends when three people have made a mistake. To me, this is the most difficult and nerve-wracking event. What you want to be able to do is memorize just enough not to run out of words before those three competitors get eliminated. This means that the real trick is in figuring out how many words to memorize. It makes for a delicate balance between what you are capable of and what you think others can achieve. Mind Explosion! There have been years that the word count went up to 88, and others where it only went up to 35. Everything depends on circumstance. People trip up on the most unpredictable things. For example, favorite Johnny Briones recited "architecture" instead of "architect" in 2014. Top 5 finalist, Brad Zupp swapped the very two first words "aorta" and "office" in 2012. And many others have just blanked when they new up to 100 or so words. You just don't know who's going to trip up, so make sure you know YOUR words. Typically I go for what I think is a safe minimum, around 100 words. Make sure you can do those 100 words, and do them perfectly. What's tricky in recall is that you aren't by yourself reciting. You have to be mentally prepared to say every 7th word or even less if someone gets knocked out before you. This can be a bit tricky and throw you off if you haven't practiced. TEA PARTY Next up, six audience members come on stage and state eight factoids about themselves. My advice: Don't bother listening to the people. Just listen for the name, memorize it, then put your head down, ignore them, and just study the sheet (the same information they speak is given to you in print). They talk way too fast to memorize it on the fly, so just read it instead. Plus, you get an extra 7-9 minutes to review the packet info after the audience members are done speaking. On top of that, you get three strikes (not single elimination like SPOKEN WORDS). I find this event the easiest because it's so lenient. Typically it goes until two people are eliminated, but in recent years, no one has made three mistakes, so all five competitors qualify for the next round. Look for them to add a few more bits of info next year to make it harder. DOUBLE DECK So now you've made it to the finals! All you have to do is memorize two decks of cards in five minutes. At this point, it's most likely there are three competitors left (but it could be up to five). The goal is to memorize more than your opponents. There was a time when memorizing around a deck and a half was championship winning, but not anymore. Last year four out of the five finalists memorized (or claimed to) both decks in their entirety. So then it comes down to accuracy. How reliably can you recite those two decks perfectly? You won't have to say all the cards, since you'll be alternating between competitors, but as with the words, you need to be flexible and say any card when it comes to you. A few competitors have failed to do this over the years (me included) despite being clear favorites to win the title. It's tricky, but can be overcome with practice. Step 4 – Fly Under The Radar Here's an "inner game" tip to take with you for the whole competition: Don't talk hype. Just show up to the competition and kick some quiet ass. For one, you'll be no one's focus. You can freely chill out in the back of the room hitting the scores that you practiced with zero attention coming your way. But if people know about you or you've been around a few competitions and done well, you'll get more attention. More attention means more stress and possibly more cameras in your face. What I wouldn't give to do my 2010 competition again. No one knew me, and I came out of the gates shocking everyone, quietly and confidently. The top guys didn't know anything about me, and it made them nervous while I was in there just cruising. Obviously there is still a lot of work you'll have to do if you want to do well in all the events. But there is an endless amount of literature on just how to train your memory for competition. You can start at Art of Memory where you'll find loads of resources created by other memory competitors. Put all those things together and with enough luck and skill, you might just find yourself standing up on stage as the 2016 USA Memory Champ. BOOM! Further Resources Extreme Memory Improvement interview with Nelson Dellis Nelson's Kickstarter campaign for a children's picture book called I Forgot Something (But I Can't Remember What It Was) Help a good cause by taking the Extreme Memory Challenge and support Alzheimer's research Climb for Memory How To Help Middle School Students Remember More The post How To Win The USA Memory Championship appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Absentmindedness sucks. You forget where you put your keys. Your car disappears from the parking lot. You left the stove on again. Well, guess what? There's a cure for absentmindedness. It's called focus, and you're about to learn three ridiculously boring ways to develop it. The following techniques work best in combination, but obviously life changes work best when you add them one by one, so pick your favorite and dive in. But if you have to begin anywhere, I recommend that you start with establishing a basic framework by understanding … The Stunning Magic Of Being Boring Boring? Oh yes, and here's why: Just about every successful person in history has lived a life of constraint. Check out the following video and beneath that, I'll break out some of the key points. As you've just learned, highly boring people live exciting lives. They reduce everything they do to the essentials, including: Wearing similar clothes and eating repetitive meals every day to eliminate decision fatigue. Isolating tasks and remove distractions. You can do this by working in cafes without WiFi. Leave your smartphone at home and bring only a pad of paper and a pen and your laptop if you must. Wear earplugs if noise bothers you, or if you like music, try an app that features focus­friendly compositions, like focusatwill.com. Hammering away at carefully defined tasks without adding new things to do willy nilly. Keeping a journal to record their activities and track their time. You can even keep an attention span journal. The reason developing a life based on constraints helps develop focus and eliminates absentmindedness is because you give yourself far less about which to be absentminded. Not only that, but should you fall prey to absentmindedness, you'll find your way back to focus. Why? Because the mountains you climb in your daily life won't be hidden behind the fog of multitasking. Frankly, when you limit your activities and focus on the essentials, you'll not only find and climb your mountains, you'll move them entirely out of your life and move on to finer things. Even if you have a boss, it should be possible for you to isolate your most high margin tasks. Write a proposal, make a meeting and ask to redefine your activities. If your boss rejects your suggestion, either track your time on your own time to prove what you can do on your own, or … Find Another Boss! Speaking of which, if you want to bypass working for the man altogether, becoming an entrepreneur or self­-employed is a great way to develop focus. Placing yourself in a situation that forces you to get results or starve will rip absentmindedness from your life and leave it wriggling on the floor like a helpless insect. As you can see, developing a boring life really can add tremendous excitement to your days on planet earth. So get started. Time is ticking. The Extraordinary Power Of Sitting Still For No Reason Whatsoever One of the most regular activities you can add to your life involves one of the most boring ­ and yet tremendously exciting activities ­ ever invented by humanity … Yes, we're talking about meditation. Would you like to know why so many people struggle to incorporate this simple activity into their daily routines? The answer is simple: It's Because They're Trying To Meditate Sorry, dear Memorizers, but that's the wrong road to enlightenment and a quick path to suffering. But before we talk about how to meditate the Magnetic way, here's what meditation can do for you. All of these features of the world's oldest brain training technique are scientifically proven and should persuade you to add meditation to your daily routine. Meditation … Increases focus Creates emotional control Improves your working memory (luca link) Reduces "wandering mind" syndrome Lowers pain Each of these benefits of meditation reduces absentmindedness because when you're not in pain, and you eliminate mind wandering, focus glides in to replace these distractions. To maintained your renewed focus, all you need to do is keep meditating. Boring, right? Not necessarily. Not when you know … How To Meditate In A Buddha-­shaped Nutshell Surprisingly, proper meditation is super easy to do. You need only chuck the idea that meditation is about experiencing so­called "no­mind" and sit just to sit. That's it. Sit down and let your mind wander. When first starting out, don't bother with breathing exercises or mantras. Sit just to sit. After a few moments, you'll become aware of the fact that you're sitting on the floor, completely lost in thought. When this happens, you'll become present. You'll be in the room, totally focused on the present moment instead of fantasizing about the future, playing some alternative version of things you've done in the past, or talking to yourself. In reality, all that inner­-dialogue is far more boring than meditating. Why? Because You've Repeated All That Junk To Yourself Before! When that moment of clarity comes, even if it takes a few sessions to get into it, you'll feel pleasure, elation, and yes, enlightenment. That's all enlightenment is: the elucidation that the present moment is all we have and you can be in it. Here's a practical, step­-by­-step meditation guide you can use every day for the rest of your life. 1. Pick a time. Morning, noon, evening, it doesn't matter. Regularity matters. If you can't commit to an actual time of day, create an After X meditation practice. For example, meditate after eating a major meal. Meditating after eating can feel especially profound because, so long as you've eaten non­irritating foods, you'll be physically content. And who knows? You might also digest your food better. 2. Pick a place to meditate. It could be your bedroom floor, basement rumpus room or backyard garden. Face East, West, North, South … Take your pick. Which direction doesn't matter, so long as you have one. Remember, the way to eliminate absentmindedness and increase focus is to eliminate decision fatigue. If you give yourself too much to think about, you eliminate the chances that you'll get down to business. 3. (Optional) Set a timer. Tim Ferris suggests that you do less than you think you can. In other words, if you think you can sit still for ten minutes, set the timer for eight minutes, maybe even five. If you do this, I would add that once the timer rings, you turn it off and then sit a little longer. You can move a little or even stand up,but do squeeze a few more moments into the session. It's often in this second, untimed session where the magic happens. 4. Sit and do nothing else but sit. A lot of people teach that you should progressively focus on each muscle of your body from head to foot. This practice is often called a "body scan." By all means, experiment with this. But understand that it is not waiting for your awareness of the present moment to arrive. It is not allowing yourself to be lost in thought so you can catch yourself everywhere but here. 5. When you finally arrive, enjoy and observe. The more you practice this simple form of meditation, the longer these moments of arrival will last. Clarity will also bubble up in different ways throughout your days. Although it's unlikely ­ and undesirable ­ that absentminded fantasizing can be eliminated from your life, you can limit the amount of time your mind spends wandering out of control. There are also dietary reasons why you can't focus. If that's the case … Cut The Booze With A Vengeance Drinking's awesome, right? You get a buzz, inhibitions loosen and that ugly stranger across the room starts looking a lot more attractive. By the same token, your vision blurs. Your speech slurs. You develop difficulty walking as your reactions slow. Worst of all, you impair your memory, including your working memory for two days or more. Worse, alcohol interrupts neurogenesis. Scientists once thought that the brain doesn't generate new cells, and once they're gone, they're gone. However, we now know that new brain cells generate from stem cells and alcohol interferes with this process. The lack of new growth in super important parts of your brain (like the hippocampus) leads to foggy thinking, reduced concentration and poor decision-­making. Of course, not all people react the same to alcohol, but even so, why take the risk? Dump The Sugar Did you know that sugar changes the structure of your brain? Not only that, but it messes with neurotransmitters like acetylcholine. That, dear Memorizers, is one super­critical substance when it comes to your ability to learn. Sugar also leads to brain atrophy, which itself leads to dementia and Alzheimer's. Those conditions involve more than absentmindedness. They are a complete and permanent journey into the void. Eat brain healthy substances instead. These include: Leafy greens Berries Whole grains Nuts and seeds Fatty fish Avocado Bananas Green tea Beets Bone broth (link) Broccoli Celery Coconut oil Egg yolks Extra virgin olive oil Rosemary Tumeric Walnuts Warning: Dark chocolate (but beware of this because prepared chocolate bars usually dissipate the helpful ingredients. You'd need to eat 70 or more to experience any benefits) And of course, drink water. Like there's no tomorrow. Without regular hydration, your brain will shrink in mass and it can't detoxify. And it's 85% water, after all, so it'll feel in good company when you keep it swimming. This Is Just The Beginning There is a lot more you can do to increase focus in your life. Reducing clutter, regular walks, playing games and being social all contribute to greater focus. Simple stuff, right? Put these simple practices into your life and you'll reduce absentmindedness to the bare minimum. You'll focus like a hawk on your goals and become the Magnetic King or Queen of your realm, just like you've always wanted to be. The post 3 Ridiculously Boring Ways To Add Focus And Excitement To Your Life appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

This is Andrew Barr and today I'm sitting in for Anthony in this guest post. I'm from realfastspanish.com and over there I help Spanish students get a conversational level of Spanish using specific tactics and strategies to improve their effectiveness as language students. And in this post I'm going to teach you how you can apply some of these strategies to significantly improve your effectiveness when it comes to your memorisation challenges using the principles of the Magnetic Memory Method. Whether you are just starting out with memory palaces or you are a seasoned professional, today you will learn three ways you can improve your effectiveness with memory palaces in order to achieve your goals with less effort and in less time. If you are already using Memory Palaces and mnemonics you are well ahead of the curve. You already know that using memory techniques improves the efficiency of learning. But, it is still possible to get even more out of your approach to memorisation. It doesn't matter whether you are using the Magnetic Memory Method for language learning, acing exams in school, vying for a memory championship title or trying to impress friends at a party. There are three steps you need to consider if you want to have even more success with your memory challenges. Memory Palaces Are a Means, But … What is the Goal? "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question; I could solve the problem in less than five minutes." — Albert Einstein. "Begin with the end in mind" — Stephen Covey. Before you can start to maximise the potential of your memory palace training you need a clear vision of what you are a trying to achieve. A memory palace is a tool that you can use to achieve any number of outcomes with incredible efficiency. But the real power comes when your outcome is sharply defined. The problem is that, often, we don't clearly define where we want to end up, which makes the path to get there a lot harder than it needs to be. Recently, I met a guy who works for an oil company and was telling me about his vision to become rich. He said he had his whole plan mapped out. His plan was to buy property after property and then subdivide and develop. He told me he wanted to have a few million in property, a few million in stocks and a few million in cash for those "just in case" moments. After mapping the whole plan out, I looked at him and said "Why? What is all this money for? If money is a means to an end, what is your end goal?" He said "I want to work with children". I Couldn't Believe It I said "why don't you become a teacher?" He said "I want to work with disadvantaged children". He then told me that he didn't need the money to pay for programs for the children, he needed it so he could live without needing to work to free up his time. I told him he didn't need millions of dollars to do that. I told him about a good friend of mine—a high school teacher who quit her job to work with disadvantaged children. She left her job here in Australia and moved to the Solomon Islands where she is working and living on a small allowance to cover her board and her food. She is working with the local teachers to develop a new curriculum in the school. As well as helping and teaching the children that live in the local area. She didn't need millions of dollars, she was clear about what she wanted to do and she went and did it. After telling him the story, he just stared at me blankly. He offered a few excuses but it was obvious there was a disconnect between the goal and the means for getting there. Without a clear vision in mind, it is possible he will spend years trying to achieve a poorly defined goal. What if it takes him 30 years to meet his goal? Will it be worth it if he gets there in his 60s? Or worse, if he doesn't get there at all? Don't Get Caught With A Poorly Defined Goal He is not the only one, though, who got caught with a poorly defined goal. I too have found myself without a clear vision at times. Seven years ago I decided I wanted to be fluent in Spanish. I did some online research and found some resources for beginners. I printed everything off and got to work. I practiced for quite some time learning whatever I could about the Spanish language. Within two years, I organised my first trip to Spain. Before I got there I was so excited for the fun and adventure I was going to have with my new language skills. I was going to make local friends, I was going to go to interesting places only the locals knew about and I was going to experience Spain the way a typical tourist couldn't. Does Language Learning Overwhelm, Confuse And Frustrate You? When I got there, the reality was a completely different thing. I was overwhelmed, confused and frustrated. My Spanish was hopeless. It was miles from what I thought it was. I couldn't understand what the locals were saying. I couldn't remember what I had learnt. And when I did remember how to say something, I translated literally from English and got a lot of strange looks. When I returned to Australia I was deflated. I thought my abilities in language learning were worthless and I should move on to other pursuits. Shortly after my return, I met up with a few friends in bar. They brought along a friend from France. Her English was good but not amazing—it was good enough to communicate, better than my Spanish at least. I told her about my experience in Spain and for the next few hours we shared language learning war stories. She told me about her struggles with English. I asked her "despite what you are saying, I understand you perfectly, you can communicate. How did you get to this level?" She then told me something about language learning that changed everything for me. She said "you can just keep learning forever, and that's it!" I asked her what she meant. She told me that, if I wanted to, I could spend every day for the rest of my life learning something about the Spanish language. But, if I wasn't clear about what I actually wanted to do with the language I would be lost learning for learning's sake. What do I mean? In the English language there are over 250,000 words yet only 20,000 are used in regular day-to-day communication. Sure, You Can Memorize A Gazillion Spanish Words … But Why? For Spanish, these numbers are even better—there are a total of 100,000 words in the language yet the top 1000 most frequent words make up 87% of spoken communication. It is really quite amazing, you only 1% of the total number of Spanish words in existence for almost 90% of the conversation language. What I discovered after talking to the French girl in the bar was that I could spend the rest of my life learning about 99,000 words in Spanish, but if I couldn't use the most common 1000 words properly I would never have a chance to meet the locals and experience parts of the culture I had always wanted to experience. So the question is — how well have you defined your goals? How well do you know and understand the outcome you truly want from the use of your memory palaces? And is there actually a disconnect between the information you are placing into your memory palace and what you actually need to know? Anthony has mentioned that one of his most popular podcasts was How To Memorize A Textbook. It is possible to memorise a whole textbook using memory palaces. But as Anthony mentioned, and I reiterate here, before you start filling your memory palaces, you should start by eliminating components of the textbook that you aren't actually going to need. If you are preparing for an upcoming exam, are there components of the course that you won't be tested for? For example, imagine you have an upcoming chemistry test. The teacher tells you that the test will be on the periodic table. The question is—do you have to memorise all 118 elements? Maybe some quick research uncovers from the previous exam tests or maybe the teacher tells you that they will only test your memory for the first 50 elements. Now you only need 50 memory stations instead 118. Through defining a clearer goal you have made the path easier. If you are studying a language, are there low frequency words that you are unlikely to ever use? Or are there words that you can eliminate because you can easily say them in another way? The 3 Person Test If we use language learning as an example, one word that I don't particularly like is the word fluency. I encourage all of my students at Real Fast Spanish to stop using this particular word when trying to set goals in language learning. For example, I mentioned that there are 100,000 words in the Spanish language. If you wanted to be "fluent" in Spanish, how many of those 100,000 words should you put in a memory palace? It is unclear, right? But … What Does Fluency Mean? Instead see if you can define a better goal for yourself. How? By using the 3 person test. Start by coming up with an appropriate goal to help you move you from where you are now to where you want to be. Then ask 3 people if they clearly understand your goal. If they do, it is a good goal, if they don't, you need to go back to the drawing board. What you ultimately want from the 3 person test is a consensus from your panel of 3 when you have achieved your goal. Let's look at a few examples. Imagine your goal is to count to 10 in Chinese. If you could do it, then the panel would all agree. Yes you have achieved your goal. Now imagine your goal is to be fluent in German. When you ask three people if they think you are fluent then it is very possible you could get three different answers, when you think you are. One person might say "yes", one might say "maybe" and one might answer the question with another question. In this case your goal would fail the 3 person test. Knowing and having a sharply defined outcome is the first step to maximising your effectiveness with your memory challenges. A clear end game allows you to carefully select the right information to place into your memory palace which will save you time and effort later. Let's look at the second step. How to Overcome Resistance "Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work" — Steven Pressfield. Once you are clear about what you actually need to put into your network of memory palaces and you have eliminated all unnecessary memorisation, you simply need to create the associated images and locate them where you know you can to find them later. But, this is easier said than done right? In order to fill your memory palace, you need to actually do the work. You need to overcome resistance. Resistance, unfortunately, is a part of nature. It's everywhere. In the physical world, resistance is called inertia. Have you ever tried to move a large boulder? Or have you ever tried to push a car when the engine isn't running? If you want to move large objects in the physical world you need to apply a lot of energy. You need to find a few friends or get the help of a large machine to apply enough force to start moving the object. In the biological world, resistance is called homeostasis. In the human body there are hundreds of processes all working to maintain the status quo. There are buffers in the blood to maintain pH. Insulin is used to maintain sugar levels. Our bodies also use metabolic and perspiration processes to maintain a constant internal body temperature. If you want to change your internal body temperature—which is not recommended—you need to go into a freezing cold place or an extremely hot place and stay there for enough time to break down the body's internal regulation systems. In other words, a lot of thermal energy is required to overcome biological resistance. In the psychological world resistance is called procrastination. Let me ask you this question—have you ever procrastinated? Why Do We Procrastinate? It's because procrastination is similar to inertia and homeostasis. And here's the thing—it's not your fault! If you have ever procrastinated it's because resistance is everywhere in nature. Nature loves to resist change. So if you want to overcome procrastination, like the large boulder or the internal body temperature, you need to apply enough energy to overcome the resistance. If you want to successfully populate your memory palace with all of the carefully selected data you have chosen in step 1, you need to overcome your psychological resistance to change. How? If you want to overcome resistance you need to apply enough energy. For psychological resistance … You Need To Apply Emotional Energy What does that mean? Have you ever had a big exam, assignment or report due for work that you left to the very last minute? Maybe you left it until the night before or the morning of. Let me ask you this question—in the end, were you able to pull an all nighter or some other feat of poor health in order to get the assignment done? If so, what changed? In the lead up to the assignment, you were resisting it—naturally. Then when the deadline came close, you started to worry about failing or getting in trouble at work. At a certain point the resistance to doing the work was overcome by the emotional energy that came out of the fear of failure or getting into trouble. Knowing this, if you want to successfully fill your memory palace, you need to develop enough emotional energy to overcome the naturally occurring psychological resistance. The Test of the Five Whys One idea that you can use to build emotional energy is the test of the "the five whys". This idea originally came from industrial manufacturing as a strategy to pinpoint the cause of potential breakdowns in the production chain. They needed the test because human beings aren't particularly good at getting to the heart of an issue. If you want to truly understand why you should do something you need to ask "why?" five times. The true answer is rarely obvious from the first why. If you want to unearth a limitless source of emotional energy for overcoming resistance, you need to get to the heart of your motivation. Let's see an example. I will give an example for learning Spanish because it's what I'm used to. But you can apply the test to whatever memory outcome you are striving for. Imagine you have a well defined small task to place 10 new Spanish words into a memory palace. The five "whys" test would go as follows: Why do I have to learn these Spanish words? Because they are important for Spanish. Why is knowing Spanish important? Because I want to be able to speak another language. Why do I want to speak another language? Because I want to experience a new culture. Why do I want to experience a new culture? Because it will enrich my life. Why do I want to enrich my life? Because it is the best way to live! As you can see, by using the five "whys" test I have connected the trivial task of placing 10 words in a memory palace with a higher life purpose. By asking the question "why" five times you can access a deep well of emotional energy and use that energy to overcome procrastination and resistance. Once you have a sharply defined goal and you have overcome resistance at a task level, the final step is to create a routine that will allow maximum effectiveness with the Magnetic Memory Method. Creating a Routine Allows You to Create "Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her." ― Lili St. Crow. "You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively." ― Anne Lamott. One important aspect of memory palaces is the creation of associated imagery. If you want to fill a memory palace you need to create and be creative. You need to take an abstract word, sentence or formula and create an associated image that you can use to recall the idea later. Said in another way, if you want to be more effective with memory palaces you need to improve your creative muscle. How To Be More Creative How then can you be more creative? If I said the key to creativity is routine there would be artists all over that would cringe at the suggestion. Creativity is about spontaneity. It's about moments of inspiration that can't be bottled. And these types of moments come when we least expect them, right? At least that what I used to think. What do Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Albert Einstein and Mark Zuckerberg all have in common? They all wore the same clothes every day. Steve Jobs is famous for his black turtle neck and blue jeans. Barack Obama has said that he simply either wears a grey suit or a blue suit. Zuckerberg rocks a black hoodie. And Einstein was known for wearing a similar grey suit every single day. Why do they limit their wardrobes? They all choose to wear the same clothes everyday because of a concept called decision fatigue. The idea behind decision fatigue is simple—every time you make a decision a future decision will be slightly compromised. In other words, every time you make a decision you are more likely to make a worse decision later. For President Obama, decision making is a crucial part of his job. He can't afford to make bad decisions. Therefore he limits simple decisions like what to wear or what to eat to someone else. What this does is leave him more decision making power for the important decisions—the types of decisions that could affect the future of the country. Have you ever had the feeling at the end of a long day at work or college and when it came time to do something as simple as choosing what to have for dinner, the decision of what to cook was overwhelming? This is due to decision fatigue. So what does decision fatigue have to do with creativity? There Is A Trade-Off Between Every Decision You Make And Your Highest Order Thinking Creative types like Steve Jobs and Anne Lamott know that they need to reserve their best thinking for creation. In order to do this they cut down decision making in their lives to an absolute minimum. They did this through routine. Either by wearing the same clothes or sitting down at a desk to write at the same time every day. The evidence of other artists that used routine for creation is overwhelming. In Mason Currey's book "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work", Currey lays out the daily routines and habits of 161 of the world's greatest artists such as Woody Allen, Agatha Christie, Leo Tolstoy, Pablo Picasso, Benjamin Franklin and Jane Austen. Why does routine work so well for creation? Charles Duhigg, the author of the power of habit, says that the brain starts working less and less as we start to form regular habits. The brain can almost completely shut down and this is a huge advantage because it means you now have free mental space that you can dedicate to something else. This is how the world's greatest artists work and you can test it for yourself. How To Easily Assign "Pre-Commitments" If you want to harness the power of routine and minimise decision fatigue, start by creating pre-commitments. A pre-commitment is a decision that you make a head of time. And ideally a decision you make only once. There are so many decisions you may be making on a daily basis—decisions that may seem inconsequential but add up quickly to fatigue of your highest order thinking. What you want to avoid is having to make hundred of decisions in any typical day: – What should I eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner? – What should I wear? – What should I buy from the supermarket on the way home? – Do we need extra supplies for the coming week? – Should I buy that new jacket or those shoes? Then after all those decisions: – When should I sit down to work on my memory palace? – Should I work on the memory palace in the morning, evening, on my lunch break, or after dinner? – Should I work on my memory palace for 20 minutes or an hour? – What parts of my memory palace should I be focusing on today? But There Are So Many Decisions … It's Overwhelming! Start by taking stock of all of these daily decisions and start making pre-commitments. Try to make decisions ahead of time. For example, you could decide on a Sunday evening everything you are going to wear for the week and eat for every meal. Here is a powerful strategy: can you work on your memory palace at the same time for the same amount of time every single day? Can you remove the decision of when or whether to work on your memory palace completely? If you don't have to make a decision of whether to work on your memory palace, you can save your best thinking for the first, second or third location based image you have to place in your memory palace. Can you avoid decision fatigue? Can you use pre-commitments and routine to minimise as many decisions in your life as possible? If you can, you will leave your mind maximum freedom to create and be creative. A freedom that will allow you to create amazing things, crazy and vivid imagery that will infinitely improve the power of your associated images and the effectiveness of the Magnetic Memory Method. What Wikipedia Won't Tell You About The Real Path To Overcoming Procrastination And Learning At The Deepest Possible Level Memory devices and mnemonics improve learning efficiency. The Magnetic Memory Method is a wonderful framework for putting the use of memory devices in a usable process. Put simply—it works! If you want to take the Magnetic Memory Method to the next level and be a more effective memoriser you should start with a clear vision of the outcome you want to achieve from the use of your memory palaces. A clear vision allows you to save time by first removing information you don't actually need to memorise. This in turn means you can focus more intensely on the information that truly matters. Once you are clear about your destination, you then need to overcome psychological resistance to change. You can do this by connecting deeply with your underlying motivation in order to build the emotional energy you need to overcome procrastination. And finally you can maximise the effectiveness of the Magnetic Memory Method by minimising decision fatigue and incorporating routines into your daily life. If you can reduce the daily mental load of simple inconsequential decisions, you can release your creative potential for a vivid world of associated imagery. 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Do you get overwhelmed and frustrated every time you need to come up with new ideas when using memory techniques as part of your brain training? Especially when learning a foreign language? You know what it's like struggling to come up with mnemonics. It can feel a bit like pulling nails out of dead wood with a pair of rusted tweezers. And what really makes the pain so bad is that you know that your brain is teeming with ideas. Great ideas … If only you could catch them. Here's the good news. In this unconventional brain training post I'm going to teach you how … You Can Catch More Great Ideas Than The Most Successful Fishing Fleet In The World (Catches Fish)! Just pick and choose from these super simple brain training activities and start with the most appealing. We're going to go deep into each one so that you'll have the fullest possible understanding. Add one or more per month over a year's time and you'll enjoy an overflow of ideas so powerful it will take ten lifetimes and thousands of employees to handle them. Just Kidding – Most Will Be … Crap. Seriously. As awesome as having boatloads of ideas can be, the real power comes from the refinement brain training brings. We'll talk about that too a bit further on so your ideas will always come out shining. But here's the important thing for now: You can't refine what you don't have. And you can't get more ideas to refine if you aren't already producing a lot of ideas in the first place. That's why you need an unending flow of ideas that you can turn on at will and focus into form with laser intensity whenever you choose. Here are 3 unconventional ways how brain training can make that happen. 1. Milk Your Mind For Ideas Each And Every Morning Most people flush their most vibrant ideas down the toilet as soon as their feet hit the floor. It's true. By the time you hit the head, you've forgotten most, if not all, of a valuable stream (pun intended) of ideas you'll never get back. I'm talking about your dreams. Of course, most of what we dream makes little sense, at least not without practicing the art of dream recall. Even then, dreams remain fundamentally surreal and devoid of fixed meaning. But just because they may be meaningless, doesn't mean your dreams can't help you create meaning. Au Contraire! Since the early beginnings of literature, for example, Daniel in the Bible, making dreams meaningful has been a practice powerful enough to direct the choices of kings. And with The Interpretation Of Dreams, Freud created an entire industry by empowering people to interpret their dreams and generate ideas about what to do and how to live in the world. You don't have to use the dreams you remember to influence world leaders or deal with childhood trauma. You can simply jot down what you remember and then free-associate to the images and vignettes. Here's a quick way to get started with this form of brain training: 1. Get a dream journal and pen/pencil. Make it exclusive to your dream capture practice. 2. Place the journal where it's impossible to miss near your bed. You can even date it before you go to sleep and leave it open at the page you'll write on. 3. Make the commitment to remembering your dreams. Just say your personal version of, "I remember my dreams. I write them down." That mantra in itself will serve as powerful brain training. 4. Free-associate to one or more of your dreams. It helps if you get relaxed first. Let ideas come to mind and jot them down. Don't think about it or try to guide them. Let them breathe. If you recall no dreams … No. Big. Deal. Write down, "no dreams" and perhaps a few notes about how you slept. Before you know it, you will start remembering your dreams with depth and intensity. And when you practice associating with these dreams, you'll always be able to come up with new ideas. The best part is that you're journaling your dreams. This brain training practice means that you don't have to associate only with recent dreams for new ideas. You can go back through those pages for as long as you've been journaling. You'll have a treasure trove of images, narrative snippets, and longer sequences as often as you please and always find some new angle on the material. To give you an example, years ago I dreamed about the pyramids. I saw them filled with a scented lava that poured down the sides, creating a river. When I finally got to visit Egypt, for some reason, I remembered the dream and started to explore it for ideas. I was there to research ancient Egyptian culture for its relationship to memory and reincarnation, past lives, etc. That was all fine and dandy and I learned some great stuff in some of the museums I'll be telling you about soon. But the fact that I remembered this dream and the lava was scented led me to think about aromas, and I wound up wondering if there is a relationship between scent and memory. It turns out there is. I have found a wealth of research material on the matter, much of which centers on the use of oils in mummification – one of the most memory-centered activities in all of history. Would I have thought to connect scent and memory without this dream that helped product it? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But the point is that without the practice of dream journaling as a form of brain training, I probably never would have thought about scent and memory in the context of mummification and essential oils in Ancient Egypt. Deliberately remembering your dreams is a way of engineering happy accidents and generating new ideas that come power packed with resonating value. It's easy, fun, quick and easy to do. It creates long term value and can change your life in many other ways too. 2. Brain Training Pulls Ideas Out Of Thin Air Like Pushups Pack Muscles On Your Arms If dream recall doesn't appeal, there's always brute force. And that's the way the following approach may feel at first. But once you get into it, things get faster, easier and more interesting. You just have to be willing to train your brain. Here's how it works, as adapted from the original exercise taught by James Altucher in Choose Yourself: Write down ten ideas every day. The benefits of completing this exercise will become plain. Just like doing consistent sets of even just ten pushups on a daily basis cannot help but strengthen your muscles … Writing Out Just Ten Ideas A Day Will Pump Up Your Thinking Pipes Will the ideas be any good? Many times no. But that's not the point. And often enough, the ideas will be good. Or they will become catalysts for betters ideas, or at least be amusing. As with pushups, so long as you keep good form, you can't go wrong. Interested? Good. Here are more specific instructions. 1. Get a special notebook and pen exclusively for this brain training exercise. 2. Write 1-10 along the side of the page. 3. Don't overthink the process. Start with the first blank space and write something down. 4. Write another idea down and keep going until you've reached 10. As with nearly every exercise you're learning now, coming with a relaxed body and mind will make a huge difference. By meditating first, or running in place, or even after performing some real pushups, your brain will be bursting with oxygen. In this state … You Can Experience Monumental Levels Of Creativity More importantly, the volume of your critical voice will go down, if not disappear altogether. You know the voice I mean. It's the voice that says, "I can't. This is stupid, pointless and useless. Why bother?" That Voice Is A Brain Training Killer! When it comes to listening to this voice, why bother, indeed? Didn't this voice already batter you with these same enthusiasm-destroying sentences yesterday? Meditation will help get that voice out of the way, letting new ideas flow with greater ease. For bonus points, you can use the same notebook you use for dream journaling. Just imagine compounding the value of the ideas nature gave you during sleep with your Altucher-style brute force ideas. Quite frankly, the value of combining the two is awesome. What's that? You want an example? Well … okay … Here are three of my ten ideas from earlier this morning. Remember, I don't judge these or even think about them too much. Just as with pushups, I'm concerned only with executing the moves with good form. In this case, good form means nothing more than … Doing. It. 1. Construct a highway from the earth to the moon out of Levi jeans. People will travel to the moon in vehicles made out of zippers and buttons. The speedbumps will be made from pockets and stitches, and all traffic lights will be made from the red Levi's tag. But they will never mean stop, only, "go faster." 2. Professors who shoot pancakes from maple syrup guns get arrested by the Spatula Police and taken to a prison made from sticks of butter. 3. All the American presidents in history suddenly appear in the present and start tattoo parlors that specialize in squeezing the Declaration of Independence onto the surface of any body part you wish. Silly stuff, right? Of course it is. But as goofy as these ideas may be, they came lightning fast and in multilayered formations. Speed and depth come from nothing more than making idea generation a daily brain training practice. It's both an art and a habit. There are no true Eureka! Moments in creativity, only ongoing processes. The longer, the better. And so whether you want to have more ideas for working with mnemonics, your work or building a better future, all you have to do is start by writing down nothing more than ten ideas. You can get started with this form of brain training today. 3. Copy, Amplify, Transform, Delete Or Downright Mutilate And Abuse The Ideas Of Others If for any reason you can't come up with any ideas at all or hit a dry spell, no stress. The world is filled with ideas already put out there. Sure, they've poured their heart and soul into creating them, but that's no reason not to … … Mess With Them! Think of Banksy. He's a master at monkeying with logos, brands, royalty and all manner of preexisting images. He copies, transforms and sometimes deletes parts of images to create new effects that lead to new feelings and ideas. Let's go through each of these approaches and see how you can make them work for you and your brain. Talent Borrows, Genius Steals, Creatives Copy Have you ever studied music? If so, then you've probably played compositions written by someone else. If you're an artist, or tried to be one, then you've probably copied at some point the works of a pro. But if you're a writer … Copying the works of others is the last thing you've ever wanted to do. Enter Kenneth Goldsmith. In this video, he talks about "uncreativity" and why you should copy, word for word, the works of other writers the way musicians and artists so all the time. (I've fast-forwarded the video to the interesting part.) Notice that Goldsmith isn't talking merely about copying the works of others. He's talking about training your brain by analyzing your choices. You get an education from writing about what you copied and how the exercise made you feel while at the same time imprinting your mind with the rhythms and metaphors of writers you admire. In other words, by studying your choices, you get ideas. Incidentally, Goldsmith's "uncreativity" exercises may sound controversial in the world of literature. Copying the writing of others to write at a higher level and produce stunning writing without hesitation has been on the radar of marketers and copywriters for decades. You can read about Gary Halbert's "neurological imprinting" and how to dig the writing of others even deeper into your mind here. But as with Goldsmith, the point of such exercises is not to clone. It's to train your brain to find connections and spontaneously produce new ideas of great wealth. For more on writing, consider Ambidextrousness and Memory: Can Dual Handedness Boost Your Brain? Cut Out The Best, Mess With The Rest Sometimes the best way to milk existing ideas for new ones is to cut them to pieces. Take Dan Walsh's Garfield Minus Garfield, for example. What makes Walsh's work so brilliant is the consistent comedy gold he mines from a preexisting comic strip simply by removing its famous namesake. You get a completely different reading experience, and your perception of John completely shifts. To take another example, try and find The Matrix DeZionized. Some people wanted to like The Matrix sequels but found the representation of Zion to be a deal-breaker. So instead of griping about it, they put all three movies together and removed Zion entirely. I don't know about you, but for me, that creates new ideas about The Matrix series that I couldn't have had otherwise. Just watching it serves as a kind of brain training. How do you use this technique to create an endless stream of your own ideas on demand? Easy. Pick your favorite novel or movie and then think about what it would be like without the lead character or some other critical element. What would Superman be like without Lois Lane? How would Anne of Green Gables play out if the Cuthberts hadn't adopted her? How would Columbo endlessly introduce himself back into the lives of his suspects if he couldn't say, "Just one more thing"? In some ways, this exercise relates to the "how many uses can you find for a paperclip?" game. But instead of adding ideas, you're deleting them. And when you delete, you can transform through replacement. Imagine, for example, if the "creator" of Garfield — had replaced the cat with Conan the Barbarian. Or James Bond? Or Julia Roberts? Okay, So Brain Training Made You Creative … Now What? By now, you've got a wealth of procedures, games and activities you can use to make your mind a machine of perpetual ideas. And you've done it all without playing any time-wasting brain games. Rest assured, the powerful effects of exercises like these don't stop here. These creativity drills infuse with everything else you do throughout the day. You will notice constant creative energy as new ideas show up left, right and center. Of course … With Great Ideas Comes Great Responsibility! After all, these ideas are like your children. It would be criminal to neglect them. That said, you do need to get rid of every idea that doesn't scale. Or rather, reshape it somehow. Instead of thinking of the culling process as tossing your children out into the cold, just imagine that you're trimming their hair. That's all it is. Shaving wool from a flock of sheep, weeding out the dud strands and using the rest to knit … A Wearable, Warm And Wonderful Idea Sweater The question is … How? Actually, this form of brain training is quite easy … Assign each idea with a value. To keep things easy, create three categories. 1, 2, 3. Green for "go," yellow for "caution," red for "forget it." Or you can use a gold coin, silver coin and a copper coin. I like this model in particular because ideas are currency. Whether it's a scratched up penny or a hundred dollar bill, you can spend all your ideas somewhere, sometime, somehow. So here's an experiment adapted from something Dean Jackson talks about in his amazing 50-minute Focus Finder video: Using the idea generation techniques you've just learned, get out three envelopes and three coins. Next, stick those envelopes to the back of the door in your workspace or on a wall or any place you'll regularly see them. Stick one coin on each envelope to indicate their value. Then, using index cards or slips of paper, sort your ideas into the envelopes based on how much value you've attached to them. You'll have to decide on your own valuation system, but … Keep It Loose And Flexible Flexibility means that you allow your ideas to appreciate. What starts off as a copper coin could easily wind up becoming silver or even leaping straight up to gold. Likewise, ideas that may have seemed gold, may downgrade over time. But no matter how things evolve on the Stock Exchange of your ideas, all of them can stay in trade and hold potential. And anytime you feel like you're lacking in ideas, you'll have three heavy bank accounts from which you can draw. Just as you can get more out of having more memory memory training techniques from around the world in your toolbox. You know that you can become more creative right now … right? Good. Then go out there, gather some ideas as part of your brain training and make something special for the world. Do it now. The post Brain Training: 3 Unconventional Techniques Guaranteed To Help You Conjure Your Best-Ever Ideas appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Here's a great question about how to memorize textbooks I received from a Magnetic Memory Method fan: What if I wanted to memorize a chapter in a textbook so I could ace a test on that subject? That would be cool, wouldn't it? Good news: It's 100% possible. No Joke When I was studying for my doctoral examinations and later for my dissertation defense (rigorous 2 hr. + grilling sessions in front of a committee of 4-7 accomplished professors), I read a total of over 500 books and articles. I'm not kidding. I almost broke my back at the library on several occasions! Here's exactly how I used to operate – and still do when I'm conducting research or just want to memorize the contents of a book using memory techniques. It's an ongoing memory improvement project to continue learning from textbooks and it all begins with this important step every time: Leave Your Fear At The Door: These Details Will Show You How To Memorize Textbooks Unfortunately, a lot of people get hung up on the details when learning how to memorize textbooks. For good reason: There are some operational factors in what I'm about to describe that might not seem to involve memorization. Trust me: Each step is essential as you learn how to memorize textbooks. If it weren't, I wouldn't have included it. Before I take any of the steps that I'm about to describe, I always begin with a carefully defined Memory Palace. As I talk about in all of my trainings, I always make sure that each Memory Palace involves a location that I'm intimately familiar with. If you're having a hard time finding good Memory Palaces, check out the MMM Podcast episode: How to Find Memory Palaces. It will help. Plus, make sure that you have the free Memory Improvement Kit so you can use the worksheets and videos as a guide. Create Limited Set Memory Palaces Based On The Textbooks You Want To Memorize I always chart out between 4-10 stations within each room of that Memory Palace. In the past, I usually made more (like 50 or so, often with between 30-50 stations within a single room). These days, I'm more focused on small sets of information. Why? Because I find that leads to more meaningful quantity over time with my current Mandarin Chinese learning project. For more information on how to create a Memory Palace, get my free memory improvement kit: Next… Create The Right Mindset This is important: Decide to work with the correct mental attitude. For example, when sitting with a textbook or journal article, I need to have the attitude that I will walk away with the most essential information firmly magnetized into my mind. You should do this too. Then Chillax Seriously. Take a moment to relax. I recommend that you adopt a traditional meditation pose on the floor, or lay down for awhile and do some progressive relaxation. Either way, I spend time practicing a bit of pendulum breathing and maybe even the Human Charger. With those operating procedures covered regarding how to memorize textbooks, let's get into further detail. 1. Look At The Book And Read The Conclusion First When approaching a new book, carefully examine the front cover and the back cover. Next, read: the colophon page the table of contents the introduction the conclusion Finally, scan through the index (if available). The scholar Gerrard Genette calls these parts of a book the "paratext," (the text beside the text). This step takes about five minutes and effectively trains your brain to understand the scope and dimension of the book with respect to its topic. Why read the conclusion first? Part of the reason is to judge whether or not the author's conclusion about his or her own subject was profound enough to warrant reading all of the steps needed to arrive at it. The introduction and conclusion also give clues regarding which chapters of the book might be the most important to focus on. 2. Manage Index Card Mania It's important to decide how much information you want to take away from a textbook in advance. That way, you don't overwhelm yourself. And you can start in a structure manner. Like this: Take out an index card and write down the name of the author, the title of the book and all of the bibliographic information. Number this card "1" in the top left corner. Before starting with a book, I tend to decide in advance exactly how many pieces of information I want to retain from it. This is the principle of "predetermination" that I discuss throughout the Magnetic Memory Method training. Often, I default to three facts or details per chapter, but always keep enough index cards on hand in case I want more. The reason for deciding these matters in advance is because a) failing to plan is generally planning to fail (especially when it comes to structured reading), and b) predetermination prevents overwhelm. Remember: Less is more. When you use the Magnetic Memory Method for something like foreign language learning or studying, you'll find that by focusing on just a few key points, a lot of the surrounding information will automatically "stick" to the memorized material. Try it. It just happens. 3. Get Started The beauty of having operating principles is that you never sit around wondering how to get started. You just dive in. So after reading the introduction and conclusion, you should now have in mind which chapters you want to read first. Just get started with one of them. If you're having decision anxiety, just go in the order they appear in the book from beginning to end. Don't let thinking get in the way of forward progress. 4.Think In Threes Here's the deal: At this point, you know that there are three pieces of information you're going to walk with away from each chapter. You've got your index cards ready to go and can start gathering the information. It doesn't have to be a limit of three. You might want to go for five or ten. The important point is to pick a structured operating principle and go with it. 5. The Ownership Mindset Since you've already adopted the attitude that you're going to succeed and literally "own" the key information in the book, it's time to play a game totally unlike other brain games I teach. This game works especially well if the book is boring or completely outside your interest. Pretend that you're the talk show host of a program and later that evening and you've got to interview the author. Millions of people will be watching, so you really need to the book. And you need to read it fast. What this mindset allows is for you to ask questions while you're reading. You'll get really curious, and instead of reading passively, you'll actively engage with the writing. Also, ask "else" questions. This means that instead of stopping after a round of: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? You add "else" to each one: Who else? What else? Where else? When else? Why else? How else? This technique will help you create new knowledge as you learn. Try it. You'll love it. 6. Categorize Every Gem (Studying Is A Numbers Game) When y0u come across a gem of a detail, write it down on the index card. Write down the page number where you found the information on the bottom right corner. Do this regardless of whether or not you've jotted down a quote. Should you ever need to find that information again, you'll know where to go. If you have any secondary ideas, use the back of the index card to capture them. At this point, don't do any kind of memorization. You're familiarizing yourself, learning, connecting the details with information you already know and gathering new facts and details. That's it. So let's assume now that you've read a book that has ten chapters and you've got three index cards for each. Each card is numbered, meaning that you now have 30 index cards. All you need now is to be prepared with 30 station in 1-3 Memory Palaces that you've hopefully already assigned to the book. 7. Start Memorizing (Magnetically) Your next step is to simply start with card #1. You want to remember the title of the book and the name of its author. That information is memorized at station #1. If you happen to know the title of the book already by heart, then you don't need to use the first station in this way, but it can still be useful to do so, and here's why: 8. Use The Author As A Visual Element You can use the author as a "lexical bridge" or "Bridging Figure" to move from station to station as you learn how to memorize textbooks. See if you can find a picture of the author online. Let's say that you are reading the book Paratexts, by Gerrard Genette. I've Googled him up and Genette looks like this. Gerrard Genette reminds me of Gillette razor blades, and so I see him shaving in that first room. To remember that it's Genette and not Gillette, I see him shaving away a beard of Ns growing crazily out of his face. For "Paratexts," I could ease either a pear bouncing up and down on a textbook, or a can of Para Paint splashing over a book – there are always options. Here's another option you can try for finding memorable characters to use as you learn how to memorize textbooks: 9. Exaggerate Everything Now let's say that card #2 says: "A text does not exist outside of the text itself." That sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? Maybe, but we don't often think about the fact that until someone comes along and reads a book, the book essentially doesn't do anything. There are billions of books standing unread on shelves around the world that only "exist" when someone is reading them or talking about them. This is what Genette means when he says that "a text does n0t exist outside of the text itself." Our minds are a kind of text, so when we are reading, two texts are intermingling. To remember all of this, my second station will feature the book Paratexts itself. I imagine it as an object in the Memory Palace I'm using. On that specific station in that specific Memory Palace, words are trying to escape from the book, and there's poor Genette trying to beat them back in because, according to him, there is no text outside of the text itself. He needs to get all of that text back in! As always, the images are big, bright, colorful and filled with exaggerated action. To get some of the other concepts in Genette's thinking that I've just described, I might see Genette giving up the battle, and then opening up a lid in his head, which is also filled with words, and allowing the words from Paratexts to mingle with the words in his mind. From there, on to the next index card. Now that you know how to memorize textbooks, you can model this process to remember any point, historical date, or formula in a book! 10. Test Yourself Before The Teacher Does The final step when learning how to memorize textbooks is to test your memorization of the details, facts and concepts you have memorized from the textbook. I recommend writing a summary from your mind and then checking it against the index cards. One of my supervisors required me to submit summaries to prove that I was reading the books on my list, so I got into that habit and have always been grateful for it. If you're a student, I highly recommend that you take this step now that you know how to memorize textbooks. It will not only deeply immerse you in your topic area, but it will provide you with material that you've already written when it comes to composing essays, pieces for publication and even your dissertation further on down the road if you decide to complete a PhD. Also, be sure to revisit the information in your mind following a procedure like the Rule of 5 or the more rigorous Recall Rehearsal procedures of the Magnetic Memory Method. It's by rehearsing the information into long term memory that you really make it your own. The best part is that the more you read, the more connections you naturally make, reinforcing what you've already learned. Now that you know how to memorize textbooks, you're going to be a Magnetic powerhouse of information! Learning How To Memorize Textbooks Is Fun! What happened during my doctoral examinations? Instead of being stressful as they are for nearly everyone else … They were fun! I had been in a relaxed state while reading and memorizing the material, and complimented this by spending a bit of time relaxing before attending the exams. I literally threw myself into a state of self-hypnosis in the corridor outside of the examination rooms. When I was asked a question, my mind zoomed to where the material was stored in one of my Memory Palaces. Once I found the information, I was able to talk at length about, whether it was Gerrard Genette's idea about "paratexts" or Aristotle's philosophy of friendship in The Nichomeachean Ethics. In case you're wondering what I did with all those index cards: I used to wrap them with an elastic band, one per book, and then store them in a shoe box. Somehow, index cards and shoes boxes were made for one another. But all those index cards are gone now and so I enjoy having nothing to do but go through the Memory Palaces in my mind. And thanks to the memory techniques and ongoing memory improvement work I do, that step is often unnecessary. But it's fun. And I'm confident it will be just as much fun for you. Further Resources Check out this infographic from How to Memorize A Textbook, a similar episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. The post What If I Wanted To Memorize A Chapter In A Textbook So I Could Ace A Test On That Subject? appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

This Man Shows You How To Unlock The Extreme Power Of Your Memory Interested? I thought you might be. The man in question is Nelson Dellis. He climbs mountains,memorizes playing cards underwater and works to solve Alzheimer's by collecting data through the Extreme Memory Challenge. Take it now. Not only does Nelson use his memory talents to create good in the world, he's also on a mission to help and inspire you to do the same. Because the fact of the matter is, when you have improved memory skills, you won't be able to stop yourself from contributing to the world at a higher level. Just remember … With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility Please enjoy this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast by downloading the MP3 and listening to it. You'll find the full transcript down below with some links throughout to help continue your education into the world of Extreme Memory Improvement. Let's get started and feel free to download the entire transcript as a PDF to your desktop for future reference. Anthony: Nelson, it's great to be able to speak with you. I've been following some of the things you've been doing for quite some time. Maybe, just for people who don't know you, give a brief overview of what got you interested in memory and how you came to achieve what you've done and take it to the level of basically bringing social good out of the achievements you've had with memory. Nelson: Yeah, you know this all started back when my grandmother was struggling with Alzheimer's as she lived in Europe. I wouldn't see her all the time but I think that made a bigger impression on me because I would go visit every six months to a year and she had drastically changed, deteriorated immensely. That made a big imprint on me. Then she passed away the summer of 2009. At that point, I had kind of dabbled in memory. I decided to take what I had read about and really drive it home and see if I could, at a young build a strong memory, a healthy brain, and I set the goal of myself winning the memory championship. That seemed like a good milestone to try to get to and to judge, test, and base all of my training scores on. I did, and I got very good at it and all motivated by my progress and eventually I ended up winning the U.S. Memory Championship four times. That's now what I do. I teach people how to unlock their memories. Anthony: That's very cool and you know one of the things that is so extraordinary is that you also turn it into social good, which we'll talk about. Talk a little bit about the book that you're working on and who it is for and why developing memory abilities is so important for the audience that you're creating it for. What If Memorizing Could Be The Most Exciting Activity In The World? Nelson: You know I still get a lot of people who approach me and talk about their father, their mother, or grandmother has early onset or has Alzheimer's, and they ask me if it's something that I can train their parents to improve their memory. Unfortunately, I don't know much about that. In my opinion, I think learning these memory techniques is a habit thing. You've got to learn it, I think, at an early age. That is something that just sticks with you. When you go into your higher education, you already know how to memorize. It is a skill that you were given in school. Right now, obviously, you see if you have a class or a teacher who gives you tips on how to improve your memory you just do it. Memorize this song. You go home. You struggle with it. You repeat it over and over and then you come back and you're excited and it's the most frustrating process. What if you lived in an age where your teachers actually had a class or spent some time teaching you memory techniques at a young age? When it would come to that poem or med school textbook that you've got memorize, you would have some toolbox in your brain to figure that out faster and more efficiently. I've been working on a book. I actually wrote a book, it's not published yet for normal people of normal age. The one I'm really excited about is this one I've been working on for kids which is teaching them memory techniques at a very young age. It's geared towards a first grader in a picture book style. Because I feel like if you can get that in the head of a kid who already has a fantastic imagination and memory, that those things could stick with them and help them be successful throughout life. Anthony: I think that's fundamental because often adults feel that they have lost their creativity somehow. It's pounded out of them through work or whatever the case may be. How do you think the people could resuscitate creativity if they felt that they have lost it? The Truth About Memory Techniques And Creativity Nelson: I know that feeling. I have felt it myself over the years. A lot of people tell me creativity is hard for me. It is hard for me to do these techniques, for example, which take a lot of creativity and imagination, but I honestly believe that anybody can do this. If you're not good at, or if you think you're not good at being creative, I think it's one of those things it is practice. I was always pretty good. I was very artistic, but I would still say I'm not the most creative person. I knew a lot of people who were a lot more creative than me. When I first heard about these techniques, a little bit skeptical and maybe thought okay this might not be up my alley or something that I might be good at, but with all the practice I've done, yeah, I'm practicing memory techniques, but for sure I'm also practicing creativity techniques. My mind is, I feel now, way more creative than it was six or seven years ago when I started this. Anthony: I'm curious about your process if we can talk shop a little bit. One of those issues really is being creative. I've always thought that, and I encountered this in Harry Lorayne is you're just doing associations. At so many levels, creativity really isn't the issue. It's more of being able to pool associations together so like famous actors or politicians or football players or whatever. I'm just curious to what extent you rely on information that you already know like pop culture images, or whatever the case may be, as opposed to things you invent on the fly or fantasy images that are not really reality so to speak. Nelson: Well, when I train for these memory competitions there's a few events. One of them is the deck of cards. How fast can you memorize them? They give you a massive number and you've got five minutes to memorize as much of it as you can. For things like that, I have systems where they are already set out. I sat down one day and decided to give each three-digit number 000 to 999 a specific person. When I came up with that list and when I use it, it's all celebrities, fictional cartoon characters from books, shows, people, friends that I know. They're all associations to things that I already know. There are other events where you have to kind of make stuff up on the fly, for example, a list of words or names. Most of that is where you have to be very creative because you don't know what you're going to get. You've got to come up with the pictures, but what I do is I'll look at a pair of words or a name and a last name, and I'll come up with that association to something I know but on the fly. If I can't, then I break it down into something smaller that is recognizable. That's always the process is to break it into something I know. It's still a creative process whether you already have associations to things or not because you still have to interweave those images with, for example, a Memory Palace or some narrative that is totally make believe. Why You Should Go Climb A Mountain If You Want To Find More Memory Palaces Anthony: To what extent do you prefer Memory Palaces based on real locations you've actually visited to just made up Memory Palaces, or even based on places that exist but you've never been to. Nelson: Right. I know some people who do all those that you mentioned. I'm more of the real places that I've been to and had a memorable experience there. To me, I love going to these places. I climbed Everest a few years ago, and I have a Memory Palace where I'm on the mountain going through base camp and the higher camps and all that. I love the fact that when I train I get to go to that place. I think that's very important at least for me to make my memories, when I memorize stuff, that much more memorable. I do know some people who use video game settings or even fictional rooms. They maybe design them on their computer or draw it or whatever. It is not a real place but it works. Anthony: One question a lot of people have is can you reuse a Memory Palace and what's your experience with that? Nelson: When I'm training, I do multiple decks a day so I've got to have a large collection of Memory Palaces. If I were to have just one and I use it over and over and over again, I'm going to get some echoes and some confusion. I'm sure if you practice, you could probably eliminate some of that. I like to have fresh Memory Palaces come competition time. I'll use a few and then leave those alone for a few days while I use other ones and then cycle back to them so that they empty themselves out. That being said, if I have something that I want to memorize forever so this is what I'm talking about for training is temporary. I'm memorize a deck of cards, I recite it and then I don't really care to keep that particular deck of cards any longer. It's meaningless almost. That's why I cycle through them. If it is some trivia set or something for school or something really important that I want to keep forever, then I typically take or design or find a Memory Palace specifically for that information and I use it only for that. I would never tape over it. I'll just use it as this hard drive, external hard drive, if you will, to store that piece of information. Anthony: How often do you feel you need to revisit or rehearse that information or to keep it fresh and overcome the forgetting curve? Nelson: You know, probably when you start out review is essential frequently, but over time it's something I – maybe every six months I'll go back and check it out. If there are gaps in it, I can go back and kind of relearn it just to solidify it. Why The Real Magic Of Memory Is In Keeping It Real Anthony: Do you ever experiment with adding a condition to a Memory Palace so you can reuse it? I'm sure you are familiar with the procedure of taking an original Memory Palace and then having a version made out of ice, a version made out of wood, grass, or maybe there would be a blue version, a red version and a yellow version. You ever mess around with that stuff? Nelson: Yeah, I've heard of that. More like you make it big or you imagine yourself miniature inside of it or something. I've heard of that. I've never actually tried it. I don't know. I just like to do it as real as the place is. Anthony: Right, that's exactly how I like to work as well. One thing too, just if we can be nerdy about this a little bit more, I'm curious do you see yourself walking through the Memory Palace? Do you have a first person viewpoint or is it like a bird's eye view of a blueprint? How is it working for you, or do you do all three in different situations? Nelson: I'm not there. I guess its first person but looking at a location in this Memory Palace and something is happening there. It's not like it's me seeing it. It's just like a security camera. Anthony: Yeah, that's cool. I mean that is just one question that I get again and again is how that people are supposed to navigate it and how they're supposed to see it. I often try to encourage them to not see it at all but rather think of it as a star in a constellation that you've carefully crafted and reduce the reconstruction of the Memory Palace to the bare minimum so you can focus on those weird and crazy images that you've put there. Nelson: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I don't really think about whether I see it or who is seeing it or what angle it is. It's just I just think of that slot, I create the image, and I move along. How To Snag Anything You Want To Memorize By Associating It With Feelings Anthony: That must be important for speed since you're often engaging in speed drills. Nelson: Yeah, when you first start out you linger and you make sure you have it in your head, but as you try to cut down your times to get faster at this process you really have to, like you said, cut these images down to their bare minimum where it's almost just a fleeting part of that image. We were talking about it last week. There was a UK Championship and some of us were saying that it's almost a feeling. When you get fast at it, and that's honestly, we go really fast and sometimes we forget things. When you have a really good run through say a deck of cards and it's fast, what you'll find is like the images that you were picturing were just all feeling. There's my dad at this location. It's not him per se at this point. It's the essence of him or I guess how he makes me feel when he's in my presence. Whatever, but he's there. Which is interesting because when I first tell somebody how to do this technique, I tell them to sit there, close their eyes, really imagine your dad, if that's what you're picturing, his hair, how he smells, how he talks, all these little details to make that image memorable. Once you get faster at it, you've got to cut some of that out and really just cling on to the things that are what make it stick. Anthony: One of the things that I think pushes people away from these extraordinary techniques is the element of let's call it rigorous cartoon violence. To what extent do you find that's necessary or are you able to use softer, gentler imagery to trigger the target information. How To Safely Use Your Taboos For Extreme Memory Boosts Nelson: Yeah, it's funny. I did a talk once, and I feel like a lot of my images are violent/sexual. I'm not a violent person by nature but my images they tend to be. I was leading an audience through an example and one woman just couldn't get it, and she was like I just can't picture gruesome things. I just can't do it. What she did from then on, she was a very spiritual person, she kind of related it all back to religion and that seemed to work for her. What I pull from that is that everybody's minds are different. I often encourage that you should go for pictures that are bizarre and silly, over the top and if you can, sexual or gruesome, grotesque in nature just because those stick because of them being so out there and loud. For me, I think that's an important part. For numbers and cards, I have actions that are violent or sexual for sure. Anthony: But you still manage to be a good citizen of the planet? Nelson: Yeah, I've heard people say I don't want to do that because I feel like it will take over my mind and I'm going to become a bad person, but that never happens. Is Every School In The World Evil For Not Teaching Memory Techniques To Children? Anthony: Going back to the book for young people and the issue of getting them young to at least have exposure to these techniques, a lot of people ask me and have probably asked you. It's one of the biggest questions. Why aren't these memory techniques taught in school? It's really easy to fall back on the idea, and there's probably a truth to the idea, that we are stuck in a Victorian education system that was designed to create obedient factory workers and so forth. What's you're take on it? Nelson: It's interesting because on the flip side every time I go up to a school or university and I demonstrate or I talk to someone who has seen what I can do and they want me to come talk about it at the school, there's always an excitement for it. They can't believe it's not in their school, that kids don't know about. But then what happens is, we get down the road, conversations, I do a few little talks and there's times maybe working together involving these techniques into the curriculum and then it falls flat. I don't understand it. It recurs a lot. It's just a funny thing. I guess memory because it's so abstract I guess in a way and it's not as tangible as say math. You can write your solutions on the board and then the work can stepped out. Whereas memory is very – everybody like I was talking about before is very different. You can't really see how another student is memorizing. You guide them and hope that they're following along. I don't know if that's the reason why it still hasn't caught on. I've been at this for a number of years and I've had so many people interested and promises and ideas and they just – some have gone through of course but not as many as I would like. You know at first I did this just because it was a personal thing. I wanted to improve my memory and my brain health. Then I realized it's a bit hard to train when you don't have kind of the end goal. With memory improvement, if I want to have a competition what am I really training for? Yeah to improve my mind, fine, but I'm a very quantities person so how do you measure that. When is it good enough? To be honest, I don't know actually have the answer. But at least with the memory championships I knew numbers and times that I had to achieve in order to be competitive for the title. That kept me very motivated in terms of driving me to compete. Why Advanced Memory Skills Are The Best Addiction You'll Never Want To Kick The thing is this stuff is so addicting. Once you realize you have this power to memorize more than you ever thought you could, and then you train and get even faster it, it's a hard thing to let go of and then when you see other people in your circle, your memory circle improving you want to stay up with them especially when you are already at the top. That's my problem right now. I won it four times, and I keep saying I'm going to stop because I don't want to end up losing. I always wrestled with that problem. Do I keep training? And if I do, I've got to train harder because the competitive levels keep rising versus just calling it quits. I'm just doing it for myself. Anthony: Have you ever plateued? Nelson: Oh yeah, I'm at a pretty big plateau or I have been this past two years. I think a lot of it has to do with difference in motivation from previous years. Whereas before I never won, I wanted to win, and then I won. I wanted to win again and then I lost the next year so I wanted to come and win that time. Now it's like okay four is a good number. Why would five be any better? Do I really have to train that hard anymore? When you have that feeling that's when you plateau. You're not really trying to find new avenues to get better because where you're at has been good enough. I don't know how I won the U.S. Championship this year because – well I did very well in the names, but something I used to be the best at which is numbers and cards I was okay. Lance Tschirhart, another American, he broke the U.S. record 29 seconds in cards which is crazy. I've done that once in training. Then 360 digits, I've done that in training but never in competition. I need to push forward to break this plateau. I'm kind of where I was around 300, around 30 seconds for cards. I need to change some things, which I've started to do and I'm seeing improvements now. It's been a lot of work to break this particular plateau. Anthony: What does a typical training session look like? Is there a fixed daily routine or how do you drill yourself to reach something like the 30-second area for 52 cards? The Best Memory Routine Advice You'll Ever Get Nelson: It depends on where I am in terms of what's coming up. Is there a memory competition down the road or is it off-season so to speak. I used to just train always. Like four to five hours a day, I'd do sets of numbers, cards, names, words, just every day. Then I pulled back a bit. I think after I won in 2014 it was the first time I took break and I didn't touch anything for like six months, which made it really had to get back into. Now that I'm training for The World Memory Championships, which has more different or varying disciplines, I have a lot more to train. I'll kind of split up my weeks by Monday/Wednesday, Tuesday/Thursday and then Friday and one of the weekend days I kind of leave for experimenting and working on systems. All the days I will usually do speed numbers and speed cards, just memorizing cards and numbers. Then on the Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll work on the longer disciplines. In the World Championships, they test you for an hour on how many numbers you can memorize and how many packs of cards you can memorize. I work on that. It just ends up being, when I'm really down to it, a five-hour training day. Anthony: Wow! That sounds intense. Given that amount of investment, do you think memory competitions should be included in the Olympics, or do you have any ideas why it isn't already in the Olympics? Nelson: Yeah, I think so. I think the reason why it's not though is because it's horribly boring to watch. That's not to say that you can't make it exciting. I'm working on that, but the World Championships is extremely boring to watch. I love to compete in it of course, but compared to staring at someone for three days straight for eight hours a day watching them stare at a piece of paper taking tests. How To Make Dudes And Dudettes Memorizing Stuff Look Sexy, Stimulating And Exciting As All Hell That's not the most exciting sport to watch but there's a memory tournament that I created two years ago called the Extreme Memory Tournament and we try to make it somewhat of a spectator sport. I think we're doing a good job so far. The XMT, as we call it, is a two-day competition and everything is digital first of all. It's all one-on-one matches. Everybody who is competing is split up into groups kind of like the World Cup. On Day 1, you play everybody in your group in each of the disciplines. There are cards, numbers, words, names and pictures. They are all short disciplines like one-minute memorization. The cool thing is – so I'm going up against you for example. Let's say we're memorizing a deck of cards. Here we are on our laptops racing through this deck of cards as fast as possible and on the screen it's broadcasted to the audience so people can see exactly how fast I'm going through my deck of cards versus you. Who finishes first and then during recall while constructing those decks, trying to remember their correct order, it's who can get the most right. If we both got it right, who did it faster? It makes it very visual. It's short. It's exciting. It's this battle. It's not so much test taking anymore versus there's a little bit of strategy involved and it's a lot more exciting that way. Anthony: That sounds like it would be very exciting. Like speed chess basically. Nelson: Yeah. Anthony: Cool, well speaking of the word extreme, and your predilection for names talk about the Extreme Memory Challenge and the research that's going on that you're involved in. Are There Genetically Superior Memorizers Roaming The Planet? Nelson: Going back to this tournament, we started it because this company called Dart Neuroscience, they're in San Diego. They were doing some research with Washington University in St. Louis, and I was part of that study amongst other memory experts. What they're trying to do is to try to find and create a drug that improves memory and brain health and cognition. Not an easy task, but they have a lot of their funds going into a lot of universities for research and they're doing their own research as well. I've worked with them obviously to help put together the tournament. They were the key sponsor those two years we ran it. They are also working, and I'm helping them with this because I totally want it to succeed, is they developed a memory test. It is long-term memory test, and they're just trying to get a million at least, honestly as many people to take the test as possible. The idea being we're trying to locate or identify people who have naturally good long-term memories. That's a very rare thing to find. Maybe not even somebody who we'll find, but you will only know if you get enough people. Once we find those people, we'll be able to do a lot of DNA testing to figure out what separates these people from the norm. That's the idea. It's called Extreme Memory Challenge. It's a pretty easy fun test. It doesn't hurt. It's easy. You're helping research and if anybody is listening to this, I would love for you to just take the test and share it. The more people that take it the better and you can actually see how you compare to me. I've taken the test as well. Anthony: We know that there are people who are extraordinarily good with mnemonics, mnemonists, and are you split testing them so that you have results from people who aren't using mnemonics compared to those who are to take the test. Nelson: At this point, we're just honestly getting as many people to take the test. Once we have people who have scored highly, we'll be more careful in how we weed those people out. That's when we'll investigate further whether they were using memory techniques or not. The goal is to find the people who were not using memory techniques. Right now, we're just trying to get people to do well on the test. Anthony: What do you think about the claims and the studies that say technology is now doing so much of our memory work that we're going in the opposite direction where our memories are degrading? Have you found that for yourself and had that observation? The Most Outrageously Powerful Definition About Memory Is Just One Word Long Nelson: Definitely. The one thing I've learned about memory through this whole journey is that it's attention. That's all it is. When you talk about techniques, Memory Palaces and number systems all you're doing at the very basis of it all is paying a lot of attention to something. You're building this elaborate system for one specific thing. You're sitting there thinking about it really hard. That's paying attention to something and that's what memory is. If you're not paying attention to something, somebody says something that you should remember you're not going to remember it. This era is all distractions. Just think of when you're out having a conversation with a friend. You usually have your phone out, whether it's on the table or in your hand or in your pocket. It's going off, it's lighting up. Maybe theirs is lighting up to, versus when you would actually go out with someone back in the day, and you maybe didn't have text messages awhile back. You'd have to say we'll meet here at this time. You did and then actually paid attention to that person. That exchange was probably more memorable or easier to remember than ones you have these days because of that technology. I definitely believe that this day and age it is so hard to pay attention to things. We're constantly being bombarded. It's just making memory that much more difficult. We don't have to use it as much as well, so all that together just kind of makes our memories so along this journey as well I try to figure out a way to give back and to educate people on all the things I have kind of figured out. As we talked about before, it's shocking that this stuff isn't in schools and that people don't know about it. We all can do it. It's all latent within us, the skill. I tried to figure out a way. How can I share this with people? I thought okay maybe I can create a blog/website where I post all these kind of tips and talk about memory and how do I make it a little more exciting. I tied it to another passion of mine which mountain climbing. How To Memorize Safely – With Almost No Oxygen In Your Brain! That's where Climb for Memory came from. I started climbing mountains and updating my blogs about my trips and photos. I was trying to get people to be drawn to the site. Climbing Mt. Everest, things like that, things that people are kind of fascinated by and don't always get the opportunity to learn about. It's kind of a diversion. It's like hey look here, but what you're really looking at is this cause I'm climbing for, which I also happen to know a great deal about it. Here's how you memorize this and that and keep your brain healthy. It was an effort to raise awareness for Alzheimer's and also funds as well. Anthony: If I understand correctly, you're also doing some experiments and as you climb with different altitudes and how your memory responds or is that something you're starting in the future. Nelson: Yeah, I've done that on some of my higher altitude climbs. Since I train all the time. I kept doing it on these long expeditions. For example, Mt. Everest, not many people know but it's a two-month expedition, so you're at high altitude, 17,000 feet or higher for about six weeks there. Your body goes through some serious changes and near the top of the mountain, you're getting a third of the oxygen you would at sea level. You need oxygen. Your body needs oxygen to function properly and to think straight. If you ever see these videos online of pilots, they simulate oxygen just dropping. They test them and they just become idiots within seconds. It's crazy. They can't put a square peg through a square hole. They put it through the triangle you know something like that. They can't do basic arithmetic. For climbers, we spend a lot of time acclimatizing so that when we do get to the top we're not like that. That's not to say we're not stupid but we can think a little better. I've have been testing that with memory. What's surprising to me is I've actually done as good or better as I went up in altitude. I have no idea why, but I just love to test that kind of stuff to see how these techniques fair with the elements. Anthony: They say that norepinephrine is produced in novel situations, which is thought to be an aid to memory, that chemical in the brain. Nelson: Yeah, I've had some thoughts about it, and that's the one that's come up. It's the most extraordinary experience being up there. You put yourself in some really memorable hairy, scary situations constantly for six to eight weeks. You walk away with an experience that is super memorable because of how novel it is, and I'm sure that plays into all your thoughts while you're up there including when I would do my memory training. How Big Is Your Memory? Anthony: Now you know personally the size and the dimension of Mt. Everest, do you have a sense or a feeling of the size of your memory? Nelson: No, I don't think so. Obviously, it's contained to that thing that's inside my head which has a finite size. But in terms of how many Memory Palaces I can have and how many bits of information I can store there, I have no idea. I mean there can always be some way that I can press information into bigger chunks and Memory Palaces that, like you said, you know you alter things in your Memory Palace and you can memorize something totally new inside of it. Where is the limit? These memory competitions are a great example because when they first started in the early 1990s the records there were, at the time, very impressive, but now they are a joke. At the time, you thought okay you can't really go that much faster with a deck of cards and then somebody broke a minute. Now people are getting under 30 seconds like it's the easiest thing in the world and people are approaching the 20second, people even in training getting 19, 18 seconds. Breaking The Speed Limit Of Memory One Card At A Time Now you're like, okay I don't think you can get much faster than that. Who knows, at some point somebody is going to come up with something that allows you memorize a deck of cards in 10 seconds, which is crazy. When does it end? Obviously, you've got to look at the cards so there is a limit to that, but in terms of how much you can store and how limitless the memory is, it's crazy to think about. Anthony: I have an interview on the podcast with Phil Chambers who is chief arbiter of the World Memory Championships … Nelson: Sure, yeah. Anthony: He said that they're working on an app (I guess it would be) that's going to be able to show the cards faster than the human hands can move, which it sounds like you already have some version of that if you're doing a digital read of the cards in your competitions. Nelson: Yeah, I mean that's what that would be, right. It's a digital version that you could just click through. There another couple of training sites online that people use, and when we talk about personal bests, who has been able to do this a lot of them are doing faster times on the digital format because you don't have to like thumb through the deck. You're just moving an arrow, clicking an arrow to go to the right and you can go a lot faster. Anthony: I think what he was talking about is that they would set a speed so you would not have any manual control over when or for how long the cards were displayed. Do you think you would be able to handle someone else controlling or an automatic process controlling the duration of the exposure? It's All A Matter Of Training Nelson: It's all a matter of training. If you tell me you're going to show me a deck of cards, one every quarter second, okay, I'm going to train that. Maybe I can't do it immediately. Maybe I'll train with – well I can do it in about 30 seconds, so maybe that's approaching a half second per card. I would start there and cut it down. When you put these boundaries and these limitations is when people suddenly improve. You see somebody run the 4minute mile for the first time and then suddenly you can do it as well because it's possible or it's a barrier and now people have something to work towards. I don't think it's too hard unless you just don't practice. That's it. I do a lot of cross training and some of these guys that end up winning, there's a guy named Rich who won four times in a row. I mean these guys just work day in and day out lifting, working out crazy. I love watching videos of him just how he trains and his mentality through it. I think that's the only way to get better is practice with anything, honestly and that's the biggest thing with memory. People think it's a natural thing or I have some talent for it naturally. Honestly, I don't think so. I think it's training. Yeah, maybe some people need less training to get to where I am or to get even better than me. If you train and you are gung ho and so motivated to do a certain thing, you can do anything. Anthony: Do you have a favorite quote? Nelson: Favorite quote? Yeah, I think every year before the memory championship I always Tweet and stuff. Let me see if I can say it right. It's dumb, it's so dumb, but it's from, what movie is that? It's one of those movies that came out in the 1990s. It's a spoof. Anyways, this guy is going out on the football field and he's kind of down on himself. He doesn't believe in himself, whatever. He sits on the bench and Mr. T comes up to him who is this high school janitor and he says before he goes out, he like "Believe in the ball and throw yourself." Which you hear it and it's like he's just saying it backwards. The guy looks at him kind of confused, but I always loved that because it's kind of true. I think usually you're supposed to say believe in yourself and throw the ball, or whatever it is, and that's how you succeed. I think when you want to succeed you've got to train a lot. You've got to practice properly. You've got to really make this your life if you really want to achieve it. When it comes down to performing in a competition, it's not about believing in yourself, it's believing in the thing that you know instinctively. You just believe in the ball and you just throw yourself into it. That's what I was saying before. When I memorize and I get a really good time, it's when I thought or memorized the least. It's like I didn't even feel like I was memorizing. It was just so natural. That's what you strive for through your training. That you've done it so many times that it's just a matter of throwing yourself out there and doing what you know. Anthony: Something really interesting came up when you were searching in your mind for the quote and even the movie that it came from, and I was interviewed myself last night and there's slips of the mind that come. Well, it some book I read at some time at some point, but people seem to expect that people using mnemonics wouldn't have these same lapses. There's No Such Thing As A Bullet Proof Memory Champ Do you ever prepare yourself for social situations? Like I presented about language learning and memory techniques at the polyglot conference in Berlin, and I went there prepared because I knew people were going to come up to me and give me some crazy phrase and I would be put on the spot. Of course, I want to demonstrate the validity of these techniques so I was really on the ball. It was successful the whole weekend, but there's this pressure of performance. Do you ever have that or people throw you curve balls to see where you're at? They somehow like in an example where you can't quite recall the name of movie they say come on. What's your experience with that kind of stuff? Nelson: Yeah, over the years I've been caught off guard and kind of made a fool of. I'm not a tape recorder. A lot of these things and you can attest to this, is you've got to turn it off. It's to me a memorizing machine. You've got to be actively doing it. Sometimes I just don't want to do it. I'm tired and don't want to focus and pay attention. I just want to veg out. When I have these talks I have to be on because I want to practice what I preach and I have little tricks that help me. You know people catch me off guard. Most of all it's just I turn it off. I really focus on being on point. If somebody comes up where they're like hey what was your favorite movie and I'm like oh the one with the memory and I can't remember. It's just I feel like a situation like that kinds of make me seem human and normal which is what people want to see as well. It's nice to see someone who seems superhuman, but on some level if there's too much of that then you almost feel like I can't do that. I think that's actually maybe good to motivate someone. It's like okay. I can do that. It doesn't seem like he's 100 percent but it's still very impressive. Anthony: Speaking about that, a lot of people they doubt themselves, they doubt that it's possible for them. What do you think is just one little thing that a person could do that would give them a quick victory so they have a taste of what's possible? Two Ways To Turn Your Memory On And Keep It Humming Nelson: I'll give you two things. The first one is pay attention. It's the most elementary thing of course but if I'm telling you that most of memory is paying attention, and you go out and say you have a meeting or a party you're going to, and you tell yourself I'm going to pay attention and remember ten people's names. That's my goal. Make it a game or something. You will. You will just from the fact that you're telling yourself to do that. You're wired, you're turning it on to complete that particular task. You will perform 100 times better than if you just hoped to remember people's names and you didn't really think about it. The second thing is the Memory Palace. Think of your house. It's a quick thing. Think of your house. Start at your front door and whenever you want to memorize a list of things just picture each item along a path of your house. Then when you want to recall it, you just imagine yourself through that house and like you said, you can't forget how to get from your front door to your bedroom or whatever. You will remember what was there. It's surprisingly simple and surprisingly powerful as well. Anthony: What's the one question you wish that someone would ask you about memory that no one ever seems to narrow in on? Nelson: Oh, that's good. Another question that people should stop asking me and that's do you play in Vegas? I don't. I don't think it would be much of a help to have a good memory there. What's the one that I hope they would ask me is when can we start training? Anthony: Very good. This has been a wonderful experience getting to speak with you and I know the people who listen to this podcast are going to love it and find it very inspiring. How can people who want to learn more about you, about Climb for Memory, about the Extreme Memory Challenge and your upcoming book, how can they find you online and get in touch with you and maybe there will be some people who love to ask you about hiring your help as a personal trainer. Nelson: Yeah, the easiest way is to Climb for Memory. You can contact me through there. There's a lot of information on there about memory and my climbs and stuff like that. Then I have my YouTube channel where there are a lot of videos of my climbs and little snippets of memory talks that I've done. There's a lot if you just Google memory. You can throw my name in there too if you want to look at something specifically for me. Otherwise, there's a lot of memory resources out there these days, there's no shortage of it. Further Resources Nelson Dellis on Twitter Man With The World's Strongest Memory Crusades Against Alzheimer's USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis On Memory, Tenacity & Conquering Anything on Jonathan Levi's Becoming Superhuman Podcast Nelson Dellis Interview On The Jeff Rubin Show The post Extreme Memory Improvement With Memory Champion Nelson Dellis appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Have you ever purchased something and hated it? And yet, for some reason, you gradually … … started to love it? Or have you seen a movie that thrilled you, only to find that your opinion suddenly sours? If so, then it could be that … Someone Is Seriously Messing With Your Memory! And there's bad news. The people involved in changing how you feel about products and media you've consumed hold more than one weapon of memory destruction. Let's look at just one of the ways advertisers manipulate your memory. But please understand that I am in no way talking about subliminal advertising. The tools we'll explore rely solely on images and procedures that rehearse, train and retrain how you think by accessing your memory in particular ways. One tool, for example, involves … Blatant And Phoney Misinformation About The Competitors Do you remember the Pepsi Taste Challenge? How thinly they disguised the fact that they were testing Coca Cola with the poor citizens they ambushed on the streets with Coca-Cola? How Pepsi used to call Coke, "the leading cola?" By representing their main competitor in these challenges by association, Pepsi was capitalizing on the fact that human memory is constructed. Our memories don't come from one location in the brain, but several. This means that as our memories come to the fore, they can be changed by the catalyst responsible for summoning them. And because the advertisements make use of nostalgic images, rousing music and cleverly placed sound effects that also invoke nostalgia (the sound of a soda can being cracked open or bubbling pop snapping against ice), they create feelings. These feelings cause your brain to associate positive experiences with the product and negative feelings with the competition. Because as this documentary reveals, it's not about selling a product. It's about selling an idea: At least, that's the theory. Scientists and marketers call this effect "memory blending." At its highest level, the injection of blended memories into your mind makes you think that you're the one who formed your preferences. And if advertising can change how you feel about something you've purchased in the past, you can be led to buy more and … … Think It Was Your Idea! Soda companies aren't the only ones to use product comparison and misinformation to create blended memories. Many companies do, including airlines, stereo and speaker manufacturers and fashion designers. The craziest part of all is that in so many cases, the difference between the products is marginal to none. If information is to be perceived by consumers … It Must Be Done By Advertising And because what matters most in these advertisement campaigns rely on how we feel about past experiences, advertisers constantly make references to childhood experiences. Playing with toys, camping in the woods, munching on cereal. You might see a mother with a child, a doctor with a patient or athletes with their trainers. Or the ads may feature running on the beach, playing tennis or eating in a restaurant. These iconic, universal cues apply to almost everyone living in the West. Even when traveling in countries like Egypt, I have seen ads nearly indistinguishable from those we see in North America and England. Two Routes To Radical Memory Change Let's look deeper at how all of this memory change works. As we've already discussed with the Pepsi Taste Challenge example, the ads work at altering your subjective experiences if the past. Secondly, the ads change how you think about an objective experience from your past. Many ads, especially the Pepsi challenge, blend the two together. To take another example, let's look at an interesting experiment conducted by Kathryn Brown and reported upon in 1997. In the experiment —- demonstrated that consumers will take second-hand information and use it to reconstruct memories of past experiences. They will do this completely outside of conscious experience. Here are the basics of the experiment: 2o female and 30 undergrads at a university in Iowa were shown the trailer for a Johnny Depp movie called Nick of Time. https://youtu.be/3ylx6aTM2hU The researcher chose this movie because: 1. The plot and marketing were shaped to appeal to Generation X. 2. The movie had not been released in Iowa, reducing the likelihood that students were aware of it. After viewing the film, the researcher asked the students to give their opinion of the film. They were asked to rate the trailer on traits such as acting, directing, pacing, etc. Brown also asked the participants if they would like to see the film in the future. The researcher then thanked the participants for their time after a twenty minute period given for watching and rating the film. For all intents and purposes, the participants thought the experiment was over. Next, however, the students were given reviews of the film to read. Although the reviews were professionally written, students were not given the names of the reviewers or the names of the newspapers or magazines from which the reviews were taken. Students, for example, might have a positive association with Rolling Stone magazine that could influence the experiment. The reviews given to the students were either thumbs-up with 5 stars or thumbs-down with 0 stars. After reading the reviews, the students were given a surprise memory test. The test asked them to reevaluate the movie trailer and then talk about how much they felt the reviews affected them. Although it was an option to say that they couldn't remember their previous evaluation, less than a measurable percentage took this option. As a result, students who received the positive reviews shifted to more positive evaluations the second time around. Likewise, students who received the negative reviews downgraded their opinion of the film. Overall, when questioned, most participants believed: 1. That they had been consistent with their original evaluation. 2. Their original evaluation had not been affected by the second-hand information. The results of the experiment suggest one thing: Your Memory Of Opinions You Once Held Can Be Eradicated! Not only that, but in addition to changing your thoughts about past opinion, your future choices can be altered too. Those who said they would like to see the film based on the trailer but were given negative reviews tended to change their mind. And we've probably all had this experience. I remember being very excited to see Jupiter Rising after watching the trailer at the Sony Center Cinema in Berlin. But the reviews completely decimated that desire and to this day, I'll never really know whether I might have liked the movie or not until I maybe one day watch it. All this said, there's one big fat white elephant in the room … Is This Experiment Valid? It seems so, but we need to question: * The likelihood that they would not have seen the trailer on a national TV station. They do not appear to have been quizzed about their television viewing habits. * They were university students, so we can assume that at least some of them came from another state. We do not know when they might last have traveled to another state. * When people can't properly remember their previous opinions, how can we trust them to remember whether or not they've seen a movie trailer before, let alone the entire movie? Nonetheless, as worthy as these considerations are, I don't think these problems affect the experiment too deeply. But everything we learned about today does raise one very important question … Is Selling Evil? One of the world's most successful marketing "gurus," Dan Kennedy, often says that people selling products need to come to grips with one essential fact: Marketing is always manipulation. However, the extent to which manipulation to buy through the use of product comparisons, nostalgia and reviews is unethical or even insidious has much more to do with the product than the marketing. Joe Polish sums it up best when he said in a video that … And so if the product is crap – and let's face it, soda pop does rot your body – then the marketing of the product may well seem to be evil. But if the product is awesome and makes your life better, than you may have had that experience of saying, "I'm glad I saw that ad." And in fact, here at the Magnetic Memory Method Headquarters in Berlin, hardly a day goes past when I don't get an email that starts something like, "thank god I found you." So even if the quality of products may differ, the tools of effective marketing – the written ads, radio jingles and video presentations that get you itching to buy … These Tools Of Unabashed Manipulation Are Exactly The Same! And so at the end of the day, you're truly on your own. You can do nothing more than decide for yourself. And that's why guarantees are so essential in today's world. Whether it's Amazon's 7-day return policy or the Magnetic Memory Method 1-year guarantee, not trying items is that interest you is relatively risk-free in today's world. Just don't be a jerk and ask for a refund when you've used a product and gotten value from it. In the words of the Fonz and one of my favorite marketing mentors (Frank Kern) … Always. Be. Cool. And if you'd like to grab my four free video series and Memory Improvement Kit, then you're more than willing to do that. I promise, I'll improve your memory, not bend it. And once you've done that, I guarantee that between now and the next time we meet, it will be easy-peasy for you to keep your memory 100% Magnetic. The post The Darkside And The Brightside Of How Marketers Manipulate Your Memory Every Single Day appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Memory is not what you think it is. Whereas we often use the word "memory" as if it's a singular, globular entity, memory is more than one thing. It's a collection a multiple entities that deal with different kinds of information, even … Information About Things That Haven't Happened Yet! First we have, prospective memory. Prospective memory is that wonderful device that helps you remember tasks you need to complete and events you're booked to attend in the future. The only problem is … … prospective memory isn't necessarily all that good. For example, how many times have you forgotten an appointment, to take a pill, to wash the shampoo from your hair? These slips happen, but even more interesting is how prospective memory tends to fail us most in areas that it should be the most reliable. I'm talking now about routinized tasks. For example, most of us do our own shopping. And yet, why is it that we so often forget items we need and know we need? Even pilots have this problem. Without checklists, even the most routine – and absolutely necessary operations for flight safety – would be forgotten as easily as you can forget eggs or milk. Spend One Dollar And Benefit From This Memory Exercise Forever For prospective memory to work, you also need retrospective memory. Retrospective memory helps you recall information that you learned in the past. Your home address, directions to a restaurant or where you put your medication all rely on your ability to recall where things are located in space. Without this kind memory, even if you do remember to take your pills, you won't have a clue where they are. Prospective memory and retrospective memory work together, and it's quite easy to keep them fit. Here's a fun exercise: Go to a dollar store and buy an object. It could be a ball, a pack of clown stickers or hair elastics. Next, visit a friend and ask them to let you hide the object in the back of a closet or somewhere deep beneath a bathroom sink. The more of the home you must navigate to reach the object, the better. In other words, don't put your object in the hallway closet directly inside the entrance. Put it down in that creepy basement bathroom where a hole in the wall exposes all those rusty pipes. Then make an appointment to come the next day, the next week or even the next month to reclaim the object. When you get home, replay the entire journey in your mind. See the entire path from your home to the store to the creepy basement in your friend's home. At the same time, see the object you placed in the home and nourish that image. Make it big, bright and colorful. Infuse it with a crazy energy, almost to the point of bursting. Then, use the Major Method in combination with Dr. Jim Samuels' method for memorizing appointments and associate the object with the date and time of the appointment you made for pickup. To complete the exercise, keep your appointment and claim your object. Then go hide it somewhere else and repeat the exercise as often as you like. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Not really. It's the way you use to exercise your memory as a kid, after all. Only back then, you called it a treasure hunt. And Now For Another Episode Of The You Show On The Brain Channel Having gone to the store and the secret hiding place, you now have a nice little story in your head. Your ability to recall that story is called episodic memory. Always connected to time, episodic memory makes it possible for you to recall elements of your last vacation, going to the movies and just about any expanse of experience that features a beginning, middle and end. Then there's semantic memory. This kind of memory trades in general facts that aren't bound with time (as such). Vancouver, for example, is a city in British Columbia, one of several provinces in Canada. Of course, if you're a historian and can rattle off the dates of when Vancouver was founded and when British Columbia became a province, then you might be blending in a touch of imaginary episodic memory, For example, when I think of places like Vancouver becoming a city, a little flash of story enters my mind. I see stiff European dudes with quills and parchment tricking the Natives into giving up all that precious territory for a few bottles of whiskey and a stack of shiny dimes. To take a more practical example, if you know that Vancouver is in British Columbia, Canada and Seattle is in the American state of Washington, and you're also aware of the fact that a ferry runs between them … … you can take the ferry and then use episodic memory to recall all the beauty you saw along the way. But here's the weird thing … Episodic Memories And Semantic Memories Are Stored In Two Completely Different Parts Of Your Brain! Do you remember that interview on the Magnetic Memory Method podcast with Dr. Gary Small? In that interview, he told us that our memories go into different neighborhoods of the brain. In those neighborhoods are tiny little houses in which parts of memories live. In order to simultaneously remember facts about places and episodes of time that you may have experienced, your memories have to leave their respective neighborhoods and come together in yet another part of your brain. It's like having a family reunion where everyone comes in from different cities to eat at Recall Restaurant on the tip of your tongue. (link to tip of tongue podcast) And last but not least, there's a very strange kind of memory, a kind of memory that often … Doesn't Require Your Conscious Awareness! We fall this mysterious form of recall "procedural memory." Some experts disagree whether it is a kind of memory all on its own, or a subset of semantic memory. I don't know about you, but the ability to ride a bike without thinking about it seems quite different than the semantic knowledge of how and why bicycles work as they do. The same thing goes for guitar. Knowledge of where to find notes on the fretboard and how to form chords requires a different kind of memory than the procedural memory that takes over when some maestro is ripping it up on the stage. Of course, even though procedural memory can be accessed without conscious awareness, episodic memory can intervene. For example, your mind can wander during rehearsal or performance, breaking the flow of the song and causing you to mess up. Likewise, bike riding on autopilot while daydreaming can cause you to sail through a stop light or crash into another cyclist. And then these too become episodic memories. Like, for example, the time I was hit by a car crossing an intersection on my bike and how vomited into my mouth the last time I performed on stage because my joint pain had gotten so bad. Fun Stuff All This Memory Business, Isn't It! It sure is. And now that you know about these different kinds of memory, you are truly empowered. You can exercise each of these special memory types and improve them. And if you use the Magnetic Memory Method, you can probably already see exactly how my unique approach to encoding, storing and recalling information lets you harness the power of each kind of memory you've just learned about. But if you don't know about the Magnetic Memory Method, why then now is your chance to avail yourself of my special Memory Improvement Kit and 4 FREE video series. Grab hold of the magic of these truly special memory techniques right here. And until next time … Keep Magnetic! 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Wouldn't it be great if you could experience memory improvement … … almost on auto-pilot? Here's the good news: Even if you don't use elaborate memory techniques and mnemonics, the following 5 ways will help you improve your memory almost without effort. 1. When Darkness Falls … Go to sleep with the sun. Seriously. What have you got to do after dark anyway? Netflix? How boring. Drinking in bars? How destructive to your memory. Playing Scrabble? Well … okay. That's at least halfway good for your brain. But the reality is that we're killing our memory by stating up late and waking up early. And when you kill your memory, you murder something else too: You Murder Your Intelligence! And as with all acts of murder, you will get caught and you will be sentenced to life in the prison of stupidity and forgetfulness. Mark my word. Next to getting more sleep, it's essential to … 2. Keep Your Brain Moist As The Soil Of A Mighty Rain Forest That's a fancy way of saying, drink lots of water. All too often we forget to imbibe the world's mightiest drink. Oddly enough, some people don't even like it. This strange, but true fact is responsible for forgetfulness around the world. But it doesn't have to be you. And if for any reason you struggle to remember to drink deep from the tap in your kitchen, the solution is simple enough. You can create a visual mnemonic by placing a big fat bottle of water on your desk. Or you can print out a picture of a bottle of water and stick it on the wall or window directly behind your computer. In addition to this … Use Every Bit Of Technology You've Got To Remind You Smart phones … Dumb phones … Computer calendars … All of these of these come equipped with programmable alerts. Most of them can be set to repeat every hour on autopilot. It's easy enough to ignore these alerts, however, so it helps to get theatrical. Instead of "drink water," program in something like: Drink Water Or Else All The Cats On YouTube Will Suffer One Thousand And Seven Deaths! If that doesn't get your attention, I'm not sure what else will. Well … maybe this: 3. Funnel Words Into Your Mind Like The Wind Shapes The Desert One of the beautiful things about living in Berlin is that they still have bookstores all over the place. Not only that, but you still see people reading books too. Here's a quick guide on how to read a book: Buy a book. No, it doesn't have to be a book by me. Whatever you read, by all means read on Kindle or some other digital reader, but I recommend also holding a physical book in your hands once in a while. As this article suggests reading books instead of Kindles can improve your memory, concentration and good looks. Reading in general helps improve your memory because you hold the details of a story in your memory over an extended period of time. You also retain and maintain details about characters, objects and locations. But you can also deliberately memorize elements of the books read by using memory techniques. For example, instead of relying on bookmarks or dog-earing pages, you can memorize the number of the last page you read before pausing. This provides you with delightful memory exercise. Speaking of which … 4. Get Your Fat Butt Into Gear Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your memory. It sends oxygen rich blood to your brain and brings fitness to your entire body. Awesome, right? You can also use your exercise time to reminisce over the books you've been reading. If you're not a reader, you can play movies you've seen beginning to end in your mind (link to breaking bad movie post). And if you use Memory Palaces (you do use Memory Palaces, don't you?), then what better time to practice Recall Rehearsal than when you're out and about, huffing and puffing and sweating up a storm? Exercise also improves your mood, and when you use memory techniques, your mood improves even more. Nothing feels better than combining jogger's high (wiki link) with the edification of recalling foreign language vocabulary. Or mathematical equations, song lyrics, professional terminology, or whatever else wets your whistle. 5. Stop Rolling Like A Stone And Gather A Bit Of Moss For Once In Your Life Meditation makes everything in life better, including your memory. The problem is … most people have been misled by weird definitions. For example, many people think that they're supposed to sit like a stone. And like a stone, they're not supposed to have thoughts. No, dear Memorizers. No, no and a thousand times no. As the great Alan Watts pointed out … Sitting Like A Rock Is Boring, Useless And An Utter Waste Of Time! Instead of eradicating thoughts from your mind (which is technically impossible), don't bother doing anything with them. Watts most famously said that the best way to practice meditation is to sit just to sit. Don't "try" to do anything. Just sit there on the floor. Let your mind wander. Be mindless as you sit and float around in fantasies about the future, alternate versions of the present and strange wishes about an alternate version of the past. Maybe not the first time, but eventually you'll wake up from the mindless fantasies that have your mind the vice of your grip. It'll go something like this. When you're sitting there, all of a sudden you'll say … Holy Moley! I've Been Sitting Here On The Floor Lost In Thought And Didn't Even Realize It! Nothing will prepare you for the enlightenment that follows. It might not last for long, but the edification you feel will stay with you and bring a completely new shape to the contours of your day. Not only that, but the experience will be hard to forget. And then the more you meditate, the more you'll remember that you're seated on the floor, sitting just to sit. Your periods of mindfulness will lengthen and you'll take these levels of awareness deeper and longer into your days. And the more mindful you are throughout the day, the more you'll pay attention. And the more attention you pay, the more naturally and effortlessly you'll remember the events and facts you experience as you go through life. How To Be A Memory Scientist In The Laboratory Of Your Mind You've now had just a taste of some of the ways you can increase your memory by barely lifting anything heavier than a book or a bottle of water. In the case of sleeping more and practicing meditation, you don't have to lift anything at all. Go ahead and give these few simple techniques a try. Keep a memory journal as you experiment so you can analyze the results. By measuring what you're doing and when you're doing it, you can create a picture of your daily life and how your memory serves you throughout. And analyze every Memory Palace you create. By taking time to go through them, you'll deepen your familiarity with each and every one. Memory Palace work, even without memorizing anything, is great mental exercise. But … The Easiest Way To Experience Massive Memory Improvement Is … … do daily memory drills. An easy and compact way to do this involves a tiny set of objects known as playing cards. All you need to do is mix them up and use the Magnetic Memory Method to memorize them in ever knew arrays of random order. And if you want to learn how to do that, then I invite you to join the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. But start by grabbing my Free Memory Improvement Kit in order to make sure that the Masterclass really is something for you. If the Masterclass is something for you, then I want you to join it. If the Masterclass isn't something for you, then I don't want you to join it. Nothing could be simpler than that, dear Memorizer. And so until we touch base again, never forget to keep yourself well-rested, well-hydrated, well-read, fit and fully meditated. Oh, and of course, always … Always … Always keep Magnetic. Further Resources The Amazing Doctor Who Wanted To Cure His Patients By Memorizing A Deck Of Cards The post The Five-Fold Path To Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.