#546： How to Get a Memory Like a Steel Trap
Episode Stats
Summary
Have you ever walked into a room to get something only to forget why you walked into that room in the first place? Do you struggle to remember where you parked your car in a parking garage or do you have trouble remembering people s names? Well, after today's episode, you'll be well on your way to never forgetting these things again because my guest today is champion memory athlete Nelson Dellis. He's got plenty of advice on how to improve your own memory even if you think yours stinks.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast have you ever
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walked into a room to get something only to forget why you walked into that room in the first place
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do you constantly forget where you parked your car in a parking garage or do you have trouble
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remembering people's names well after today's episode you'll be well on your way to never
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forgetting these things again because my guest today is champion memory athlete nelson dellis
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he's got plenty of advice on how to improve your own memory even if you think yours stinks nelson is
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the author of the book remember it and we begin our show discussing the world of memory competitions
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how nelson got involved with them and what records he's notched so far nelson then corrects a couple
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common myths people have about memory and makes the case for why you ought to care about improving
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your own he shares the overarching system he recommends to improve your ability to retain
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information and how to use it to remember where you parked your car people's names and the items
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on your to-do list nelson also explains the reason we forget what we walked into a certain room to
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get and what to do if that happens to you he then walks us through how walking through a memory palace
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can help you remember lists speeches and more plenty of action ready easy to remember tips in the show
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after it's over check out our show notes at aom.is remember it nelson joins me now via clearcast.io
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nelson delis welcome to the show hey thanks for having me so you are a memory athlete you're a
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grandmaster of memory and you've won several usa memory championships all right so for those who
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aren't familiar with what a memory athlete is what is a memory athlete a memory athlete is someone who
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memorizes competitively and then the next question is what are these competitions like is it the game
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of memory you know where you're flipping over cards that's what most people think it is and trying to
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match them but no it's it's a bunch of different memory tests across a day or a number of days depending
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on the format and it tests numbers cards names lists of words whatever you can think of we probably
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have a an event based around that and how did you get involved in this was this something like when
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you were a kid you were like i love memorizing or you sort of fell into it by accident no not at all
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you know people ask me this about my past like first when did you discover that you had this gift and
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i'm the first to correct them that you know this is something i learned about 10 years ago and then
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the next question is well you must have had some you know inkling that you were good at memory when
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you were younger and the short of it the true answer is not really i had an affinity for certain
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things like any kid might do and i probably could memorize something that i really cared about back
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then but in general i'd say my memory was pretty subpar or average and then yeah over the years once i
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discovered this stuff um it just lit like kerosene and and took over my life well in in the book you
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wrote remember it where you talk about you know memory techniques talk about how your grandma getting
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alzheimer's also played somewhat of a little bit of a role in you getting into this stuff totally yeah i
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mean that's that's what kind of put memory on my my map at the time just because she was struggling
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with alzheimer's and eventually it took her life and you know i was sitting there i'd never lost
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anybody close to me in my family or in my life really yet and so that really hit me and it made
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me question myself and and what being having a healthy memory or a good memory was and if there
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was anything i could do now to change that and that kind of led me down the rabbit hole of these
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championships and the techniques behind the the championship winners and so what are some of the
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you hold several records world records for memory what are some of those feats that you've done
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yeah i mean listen the sport's always changing like any other sport so i've had records and then
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lost them and earned them back and then lost them again and so i i currently have two u.s records i
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believe one of them's a world national record but the the one i'm super proud of is memorizing the most
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names in 15 minutes which is 235 names and then i believe the other one is also names uh i think it's
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like 125 international names which is a big difference than the 235 but you got to see
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these names that show up in international competitions it's like combining chinese first
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names with really long indian last names it's it's from all over the world so they're really difficult
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so let's talk about memory i mean why should regular folks you know who don't plan on memorizing you
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know thousands of digits of pi why should they you know work on their memory what do they stand
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to benefit to doing that yeah it's a great question and i had a an event last night where somebody asked
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me like why even why do we need it at all if we have instant access to all the information we need
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right that's a fair question but you know what kind of gets it for me is that i'm using my brain
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daily and because of that i'm able to make it stronger sharper you know so if if i am in a
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situation where i need to use my brain which is all day long i can be very confident in its performance
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and i know how to use it i'm very i'm able to control what's staying in my mind what's coming
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in and out of it how i use it how i access it and that's a really empowering feeling and i don't know
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if people these days have that feeling anymore it's kind of like a fake sense of of control
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because you think that because you have information at your fingertips that you have a master of
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anything you want and i guess there is a bit of truth to that but deep down it's it's you have zero
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control or less and less control the more you rely on these devices and wikipedia and google and stuff so
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there's that argument and then there's also the the health side of things you know if you're not
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using your brain it's becoming you know it's it's wasting away right if if you're injured you break
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your leg and you're in a in a chair for a long time because you can't uh you gotta rest it you
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see that leg atrophies right it loses all its muscle it looks really thin and weird and you know
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if you don't use your brain it's the same kind of thing you forget how to memorize well so no i like
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that so we maybe this will probably come up later uh but we a few weeks ago we had a a guest on the
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show she wrote a book about navigation okay and like relying on gps is sort of atrophying our brain
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yeah and i think we'll talk about this because uh navigation and memory are innately connected in
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fact some of the memory techniques rely on us sort of going on a journey in our brain yeah yeah i told
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this story a few times uh this year because it it really stuck with me is my wife lives in upstate
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new york and i'm from miami so i know miami very well in terms of directions and where everything is
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laid out but upstate new york i've had to learn over the years as we visited you know her parents
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and family and it one of the most recent times we visited you know i was like listen i still don't
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know how to get from point a to point b these very common routes we take to go to the gym or to the
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town and i always just put in my phone you know and follow it but that doesn't help me because i
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don't know anything about where i am where things are related to each other so that one time i was
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like you know i'm just gonna wing it i'm gonna figure it out if i get lost i get lost but you know
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what the struggle is gonna help me remember you know those mistakes will help me remember if i make
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any and sure enough i found my way home it wasn't easy but my brain figured it out and because of
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that i remember now how to get from point a to point b you know and just that act of struggling
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through it and really trying to situate myself you know and try to understand the layout in my mind
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did wonders for my brain it was incredible let's talk about some of the myths people have about
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memory and i think you mentioned one in the introduction where people assume the reason
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you're good at this stuff is because you have some sort of innate gift like you're born with a good
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memory yeah and that sounds like it's not true yeah and i think that's in general over
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all of humans i don't think having an incredible memory is is something that really exists like you
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hear people talk about photographic memories people are just born with it i've never met anybody like
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that sure there are some cases you know autistic people at or people with aspergers who have you
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know who are capable of solely one task and they're extraordinarily well at that task and it has to do
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with memory that's a special case but the majority of people you know we all have the same memory
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we're all given the same tools and it's how you work on those skills you know that sets you apart
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in terms of your memory skills it's not innate are there any other myths about memory that people
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have yeah yeah i mean another one and this is kind of related but people think that if they have a bad
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memory that's just what they're stuck with right that their memory can't change and that's totally false
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it's something you can work on no matter how bad any of your listeners think that your their memory is
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you can use these techniques and become a champion even if you if you really wanted to all right let's
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talk about some tips on how to improve our memory and some some of the broad general tips you give in
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your book remember it is first thing you gotta do is like you gotta trust your memory yeah why why is
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that important to trust your memory how does that help yeah because i think one of the the biggest
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killers of uh being able to have a good memory is when you doubt yourself um or if you believe that you
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have this bad memory and most people do unfortunately so often when i go in to give a speech or some
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seminar i try to really show people that first of all they can do this and secondly that their memory
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is just as good as anybody else's that it's not bad people get stuck in this you know acceptance of
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yeah i have a bad memory that's just me you know bad memory mcgee whatever but that's that's not the
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case and you know people have to get out of that and just go for it give it give your memory a shot
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and just trust in it and i found that the best kind of performances in my memory and competitions that
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have happened were when i totally believed and trusted in my memory and kind of went for it and
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it's the craziest thing because you almost feel like you're not memorizing you're just kind of going
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and you're in that flow zone in a way and and i was able to memorize you know one of my fastest times
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or the most of digits or names that i've memorized because of that trust so there's different techniques
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you talk about in the book but all of them have this overarching system involved and it's c link go
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so let's talk about the c part of this what are you talking about when you say c yeah so c means
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basically see the thing that you're trying to memorize in your mind's eye basically turn it into
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a picture because our brains remember pictures better and often the things that we're trying to
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memorize are difficult to see if you if you look at them just for what they are right like a number
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or a name right often they look very complicated or foreign or don't really have any meaning so
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if you can see it and by seeing i really mean visualize it using all of your senses right try to
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think of something that conjures up an image whether it's you know associative or you know it actually
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conjures up an image try to picture an image for the thing rather than seeing the number or seeing
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the actual letters of the word you know gotcha and so uh this is an important step because you can do
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this with abstract ideas too are you talking about you know how can you see liberty or you can think of
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the statue of liberty yeah so simple nouns right that you know and know what they look like that's easy
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to visualize right but then there are different types of information that get harder so abstract
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terms like liberty what would you picture well i can't really picture a liberty but i could maybe
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picture the statue of liberty right so that's a natural association i might make and it's a very
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tangible image i can create in my mind you know and i visited it when i was young so i can maybe tap
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into that feeling i had being there with my dad and getting to the island and stuff like that and the
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color right of the that that green right and then just maybe even feeling of new york right all these
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kind of senses tap together with emotion that is the true essence of seeing and your brain loves that
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it just gobbles that stuff up versus stuff that's very dry and hard to picture you know and what memory
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becomes eventually is how do i encode that thing into a picture i can see and there are different
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strategies for more complicated things like numbers and binary digits or cards yeah we can talk about
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some of those things here in a bit but let's talk about that linking phase yeah and there's several
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ways to link but like what does linking look like in its you know simplest form yeah so linking
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uh in essence so i mean the idea of having a single picture right that you see is good but it's not
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very good unless you kind of anchor it or link it to something that you already know and that's what
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learning is that's how we learn you know if you've ever really thought about how you learn something
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it's by association and by connecting it to something in your mind and and think about it i mean if our
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brain is made up of all these connecting neurons right and somewhere deep down the most fundamental
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neurons the the basic ones the the home-based ones that are responsible for the most simplest
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pieces of knowledge that we know everything is built off of that right and and so something new that
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you learn you're going to try to relate it to these well-established networks that you have and
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and make it kind of a shortcut along these paths so that it's easier to access later because it's
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all related and intertwined you know so in short the the quick and easy way is just there are different
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strategies to to relate that new thing to some things that you already know and that all these steps
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are kind of they're meshed together because kind of if you're associating it to something you already
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know you're almost kind of already seeing it in a way too because you know if you hear the word
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liberty right and i start seeing it i'm also kind of linking it in a way too gotcha and so that could
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be like well you know when you learn someone's name you're trying to remember someone's name
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you might link it to a a celebrity that like you're you know in your brain already so you picture the
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celebrity and link that with the the person's name you just learned yeah exactly and and yeah and
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the linking part also is responsible for how you access the information later so it's it's almost
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equivalent to saying how am i going to store this information and there are different strategies to
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go about that if you meet someone for example you might want to link the picture for their name
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the thing that you're trying to memorize to something about them right and that's the thing that you
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would notice every time you saw them right and that's the thing you know because you see that your brain
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just tends to see that thing and notice it every time so attach that image or or locate it onto
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this uh it would be located on that thing of that person's face okay we'll talk about some more
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complex linking techniques here in a bit but let's talk about the go what does go mean yeah so go is
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like the the final glue the the special sauce that kind of brings it all together you know if you come
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up with a picture and you store it or you link it you're good to go for the most part but you really
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want to go with it meaning really take it to the next level in terms of how you visualize all that
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happening together that means make it weird make it bizarre make it go way over the top tap into those
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emotions put some movement and action into that image and all that together should make that image
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as sticky as hell in your mind so it's like if you're thinking if you're trying to link something
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to pizza you know like don't just think of like a pizza emoji like you want to think of like an
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actual pizza like heat waves coming off of it you can smell it or there might even be like a dead rat on
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it right yeah yeah exactly the more you know think of all your senses think of all your emotions
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and try to really hone in on on a few of those for that image right so the less static this picture is
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the better and the more uncomfortable or disturbing hilarious that it is the more it's going to stick
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well that's just you're taking advantage of how memory works like we remember stuff that stands out
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like if you think back your childhood memories like the things you remember the most are the things that
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were really bizarre and happened maybe once and like that that's how your memory works it remembers
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things that are not that are different from everything else exactly yeah so this is essentially what
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we're doing is we're trying to make everything that we memorize different and unique which is a
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challenge sometime but we know that it works so we can try to emulate that every time we're given
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some data that is crucial to remember we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so let's walk through some of the how the ceiling go works and some very
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like you know remembering everyday things so like one thing you talk about in the book is
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someone asks you to go do something maybe it's your boss says hey do this task for me i need a
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hundred copies of this thing and then you're like okay and then like 10 minutes later you're like oh
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man what are the what did he ask me to do so how can you use ceiling go to remember that sort of stuff
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yeah so the first thing would be to okay how am i going to encode this how am i going to see this
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right so and there's there could be a hundred ways to do this but i'll just kind of go through what i
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would do it i mean there's a bit of improvisation you know involved here and it depends on what you
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gravitate towards what you think of first people might think differently but i would say okay well
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the important part here is i gotta remember 100 copies and you know it's for my boss or whatever
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right and i gotta do it today so i'm gonna memorize it you know it depends how you store it if it's for
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later on it might be stored differently in case you have some kind of ongoing to-do list for the week
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in some kind of mental calendar but if it's for today you know maybe just keeping it in your mind
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until you get it done and then getting rid of it is good enough so 100 i might think of a way to
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visualize 100 if if i have a number system so i i would picture him frankenstein for that number
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that's who 100 is in my system but if somebody didn't have that right so i might put my boss's head
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inside of the photocopier in my mind and imagine just slamming the the door of it uh on it on his
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head 100 times right until 100 copies come out and i would picture that what it would sound like
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how absurdly over the top violent that is but you know what i use it in that sense so that it sticks
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uh it's just a really memorable picture but you would want to tell your boss that that's what you did
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no no yeah definitely keep that to yourself keep it to yourself so the c part you know it's
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there's an image there the link part is okay so how am i storing this well i i have to link it to
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the fact that my boss needs this done right that's the important part of this thing and so i don't
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want to forget that so i'm inevitably in my job gonna think about my boss or see my boss so every time
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that happens that's going to ensure that this bizarre image comes up right this is in the case that i
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don't take care of it immediately right so maybe later on the day i'm like oh that you know you
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gotta remember it before the end of the day so i'm attaching it to my boss so that i don't forget
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it that day and then go it's just like that extra detail thought detail that makes it kind of over the
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top uncomfortable or weird um so another thing that people often lose or try to remember is like
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where they left their keys or wallet and in the book you talk about well the easiest thing to do is
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get yourself a tray where you put everything do that but let's say there's times when you can't
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do that and you just have to toss your how do you remember like where you left your keys so you're
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not scrambling for them when you're trying to get to kids practice so yeah so a lot of what i
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describe in the book is also like kind of managing your life right that's kind of the first thing you
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can do and i say that simple hack of just putting trying to put your keys in the same spot every day
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you know have a little bowl for it that seems like a cop-out but it's it's useful i mean a lot
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of the reasons we forget stuff is because we're all over the place right if you're a little more
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mindful about what you do and if you're very predictable in what you do then you're kind of
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preparing yourself for future forgetfulness you know and so it but if you want to go beyond that then
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one kind of technique that i like to do when i'm either let's say taking medicine or you know i put
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something down and i i'm kind of certain i might forget it later what i do is when i put it down
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or right before i put it down i do some really weird action to myself right so i'll either i don't
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know i'll pinch my nose or yeah i sometimes i say something out loud in a really strange voice
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it depends where i am right if i'm in public or private which sounds totally bizarre but it works
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because every time afterwards if i'm trying to remember where was i when i put down my backpack i don't
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know where my backpack is i'm gonna think of me doing that weird sound and where i was when i
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stood that uh stood there doing it and uh that'll help me remember where the thing was that i put
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there whether it's my keys wallet backpack whatever that yeah it's a great example of seeing the ceiling
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go all happen at once because like you're creating the image but doing the weird thing and you're
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linking that weird thing to where your keys are and then you go it's like it's weird you're like
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talking to yourself yeah so you're gonna remember it more exactly yeah and and so you know the next
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kind of concern is well what if i forget to do that right and and this is where memory becomes more
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like a lifestyle right a different kind of frame of mind you have to start remembering to remember
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and you know people like how am i going to do that well the more you're aware of your memory
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and understanding how it works which is what you learn when you get into this world of mnemonics
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you start looking at everything that happens to you through this lens of how can i make this a
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little more a little bit more memorable how am i going to make this stick how should i think about
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it so that it's um a lot stickier and that i think in itself uh helps you remember things just
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way more even without using some of these weird tactics you know right uh this can be done with
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parking like where you parked so if you like parked on level b like i think you talked about
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imagine your car full of bread yeah yeah think of a word that starts with a d or if you're on in the
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red zone of the garage think of you know your car is just like filled to the brim with gallons of
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blood right um and when you open the door just like like out of the shining when the elevator doors
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open it's just like all this blood kind of careening out of the the the car yeah you just try to
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incorporate some kind of image and link it to your car right that's where you parked it and then just
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make sure to go so here's a memory thing that happens to people all the time and when it happens
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they're like oh man i'm getting old am i getting they start worrying am i getting alzheimer's yeah
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it's like they go into a room because they had to go get something there and they're like i don't know
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why i came in here yeah but you actually highlight research that it possibly offers a suggestion on why
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that happens what what why does our brain tend to forget what we went into a room for
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uh when we get there yeah there's this kind of strange phenomenon that when you kind of pass
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through kind of an entryway your brain reshifts and and or resets in a way and so it's very common
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that when you walk through that doorway of a room you may blank out what you were going in there to do
00:24:07.080
and it's funny i had a conversation with key from key and peel um you know from the from comedy central
00:24:13.860
and he was the host of the show and we were talking about that very thing and he said that
00:24:18.440
it's a similar thing when you're memorizing lines for script he said when he memorized one page and
00:24:24.620
then he turned the page to the other that changing of the page like he could remember that whole page
00:24:30.060
but then the next page would kind of be separated suddenly because of that disjointness as changing
00:24:35.900
the page and so we were talking about how yeah that it's kind of there's studies that show that just
00:24:41.300
like that separation is your brain kind of resets so a tip that i give people is to kind of walk back
00:24:47.760
into the room you were before which will usually not always but uh sometimes it helps to kind of
00:24:53.400
remember what you were doing when you're in that previous mindset in the other room right i think
00:24:58.820
that's that that's that what your brain's doing is it linked the thing right and where you got the
00:25:04.260
idea so if you're like in your kitchen you're like i need to go to the dining room to get
00:25:07.480
uh my wallet well your brain probably associated wallet with kitchen because you're already in the
00:25:12.800
kitchen exactly as soon as you go to the dining room it's like well yeah why are you here so i think
00:25:18.320
that's related that idea that you know geography and memory are like navigation and memory are connected
00:25:23.140
right like we we connect ideas with our geographic landscape and once we move context like our memory
00:25:32.000
can get messed up right yeah yeah and and that's that's really where the strong parts of the link
00:25:38.160
method come some of the strategies that we use in these memory championships are based off of using
00:25:44.420
actual spatial information to link information to so we use this idea of a memory palace which is
00:25:51.600
basically taking a mental blueprint of a place that you know and using that to attach your images to
00:25:58.360
and it's super effective another everyday memory task that we do is remembering names we talked
00:26:03.720
about that just now a while back ago but it's just linking the person's name with something you're
00:26:08.840
very familiar with but i think the the secret is doing that go step and making it really bizarre
00:26:14.340
and absurd so that you remember even more so maybe find a feature on the person and then just amplify it
00:26:21.260
make it a caricature yep and then that you'll that's the go part and you'll probably you'll make
00:26:26.440
cement in like what their name is yeah and also the linking part not a lot of people do this with
00:26:31.500
names but i try to attach it to something about the person and i tend to use their face just because
00:26:36.920
that's what i'm looking at and or what i notice when i'm meeting someone for the first time so you
00:26:42.300
know if nelson over there has a big nose i'd come up with a picture i'd see his name as an image so maybe
00:26:49.020
i'd picture nelson from the simpsons right the character and then i i want to link it to his nose so
00:26:56.000
every time i see him i'm going to notice his nose and there will be the picture that i placed there
00:27:00.360
so i imagine a bully nelson from the simpsons just beating up on his big old nose and that's why it's
00:27:06.520
big you know and i can add as much secret sauce to that to make it pop even further but um you get
00:27:13.060
the idea you know and again like like you're thinking of your boss slamming your boss's head
00:27:18.040
in the cop machine like you wouldn't want to tell people like the thing you know yeah yeah i'm sorry that
00:27:24.500
my images always come back to being a little violent but um they're not always that way but
00:27:29.500
and every person's different um you know maybe you want to just go with something that's maybe a
00:27:35.520
little more somber or pleasant i don't know uh it all depends you have to find out what works
00:27:40.300
for you and i'm just trying to find the things that i know my brain will never forget no violence is
00:27:46.140
memorable like i mean i remember like fights i was in a kid or like watching a fight like when i like i
00:27:51.320
still remember that you know 25 years later yeah me too i'm thinking of like i wasn't a very
00:27:57.160
confrontational guy but you know i had some run-ins with some guys who picked on me in middle school
00:28:02.420
or whatever and i remember one day this guy just pushed me up against the wall and i it was like
00:28:09.660
the last straw kind of thing and i remember doing this move on him where i tripped him and pinned him
00:28:15.020
on the floor and it was just like this thing where i can picture it like daylight in my in my mind you
00:28:20.520
know and that's what 15 20 years ago yeah remember it all right um and so you can use that probably
00:28:26.260
for your like you know to peg something some memory thing you're trying to remember yeah exactly yeah
00:28:31.400
so let's talk about uh let's get a little more advanced here this is kind of getting to your
00:28:36.120
realm a little bit of uh memorizing list of things so how do you remember a list of things you have to
00:28:42.620
do that have a particular order so for example one thing you do is or people doing these memory games
00:28:48.000
remember presidents of the united states sure yeah i mean so now when you get into lists of things
00:28:53.880
where order matters you can you have you you're required or you need now better organization for
00:29:00.820
those pictures because there's a lot of them and they have to be in a certain sequence so the linking
00:29:05.220
step needs a bit more care and so the strategies that we use there's a few out there but the kind of go-to
00:29:11.580
one i had just mentioned was the memory palace and so when you use memory palace you basically have
00:29:18.680
this blueprint of a of a place and you've decided on a route through it something that makes sense
00:29:24.820
right you know this place like your house let's say you know how to walk through your house if you
00:29:28.460
close your eyes and start at the front door you could easily navigate around in your mind you know
00:29:33.180
that well so if you do that while imagining let's say the presidents all the names pictures for the
00:29:39.980
names along a path from your front door all the way up to your bedroom you're going to remember that
00:29:45.140
very easily because all you have to do to recall it is walk back through your house and pick up the
00:29:50.580
crazy images that you left there along the way and so when and also when you're thinking of the
00:29:54.940
presidents like you want to find something about them and make it memorable so like you know for
00:29:59.700
george washington you might make imagine him as a washing machine right yeah yeah washing a washing
00:30:05.940
machine washing a ton of something right right so you have washing ton right and that could be
00:30:13.100
you know your doorway right so in your doorway instead of a door there's a big washing machine
00:30:17.940
with a ton of and if you want to take this even further you can combine you know maybe do two
00:30:24.520
presidents at a time so maybe second president is adams i think of an adams apple so i have apples
00:30:30.200
that's my picture so now washing machine is washing a ton of apples right so that image in itself is
00:30:36.660
totally insane and imagine walking up to my house and there they are there is that image as the front
00:30:42.300
door never for gonna forget that i've already encoded the first two presidents right there and this this
00:30:48.280
memory palace this has been around for thousands of years yeah i mean the origins story says that it
00:30:54.520
comes from the early greeks but you know there's lots of civilizations that use some form of this i
00:31:00.480
mean i believe there were some even some south american cultures using or even african cultures that
00:31:06.240
use kind of these boards that had knots on them or little pieces of just things that they'd attach to
00:31:15.080
this board and the pathway through the board was basically their memory palace their portable memory palace
00:31:21.100
and besides doing a memory palace another linking tool you can do if you want to remember things
00:31:25.860
in particular order is like think of a story in your head that connects all these things so you could
00:31:31.700
sort of you know instead of pegging these things to a room in your house you could just imagine a scene
00:31:36.600
where you see like george washington as a washing machine doing something with john adams
00:31:42.040
who you come with some weird picture and then that's the link so you just like all you have to do is
00:31:46.420
remember like the last thing and once you get to the next thing you have that connection so
00:31:51.040
you're able to keep going yeah so one connects to the next like a link a connection of linking
00:31:56.520
chains right and that that technique is very effective as well it's very quick because you
00:32:00.840
don't need to set up a memory palace the downside to it though is that if you miss one if you forget
00:32:07.060
one then you're gonna have a hard time you've lost the connection to the next one right whereas
00:32:12.280
with a memory palace if you skip one or you forget one you can still keep walking through your house
00:32:17.720
right so that's kind of this world is there's there's some different strategies for different
00:32:23.320
scenarios depends you know if you have to get something in your head quick maybe the story
00:32:28.240
method is is kind of the the way to go or if you have a memory palace ready to go and you want to
00:32:34.080
the information to stick there longer then go with the memory palace and with the memory palace
00:32:38.820
like you can have like memory palaces inside memory palaces so like maybe have your whole house
00:32:44.400
but then you can like use like a single room and have a memory palace in that room
00:32:48.500
yeah yeah the the it's limitless to what what you can imagine as a memory palace you know some people
00:32:57.040
say oh i live in a tiny apartment i'm limited but you know i tell them shrink yourself right imagine
00:33:02.840
you're the size of an ant right and now suddenly you have this giant structure to explore right
00:33:08.560
you could memorize you know 100 things on just your front door if you wanted to you know just
00:33:14.480
because if you look closely enough at your door you can make a little pathway through it that you
00:33:19.520
know goes from the bottom corner to this little splinter that you noticed the handle to you know every
00:33:26.340
little nook and cranny of that door could potentially be a location where you're storing a piece of
00:33:31.300
information and i know the ancient greeks used the memory palace as a way to remember speeches
00:33:36.480
memorize speeches like how does how does that look how do you how can you apply these the c-link
00:33:41.180
go with the memory palace remember a speech you have to give yeah um and then back in the day that's
00:33:48.400
what they would use the memory palaces for is that they would store their speeches and they would put
00:33:52.920
the topics of their what they wanted to say in each location along this path and so text is hard
00:34:00.760
right so speech is essentially just text that you want to memorize and you can go about it a few ways if you
00:34:06.240
want to memorize just the general ideas that's one way or if you're memorizing a speech verbatim word
00:34:11.380
for word that's a little harder but you got to memorize every single word but essentially the
00:34:15.760
process is the same just kind of turn the word or turn the idea into an image and then place it along
00:34:22.800
a path or link it in this case i would suggest a memory palace and then when you're giving your speech
00:34:28.740
all you got to do is think of that place and mentally walk through it as you're reciting your speech
00:34:33.860
how does this look this memory palace look for numbers because and so i guess the trick there is
00:34:41.120
how do you turn a number into which is very abstract into a visual thing yeah so the tricky thing with
00:34:48.540
numbers becomes the c part how do i encode it and there's a few methods to do that as well but it
00:34:54.600
essentially hinges around making these numbers into words and then those words suddenly just becomes like
00:35:02.740
memorizing words which is easier gotcha and you talked about earlier you mentioned like frankenstein's
00:35:08.780
100 yeah yeah so yeah so my system it's a bit complicated but every three-digit number i have a
00:35:15.660
preset person for it and 100 happens to be frankenstein so so you could there's something
00:35:21.740
this is as a memory athlete what you've done is you've gone sort of done some work ahead of time
00:35:26.680
where you've made you've assigned certain things so three-digit numbers assigned a person
00:35:30.480
like do you have like two-digit numbers or assigned a specific type of thing yep so well when i started
00:35:35.680
i actually started with just a two-digit system so every number from zero zero to 99 was something
00:35:41.300
and i actually use a method called person action object so every two-digit number had a person but
00:35:48.600
also an action and an object associated with it and that way if i ever saw a group of six digits i would
00:35:55.740
split it up in two two and two the first two being a person the next two being an action and then the
00:36:01.500
last two being an object and what that allows for is for me to come up with a very creative
00:36:06.700
scene you know a person doing something with a something and uh i would place that in a memory
00:36:12.840
palace as i go and each little image is now taking up six digits which is a really nice way to kind of
00:36:19.920
compress data and then yeah from then on i tried to expand well if i can memorize six who's to say i
00:36:26.980
can't put seven or eight right in one location i just gotta come up with a more images to represent
00:36:33.220
larger numbers well there's another trick you did there when you're memorizing numbers like i'd say
00:36:38.440
a long number uh is you're chunking numbers and so instead of like trying to remember single numbers
00:36:43.720
by themselves you're looking okay what is i can look remember three numbers a lot easier than just
00:36:49.500
three individual numbers yeah yeah and this is often a strategy too when i'm trying to memorize
00:36:55.060
is is like what's the most efficient way to smush this data down right and that's called chunking
00:37:01.680
right so sometimes like if you look at a number and it's just meaningless it's just a big chunk of
00:37:07.840
numbers but if you maybe separate it out into something that looks like a phone number right like a
00:37:13.000
three-digit area code three-digit first part of the number and then the four digits at the end
00:37:17.760
maybe suddenly now it's a little easier to read and absorb because you chunk it now as a phone number
00:37:24.980
right three three and four rather than 10 all at once you know yeah one thing that i do i don't do
00:37:32.080
the link thing but just i do a lot of chunking when i have to remember like a 10-digit number i'll just
00:37:36.680
try to remember in groups of three right so it's like it's necessarily 520 it's 520 yeah yeah
00:37:42.660
yeah 520 as one thing is a lot easier than thinking 520 exactly but if i want to take this
00:37:48.800
up a notch i could assign 520 like a frankenstein doing the moonwalk or something yeah so yeah for
00:37:55.100
me 520 is the character from the show flight of the concords i don't know if you ever watched that
00:38:00.000
one brit which one it wasn't brit it was a mel you know the weird yeah chick right so that number
00:38:06.420
those three digits suddenly is this really colorful funny comedian that's whatever i think about it i
00:38:13.140
laugh and can picture her in all the episodes you know it's suddenly got this ton a ton of imagery to
00:38:19.240
work with right rather than this dry set of three digits wasn't mel also isn't she mabel in gravity
00:38:25.300
falls the cartoon i don't know i didn't i never saw that i know she was in the last man on earth show
00:38:31.620
as well well now i'm going to associate 520 with mabel from gravity falls from here on out
00:38:37.820
so you're doing all these things but is there a place for review like do you constantly have to
00:38:43.260
review this stuff in order for you to remember it like do you have to review your your things you've
00:38:48.700
linked like do you have to review that you've assigned 100 to frankenstein yeah this is something
00:38:52.580
that i had to practice and review a lot at first it's a thousand different things right
00:38:57.700
but uh after a while you know by using it a lot in practice uh it's almost become a language that
00:39:05.600
i'm fluent in you know i look at 520 and i don't have to say like well okay that was this and this
00:39:12.180
oh no okay no not anymore it's it's 520 is mel you know i look at that number and it's like i'm looking
00:39:19.600
at an episode of flight of the concords right i don't even have to think about it and that's that's
00:39:24.640
that's what you want out of these systems so that you can spend the least amount of time trying to
00:39:30.060
remember what everything represents and actually focus on the pictures and remembering the pictures
00:39:35.400
here's another question about the memory palace do you use certain places for certain types of
00:39:40.260
memory tasks like and like do you only use them once just for that memory task i can i imagine there
00:39:44.540
could be an issue if you try to use your house for memorizing multiple like things like there could be
00:39:49.560
some bleed over going on yeah so part of this lifestyle of memorizing things you want to have
00:39:55.480
a number of memory palaces and you want to manage them correctly so you know you're gonna have some
00:40:00.660
memory palaces that hold information that you'd like to keep forever that's not going to change you
00:40:06.500
know think of stuff like the presidents or the periodic table right or world capitals that kind of stuff
00:40:12.880
like stuff you just want to know or stuff you're studying for your job or for school whatever you would
00:40:18.740
choose a memory palace or create a memory palace and dedicate it to that alone just so that you
00:40:24.740
don't mess with the contents you know and confuse it with anything else but then i also have a ton of
00:40:30.380
memory palaces that i use for stuff that is you know for one day i need it to remember my to-do list and
00:40:36.660
then by tomorrow i hope to forget it and what i do is i'll have say a cycle of memory palaces that
00:40:44.500
are on rotation and day one today i'll use this one right and then tomorrow i'll use the next one
00:40:51.180
and so on and then by the time i've used them all i start back over and hopefully by then i've forgotten
00:40:56.460
what was in it the first time you know so so basically what i'm saying is some of these memory
00:41:01.700
palaces i i practice forgetting the contents right i have to get good at forgetting some of the stuff
00:41:07.040
because i need to tape over it when you uh do your memory palace like when you're visualizing it are
00:41:12.360
you like do you imagine yourself doing like first person like doom style right where you're going
00:41:16.540
through the room like that or do like do you imagine because when i think of memory palace i'm
00:41:20.320
always imagining you guys remember family circus yeah where billy like goes through the house you
00:41:25.420
know shows like him going through like the the backyard these weird trails to do things yeah oh yeah
00:41:30.480
yeah um how do you how do you visualize that when you're going through your memory it's a good
00:41:35.300
question i think people do it differently but i'm more first person and so like everything's kind of
00:41:40.840
like i'm looking at it you know sometimes you have i float around sometimes i feel like i'm a part
00:41:46.840
of it it really varies but i think more than not it's kind of like this first person shooter
00:41:51.580
view uh that you mentioned gotcha so it's gonna all these things are going to be different for
00:41:56.560
different people you got to use what works for you exactly yeah i mean it's it's your mind right
00:42:01.520
and we all think differently so yeah i'm kind of giving people through my book and what i'm saying
00:42:07.040
now a general idea but ultimately you have to figure out by trying it what your brain gravitates
00:42:13.500
to but the basics of it all is is stuff that we all can do namely that we can see pictures in our
00:42:21.000
mind and we can use spatial information to really store it well so nelson let's say there's someone
00:42:28.860
to try to start putting this stuff into action like radically listen to show like what's like an
00:42:32.900
easy memorizing task that can really help them start greasing the wheels for this stuff yeah i
00:42:37.900
think a great place to start is to try to remember names you meet people all all day long all week
00:42:43.980
long and it doesn't hurt if i mean it sometimes hurts if you forget someone's name but how is it any
00:42:49.600
different than what you're currently doing you know you lose nothing by trying this now and it's it's a
00:42:55.340
free kind of game app that's available all around you so i really suggest people try with that
00:43:01.860
make the effort and try to see link go with remembering names and once you have that you
00:43:07.420
know you feel a little more confident then you know try and maybe memorize something that you're
00:43:12.000
interested in right something that you've always wanted to learn or whether that's a poem or periodic
00:43:17.440
table whatever you know i hate for people to try to memorize or use these techniques to memorize
00:43:23.600
something that they find completely boring you know for me i like to memorize by practicing the
00:43:29.660
events that these competitions which is cards numbers names all that stuff but for the everyday
00:43:34.900
person maybe all they want to do is just memorize their to-do list so do it that's that's what you're
00:43:40.920
going to practice with every day well nelson where can people go to learn more about the book and your
00:43:45.020
work yep my book is called remember it it's available pretty much anywhere online amazon books and
00:43:51.620
books whatever so if you just look for it you'll find it you can also find a lot of information
00:43:56.180
on these techniques on my youtube page you just search for my name nelson dellis you'll find my
00:44:01.340
page there's a bunch of free tips and fun little videos and then my website nelson dellis.com you can
00:44:08.040
learn more about me and get in touch with me if you have any questions fantastic well nelson dellis
00:44:12.900
thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you yeah thanks for having me my guest today was
00:44:16.760
nelson dellis he's a memory athlete and the author of the book remember it it's available on amazon.com
00:44:21.700
bookstores everywhere you find out more information about his work at his website nelson dellis.com also
00:44:26.820
check out our show notes at aom.is remember it you can find links to resources ring delve deeper into
00:44:31.940
this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at
00:44:43.200
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00:44:47.640
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