Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 33
June 23, 2016
Brain Games: The Truth You Need To Know For Memory Improvement
[image error]Before you dump another moment of your life into searching for brain games that improve your memory, please realize one thing:
Your Brain Exercises Need To Be About Something …
Here’s the deal:
A lot of memory games and other brain-enhancing apps try to help improve your memory by giving you abstract or arbitrary memory tasks. For example, you might be asked to remember the locations of a detective’s cap, magnifying glass and a detection kit behind a set of tiles.
The Sherlock Holmes theme is certainly clever, but exactly what kind of memory skills does this exercise train? The answer is easy:
General memory skills.
That’s it and nothing more. Or …
… maybe even less.
After all, general brain games help you get good at remembering the location of imaginary objects hidden behind squares on a tiny computer screen. And you have to ask yourself …
Does That Sound Like A Useful Skill To You?
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Is there anything wrong with this kind general of brain exercise?
Not necessarily. This Scientific American article finds no harm in playing them (few demonstrable benefits either).
But if you want to get better at remembering the information that matters …
Play Games With Information That Matters!
Seriously. If you want to harness the power of neuroplasticity, give your neurons toys that are congruent with your end goal.
Yes, a basketball player completes some training drills that don’t involve a basketball for general fitness. But when it comes to developing skills and having the REAL fun basketball offers as a game, you need the ball itself in your hands. You need to practice navigating it around the court and sinking it through the hoop.
The Benefits Of Brain Games Do Not Last
First off, have you looked into any of the studies to which many of these software companies refer? Chances are you won’t even find any because they often don’t exist. This was the finding of one major FTC case that led to a $2 million lawsuit again sellers of a popular brain training program.
Look:
No one is saying that these games don’t have some effect. But exactly how they provide measurable benefits is far from clear. Nor can it be clear. The skills one develops in the games, apart from concentration, rarely, if ever, appear in real life.
This lack of necessity for the “skills” supposedly developed by brain games again brings us to one important fact. To get long lasting effects, we need to link the brain games we play with the information we want to get better at handling.
Which Of These Information Types
Do You Tend To Forget Most?
Foreign language vocabulary
Names and faces
Facts
Numbers
Equations
Lyrics
Dates
Recipes
If you want to get good in any of these areas, the best thing is to play brain games that involve them. That way, you associate the information with fun while you get better at learning, memorizing and using it in practical situations.
Plus, you’ll get long-lasting effects because the more you know about a particular topic, the more you can know. For example, if you’re studying history, knowing that the important memory artist Giordano Bruno died in 1600 creates a hook upon which you can hang other pieces of information.
Would you like to know that Hamlet was (probably) written or being in written in 1600? No problem. Just see Kenneth Branaugh or another actor you associate with the role of Hamlet strangling the Bruno statue in Rome. Would you like to know that the Bruno statue in Rome is specifically located at Campo de’ Fiori? No problem: just add an image like a Ferrari digging ore from beneath the statue using a camping tent.
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In this fascinating brain game, we’re compounding information by linking one thing with another. You can make a tower of knowledge using just that one location in Rome. There’s so much more you can add because knowing one thing enables you to know yet another.
Here’s How To Make Your Own Brain Games
I get it:
You look to software and apps so you can instantly download games to your device. You want to immediately start enjoying the benefits of memory improvement right away. You’re probably also looking to improve focus and concentration too.
But if the brain games on the market only improve your memory on a general level (if at all), then you’re only going to get general results. And if the game doesn’t involve information that’s even remotely interesting to you, finding hats and magnifying glasses behind rotating tiles is going to get boring fast.
To create your own games, ones that will make an impact on specific areas where you’re weak, you may have to create your own.
Let’s say you’re learning a language and keep forgetting words and phrases. To make a game that will help you improve, you need only a goal, some rules and an antagonistic force.
Good News: The Enemy In Your Brain Games Comes Built In
Time. Everybody has too little, so when time deadlines appear in games, it’s a metaphor for real life.
But in this case, the real antagonist is forgetfulness. And that’s the beast we’re going to beat.
Here’s a game you can try. All it requires is one Memory Palace. If you’d like to learn how to make and use one, get my free Memory Improvement Kit for a full training.
Using a Memory Palace, take 5-10 words you want to memorize.
Put on a timer and start memorizing using the tools of associative-imagery. Again, you can register for my FREE Memory Improvement Kit if you don’t know how to create associative-imagery. Some of the basics were demonstrated in the example with Hamlet and Bruno given above. But very briefly, using associative-imagery is part of the art of memory that involves taking something you don’t know and attaching it to something you do.
For example, if you want to memorize German vocabulary like “abartig,” you could see an image of Abraham Lincoln tossing a piece of art like the Mona Lisa into the washing machine where Tigger is doing something … abnormal. (It’s up to you what that weird thing is!)
Already Sounds Fun, Doesn’t It?
Associating the “Ab” in Abraham lets you remember the beginning of this word and the painting reminds you of “art” and the “Tig” in “Tigger” helps you recall the end of the word.
Ab + art + Tig = Abartig.
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Remember, Tigger is doing something abnormal in the washing machine and that’s why you know when you put the pieces of the puzzle together and say “abartig,” the word means “abnormal.”
Make Sure You Have The Right Tools
To play this brain game, have your Memory Journal open so you can see your Memory Palace as you play and write out the associative-imagery you create.
Just like you did with the first word, go as fast as you can. Create one tight and vibrant image for each word to leave at each station on your Memory Palace.
At this point, don’t worry about anything other than coming up with images for each of the words you’ve selected. You just want to see how long it takes you to create associative-imagery for 5-10 words. Once you have your baseline time established, you can start challenging yourself to break the record for new sets of words.
The Magic Happens During The Testing Round
Once you’ve made a pass over the information, make a two minute pause and then test how much you can remember.
Do this by going to each station in your Memory Palace and “decoding” the associative-imagery you’ve created and placed there.
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Don’t worry about total accuracy or stress yourself out. It’s just a game and you’re only competing with yourself. You’re going to get better quickly and soon be breaking your own records.
And because the information you’re using is drawn from something you want to learn, you reach goals in addition to memory improvement. And when you share the rules of this brain game with others, you become a better human too.
Play This Game With Any Information …
So Long As It’s Info That Counts
I’ve given German vocabulary in this example, but you could use anything. Song lyrics present a different kind of challenge, for example, because they involve full phrases. Song lyrics in a foreign language offer even more of a stretch. Either way, it feels so great when you walk away from playing games with your brain with the ability to create pleasure at any time by singing a song you’ve always wanted to learn.
You can play with information about geography, biology, literature, film studies and medical terminology. Or if you’ve always wanted to know the Kings of England and their historical dates, you can do that, along with the American Presidents and Canadian Prime Ministers. You can have fun learning, memorizing and recalling anything.
The Secret Sauce To Real Results
From Real Brain Games
As we’ve asked today, how does getting better at finding objects you’ve been shown behind tiles on a memory game help in real life?
Who knows? That’s hard to quantify.
But when you spend your time playing brain games with the information you need to succeed, everybody wins.
Here’s the real way to get massive results: Go for small and consistent improvements using information that matters. Make sure that you can measure what you’re doing so that you see the results in tangible ways.
To accomplish this, play your newly minted brain game on a schedule. Believe it or not, it’s in human nature to establish daily routines and we respond well to doing the same things at the same time on a training schedule. Write down the nature of your game and the results using a dedicated Memory Journal. Involve your hands and colored pens and pencils to bring in more creative parts of your body and brain for best results.
How To Make Playing Mind-Nourishing Games A Priority
As I detailed in Mandarin Chinese Mnemonics And Morning Memory Secrets, the best way to get in regular learning and memory fitness is to spend time playing with information first thing before the computer goes on.
Seriously, why risk squeezing your memory improvement in when you can make it a cherished part of your day?
Works For Highly Committed Learners Too
Please don’t make the mistake that the game I’ve just shared with you is only for beginners or for those who struggle to fit regular learning and brain exercise into their schedules. People already dedicated to using memory techniques benefit from playing self-made games for the mind too. In fact, this kind of activity can really help you avoid getting into learning ruts, so you can also think of them as a preemptive measure.
The Real Problem With Downloadable Brain Games
If you’re as excited as I am about getting real results from the time you spend training your brain, I invite you to make a public declaration below. Talk about the game you’re going to create for yourself and feel free to pop back often with updates on your results. I respond to every post.
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But after you commit with your comment below, turn the machine off for awhile. The real problem we face in today’s world is the encouragement to be wired all the time. By taking a walk without your smartphone, you may already be giving your brain a massive advantage, even if you don’t play a memory game of the kind I’m suggesting.
Mental rest is just as important as mental training, so until we speak again, see if you can’t fit in less screen time, not more. You’ll feel Magnetic.
The post Brain Games: The Truth You Need To Know For Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - Anthony Metivier.
June 15, 2016
How To Improve Focus And Concentration: 4 Ultra-Fast Tips
[image error]Zoning out sucks, doesn’t it? You’re sitting there, wishing you can concentrate … and yet … your mind is just dancing all over the darn place.
Well, if you want to know how to improve focus and concentration so you can finally get those important things in your life done, these ultra-fast tips from Joanna Jast will give you exactly what you need to succeed. Make sure to read the entire post and download the audio she narrated for your convenience. Enjoy this game-changing focus training! 
June 1, 2016
German Phrases: The Ultimate How To Memorize Them Guide
Guest post by Richard Gilzean
Note: What follows is a deconstruction of the steps I took (and continue to take) to improve my German. But rest assured, these same steps will work for memorizing phrases in any language.
Sound good?
Regardless of whether you’ve been learning a second or third language for a while, or just starting out, this approach to memorizing foreign languages will help you.
In the beginning was the Word SENTENCE.
You might be wondering: Why learn phrases and not just individual words?
Good question. The answer is that we all read, write, listen and speak in sentences, or fragments thereof. The sentence is at the core of any language and learning to master the sentence should be considered. Even the most basic language guide book for travelers teach simple phrases that follow syntax.
Don’t get me wrong. Words are beautiful in their own right. We all should invest in the time to learn what a word means and how to best use it. And this is achieved by working those words into sentences.
How I Built My “Internal GPS” (And You Can Too)
Before launching into memorizing my first German phrase, I designed the Memory Palace system that would store them. I’ve been interested in the art and craft of memory training and self-improvement for a couple of years. But I only really started to study it closely after coming across Anthony’s book How to Learn and Memorize German Vocabulary which, in turn, led me to the Magnetic Memory Method website.
Anthony’s approach to teaching anyone how to learn, memorize and recall vocabulary, names, mathematical formulas and pretty much anything that can be memorized is both well-structured and comprehensive. So I’ll just highlight the essential components as they relate to learning languages and all of you who have been following Anthony’s site will be familiar.
Have a store of real locations to house your sentences.
Imagine real concrete / tangible objects or people that are creative, vivid, colorful and zany. Therefore, not just an elephant, but a pink pygmy elephant with Dumbo-like ears and with a runny trunk.
Schedule time for practice so the sentence can work its way into your long-term memory.
You’ll need to draw from your own personal memory bank a real location in which to store your sentences. It can be a place you know well, like the house you live in, or the place where you grew up that holds its own strong memories. It can be a route you follow regularly, such as a park or your daily commute from home to work.
With a little practice you can come up with more than enough Memory Palaces. While there are some general guidelines about how to make your Memory Palace effective, there is a lot of divergent opinion on how to make best use of your own Memory Palaces because no two thought processes are alike.
[image error]Because I knew I would need a large location to hold my expanding sentences, I chose a route that ran from the front door of my house, along the street, through a local park and over to my son’s local primary school – some 400 meters in total.
From AA to ZZ: Where I Keep My Memorized Phrases
But before you set off on your journey, you’ll need to figure out your memory anchors. Think of the process like mental orienteering where you go for a jog in your mind along a set trail and arrive at control points along the way.
To help, I created an excel spreadsheet with an index of initials for names of famous people, friends and cartoon characters, running all the way from AA to ZZ. This process took a little time to work through and I made some compromises along the way. In particular, I left out the letters Q – X – Y (just too hard to come up with names).
I ended up with a list of 600 names running from Andre Agassi to the bearded rockers from the band ZZ Top. Six hundred names means, in theory, I am able to memorize at least 600 foreign language sentences.
Running alongside my list of names I also have a separate list of 100 what I refer to as my memory tag words. These words use the well-established mnemonic Major Method which is a technique used to aid in memorizing numbers and has been used in memorize shopping lists, the sequence of a shuffled pack of card and memory competitions. The Major Method works by converting numbers into consonant sounds, then into words by adding vowels.
How To Choose Which Phrases To Memorize
Armed with my list of 600 names and 100 Major System tag words, I now have the memory anchors in place to hold my German sentences. I also have the memory route from my house to my son’s primary school. There is a smorgasbord of foreign language sites out there to choose from, but the question is, which phrases should I memorize in order to get the best results for building fluency in German.
I subscribe to the German Flashcards section of a website run by Learn With Oliver. It contains an easy to navigate database of material to assist you in learning several of the most common languages. The site produces a daily e-letter with a word and phrase of the day, an audio recording of the text plus a whole bunch of other useful resource material. From this site I have taken almost all of my German phrases.
Once I have material to work with, my approach is to review the phrases I want to memorize and make sure that I am comfortable with the grammar and etymology. I then copy the sentences and the English translation into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is made up of the following columns:
Initials running from AA to ZZ
The English sentence
The German sentence
My mnemonic interpretation (this is explained below)
The full names of my AA – ZZ group
My 100 tag words
Here’s an example:
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Here’s how I’ve adapted my practice from memorizing single words to whole phrases.
As you can see, I’ve front-loaded three of the components into the sentence. They include the initials of a well-known/memorable name (Michelle Obama), the English translation (no problem) and the tag word (hail). By splicing these three components into the sentence I’ve built an imaginative cross reference for whenever I need to recall the German phrase “Keine Ursache!” the rest of this mnemonic interpretation follows some established mnemonic guidelines.
For the word “keine” I thought of Keyser Soze, who some of you may recall as the evil dude Kevin Spacey played in the film “The Usual Suspects”.
For the word “Ursache” I broke it down into two images, one for “UR” and one for “SACHE” and came up with Keith URban (well-known country singer) + SACK.
I then imagined Keyser (rhyming with kaiser and which just happens to be a German word) shoving URban into a SACK. Don’t forget to take the time to imagine this scenario with crazy, vivid, memorable images. Gimpy-legged Keyser shoving guitar-wielding URban into a big smelly potato SACK works for me.
If You Can Imagine A Castle, You Can
Use Memory Techniques To Boost Your German Fluency
Let’s take these ideas and incorporate them into a more challenging sentence. Is it worth visiting this castle? = Lohnt es sich diese Burg zu besuchen? Jacques Tati is king of a CASTLE in a MoVie starring Lindsay LOHAN playing the role of ESther who is throwing up SICK over DIESEL (a musician I know) after eating a BURGer served by ZUlu armed with a BAZOOKa.
In this case I’m using some mnemonic shorthand. Again, I’ve loaded three of the components at the front of the sentence Jacque Tati / Castle / Movie. Jacque Tati (famous French film actor and director) is my f[image error]amous name and CASTLE is a single image I want to use represent the entire sentence. It’s a concrete image that is easy to visualize. (Is there anyone who can’t imagine a castle?)
The third component is the word “MOVIE” which is number 38 in my 100 memory tags. For the rest of the exercise you should be able to make the connection between my sentence and the similar sounding words in the German phrase.
How To Make The Most From Mnemonic Shorthand
Regardless of whatever foreign language you want to master, you’ll soon figure out the high frequency words and syllables and will want settle on some shorthand images to help you form your mnemonic sentences.
For example, I’ve settled on the following shorthand for these common German words:
es = it. For this word I use an image of a family member whose name is Esther.
ich = I. Here I just imagine “ItCHy”, the mouse from The Simpson’s cartoons.
der = multiple meanings including:
the (masculine definite article)
(definite article for genitive and dative singular feminine and genitive plural)
who
which
that one, this one
I found some mnemonic shorthand harder to imagine than others. In what is probably an understatement, the German language has many words with the prefix ‘ge’. After much trial and error, I settled on an image of GoethE as my go-to guy for the ‘ge’ words.
[image error]But if GoethE doesn’t make sense to your imagination and you encounter an issue Anthony talked about in his podcast,
you might think that Agent Maxwell Smart from the GEt Smart television series works better for you. Or perhaps someone more contemporary comes to mind.
The important thing is that you learn to link figures with information so that you can recall it at will. This skill comes in handy in many ways, particularly when trying to memorize German genders. For example, in all instances of “der” I use an 80’s television character DERrick from the popular German detective series.
How To Get Ikea To Optimize Your Memory Palace
Now, you may be thinking: Do I really need to be able to recall all of my mnemonic sentences? Answer: No. I’ve found that once a schedule of recall practice is established you’ll be able to rely on the processing power of your mind to summon the sentence.
The next problem I had to solve concerned mental real estate. I now had in place my daily practice of learning and memorizing new German sentences and placing them along my chosen route. But I eventually realized I was running out of stations along my route and I wanted to get more benefit out of the site of this Memory Palace.
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My solution was to use a system of alphabetical modular shelving – think Ikea wall units – in which to place my mnemonic imagery.
So when it came time to assign sentences to my prepared list of EA to EZ letters, instead of using up 23 separate places (remember letters Q, X and Y are out) along the route, I imagined a rather large E-shaped white Ikea wall unit with 23 compartments at the next station along the path.
And in each compartment I would place my mnemonic interpretation of whatever German sentence I was learning that day. Kind of like the dioramas I used to help my son make for his school projects.
Forging The Memory Chain Using Recall And Difference
The main advantage I’ve found with using what I call my double-bind memory link strategy (i.e. initials plus memory tag words) is that if I happen to forget one when practicing my recall I can usually rely on the other one to help me out. Take up this practice and you’ll see quick results too.
Memory Palaces do not have to be photographic / perfect representations – they just need to be consistent with how you recall them in your mind. Once I’ve memorized a batch of 23 sentences to the point where I can mentally recall the sentences forwards, backwards and in some random order, I use a simple spaced repetition system that involves setting a date in my Google calendar with a title like – “LA – LZ 1 week”.
I then mentally run through my recall, check my responses on the spreadsheet and, if I get them correct, will reset the next recall for two weeks, followed by 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months. If I’m not happy with my recall practice I’ll review the mnemonic sentence I’ve constructed and practice again a few days later.
I recommend you rehearse your phrases out loud because you need to hear the sounds your voice makes. Make a practice of writing them out by hand as a way of reinforcing the learning. For extra bonus points you might like to record the sentences and listen to them when you’re out and about.
That pretty well sums up what I’ve achieved in a short period of time. This method takes the key features found on Magnetic Memory Method site and tweaks them to get the best value out of your Memory Palace. Try creating warehouses in your own Memory Palaces using the alphabetical system outlined. My German phrases continues to swell and grow. So far I’ve gone from Andre Agassi to Van Halen. That’s about 500 sentences.
Sprechen, Lesen, Schreiben und Hōren
(Speak, Read, Write & Listen)
As I mentioned at the start of this post we all write, listen, read and speak in sentences and phrases. Learning to speak and understand any foreign language with fluency requires application to all four components in equal measure. The method of memorizing sentences I’ve described ticks all four boxes.[image error]
Of course, you’ll need to get out there and road test your German phrases (or those in the language you’re studying) in real world situations to become comfortable with your newly acquired knowledge.
If you’ve found this training helpful, or you’d like some clarification on the points, please contact me at richard@richardgilzean.com.
Viel Gluck!
Richard Gilzean is a writer and blogger specialising in creating content for small business owners, entrepreneurs and corporate clients. He has thirty years of writing, research and training experience in corporate and government sectors. Whether you want to create great content to boost traffic to your website or you’re looking for a professional writer who can tell your story in your voice, Richard can help. Check out his freelance writing website here.
May 25, 2016
Remember Names At Events: Quick Start Guide
[image error]Wish you could remember names? I’ll bet you do. After all …
Forgetting names sucks, especially at events where you’re meeting important new contacts. Business cards are fine and dandy, but you want to be looking that new person in the eyes and connecting, not constantly peeking at the sweaty lump of cardboard stuck to your palm.
Instead, you want to hold each person’s name with the certainty that can only come from mastering your memory.
Or You Can Keep Living The Nightmare
You know the one. You hear a name and then just a few seconds later … it’s gone.
The good news is, it’s not your fault. There’s a reason your brain doesn’t grasp onto names and hold onto them like treasure. (Yes, treasure. Every name is as valuable as a rare coin.)
The better news is that, even if it isn’t your fault that you can’t remember names, you can eliminate the problem. With practice, you can remember the names of as many people as you want. Even if you make a mistake from time to time, even slip-ups can become powerful assets.
3 Key Reasons We All Forget Names
(Including Memory Champions)
You can help yourself stop forgetting names by understanding why it happens.
First, names are abstract. Unless you’re a philologist, most names will hold zero meaning for you.
Second, when we meet people, we might hear names, but we’re not paying attention. We’re either dazzled by their good looks or horrified by the food dangling off their faces. Worse, we’re thinking about what we’re going to say next. Our concentration is directed inward instead of outward.
Finally, we’re bombarded by stimuli. The room is filled with noises, we may be drinking alcohol, suffering jet-lag. or moving around the meeting space. All of these elements distract us.
You know how you sometimes go into the kitchen from the living room and then forget why you’re in the kitchen? This problem happens because the instant you leave the living room, the movement and change of locations floods all of your senses. Your intention isn’t so much forgotten as it is suddenly pushed out to sea like a message in a bottle.
The same thing happens when you’re introduced to a person. You hear the name, but then you ask where they’re from and what they do. In combination with all the activity in the room, it’s the same effect. Waves of information push that bottle out to the margins of your mind and the new name you just learned falls out your ear.
The Super-Simple Mechanics Of Memorizing Names
Let me tell you a story.
A few weeks ago, my friend Max Breckbill of Starting From Zero held one of his great entrepreneur dinners in Berlin. A bunch of people get together to network and just chill out in a relaxed restaurant. His dinners are amazing.
Max always begins the evening with a round of introductions. As each person said their name, I created a crazy image to help me recall their names. For example, there was a guy named Lars, so I saw Lars from Metallica playing drums on his head.
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For Lukas, I saw Luke Skywalker using his Light Sabre to carve an S onto Lukas’s chest so I would remember it was Lukas with an S instead of Luke as in Skywalker.
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A bit later, I saw a guy named Jeremy in a fistfight with Eddie Vedder with the Pearl Jam song of the same name playing on the soundtrack.
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There were 20 other names and in a very short period, I created a wildly explosive image for each. I did not connect the names in any particular way with a story, however. For me, the linking method would not be helpful because Max rotates the tables. Plus, at many events, you won’t see people in the same place twice. The constant shifting means that each individual needs their own vignette, a mini-story that requires no connection with any other name.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t use the building as a Memory Palace and store that image with the location of the person when you first encountered them. You most certainly should.
What you don’t want to do is be looking at a person and trying to see where their imagery fits in with Mickey Mouse time bombs as Taylor Swift razors through Wolverine’s dandelion claws in a showdown. You just want one clear and distinct vignette per person that can travel with them wherever they go.
And this is important: These vignettes must be INSANE. The good news is, it’s easy make images that really pop in your memory. Just …
Make Them Brighter Than The Sun
And More Colorful Than The Joker
When I saw Lars, it wasn’t just a humdrum image I thought about. The Metallica drummer was exploding with light and color, almost like a neon sign wrapped around a disco ball.
Keep in mind that I “thought” about this, which is quite different than seeing. It’s not like memory wizards have HD television in their minds. You can develop visually so that you do see things better in your imagination, but you don’t strictly need to be a visual person. You can get started with nothing more than verbal associations. And then ask yourself, “what would this look like IF I COULD see it?” Often a simple question like that will move you toward the ability to see in your mind.
Next …
Use Explosive Sounds, Epic Sizes
And Ripsnortin’ Physical Force
When I saw Luke Skywalker carving an S into Lukas’s chest, I felt the burn and imagined how it must smell so vividly that I almost felt like puking. I even imagined that I could see the smoking embers on his shirt from the searing motion of the Light Sabre.
When I saw Jeremy fist-fighting Eddy Vedder, it wasn’t music-video sized Vedder the way I’ve seen him on YouTube. Vedder was massive and his fists pounded down with enormous force. Plus, the song Jeremy was blasting at top volume, as if screamed by Vedder with volcanic energy.
Again, this happens both in words and visuals with as many other sensations involved as possible. The images feed the verbal descriptions and the words going through my mind amp up the sensations so that everything is tangible, memorable and downright Magnetic.
How long should this creative process take? With practice, mere seconds. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you can pick up this skill and do it at a very high level. I’ve seen teenagers learn the skill in under an hour and win competitions on the same afternoon.
How To Practice Memorizing Names
Since the stakes are high when it comes to memorizing names at events, try practicing at home before taking your new skill out in the field. It’s easy: use Wikipedia to get a list of names and use the tools you’ve just learned. You’ll also want to use the Memory Palace technique that you can pick up from my Free Memory Improvement Kit.
But this is important:
Don’t make it a list of just . Choose names that you would like to have memorized: composers, scientists, poets, names that will make a difference to your quality of life either professionally or in connection with a hobby or personal interest. One of the biggest failings with learning memory techniques is that people practice with uninteresting material like shopping lists – information that they’ll never really use. (Sheesh, who can’t remember what they like to eat?)
No matter what kind of names you choose to practice with …
Start Small!
Although you will soon be capable of memorizing dozens of names at rapid speeds, don’t overwhelm yourself at the learning stage. Start with 5-10 names. Developing the ability to learn, memorize and recall names isn’t a competition. Your goal is to learn the technique so you can master it, not frustrate yourself into giving up a skill that amounts to real magic. Memorizing names is, arguably, the most important skill in the world because of how important it makes other people feel.
Once you’ve associated crazy images to each name, go through the list a couple of times and make sure you’ve really exaggerated each.
Next, remove yourself from the list. Take a notebook and head off to a cafe or at least to another room. A lot of people make the mistake of recalling a word and then checking right away to see how they’ve done. Unfortunately, this bad habit amounts to rote learning and will not serve you in the long run. You need delayed gratification so that you’re really exercising your imagination and memory.
As you sit in that cafe, write down each and every name you associated an image with. If you come up blank, place a question mark and move on. Give yourself space and really hunt for the images. Then, as you head home, go over the list and fill in any blanks you manage to excavate.
Test Test Test, Rinse And Repeat …
And Then Test Some More
You don’t have to give yourself a score when you get home, but do take careful note of where you made mistakes. Analyze what went wrong and work on making the associative-images that didn’t help you recall a name stronger.
Repeat this practice until you’re confident that you can memorize names at an event. Once you’re out in the world, don’t feel like you have to give demonstrations or show off. This skill can be private, though you will find people noticing your talent and you should teach them how to do it. They’ll thank you forever.
More Hot Tips For Memorizing Names
At Events Without Stress, Strain Or Embarrassment
If you’re at an event featuring a round of introductions, try to be the one who goes last so you don’t spend the entire time worrying that your introduction could have been better. Plus, if you go last, people will remember you better thanks to the recency effect. If there isn’t a circle introduction at the event, you can be the one who suggests it. This strategy is an excellent way to engineer your position.
Regardless of when you go, have an elevator speech prepared so that your mind isn’t clogged up. If you’re dreaming up your introduction on the fly, you won’t be focused enough on memorizing the names.
Always Be Cool
Relaxation is essential when memorizing any kind if information, especially in real time. Daily habits like meditation and fitness help a great deal. You can also deliberately manufacture comfort using invisible techniques at the event such as Pendulum Breathing and Progressive Muscle Relaxation. No one will know you’re doing anything and you’ll be as relaxed as a sleeping YouTube kitten. Nothing will rattle your cage.
Don’t Drink Or Smoke
If you want to have a strong memory that works on command, cut out alcohol and stop smoking. I used to get away with it when doing memory demonstrations, but alcohol seriously messes with your working memory and nicotine withdrawal makes concentration difficult if not impossible. Better never to have smoked at all.
Let Go Of The Outcome
Wanting to succeed trips a lot of beginners up. But when you put all thoughts of success out of your mind, your memory is free to percolate the images you feed it.
Plus, you can play with the names in high spirits. Since you’ll want to go through the names a few times throughout the evening to massage them from working memory into long-term memory, you want the entire process to be fun. But if you’re racing through the list motivated by the fear of making a mistake, you’ll only damage the results.
Speaking of mistakes …
Don’t Get Stressed When You Flub
I struggled with a few names at Max’s event and it’s all Brian Dean’s fault. Seriously, I needed to go through the list of names at least once to ensure I could remember them all, but he kept asking me all these questions about memory.
Brian Dean is the guy behind backlinko, which is a site you need to check out if you run a website or blog.
But it really isn’t his fault that I wound up reaching hard for a couple of names. As I explained to Brian while we were talking, because I had my fat lips motoring away instead of going over the names a few times, I was not working against the forgetting curve. I predicted that I would lose 40-60% of my potential for total recall every ten minutes that passed without making a quick pass over the names.
It turns out my numbers were off. I only struggled with 2 of the names later, but didn’t entirely forget them as I’d predicted I might. With a bit of a push, the images popped up and I was able to retrieve them. Annoying, but passable.
However, there was one name I got completely wrong, but in that’s only because I misheard it. (Remind me to one day tell you the story of Jonathan Levi and his experience mistakenly understanding that someone’s name was “Laura.” That mishap made for quite an evening here in Berlin!)
Anyhow, the point is that despite my dark prediction of failure while speaking with Brian, I had consciously released the outcome. Yes, everyone in the room knew that I was a memory guy, and that created some high expectations (if only in my head), but mistakes are an opportunity to talk about how memory works. And in many ways, mistakes make for better illustrations of how and why the techniques work or fail to work.
Avoid Mystifying Abstractions
For example, “Pascal” was one of the names I struggled with. Because things were going fast, I picked an ineffective image for him. The philosopher Pascal had famously turned from atheism to religion, so I saw an image of God halfway putting a noose over his head and halfway slitting his throat.
Although I did get this name back eventually, it took a fight for a few reasons. First, I don’t know how Pascal the philosopher looked and I’ve never seen God. In retrospect, I could have used Michaelangelo’s God from the Sistine Chapel, but that still doesn’t exactly help get back to “Pascal” at speed.
Second, I tried to see two actions instead of just one. And neither hanging nor throat-slitting have any direct relationship to atheism. I created so many vague elements that I could barely remember the hurdles I’d placed between myself and the target information.
But I didn’t let myself get stressed out about it. I simply noticed the outcome and knew I would use it as a talking point and teaching tool if called upon to give a memory demonstration. I have given demonstrations, I have made errors and I have won respect simply by keeping my cool and sharing what went wrong.
You can too, so I recommend you follow the Always Be Cool principle while taking time to analyze your mistakes and thinking about how you can do better next time. And share the process so that others can learn too.
You Don’t Have To Remember Them In Order Every Time
Let’s say that you’re called upon to give a demonstration and you can’t recall a couple of names. Instead of giving up or getting frustrated, just move on, the same way you would in practice.
As you’re finishing the other names, you’ll often be pleasantly surprised at how the ones you forgot suddenly spring back. And if not, you wind up with an opportunity to explain what went wrong and demonstrate troubleshooting on the fly.
Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get frustrated. You don’t want to blow your momentum over what amounts to nothing in the long run. Always be cool and your memory will serve you well.
Prepare to be admired
People will be super-impressed, especially if you’re humble and can handle any mistakes gracefully.
By the same token …
Prepare to be forgotten
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into someone and called them by name. They’re always shocked and amazed that I remember them.
But more often than not, they can’t do the same. This lapse in their memory can create an awkward moment, but don’t let it. Just make a joke or otherwise blow it off and offer to teach them the skill. You’ll be able to use their name as an example and personalized teaching is often the best.
And assuming you get yourself a list of names and get practicing, you now have a skill that will serve you for a life. You never have to be at an event in a sea of strangers again. When you can remember names, you will always be surrounded by friends.
How To Remember Names At Events And Never Forget Them
[image error]Forgetting names sucks, especially at events where you’re meeting important new contacts. Business cards are fine and dandy, but you want to be looking that new person in the eyes and connecting, not constantly peeking at the sweaty lump of cardboard stuck to your palm.
Instead, you want to hold each person’s name with the certainty that can only come from mastering your memory.
Or You Can Keep Living The Nightmare
You know the one. You hear a name and then just a few seconds later … it’s gone.
The good news is, it’s not your fault. There’s a reason your brain doesn’t grasp onto names and hold onto them like treasure. (Yes, treasure. Every name is as valuable as a rare coin.)
The better news is that, even if it isn’t your fault that you can’t remember names, you can eliminate the problem. With practice, you can remember the names of as many people as you want. Even if you make a mistake from time to time, even slip-ups can become powerful assets.
3 Key Reasons We All Forget Names
(Including Memory Champions)
You can help yourself stop forgetting names by understanding why it happens.
First, names are abstract. Unless you’re a philologist, most names will hold zero meaning for you.
Second, when we meet people, we might hear names, but we’re not paying attention. We’re either dazzled by their good looks or horrified by the food dangling off their faces. Worse, we’re thinking about what we’re going to say next. Our concentration is directed inward instead of outward.
Finally, we’re bombarded by stimuli. The room is filled with noises, we may be drinking alcohol, suffering jet-lag. or moving around the meeting space. All of these elements distract us.
You know how you sometimes go into the kitchen from the living room and then forget why you’re in the kitchen? This problem happens because the instant you leave the living room, the movement and change of locations floods all of your senses. Your intention isn’t so much forgotten as it is suddenly pushed out to sea like a message in a bottle.
The same thing happens when you’re introduced to a person. You hear the name, but then you ask where they’re from and what they do. In combination with all the activity in the room, it’s the same effect. Waves of information push that bottle out to the margins of your mind and the new name you just learned falls out your ear.
The Super-Simple Mechanics Of Memorizing Names
Let me tell you a story.
A few weeks ago, my friend Max Breckbill of Starting From Zero held one of his great entrepreneur dinners in Berlin. A bunch of people get together to network and just chill out in a relaxed restaurant. His dinners are amazing.
Max always begins the evening with a round of introductions. As each person said their name, I created a crazy image to help me recall their names. For example, there was a guy named Lars, so I saw Lars from Metallica playing drums on his head.
[image error]
For Lukas, I saw Luke Skywalker using his Light Sabre to carve an S onto Lukas’s chest so I would remember it was Lukas with an S instead of Luke as in Skywalker.
[image error]
A bit later, I saw a guy named Jeremy in a fistfight with Eddie Vedder with the Pearl Jam song of the same name playing on the soundtrack.
[image error]
There were 20 other names and in a very short period, I created a wildly explosive image for each. I did not connect the names in any particular way with a story, however. For me, the linking method would not be helpful because Max rotates the tables. Plus, at many events, you won’t see people in the same place twice. The constant shifting means that each individual needs their own vignette, a mini-story that requires no connection with any other name.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t use the building as a Memory Palace and store that image with the location of the person when you first encountered them. You most certainly should.
What you don’t want to do is be looking at a person and trying to see where their imagery fits in with Mickey Mouse time bombs as Taylor Swift razors through Wolverine’s dandelion claws in a showdown. You just want one clear and distinct vignette per person that can travel with them wherever they go.
And this is important: These vignettes must be INSANE. The good news is, it’s easy make images that really pop in your memory. Just …
Make Them Brighter Than The Sun
And More Colorful Than The Joker
When I saw Lars, it wasn’t just a humdrum image I thought about. The Metallica drummer was exploding with light and color, almost like a neon sign wrapped around a disco ball.
Keep in mind that I “thought” about this, which is quite different than seeing. It’s not like memory wizards have HD television in their minds. You can develop visually so that you do see things better in your imagination, but you don’t strictly need to be a visual person. You can get started with nothing more than verbal associations. And then ask yourself, “what would this look like IF I COULD see it?” Often a simple question like that will move you toward the ability to see in your mind.
Next …
Use Explosive Sounds, Epic Sizes
And Ripsnortin’ Physical Force
When I saw Luke Skywalker carving an S into Lukas’s chest, I felt the burn and imagined how it must smell so vividly that I almost felt like puking. I even imagined that I could see the smoking embers on his shirt from the searing motion of the Light Sabre.
When I saw Jeremy fist-fighting Eddy Vedder, it wasn’t music-video sized Vedder the way I’ve seen him on YouTube. Vedder was massive and his fists pounded down with enormous force. Plus, the song Jeremy was blasting at top volume, as if screamed by Vedder with volcanic energy.
Again, this happens both in words and visuals with as many other sensations involved as possible. The images feed the verbal descriptions and the words going through my mind amp up the sensations so that everything is tangible, memorable and downright Magnetic.
How long should this creative process take? With practice, mere seconds. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you can pick up this skill and do it at a very high level. I’ve seen teenagers learn the skill in under an hour and win competitions on the same afternoon.
How To Practice Memorizing Names
Since the stakes are high when it comes to memorizing names at events, try practicing at home before taking your new skill out in the field. It’s easy: use Wikipedia to get a list of names and use the tools you’ve just learned. You’ll also want to use the Memory Palace technique that you can pick up from my Free Memory Improvement Kit.
But this is important:
Don’t make it a list of just . Choose names that you would like to have memorized: composers, scientists, poets, names that will make a difference to your quality of life either professionally or in connection with a hobby or personal interest. One of the biggest failings with learning memory techniques is that people practice with uninteresting material like shopping lists – information that they’ll never really use. (Sheesh, who can’t remember what they like to eat?)
No matter what kind of names you choose to practice with …
Start Small!
Although you will soon be capable of memorizing dozens of names at rapid speeds, don’t overwhelm yourself at the learning stage. Start with 5-10 names. Developing the ability to learn, memorize and recall names isn’t a competition. Your goal is to learn the technique so you can master it, not frustrate yourself into giving up a skill that amounts to real magic. Memorizing names is, arguably, the most important skill in the world because of how important it makes other people feel.
Once you’ve associated crazy images to each name, go through the list a couple of times and make sure you’ve really exaggerated each.
Next, remove yourself from the list. Take a notebook and head off to a cafe or at least to another room. A lot of people make the mistake of recalling a word and then checking right away to see how they’ve done. Unfortunately, this bad habit amounts to rote learning and will not serve you in the long run. You need delayed gratification so that you’re really exercising your imagination and memory.
As you sit in that cafe, write down each and every name you associated an image with. If you come up blank, place a question mark and move on. Give yourself space and really hunt for the images. Then, as you head home, go over the list and fill in any blanks you manage to excavate.
Test Test Test, Rinse And Repeat …
And Then Test Some More
You don’t have to give yourself a score when you get home, but do take careful note of where you made mistakes. Analyze what went wrong and work on making the associative-images that didn’t help you recall a name stronger.
Repeat this practice until you’re confident that you can memorize names at an event. Once you’re out in the world, don’t feel like you have to give demonstrations or show off. This skill can be private, though you will find people noticing your talent and you should teach them how to do it. They’ll thank you forever.
More Hot Tips For Memorizing Names
At Events Without Stress, Strain Or Embarrassment
If you’re at an event featuring a round of introductions, try to be the one who goes last so you don’t spend the entire time worrying that your introduction could have been better. Plus, if you go last, people will remember you better thanks to the recency effect. If there isn’t a circle introduction at the event, you can be the one who suggests it. This strategy is an excellent way to engineer your position.
Regardless of when you go, have an elevator speech prepared so that your mind isn’t clogged up. If you’re dreaming up your introduction on the fly, you won’t be focused enough on memorizing the names.
Always Be Cool
Relaxation is essential when memorizing any kind if information, especially in real time. Daily habits like meditation and fitness help a great deal. You can also deliberately manufacture comfort using invisible techniques at the event such as Pendulum Breathing and Progressive Muscle Relaxation. No one will know you’re doing anything and you’ll be as relaxed as a sleeping YouTube kitten. Nothing will rattle your cage.
Don’t Drink Or Smoke
If you want to have a strong memory that works on command, cut out alcohol and stop smoking. I used to get away with it when doing memory demonstrations, but alcohol seriously messes with your working memory and nicotine withdrawal makes concentration difficult if not impossible. Better never to have smoked at all.
Let Go Of The Outcome
Wanting to succeed trips a lot of beginners up. But when you put all thoughts of success out of your mind, your memory is free to percolate the images you feed it.
Plus, you can play with the names in high spirits. Since you’ll want to go through the names a few times throughout the evening to massage them from working memory into long-term memory, you want the entire process to be fun. But if you’re racing through the list motivated by the fear of making a mistake, you’ll only damage the results.
Speaking of mistakes …
Don’t Get Stressed When You Flub
I struggled with a few names at Max’s event and it’s all Brian Dean’s fault. Seriously, I needed to go through the list of names at least once to ensure I could remember them all, but he kept asking me all these questions about memory.
Brian Dean is the guy behind backlinko, which is a site you need to check out if you run a website or blog.
But it really isn’t his fault that I wound up reaching hard for a couple of names. As I explained to Brian while we were talking, because I had my fat lips motoring away instead of going over the names a few times, I was not working against the forgetting curve. I predicted that I would lose 40-60% of my potential for total recall every ten minutes that passed without making a quick pass over the names.
It turns out my numbers were off. I only struggled with 2 of the names later, but didn’t entirely forget them as I’d predicted I might. With a bit of a push, the images popped up and I was able to retrieve them. Annoying, but passable.
However, there was one name I got completely wrong, but in that’s only because I misheard it. (Remind me to one day tell you the story of Jonathan Levi and his experience mistakenly understanding that someone’s name was “Laura.” That mishap made for quite an evening here in Berlin!)
Anyhow, the point is that despite my dark prediction of failure while speaking with Brian, I had consciously released the outcome. Yes, everyone in the room knew that I was a memory guy, and that created some high expectations (if only in my head), but mistakes are an opportunity to talk about how memory works. And in many ways, mistakes make for better illustrations of how and why the techniques work or fail to work.
Avoid Mystifying Abstractions
For example, “Pascal” was one of the names I struggled with. Because things were going fast, I picked an ineffective image for him. The philosopher Pascal had famously turned from atheism to religion, so I saw an image of God halfway putting a noose over his head and halfway slitting his throat.
Although I did get this name back eventually, it took a fight for a few reasons. First, I don’t know how Pascal the philosopher looked and I’ve never seen God. In retrospect, I could have used Michaelangelo’s God from the Sistine Chapel, but that still doesn’t exactly help get back to “Pascal” at speed.
Second, I tried to see two actions instead of just one. And neither hanging nor throat-slitting have any direct relationship to atheism. I created so many vague elements that I could barely remember the hurdles I’d placed between myself and the target information.
But I didn’t let myself get stressed out about it. I simply noticed the outcome and knew I would use it as a talking point and teaching tool if called upon to give a memory demonstration. I have given demonstrations, I have made errors and I have won respect simply by keeping my cool and sharing what went wrong.
You can too, so I recommend you follow the Always Be Cool principle while taking time to analyze your mistakes and thinking about how you can do better next time. And share the process so that others can learn too.
You Don’t Have To Remember Them In Order Every Time
Let’s say that you’re called upon to give a demonstration and you can’t recall a couple of names. Instead of giving up or getting frustrated, just move on, the same way you would in practice.
As you’re finishing the other names, you’ll often be pleasantly surprised at how the ones you forgot suddenly spring back. And if not, you wind up with an opportunity to explain what went wrong and demonstrate troubleshooting on the fly.
Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get frustrated. You don’t want to blow your momentum over what amounts to nothing in the long run. Always be cool and your memory will serve you well.
Prepare to be admired
People will be super-impressed, especially if you’re humble and can handle any mistakes gracefully.
By the same token …
Prepare to be forgotten
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into someone and called them by name. They’re always shocked and amazed that I remember them.
But more often than not, they can’t do the same. This lapse in their memory can create an awkward moment, but don’t let it. Just make a joke or otherwise blow it off and offer to teach them the skill. You’ll be able to use their name as an example and personalized teaching is often the best.
And assuming you get yourself a list of names and get practicing, you now have a skill that will serve you for a life. You never have to be at an event in a sea of strangers again. When you can remember names, you will always be surrounded by friends.
May 19, 2016
How To Beat Jet Lag And The Winter Blahs
[image error]Do you hate that slump you get after flying?
How about that dumpy feeling that comes when winter takes hold? Not the greatest of friends, is it?
But just stop and ask yourself …
What If Suffering Like This Could Be Reduced Or Eliminated?
In my brief experience with an amazing new invention, I believe that it can. It’s called Human Charger and this is my story using it.
As a Canadian currently living in Germany, I’ve spent more than a few days in the miserable dark. Winter temperatures rarely stand a chance, but gray days take a lot out of me, especially since I have Bipolar Disorder.
But no matter where a person lives or what conditions they might face, there are solutions to the winter blahs.
And if you’re a frequent flyer, the very same solution applies to jet lag too. All you need is light.
As always, the science is divided. In general, light is essential to the creation of Vitamin D, though it’s not entirely clear that Vitamin D plays the role we think it does. Nonetheless, light definitely affects mood and energy. And since it takes a feeling of well-being to tolerate long, dark winters, arguably, more exposure to light will ease that burden.
The 3 Best Ways To Get More Healing Light
I’ve tried a number of ways to get more sun during the winter in Berlin.
Travel is the simplest: Pick a sunny place and go. Travel is great because you not only get more light, but you can challenge your mind by learning a language and enjoying the culture. In addition to getting more “happy rays,” here are another 15 Reasons Why Learning A Foreign Language Is Good For Your Brain.
Definitely chase the sun if you can. I’ve enjoyed warmer temperatures, boosts in fluency and warm sun in places like Greece, Spain and most recently in China where I shot a video course and did some research on the great mnemonist Matteo Ricci.
While at home, my trainer Lars Rosenbaum at Ignite Fit recommended one 15-minute session per week in what he called the “assi-toaster.” That’s a Denglish (German/English) word that combines asocial with toaster to joke about the anti-social activity of laying in a tanning bed.
I’ve found that he’s right. That small blast of light once a week helps keep the blues away. It’s not enough to create much of a tan, but a sufficient amount for creating the desired effect.
Just Like Storing The Sun In Your Pocket?
Even before the package arrived, I was skeptical. After all, the idea of shooting light into your ears sounds a bit fantastical. I also worried about burning holes in my eardrum or developing tinnitus.
Not only that, but I had no upcoming trips with flights long enough to merit trying the Human Charger. So I let one of the most miraculous technologies I would ever use just sit there.
Then Jari got in touch to ask if I’d given the Human Charger a try. I told him that I had no reason to do so but might the following year. He suggested giving it a try, citing its use for dealing with Seasonal Effective Disorder (SAD). My interest peaked and so I finally opened the package and gave it a try.
It’s simple to use. About the size of an iPod, it comes with two earbuds that you pop into your ears before switching it on. It makes a beep and soon after you feel warmth inside your head.
Eureka … It Works!
After the session, I immediately felt different. I felt better. And of course I figured it was probably a placebo. Nonetheless, I stuck with the device and still use it every day during my meditation sessions.
The device is set at 100% power when you get it for a 12 minute session. That felt too much for me so I reduced it to 75% for 9 minutes. The 9 minutes matches almost exactly how long I like to meditate and gives my meditations a frame without having to set an alarm. It’s also pleasant to meditate with the warmth in my head, something definitely worth experiencing.
Imagine Flying Halfway Around The World
Without A Shred Of Jet Lag
For me, the real test would be an international flight. So when I finally went to China, I followed the instructions precisely and flew with anticipation of a jet lag free experience.
To my pleasant surprise, I got it. More precisely, I felt like my body wanted to go into jet lag, but it couldn’t. There was just a whisper of that holiday-destroying condition that didn’t disrupt a thing.
I wasn’t the only one surprised either. People kept asking me why I was so chipper, which gave me the opportunity to share the good news about the Human Charger. As I was, many were skeptical, but both during and after my visit to China, the post-flight experiences created amazement in myself and others as I strutted around with my usual impenetrable energy.
The Best Meditation Hardware On The Market
With respect to overall well-being, the best part of using the Human Charger apart from solving jet lag is the experience of using it during meditation. Many people use apps to help keep them focused as they practice and I’ve certainly tested my share.
At the same time, I’ve always felt that using sound-based apps weakens the mental effects one is trying to create. After all, shouldn’t we work to meditate unassisted by anything? Isn’t that where the real power of creating concentration at will lies?
[image error]
I still think so, but the Human Charger is different because it’s not software. It enables light to reach a place inside your body light normally doesn’t get to go. There are no sounds, no fantastic strobe effects, nothing more than a steady blast of exposure as if your ears had opened up and let the sun in.
The reason the Human Charger adds so much to meditation is not only that the device adds a time frame to the experience. It also creates a physical sensation that you can focus on. I find kinesthetics more beneficial than sound during a meditation because touch is always happening anyway. Your body touches the floor and itself. You can create physical effects with your breath and the temperature can be noted and focused upon.
Warmth in the ears then becomes another tool of physical immersion that further cements you in the moment. Computer-generated sounds, on the other hand, usually have a transportive effect, immersing you in the technology rather than the world as it is unfolding around you.
Yes, you can argue that the technology is part if the unfolding world around you – but you know what I mean! … 
May 12, 2016
Stop Smoking And Boost Memory With These Step-By-Step Addiction Breakers
[image error]You know all about the dangers of smoking, right? Bronchitis, emphysema, vascular disease … Heck, the Demon Nicotine has even been linked to cancer.
But did you know that smoking also poses risks to your intelligence and memory? Some experts disagree, but common sense in combination with evidence tells us that …
Smoking Murders Your Memory!
Never fear. If this post doesn’t spook smokers out of lighting up ever again (it probably won’t), it’ll at least educate them. Plus, I’ll give you some ideas for how to quit with minimum suffering in record time. If you’re not a smoker yourself, you can at least pass the tactics on.
But if you’re one of those who prefer cocktails of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and hydrogen cyanide, abandon this post right away because it’s basically a rant from a guy who cares for both you as a person AND for your mental abilities. So buckle up if you’re going to stick around, because here comes some tough love from your friendly neighborhood Warrior of the Mind.
A Brief History Of The World’s Stupidest And Stinkiest Habit
There may be earlier accounts, but history tells us that Columbus witnessed Native Americans huffing and puffing on rolled dried leaves starting in 1492. They “drank the smoke” as he put it.
Later, ships brought some of those Natives with them to Europe, leading to tobacco seeds being left at each and every port of call. The Dutch brought tobacco home from the Hottentots, the Portuguese introduced it to the Polynesians and people soon planted nicotine anywhere and everywhere it would grow.
Even Kings Failed To Stop The
Spread Of Smoking Across Their Kingdoms
We often think of royalty from the 1600s as slovenly pigs stuffing their faces with mutton and mead, but not King James. When he wasn’t busy developing the Bible, he was writing hate mail to smokers. Check out this rant in which he says smoking is …
“… A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian of the pit that is bottomless.”
King James wrote those words in 1604, but his rage was nothing compared to the Russian czar who banned smoking and said that “offenders will be sentenced to slitting of nostrils.”
Ouch!
Nonetheless, demand exceeded supply all over Europe, and tobacco prices soared. As a result, some people got mighty wealthy.
How Smoking Formed A
Global Superpower … Almost Overnight!
By the 17th Century, smokers had become aware of nicotine’s addictive powers. But it was already too late, and, much worse, tobacco had become central to the development of an emerging economic and political powerhouse.
For example, the tobacco industry bolstered the success of the Virginia Settlement. Farming the plant became the backbone of slavery and the southern plantation practices overall. The weed stood behind the Louisiana Purchase and is still considered America’s oldest industry (not to be mistaken with prostitution, which belongs to the entire world).
By the 1930s, smoking had entered the world of advertising. Printed images of sexy women and dapper men enticed people around the world, not to mention Hollywood movies, which were entering the era of sound. Now you could even hear the sounds of beloved celebrities puffing their way into early graves.
If You Think Trump Is An Idiot, Get A Load Of This
Some people admire Theodore Roosevelt and perhaps for good reason. But he’s the same dude who classified tobacco as an essential crop and had the stuff shipped overseas to America’s servicemen. Thanks to him, they could get their limbs blown off and memory-destroying pulmonary diseases too.
Not only that, but in 1945 alone over 267 BILLION cigarettes were sold domestically in the US. The military draft legislation was changed so that enough people could stay home to work on the tobacco farms to supply the domestic and overseas markets.
Science Fails To Come To The Rescue
Although people had long been aware of tobacco’s addictive properties, medical research didn’t pick up the issue in earnest until the 1940s. But it wouldn’t be until 1957 that a Public Health Service report called for sales restrictions, health warnings and advertising regulations.
Those not afraid to speak out against smoking gained some traction, but the tobacco industry retaliated by introducing filtered cigarettes to allay the fears of current and future smokers. Congress continued to favor the industry and to this day, celebrities romanticize the disgusting habit by either smoking themselves or pretending too. (Some actors even pick up the habit after playing the role of smokers!)
Smoking Destroys Your Body And Mind At The Same Time
Despite different conclusions, most studies link smoking to diseases that involve the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. Tamper with these and your ability to concentrate and remember plummets.
Why? It’s because smoking:
Causes peripheral blood vessels to restrict
Reduces capillary flow
Deposits toxic fat in blood vessels
Prevents oxygen from reaching the heart and brain
Decreases lung capacity and elasticity
Lessens the amount of carbon dioxide your body needs to expel
Lowers the ability of your macrophage cells to kill invading microbes
… and much, much more!
And if all that wasn’t bad enough enough, these effects of smoking …
Utterly Smash Verbal Intelligence
And Intellectual Functioning!
Okay, I’m probably exaggerating, but a lot of evidence supports this claim. Sure, smoking tricks your adrenal medulla into blasting out a bit of dopamine and epinephrine, but for the average smoker who sucks in nearly half a cup of tar a year …
Smoking Is Suffocating Your
Cognitive Functioning To Death!
At this point, you might be asking …
So what? What’s so great about being intelligent and mentally capable anyway?
I’m glad you asked because intelligence and memory work together to form your entire personality. In short, you need memory and intelligence to:
Act with purpose
Think rationally
Deal effectively with your circumstances and environment
I think you have to agree that ruining your memory with smoking is complete madness.
The Biggest Lie Smokers Tell Themselves
About Concentration And Memory
Of course, smokers love to claim that smoking helps them in each of these areas. But in reality, even just a few hours without nicotine has been shown to severely damage verbal and visuospatial memory. This state is called withdrawal and many nicotine addicts may need nine weeks or more without smoking to sail beyond the torrid waters of depleted intelligence.
Of course, the extent to which any individual experiences these pains depends on a lot of factors, including baseline indicators of intelligence, including:
How much they educate themselves formally or informally
The amount of social and cultural experiences they pursue
Diet and other lifestyle choices
The amount smoked
The style of smoking (quick puffing, deep inhaling or not drawing smoke into the lungs at all)
Other factors such as genetics, gender and even how much a person engages in random acts of generosity
All this means that …
It Only Seems Like Smoking Helps Improve Your Memory
In reality, smoking stops withdrawal from messing with your concentration and memory, specifically working memory.
By working memory, I’m referring to Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch‘s model. They described memory as a Central Executive System with three structures:
1. Phonological loop
2. Visuospatial sketchpad
3. Episodic buffer
When nicotine withdrawal gets rolling, it interferes, it messes with each of these bigtime.
So even though some evidence shows that using mnemonics may combat the effects of withdrawal, you’re better off not smoking at all.
7 Super-Difficult Ways To Quit Smoking
I’m not going to sugar coat this or make elaborate promises. Getting off the Demon Nicotine ain’t easy. But as a former working hypnotists, I think these tips can help you if you want to quit.
1. Hypnosis
Hypnosis, as Kreskin once defined it, is nothing more than the acceptance of a suggestion. If you take this definition to heart, then you instantly realize that we are all hypnotizing ourselves and others all the time. The real question is …
How do you get yourself to accept the suggestion not to smoke.
The answer is:
You Don’t!
Instead, the hypnotist or self-hypnotist helps raise the ego to overcome the effects of withdrawal and resist the temptations of addiction. Hypnotists harness the power of the imagination to achieve this feat by eliciting the language of their clients, adopting their body language to create rapport and using relaxation inductions to increase trust and the acceptance of suggestions.
A hypnotist might hear that you hate spending money on cigarettes above all and then have you imagine setting stacks of cash on fire after feeling the weight of your hard-earned wealth in your hands. Or if you mention disliking wheezing and coughing, the hypnotist might help you exaggerate that suffering in your mind and then replace that experience with the bliss of physical reaction.
The hypnotists then compliments these states with ego boosting statements that help the client keep feeling empowered over the next 72 hours, which tend to be the hardest when a person quits.
2. Drink Tons Of Water And Devour Acres Of Fruit
It helps to detoxify during those first 72 hours, so many hypnotists will send you home with the instructions to keep hydrated and get your sugars from natural sources instead of candy and pastries.
You might gain a bit of weight from the fructose, but not as much as you would from refined sugars. And chocolate bars and other sweets will only make you antsy, impulsive and thereby more likely to pop a cigarette in your mouth and light up.
3. Rest
It might be hard sitting still, let alone getting to sleep, but with The Ultimate Sleep Remedy, you at least have a fighting chance. I can’t reproduce the entire book here, but one technique you can try is Shavasana. In its simplest form, this practice involves nothing more than laying on your back and practicing total stillness for as long as you can.
4. Fitness
Go for a walk. Do pushups. Even just working at a standing desk provides beneficial exercise. You can also hang out with non-smokers and visit smoke-free places like art galleries and museums.
These activities follow the powerful “don’t go where it’s slippery” principle. If you make it impossible to spark a cherry, you won’t wind up inhaling junk that ruins your body and mind. It’s that simple.
5. Breathing Exercises
Lately, I’ve been using the Wim Hof Method and a few other techniques. These exercises fall under physical fitness, but belong to their own category because they strengthen your lungs, improve oxygen circulation and develop your concentration while hopefully distracting your mind from nicotine cravings.
6. Meditation
Sit just to sit and also combine meditation with breathing exercises and even do both while walking.
7. Practice memory techniques
Although you might feel too fidgety to memorize playing cards or foreign language vocabulary (LINK 15 reasons), this technique pays off.
Why?
Because the more you experience success with mnemonics while distracted, the more successful you’ll be when using them post-addiction. That’s just a hypothesis of mine, but I think it’ll prove true. When I’ve practiced card memorization in noisy places, for example, I wind up getting crazy better results later when I do the same drills at home.
Are You Ready To Serve Your Memory By Quitting Smoking?
In sum, you can stop smoking. When you do, you’ll not only improve your physical health, but also the strength of your mind. Even better, you can use the art of memory and mnemonics to help you get through it in combination with self-hypnosis or with the guidance of a good hypnotist who doesn’t BS you about what’s really going on.
No matter how you quit, I know this general information and these tips will serve you and I look forward to hearing about your success.
In the meantime, stomp this habit out of your life and get busy using memory techniques to help keep the cravings at bay using my FREE Memory Improvement Kit starting right now.
Further Resources
The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis And Memory Improvement
May 4, 2016
How To Help Middle School Students Remember More
[image error]Remember when you were in middle school? How boring it was?
Wouldn’t it have been great if you had not only the ability to make it the most exciting time of your life, but also memorize everything you learned?
Here’s The VERY Good News About Helping Middle School Students Remember More
Even if it’s too late for you, it doesn’t have to be for your kids or any young person for whom you buy books in your family or social circles. US Memory Bronze Medal Champion Brad Zupp has an exciting training book just for youth.
The book is called Unlock Your Amazing Memory: The Fun Guide That Shows Grades 5 To 8 How To Remember Better And Make School Easier.
Unlock Your Amazing Memory is a great book and in this post, I’m going to try and sell you on buying and reading it. Heck, even if school is far behind you and your hair has gone gray, you’re going to learn a lot from Zupp’s book.
Not Being Able To Remember Does Not Make You Dumb
Unfortunately, schools tend to set things up so that we think intelligence is linked to performance on tests and exams. But this couldn’t be further from the truth and Zupp shows how any student can break the pattern of institutionally-forced failure.
Zupp’s book is easy to read for the advertised grade level, as well as anyone. This aspect of Unlock Your Amazing Memory really makes it shine because all too often, books on technical skills like mnemonics can also make you feel stupid. Zupp’s clear writing style and progressive organization of the basics makes it impossible to misunderstand the techniques.
The More You Practice Your Memory,
The Better It will Be
Learning memory techniques can take time, but the payoff later is incredible speed that MORE than pays off the initial investment. The best part is that it pays off for life.
To motivate readers, Zupp recommends visualizing yourself impressing friends. This is okay, but I would add visualizing just taking the first steps. For example, research has shown that people who visualize themselves putting on their running shoes get more fit in a six-month period than those who see themselves with an excellent physique.
When it comes to memory techniques, you can start by visualizing yourself creating a Memory Palace. To make that even simpler, picture yourself getting a memory journal and picking out a special pen or pencil that you will use exclusively for that journal.
Taking this small step is more likely to lead to actually creating a Memory Palace than visualizing yourself as a memory hero in front of your friends. Heck, just picturing yourself reading the book from beginning to end and then actually reading it will already make you a modern Hercules amongst your Internet-addled friends.
Remembering Involves 3 Steps So Simple You’ll
Wonder Why Schools Don’t Save The Alphabet For Later
Zupp breaks his approach to memory techniques into three distinct movements.
The first seems obvious, but how many people actually do it? For Zupp, it’s called remembering to “get” the info, or what Harry Lorayne often calls “paying attention to it in the first place.”
You Can’t Remember What You Haven’t Learned
So if “paying attention” to the target information is the first key to “getting” it into memory, how do you accomplish this feat?
First up, Zupp says you’ve got to sit up straight. I remember this principle well from learning music. Slumping not only breaks the flow of oxygen. It also reduces concentration. You’re going to need focus if you want to learn well over the long haul.
Speaking of air, breathing is an incredible stimulant for memory. An oxygenated brain has more resources for creating the physical connections needed to form memories.
Guessing Games Make Memories Fast
Another of Zupp’s suggestions involves thinking ahead. For example, when you’re listening to a lecture, try figuring out where the lecturer is headed in advance of his current line of thought. By doing this, you increase the attention you’re paying to the speaker. The intensified focus makes the material more memorable almost by default, even if your assumptions are wrong.
In fact, the information becomes more memorable when you are wrong because your mind loops back to the part of the thread where you took your wayward turn.
The game of guessing “what’s next” reminds me of a meditation approach suggest by Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now. When meditating, Tolle suggests pretending you are a cat perched in front of a mouse hole. But instead of waiting for a mouse, you wonder instead, “What thought will I think of next?”
This activity keeps you focused both on the present moment and ready to capture new thoughts when they appear. In the case of meditation, the thoughts don’t distract you. Instead, they create even more focus because you’ve attuned yourself to their appearance.
The same applies to keeping your mind on what the professor might say next. You’ll be wide awake to the present moment and carefully attuned to whatever comes next.
Counting Uhms, Ahems And Other Human Hesitations
To increase focus, Zupp suggestions counting the uhms made by your teacher. But is this particular strategy reasonable? You might wind up juggling the wrong info in your mind. Answering “uhm” and “ah” won’t get you far on many exams – unless they involve demonstrating radical knowledge about contemporary sound poetry.
When I’m in need of concentration, I prefer repeating what people are saying in my mind, deleting the uhms. This practice creates laser-like focus and helps form memories. That said, Zupp’s method is worth trying.
When You Know How You’re Going To Memorize It,
All Information Gets Stickier
Another means of focusing and paying attention involves asking yourself how you’re going to remember the info. This activity offers a great deal of value because you can practice mnemonics directly in response to the question.
For example, in a class on literature when you’re asked to learn the definition of a simile, you can ask yourself how you’re going to remember it and start formulating an answer. You could ask this simple question and say, “Eureka! I’ll see a simian ape tearing Lee jeans in half as he shouts ‘like!'”
Make Multitasking An Endangered Species
We’ll All Be Glad Left The Planet
Finally, Zupp urges us to avoid the multitasking myth. If you want to focus, limit yourself to one task at a time. When it comes to memory skills, for example, this is why I have created a deliberate three-day memory routine to maximize your results. So long as you can devote all of your attention to just the three recommended tasks on the three recommended days, you’ll get results beyond the extraordinary.
Don’t Forget To Press Save!
Another key takeaway from Zupp’s book is that you need to focus on storing the information. Imagery, especially exaggerated imagery, is the most powerful mnemonic tool we have for making information stick. In combination with a Memory Palace, it’s the closest thing in the brain to a “save” button.
One great feature of Zupp’s work is explaining how to deal with abstract information. In the Magnetic Memory Method, we call the process word division, which involves taking information with no concrete correlative and breaking it down into smaller units that can be paired with tangible imagery.
The only problem, as Zupp points out, is that too few people know how to make the needed imagery vibrant and exciting. The imagination literally needs a smack across the face to get your memory working and anything less makes the information boring. And and as we all know from many boring hours in school, that which makes you drool gets lost fast.
If You’re Looking For Mnemonic Examples, Here Be Dragons
Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t ask me to tailor them a series if images to help them memorize information.
I never do it. My books and video courses are light on mnemonic examples because I focus on the nuts, the bolts and the detailed mechanics. It’s what I do and I’m proud to be the only one in the field who concentrates this deeply on mastering the Memory Palace.
That said, some people benefit from seeing a lot of examples from the mind of a mnemonist. For that reason, Zupp’s book is becoming one of my go-to recommendations.
I’m leery about sending people off to example-land, however. I always have been and we’ve talked a lot about the dangers of mnemonic examples on previous episodes of the Magnetic Memory Podcast.
A recent experience makes me even more certain that making your own mnemonic examples based on our own understanding of the core mnemonic principles enforces my conviction.
Why You Must Learn To “Pack Your Own Parachute” As A Student
Out in the dunes of Gran Canaria, I found myself spending a delightful afternoon with Peter Sage. We were there shooting a variety of videos for some courses with Jimmy Naraine and Peter told an incredible story about getting an upper-level parachuting certification.
In order to earn it, the parachuter has to personally pack his or her parachute. Not only is the task detailed and requires great care. The stakes are also high.
Why?
Because you have to dive wearing the parachute you packed yourself.
And as Peter told the story, he said that the smoothest opening he ever experienced as a parachute popped out above him was from the bag he packed himself.
It’s Exactly The Same With Mnemonics!
Sure, a few examples help and no doubt we all need them. But if you want a smooth experience using memory techniques, you need to leave the mnemonic examples of others behind as quickly as possible.
The other problems with mnemonic models is that authors of memory improvement books often use information that readers could care less about. Sure, some people might like to have all the US presidents and state capitals in mind. But it’s the 21st century and globalization requires less Americancentric examples to appeal to the needs of much wider audiences.
In no way do I mean this brief soapbox lecture with its politically correct tone as a criticism of Zupp’s book. He explains his example images in solid language and includes a lot of fun illustrations. Nonetheless, over half the book contains these examples and I would have liked to see more detail on Memory Palace creation and the art of recall.
All the same, I highly recommend this book to anyone of any age. Complete the exercises, supplement Zupp’s work with other memory training books and programs and you will be delighted with the progress you make.
And listen, if you enjoy the book, leave a quick review for Brad on Amazon. Even the shortest sentence of support helps memory trainers continue helping you. Pitch in with some star ratings with your candid feedback and help make the world a better place. You can help spread the good news about memory techniques and Zupp’s audience of students in grades 5 to 8 are amongst those who can use his help the most.
Further Resources
3 Memory Games You Can Play With Your Childhood
Brad’s World Memory Championships Records
April 27, 2016
How To Stop Information Pollution From Poisoning Your Memory
[image error]You’ve read about browser control software, right?
You know. The kind that blocks ads or logs you out after you’ve procrastinated too long.
All fine and dandy, but not the solution. Here are some low-tech things to try instead:
Get The Important Stuff Done
Before You Switch The DumbPhone On
“Yeah right,” I hear you say. “My computer IS the important stuff!”
Really? What about learning a language, or even just developing motivation for learning one? Believe it or not, people have learned languages for a long time without the aid of machines.
But even if you still need software, you can model what I’m doing for Mandarin Chinese. Technically, it still involves using a machine, but I use it like an ugly old Walkman.
Which leads us to:
Stop Carrying The Internet With You Everywhere
Sometimes I worry about becoming a Luddite. I do not have a single device that accesses the Internet unless I find wireless in a cafe. And even then, I’ve designed my life in a way that I rarely need it.
Friends and strangers alike ask me how I survive without it, a question that perplexes me. From ages four to twenty-four, I managed to meet people all over the world without having an email address or a cellphone.
Heck, I even used to arrange meetings by post.
The point being is that if you can’t figure out why you’re not achieving your goals, look to the roaming Internet first. And then consider the following life-changing activities:
* Use an app like Plain Text to write a book, blog post or article (like I’m doing right now) instead of scrolling through Facebook and clicking the Like button. That’s a fast path to nowhere.
But all wealth comes from writing, including social, intellectual and financial wealth. I guess the occasional “LOL” might add to the pool, but I’m certainly not counting on it.
* Create a mind map with (gasp!) pen and paper while using your spayed or neutered DumbPhone to listen to a podcast or lecture. You’ll remember more and come up with incredible ideas as you work.
* Meet a human being and have a conversation with no devices on or near the table. Switch it off so it doesn’t buzz, beep or otherwise bang its way into your attention from within a bag or pocket.
And above all, learn and love this phrase: “I’ll look it up later.” Then use your to-do list to create a Memory Palace that helps you do so.
Speaking of which:
If You Create Them, Use Them
Many people tell me they’ve created one or more Memory Palaces. They even send me excellent drawings that demonstrate substantial knowledge of the Magnetic Memory Method.
The only problem is … They never use them.
Regarding today’s topic, failing to use your inner mental technology opens you to more information pollution because you’re not spending time massaging the right stuff into your memory.
Stuff like:
* Facts that build general knowledge.
* Names and dates of historical figures and events that develop your understanding of how and why we got here.
* Critical Information from a textbook so that you can ace exams.
* Poems, quotes, plots and jokes so that you always have something interesting to say. Heck, if you’ve got good poems, stories or philosophical ideas memorized, you’ll always have something fascinating to think about even when you’re on your own.
* Passwords and credit card numbers so that you’re not pouring time down the drain looking stuff up.
Memorizing These Things Could Make The Difference
Between Being A Mouse Or A Millionaire
But if you’re tootling your time away consuming and creating blasts of info pollution, good luck making it to the top.
But … How? How do we avoid all this nonsense?
Frame Your Day With Time Boundaries
It’s not just about doing the important stuff before you switch on the computer. It’s about spacing out time across the day.
Luckily, this is easy to do. It’s called “setting a timer.” How it works is this:
1. Decide how long you want to work on a high margin task. When it comes to your memory work, that might mean the design, memorization or recall parts, as described in this video:
2. Set the timer.
3. Work until it rings.
4. Take a computer-free break to avoid noise pollution. Do push ups, take a walk or, dip into a Memory Palace.
If you can’t develop the discipline needed to do this on your own, find a co-working team. My friend Max Breckbill hosts the most amazing group sessions and serves as the MC. He starts and ends each session and manages a spreadsheet that lists the activities of each attendee to help create accountability.
Set Activity Boundaries And Hold To Them
At the beginning of 2016, I performed a life assessment with the help of my friend Jonathan Levi. One of the huge gaps I found involved the withering of my music life. Somehow I just wasn’t playing bass often enough anymore. Same thing with my language learning and memory experiments.
So then I did a severe time analysis and found that I’d unconsciously slid away from my tried and true time-tracking technique. Once I got that back on track, I quickly spotted the culprit.
Here’s What Happens When You Look In The Mirror
You thought I was going to say Facebook, right?
Almost. The actual answer is “me on Facebook.”
Why?
Because blaming software, hardware and online platforms for siphoning our time amounts to technological determinism. The truth is that the machines don’t make us spend our time on them. We determine our own way onto them and into their forests of noise pollution all on our own.
And it’s tremendously exhausting both psychologically and physically. Those dopamine boosts feel good, but that’s just because there’s sugar on the blade. We’re oozing precious lifeblood each and every second we spend in states of media-induced excitement.
The solution?
Use The Simple Power Of Arithmetic
Rules To Set Yourself Free
At the ThinkBuzan memory training I attended, Tony Buzan said something very important that applies to many things in life: “Rules set you free.” When it comes to eliminating information pollution to your life, try setting these into action:
Starting tomorrow, count the number of times you find yourself on Facebook. If you use browsers exclusively, you could use the history function at the end of the day, but if the FB app doesn’t track it, you’ll have to do it manually.
Yes, yes, I know that there are apps that show you graphs of where you spend your time. But I don’t think graphical readouts spit out by the same machine you’re trying to avoid will create quite the same shock ad awe as the graph you create on your own.
Once you know your numbers, set a rule. For example, you can cut the number in half and use a Memory Palace and the Major Method to track the number of times you’ve popped in.
Everybody Knows That The Dice Are Loaded
Or roll dice and subtract that number.
Better yet, go for broke and determine to visit your favorite noise pollution sites once a day. Maximum.
That’s ultimately how I got mounds of time back into my life. At first, I didn’t know what to do with it all, even after reinserting bass practice and language learning. But I soon found ways, such as reviving my passion for reading novels and even created my own coloring book so I could dive into a form of guided creativity so many of us have lost since childhood.
To seal the deal …
Journal Your Progress And Tell Others
About Your Accomplishments
“Hell,” Sartre wrote, “is other people.” And when it comes to getting tied up in information pollution, this might be true. Especially when the excuse for multiple exposures comes down to not wanting to lose touch with friends.
Frankly, if you can’t keep up with friends by visiting Facebook just once a day and scanning their feeds, then you need to find a way to get paid for the labor of liking their posts.
Instead, use the power of mathematical rules to set yourself free and then report on the experience.
Encourage others to do the same.
Fight the noise pollution.
Get your power back.
Learn, memorize and recall more.
Trust me, if you implement what you’ve read in this post, you’ll not only reduce the info pollution in your life. You’ll win back the time you spent reading it back in droves and become one of the smartest human beings on the planet.
Now go forth and Magnetize.
April 20, 2016
5 Simple Ways Albertus Magnus Can Improve Your Memory Palaces
[image error]Did you know that your ability to be a moral person directly connects to the quality of your memory?
At least, that’s according to Albertus Magnus and I think he’s right.
Why?
A few reasons. First off, forgetfulness is an unnecessary evil. Let it run your life and you’re automatically living on the Dark Side.
Second, you learn, memorize and recall less than you’re capable of. That’s not only an act of self-cruelty. It’s a crime against humanity.
Finally, if you’re not on top of your ability to memorize the information you need to achieve maximum success in life, you’re not able to pass the skills on. It doesn’t get any more immoral than that.
Memory Is The Sensitive Part Of The Soul
Born sometime around 1200 in the Duchy of Bavaria, Albertus Magnus spent a fair shake of time writing about memory skills before dying in the year 1280. He was influenced by Aristotle, who also wrote about memory, and left his mark on Thomas Aquinas, who also filled a few pages on the art of memory.
For his part, Magnus was fixated on ethics and what exactly makes good things good.
For example, he nailed down four cardinal virtues:
Fortitude
Temperance
Justice
Prudence
Memory, or memoria, belongs to prudence for Magnus, along with intelligence and providence.
Magnus breaks prudence down even further by saying it has a rational part and an emotional part. We should be using memory to live useful lives based on both of these aspects. As he writes:
“Memory can be a moral habit when it is used to remember past things with a view to prudent conduct in the present looking forward to the future.”
Calling up positive things from the past to guide your behavior in the future is fine and dandy. But what about mnemonics?
Guess what?
Using Memory Techniques Is Also A Virtuous Habit
Magnus called mnemonics “artificial memory” after the conventions of the time. We know better now, however. Using the power of your imagination to make Memory Palaces is the most natural activity on earth, especially compared with spaced-repetition software. That’s the hammer of memory that deserves the term “artificial” more than anything else.
The 5 Magnus Rules For Creating
Top-Notch Memory Palaces
Plus, Magnus was a lot like me. He wasn’t into using virtual Memory Palaces. He advises using only real locations and especially recommends churches because of how they can move the soul.
It’s an interesting suggestion because often the more meaningful the building, the more powerful the Memory Palace will be. Keep that in mind when creating your next Memory Palace and avoid basing any on buildings that may suck your enthusiasm.
With this point established, Magnus offers five rules.
1. Use Quiet Locations
Makes sense, right?
Maybe.
I can understand wanting to base your Memory Palaces on locations prone to silence. It kind of makes sense for them to mimic the intense concentration needed for creating powerful associative-imagery inside the Memory Palace.
However, if you’re using a bustling cafe, you don’t need to do the memory work in the cafe. And when you are using the Memory Palace, you can be in a quiet space. In fact, no matter where in the world the building you’ve sourced for your MP happens to be, it’s always a good idea to learn, memorize and practice Recall Rehearsal in quiet places.
But if you want to use the stage and stadium of a memorable Kiss concert, do it. If for any reason your memories of the excitement do get in the way, simply move on to another place.
2. Your Memory Palaces Should Neither
Be Too Large Nor Too Small
Many beginners get excited by the possibilities of making massive Memory Palaces. They draw diagrams of shopping malls, airports and try to use each and every floor of New York skyscrapers.
There’s no doubt that with practice you can use enormous Memory Palace structures. But Mangnus is right. You want to find a comfortable size the works for you.
In my case, I max out at 50-60 stations per Memory Palace. In many cases, I stick with a mere 10, using proper Magnetic Memory Method form to get the into long term memory so any given Memory Palace can be put out of rotation for a while and then reused.
That said, it’s good to stretch once in awhile, so keep working progressively to extend your abilities. The trick is to make sure that you’re getting your desired outcome. Sure, creating a Memory Palace with 5000 stations would be cool – but can you get measurable results from it?
Probably not.
3. Avoid Using Overly Similar Memory Palaces
Here’s another rule where it really depends. But in principle, you sure can confuse the heck out of yourself if you can’t distinguish one Memory Palace from another.
In my experience, this isn’t such a big deal. Here’s why:
It’s the difference in information that matters.
For example, I like to use the Ross Building on the campus of York University. I start on the seventh floor where the Grad Pub used to be and work my way down.
The levels are nearly identical, as are the journeys through them. The key difference is how the information itself “tags” each floor.
For example, the seventh floor has been reserved for words that start with “se” spellings or sounds. Likewise, the sixth floor for “si” sounds. The rest of the similarities in the Memory Palace divisions don’t matter because the information itself marks the territory.
As ever, your personal experimentation will make the difference. If it’s too much for you, scale back. When you’re ready to expand, add gradual challenges that will help you grow your memory and memorization management skills.
4. Not Too Bright And Not Too Dark
I don’t know what was up with medieval dudes like Magnus. Even up to Giordano Bruno, mnemonists were bonkers about the level of light in their Memory Palaces.
The issue may stem from the lack of electric lighting. Just as they wanted to use quiet places to maximize concentration, they figured it might be useful to see the Memory Palaces.
Of course, we know now that you don’t really need to “see” anything in your mind. You need only a conceptual approximation.
I think another reason the light issue crops up throughout the history of mnemonics is that so many people built upon the Ad Herrenium. In Magnus’s case, Francis Yates figures he probably had a corrupt copy.
All the same, the dogma about light strikes me as just that. You really need to explore this issue for yourself and see what happens. I predict you’ll do just fine, even if you’re a bat.
In fact, probably especially if you’re a bat, since echolocation is a powerful metaphor for how you can navigate a Memory Palace efficiently without seeing a single thing in your mind.
5. Leave 30 Feet Between Stations
Now here’s a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. If your Memory Palaces aren’t supposed to be too big, how does one leave this much space between stops along the path?
Hansel and Gretal would have been in big trouble if they’d done that with their crumbs, and so, I reckon, would you. I know this has created issues for me. For example, in one of my Aristotle Memory Palaces for my dissertation on friendship, I had some waaaaaaay too far distances between stations.
The reason long distances creates problems is because your mind spends time and energy scanning the territory. Whether you see the Memory Palace or merely conceive it like stars in a constellation, you’re still using spatial memory.
To reduce drag, try keeping your stations as close together as possible without creating issues for yourself. Cramming is the inverse problem and without breathing room, your associative-imagery might not correctly consolidate.
As ever, it all comes down to your personal experimentation. In this case, you’ll need to work on a case to case basis since, with the rare exception of places like the Ross Building I just mentioned, there are no uniform Memory Palaces.
Memory Palaces Are As Physical As A Brick Wall
One of the coolest ideas Magnus brings to the table involves the notion that both the memorizer and the Memory Palaces are physical bodies. In fact, the entire world is physical and so anything you imprint on your mind essentially resembles tattooing.
Magnus’s concept here is complex, and I’m still pondering it, but he seems to be pre-envisioning the world we live in today. For example, you can think of information as ethereal stuff that has no physical form.
But that would be incorrect. Not only does all information require physical storage in order to be receivable, your brain either uses or creates new chemicals and structures to perceive it.
When you read a book, for example, the information has been physically stored using ink on paper. Read the same book on a computer and the information is stored both in the physical chips and wires, but also in the electricity itself.
This info then enters the physical bodies of your eyes before entering the gazillion roller coaster rails of your brain.
Anyhow, Magnus’s point appears to be that by focusing our concentration on the physical reality of both the locations and the information, we can create much more powerful sense impressions.
And if all of these points from Magnus don’t make your memory more poignant, perhaps a previous or future episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast will. Until that time, by moral by using your memory and always, always keep Magnetic.
Further Resources
