Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 35

Can You Supercharge Your Memory With These Popular Supplements?

[image error]Supplements, both legal and illegal, have been used for centuries to enhance cognitive performance.

For example, Sigmund Freud used cocaine to prevent fatigue. In fact, he is reputed to have written some of his most popular psychoanalytic works while under the influence.

Entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss is also known for his experiments into so-called “smart drugs”.

Today, caffeine is a popular choice, used as a cognitive stimulant and is often consumed in very high doses. The widely consumed regular size Starbucks coffee contains five times the amount of caffeine of a normal coffee (Mehlman 2004).

Yet another common cognitive enhancer is nicotine, most commonly ingested through inhalation. It’s been found that nicotine has the ability to improve cognition in areas such as attention, memory and motor skills (Heishman et al 2010).

The reality is that most of us are not open to experimenting with unhealthy or illegal drugs to enhance our cognition.

But with the aging population and increase in age-related memory deterioration, many are turning to out-of-the-box solutions (Mehlman 2004). Discovering a quick-fix pill that protects and even enhances memory would be both beneficial and exciting.

This lusty market for an easy memory solution has been quickly filled with many drugs claiming to have amazing brain-boosting potential. Known as Nootropic supplements, these cognition-enhancing drugs make bold claims about their ability to increase their user’s memory.

In comes science to cut through the marketing hype and give us real answers about whether these pills really work.

Before we continue, here’s an important disclaimer: By offering this information in written form and by including videos of various people explaining or supporting the uses of supplements for memory, I in no way intend to validate, support or recommend the use of memory supplements. Please see your doctor before taking any substance and always, always use mnemonics.

3 Things To Remember About Alzheimer’s And Memory

[image error]Auguste Deter was only in her late 40s when she started showing signs of dementia. Her husband Karl, cared for her for some time.

Eventually, he could not cope with her hallucinations and forgetfulness that often kept him up all night. When Auguste was 51, Karl placed his wife into a psychiatric institute.

There, she spent the rest of her short life, eventually dying at the age of 55.

Auguste is now acknowledged to be one of the most well known patients in medical history (Muller et al. 2012). The doctor who examined her, Dr. Aloysius Alzheimer, named the disease for which she is acknowledged as the first identified patient. At that time, he called it “presenile dementia,” but later his colleague Emil Kraepelin gave the condition the name by which we know it now.

It’s been over 100 years since Alzheimer’s disease was first described, and yet, no cure has, as of yet, been found. However, with an increasingly aging population, it has become more pressing than ever to find effective treatments (Giacobini and Becker, 2007).

In the absence of a definitive cure, this post and podcast will provide important information about Alzheimer’s. The disease can be all-consuming for those afflicted, as well as their caregivers. Understanding how it works and how to care for that person may help to relieve stress for those trying to cope.

 

Who Does Alzheimer’s Affect?

 

Alzheimer’s is a disease of old age, and generally, affects those over the age of 65. However, a rare variation of the disease, early-onset Alzheimer’s, will affect those as young as 35. The prevalence is higher in females than males, although females do tend to live longer, which may explain this trend (Keene, Montine and Kuller 2015).

It’s important to realize that although Alzheimer’s affects older adults, it is not part of normal aging.

Right now, the overall prevalence of Alzheimer’s is between five to seven percent throughout the population (Keene, Montine and Kuller 2015). As we age, the likelihood that we will be affected by Alzheimer’s nearly doubles every decade. That is, by the ages of 95-99, your chances of having developed Alzheimer’s increases by 50%.

 

What Causes Alzheimer’s?

 

The cause of Alzheimer’s is, as of yet, not completely understood (Ginter et al. 2015). We do know that genetics plays a role in early-onset Alzheimer’s. This form of the disease is rare, and affects people under the age of 65. What genetics fails to fully explain is the prevalence of Alzheimer’s in aging adults (Keene, Montine and Kuller 2015).

The links between risk factors and Alzheimer’s have not fully been proven. However, in studies the following has show to possibly increase our risk of Alzheimer’s:

 

Hypertension (high blood pressure) during midlife
Having Type 2 diabetes
Obesity
Living an inactive lifestyle
Having had a brain trauma
Having had exposure to secondhand smoke

If you have a family history of dementia and Alzheimer’s, the chances of developing it yourself is much higher. People with a first-degree relative (parents or siblings) who developed dementia after 65, but before 85, have a higher risk factor. In fact, they are 10 to 30 times more likely to develop dementia themselves (Keene, Montine and Kuller 2015).

 

Alzheimer’s and Memory

 

Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia, which is a degeneration of cognitive function. One of the earliest and most distinctive aspects of Alzheimer’s is its affect on memory.

The first warning signs a doctor and other caregivers will look for is memory impairment (Wolk and Dickerson 2015). The patient will typically go through selective losses in short-term memory.

For example, a person suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s may find themselves getting lost on familiar paths. They may forget recent events and repeatedly ask for the same information.

It’s important to keep in mind that normal aging does accompany some memory deterioration. However, unlike normal aging, the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s comes in the way of normal daily activities.

The table below compares normal memory loss associated with aging to memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s (Leifer 2006).

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Family members may notice these types of memory declines and others, such as repeatedly asking for the same piece of information.

As the disease progresses, memory becomes severely affected. Memories of the person’s life are impacted. A patient will forget important life events, occurring at a particular time and place early on in their disease (Wolk and Dickerson 2015).

Moreover, factual memory, such as the words used for objects and concepts, deteriorates as time goes on.

A doctor may test memory by asking patients to learn and recall a series of words or objects. Recall is asked for both immediately and at a delay of five to ten minutes. They may also ask them about important historical events or artifacts in popular culture (Wolk and Dickerson 2015).

The brain of a normally aging person will compensate for the memory loss due to normal aging. The cognitive decline of a normally aging brain will not be severe enough to affect their ability to complete everyday tasks. Nor will the cognitive decline affect a person’s ability to live independently (Wolk and Dickerson 2015).

However, a brain with Alzheimer’s will decline quickly. This can vary, but the average survival rate after diagnosis is between eight and ten years. Some survive for as long as 20 years after the diagnosis (Wolk and Dickerson 2015).

 

What Alzheimer’s Looks Like

 

As Alzheimer’s progresses, the afflicted person will become more and more disoriented. Alzheimer’s patients will increasingly be unable to:

Speak or write coherently. They will have trouble finding the right words for the right situation.
Understand what is said or written.
Recognize familiar places.
Plan how to take multi-step actions.
Carry out multi-step actions, such as cooking.
Concentrate.
Make logical choices or decisions. For example, dressing in a outfit with oddly matched colors and patterns.

As the disease progresses into later stages, the person will start to exhibit more personality and emotional changes. These can be particularly stressful. They may include:

Increased hostility or increased passivity.
Hallucinations or delusions.
Disorientation.
Incontinence.

These changes might be due to chemical imbalances in the brain. They may also be due to the individual’s increasing fear and confusion because they do not understand their own surroundings.

Eventually, an Alzheimer’s patient will literally forget the more fundamental tasks, such as how to move. They will become immobilized and require assistance for bathing, eating and dressing.

 

Treatment options

 

There is no cure for Alzheimer’s. Current drug treatments only slow the disease in the short-term, for no longer than a year. However, for patients with early stages of the disease, medications can improve their cognitive function. These benefits may need to be weighed against the medication’s side-effects as the disease progresses.

In addition to medication, there are behavioral treatments available. For example, speech therapy can be combined with medication to help patients with troubles in this domain.

Caring for an Alzheimer’s Patient

 

Caring for people afflicted with Alzheimer’s is a very cumbersome task, and difficulties range from financial to emotional stress. In a study carried out in the UK, nearly two-thirds of people caring for Alzheimer’s patients were family members (Beinart et al. 2012).

When dealing with Alzeheimer’s, it’s important to seek support from extended family members, friends and your community.

Ask your doctor to refer you to a local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Many changes will need to occur in an afflicted person’s home and life due Alzheimer’s. They will likely be unable to drive, and will need monitoring and help with basic tasks. These include things such as cooking and taking medications (Alexander and Larson, 2015).

Other tips for helping people with Alzheimer’s include:

Simplifying choices, such as wardrobe choices, to reduce their indecisiveness and confusion.
Having familiar objects or photos may help with a patient’s disorientation with time and space.
Keep distractions and noise to a minimal so as not to agitate the patient.
Speak clearly, with short and concise sentences to increases your chances of being understood.
Encourage daily exercise, such as daily walk, to maintain physical health and tire the patient out. This will help prevent them from wandering and getting lost.
Avoid major changes in their environment.
Try to be patient when waiting for responses and actions to be performed.
Employ safety measures in the home, such as locking medicine cabinets, removing electrical appliances from the bathroom, installing grab bars in the bathroom, and setting the water heater below 120ºF
Install locks on the outside of the doors, so the patient cannot unlock and leave the house.
To prevent the person from getting lost, employ the use of a “safe return program” provided by the Alzheimer’s Association. They offer 24-hr assistance.
Try to implement a daily routine, but remain flexible.

In the mid-to-late stages of the disease, it may become impossible to care for the person at home. They may require skilled health care attention and placing the patient in a nursing home may be the best option.

Most importantly, remember that as a caregiver, you require care as well. Using respite services, such as adult day care and hiring home aides when possible is a great way to recharge. Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to ensure that your mental and physical health is tended to.

Emotionally and mentally, it’s important to try to focus on the positive. Try to enjoy the remaining qualities and activities with your relative instead of only remembering what you’ve lost. Remind yourself that you are doing your best in moments when you feel overwhelming guilt or fatigue.

 

Future Hope for Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Alzheimer’s disease is a tragic sickness, and poses an enormous financial burden on society at large. Paying to care for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s is predicted to cost 1.2 trillion dollars by 2050.

The good news is that there is increasing evidence that Alzheimer’s may be more of a lifestyle disease than previously acknowledged. Except for rare cases of early-onset Alzheimer’s, which have a strong genetic component, lifestyle may determine your likelihood of developing it. That is, maintaining a healthy diet and doing regular exercise can decrease your chances of developing Alzheimer’s. Due to the strong link between blood-sugar levels, some scientists have even started calling Alzheimer’s “Type 3 Diabetes” (De la Monte and Wands, 2008).

Not everything in life is within our control. However, living a healthy and balanced life are ways to counteract the effects on cognitive function, especially as we age.

For our purposes, the question is …

 

Can Mnemonics And Memory Palaces Help? 

 

It’s too soon to tell, but I highly recommend watching this TEDTalk with Kasper Bormans for an introduction to what might be possible:

Further Resources and Reading

Nelson Dellis spoke on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast about his experiences with Alzheimer’s and his efforts to combat the condition. Check out Extreme Memory Improvement to learn more.

These memory tips from Dr. Gary Small may not be the ultimate prevention against Alzheimer’s, but they are going to serve you well. Give it a listen.

I recommend subscribing to Preserving Your Memory Magazine, put out by the Fisher Center For Alzheimer’s Research.

And for more information, follow-up on the following articles:

Alexander, M., Larson, E. B., Patient information: Dementia (including Alzheimer disease) (Beyond the Basics) Up To Date (2015). Online.

Beinart, N. Weinman, J., Wade, D., & Brady, R. “Caregiver Burden and Psychoeducational Interventions in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review.” Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders EXTRA 2.1 (2012): 638–648. PMC. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.

De la Monte, Suzanne M., and Jack R. Wands. “Alzheimer’s Disease Is Type 3 Diabetes–Evidence Reviewed.” Journal of diabetes science and technology (Online) 2.6 (2008): 1101–1113. Print.

Keene, C. D., Montine, T. J., Kuller, L., H. “Epidemiology, pathology, and pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease” Up To Date (2015). Online.

Müller, Ulrich, Pia Winter, and Manuel B Graeber. “A Presenilin 1 Mutation in the First Case of Alzheimer’s Disease.” The Lancet Neurology (2012): 129-30. The Lancet. The Lancet. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.

Leifer, B. P. “Alzheimer’s disease: Seeing the signs early.” Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners(2009) 21: 588–595 Web. 13 Jan 2016

Ginter, E., V. Simko, D. Weinrebova, and Z. Ladecka. “Novel Potential for the Management of Alzheimer Disease.” Bratislava Medical Journal BLL (2015): 580-81. Online.

Giacobini, E and Becker, RE. One hundred years after the discovery of Alzheimer’s disease. A turning point for therapy? J Alzheimers Dis (2015): 12, 37-52

Wolk, D. A., Dickerson, B. C. “Clinical features and diagnosis of Alzheimer disease” Up To Date (2015). Online.

How To Live An Interesting Life

[image error]How would you like permission to skip school for the rest of your life as a student?

Or how about the ability to quit your job and do whatever you like for the rest of your career?

Well … I’m not sure I can help you with that.

But what I can do is give you some tips on how to live an interesting life. Here are six of them:

1. Be The Driver Of Your Education

 

There are two main forms of education:

* External Driven

* Self Driven

The first is the kind of education where you show up when you’re told and sit where you’re told. You even eat when you’re told.

Sounds kind of like prison, doesn’t it?

 

Prison? It Might Even Be Worse!

 

Not only do you have all kinds of pressures on your time. You’ve got people telling you what to learn.

Think about that:

What. To. Learn.

Oh no, no, no.

No and a thousand times no. That’s not the path to an interesting life.

What you want instead is to …

 

Be The Boss And Manager Of Your Own Intelligence

 

Let me tell you a story:

I dropped out of high school in Grade 12.

There’s a lot of detail surrounding this decision and some of it ain’t pretty.

But sticking to the facts (and just the facts), I thought school was such a drag that I decided to stay home and read Collier’s Encyclopedia.

 

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Each morning I would leave home. But instead of getting the battered yellow school bus into town, I would hike up into the mountains. For months I experienced the Fall transform into Winter and then Spring from up above the highway where I would wait for my mom’s car to pass by.

It sounds like something out of Hitchcock’s Psycho, I know, but as I was watching the highway waiting for mom to go to work, I was listening and learning.

No, not listening to Heavy Metal. Not pop. Not even soft rock.

Instead, I was listening to the CBC on my fat yellow Walkman. At that time, Peter Gzowski, a.k.a. Mr. Canada, was the host of Morningside.

Over the course of the year, I got virtually a Ph.D. in Canadian culture, history, politics, literature and the arts. I also heard interviews with important people from around the world.

True, a bear might have mauled me while I was up there, and I did have a few close encounters with moose and deer. But the danger was worth it.

And after a few hours of Morningside, I would head down the mountain and make hot chocolate. With a steaming cup beside me on the coffee table, I would sit in the same rocking chair I was nursed in and read the Encyclopedia.

It was like being nursed all over again, this time by the knowledge my parents had invested in when they ordered the Encylopedia one volume at a time.

These days we have Wikipedia, but back then, if you wanted to know about the world, it cost a lot of money. I remember my mom talking about saving for the Encyclopedia year after year. She cut dozens of coupons from the newspaper so she could save more and complete the set.

It took about three years and after that, she kept up with the yearly updates for at least another three.

And this was all before I was old enough to read anything more complicated than Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Come to think of it, that story is rather complex …)

It was a lot of fun reading through Collier’s Encyclopedia.

And educational.

When I finally did return to complete high school, I knew so much about the world that …

 

 

School Was EVEN MORE Boring!

 

But that was fine. Because I knew about all kinds of books I wanted to read.

So whenever I could, I would still skip school and take out a notebook I’d kept and look for all the books I’d learned about in Collier’s.

I would go to the Kamloops Public Library and check them out. While everyone else was spending weeks struggling through A Separate Peace by John Knowles, I was reading:

 

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* The Stranger by Albert Camus

* 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell

* Demian by Herman Hesse

* The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

* Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevski

… and much, much more.

The point of all this is that I was practicing, without even realizing it, the art of self-driven education.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone quit school, skip school or do anything like that …

But I am suggesting that you won’t get nearly as intelligent as you deserve to be if you learn only what you’re told.

 

So What Can You Do?

 

If you’re told to read a Shakespeare play, read the play and one other.

Or look up a book about Shakespeare and read a play by one of his contemporaries (I recommend the zany John Webster).

If you find math difficult and boring, find a book on mathematics that has mostly words. See if you can tackle the idea of math from another angle. Khan Academy has math courses you can take as well, something I couldn’t enjoy. But you can.

And when you find an author or an online teacher you like, stick with them. You can learn a lot by seeing how people develop over time.

You’ll also learn a lot about successful people, which brings us to …

 

2. Reverse-Engineer People You Admire 
(Just So Long As They Aren’t Creepy Weirdos Or Serial Killers)

 

The world is filled with people who have either lived or are living exciting lives.

That doesn’t mean they led easy lives. There’s no such thing and living without challenges would probably be even more tedious than high school.

What you want to look for when studying the biographies of other lives are:

* How they explained their desires, goals and wishes

* What actions they took to do great things

* How they coped with suffering

* What they did to keep themselves expanding

* How they dealt with their historical circumstances

* Who they knew and what they did with their friendships and relationships

There’s so much more to pay attention to, but these are a good start.

 

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Why Do This?

 

Because life starts to get serious when you act and think about who you are and what you want to do.

And to truly develop a unique profile and create the space needed in your mind to become whoever it is you’re going to become …

 

You Need The Ability To Think And Feel The Ideals And Sorrows Of Others And Dream Up Your Preferred Version Of The World So You Can Make It Real

 

When you study others, you’ll experience a diversity of ideas that will train you to pay attention to what everyone around you is doing.

It will also help you get past the negative habit so many have of rejecting differences.

Remember, there are no differences as such. Everything is part of the world. And as long as that is true, everything in the world is part of you. And that means everything and everyone applies to you and your life.

If you don’t like reading, you can also watch biographies. And for a super-interesting exercise, you can pick a single actor and watch as many films starring that person as possible in chronological order.

You can choose actors who are good at portraying different characteristics and actors who just seem to be playing themselves over and over.

Either way, you’ll notice patterns of consistency and difference. And like a wine expert, you’ll start experiencing all kinds of different shades of flavor you never noticed before.

Next, move from hanging out with books and movies to …

 

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3. Toss Social Inertia From Your Life Forever

 

Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing the same people all the time.

That’s no way to revolutionize your life and keep it revolutionizing.

So as you’re finding interesting biographies and adapting ideas to your life, HUNT for advanced people with whom you can share an environment. (But not in a creepy way …)

Find the people who have the characteristics you want and enter their circles. Don’t be creepy about it. Just identify someone and ask if you can have 20 minutes of their time to ask some questions. Then ask them who else you should talk to continue your education.

Do this and you’ll have an unending stream of new contacts and interesting people around you. As a result, you’ll experience SO MUCH MORE in your life. And you’ll always have interesting things to say to the new people you continue to meet.

Plus, if you visit these people in their homes, you instantly have more Memory Palaces. You can also meet them in cafes or restaurants you’ve never visited to increase your awareness of your city and its offerings.

All this will help you develop …

 

4. The Most Important Skills In The World

 

Communication, for example. There’s no point in being more interesting if you’re no good at speaking. At some point, you’ve got to learn to control how words come out of your mouth. You get that practice by … (gasp!) speaking with people.

You can also attend Toastmasters meetings, start a podcast, speak your mind on YouTube and develop yourself as a writer.

To get good at writing, start with the high school newspaper, writing letters to the editor, regularly updating a blog or just by posting on Facebook to explore your ideas.

By studying all those successful people and learning to communicate with them, you’ll also be orienting on success.

This will help ensure that your life isn’t controlled by external circumstances. You won’t fall prey to the strange idea that certain times are good and particular periods of history are bad.

Here’s the only thing about time you need to now:

 

Times Change …

 

Your job is to adjust.

To be flexible.

To be adaptive.

To be agile, aware and if necessary, defensive.

Above all, you want to develop awareness of everything around you that you possibly can.

Because at the end of the day …

The way you succeed has little to do with the ways of the world. It has to do with how you react to the way the world changes.

And you always want to ask …

What advantage can I take of the present state of change?

It’s a compelling question and the best way to prepare for the times when you’ll need to ask it is to …

 

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5. Live Like A Scientist

 

Scientific living means being measurable.

You can measure everything down to what you do to be productive and make good use of your timeTOR’s Post, to measuring your testosterone levels.

Measuring your activities will help you see where you’re strong and where you need to improve. The best part is that, because you’re studying so many other people, you’ll see how you can do more of what works, and how you can do things differently.

Track everything in a journal, diary, Google Spreadsheet, in Evernote or whatever you prefer. Use whatever tool makes it easy for you to see where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going.

By doing this, you can develop processes and systems for your life.

For example, I have systems that tick along no matter what happens on CNN:

* Writing every day

* Putting out a weekly podcast

* Emailing Magnetic Memory Method members 1-2 hours a day

* Theatre group once a week (when in season)

* Other regular courses

* Monday and Friday mornings at the gym

And the best part of all this activity and tracking is that …

 

It’s Easy To See The Holes In The System

 

For example, my activities are all fine and dandy, but looking them over, it’s clear to me that I’m missing out on music. Now I know that I’ve got to schedule more time for my memorize Bach on bass habit. Popping Bach into my memory used to be a huge part of my week, and now it’s faded almost to nil.

The important point here is that you want to develop “sticktoitiveness.”

The ability to stick to it is pure gold. So many of us (including me) get so distracted by the next bright shiny object that we need systems to keep ourselves on track.

Sticking with the program is important because without consistency, we never wind up doing anything long enough to see results.

And at the end of the day …

 

It’s All About The Results

 

That’s why it’s so important to stop and check in with yourself and your stats.

And stop searching for the easy path. That’s one of the quickest ways to fail. In reality, finishing a course you’ve started or completing a project from beginning to end IS the easiest way to get from point A-Z.

Success happens when you bring precise implementation to the game. I’m talking about dedicated practice, which is as true to memory development as it is to any task.

Stick with whatever you’re doing. Experiment with it. Study every angle and explore every corner.

Do that and you won’t need memory techniques. The stones will be set and the things you’ve learned will be impossible to forget.

Finally, there is one point that rules supreme:

 

6. Have Confidence In Yourself

 

Not only do you need to have confidence in yourself. You need to have confidence in the things you’re doing. This is why, for example, completing courses and finishing books you’ve started is so critical.

We live in memory. We thrive or fail by what we’ve done in the past. The more good things we’ve done, the more positive experiences we have to build upon.

That said, if you have weaknesses in your past, perhaps even terrible experiences …

 

There Is No Reason To Let The Darkness Control Your Future

 

If you just make the shifts needed to put yourself in alignment with others, your unique desires and the habits and patterns needed to achieve success, all the pieces will fall together.

You’ll see the patterns you noted in the lives of others emerge in your own life. You won’t let yourself get bullied out of accomplishing your dreams. You’ll be a transformer. An influencer. A true human being who cannot help but live an interesting life.

 

Further Resources

 

How To Improve Concentration And Memory Buddha-Style

This song:

 

 

How To Improve Concentration And Memory Buddha-Style

[image error]There are few things more frustrating than forgetting a single, important detail. Especially when you’re in the middle of something as important as recalling a hilarious joke.

You’ve prepared the perfect anecdote, yet, you can’t retrieve it the single most important part from your memory. You can remember the newspaper where you read it. You can even remember the look of the page where the information was found, including images and other small details.

And yet, in your mind’s eye …

 

That One Piece Of Information Is Painfully Out Of Reach!

 

But don’t worry. You’re not losing your memory. Your inability to remember is likely related to the level of concentration you used at the time you read the passage.  This is because concentration is key to memory recall. (In case you want to look it up on Wikipedia, concentration is also known by the slightly less sexy term,  “attentional control.”)

Good concentration is necessary for creating complete memories. Lack of attention to detail leads to difficulty remembering crucial and important pieces of information. Although having excellent concentration may not necessarily lead to better memory, concentration is essential to well-formed and useful recall of information.

But in a time with so much valuable information at our fingertips, there are more barriers for our concentration than ever. The notification-saturated world of the the internet constantly attacks our focus. This reality has led some teachers to worry that students are growing up with decreased attention spans.

Thankfully, there is a powerful and scientifically proven method to improving concentration. What’s more, this method has been practiced for thousands of years.

Best of all, it’s something anyone can take up, at no cost, with no fancy equipment, and no extensive training.

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This 3,500 Year Old Technique Will Improve Your Concentration

 

The mind is a powerful thing.

Perhaps no other group of minds demonstrates this more strongly than experienced Buddhist monks.

These monks dedicate their lives to following the Buddhist 8-fold path to enlightenment. The path involves doing good, serving others, and extensive meditation.

Enlightenment is the ultimate state of mind. When enlightened, a meditator finally achieves a complete stillness of the mind and inner peace.

Although meditation has existed for over 3,500 years, the scientific community has only been studying meditation for over 50 years (Thomas and Cohen, 2013).

Nonetheless, research on meditation has demonstrated impressive potential and even stunning feats.

In one mind-defying example, Buddhist monks have been recorded controlling their body temperatures through a meditative practice called “g-tummo”. In controlled scientific tests, experienced monks were able to dry cold and moist sheets (Kozhevnikov et al. 2013).

These sheets were placed around each monk’s body, and were dried within an hour. This process was made possible through body heat produced by the monks while in their meditative state of “g-tummo”. Some witnesses of similar experiments report seeing steam emerge from the sheets while they dried (Kozhevnikov et al. 2013).

Researchers also measured the monks’ body temperatures, which rose by as much as 17 degrees Celcius.

 

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How is this possible?

 

No one quite understands the biological mechanisms behind meditation just yet.

But study after study demonstrates that meditation has far-reaching benefits – including for concentration and memory.

Indeed, meditation is perhaps the only mental exercise with so much evidence of its ability to improve cognition and focus.

And you don’t even have to be a monk to start using this tool to better your own mind, body, and soul.

The Long way To Better Concentration

 

As with everything, there’s an easy way and a hard way. Science doesn’t skip over the hard way and investigates everything (crazy right?).

Looking for links between meditation and cognition, researchers from the University of California, Davis, recruited 60 people for a study. Half were assigned to a meditation retreat to practice mindfulness meditation for an average of five hours a day for three months.

These participants were committed. Not only did they volunteer three months of their time t, but they also paid $5,300 to attend the retreat.

The other 30 were used as a control group and placed on a waiting list. This was to rule out that the passage of time alone was not to blame for any differences between the groups.

Both groups were asked to watch a series of lines flash on a screen. Participants were to click a mouse when they saw a line that was shorter than the others. This detail-oriented test forced participants to focus intently. Researchers found that those who meditated were significantly more likely to see increasingly small differences in the lines (Maclean et al. 2010).

In other words, the meditation group were better able to focus in on small details through their improved concentration (Maclean et al. 2010).

But not everyone has the time to undergo a three month meditation retreat. So, where’s the shortcut for the majority of us who want the benefits without the commitment?

Science has a solution.

 

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The Easy Way To Better Concentration

 

As benefits to cognition had been observed for longer-term meditation, researchers were curious to see whether less effort could be effective (Zeidan et al. 2010).

In a study conducted at the University of North Carolina, a group of 49 students volunteered for a meditation study. None of them had prior experience meditating.

24 participants were randomly assigned to meditation, while 25 were assigned to listening to an audiobook. Each group performed their activity for 20 minutes, four times a week, for one week under laboratory supervision.

At the end of the one week experiment, the meditation group experienced significant improvements in concentration compared to their audiobook counterparts (Zeidan et al. 2010).

It’s important to note that this research has a few limitation. These results were seen in college students and may not extended to older adults. Also, there is no indication that this is as effective as longer-term and longer-duration mediation (Zeidan et al. 2010).

However, it is encouraging that immediate benefits to practicing short-term meditation were observed. This means that you don’t have to wait a few months before you can start benefiting from your practice. Within a week of consistent meditation, you can start to experience improved concentration.

 

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But Will It Really Improve Your Memory?

 

If the meditation-to-concentration-to-memory link seems shaky to you, don’t abandon meditation just yet. The link is more direct: meditation has also been shown to improve memory.

A randomized controlled test studied the effects of meditation on the working memory capacity in adolescents.

Around 200 teenagers were recruited and assigned to either a mindfulness meditation practice, yoga, or were waitlisted as a control group. The groups meditated or practiced yoga once a day for 15-30 minutes. These were accompanied by two formal teaching sessions twice a week.

By the end of the study, teenagers participating in the meditation group had significantly better outcomes than their yoga counterparts. Particularly in terms of their working memory capacity (Quach et al 2015).

But Meditation Doesn’t Just Improve Memory For The Young!

 

Another study looked at the effects of mindfulness training in adult-aged college students studying for their GRE tests. Sure enough, the meditating participants experienced less mind-wandering and increase working memory capacity. This result was achieved with only two weeks of meditating ten minutes per day (Mrazek et al 2013).

By now, you must be getting excited about meditation’s potential to super-charge your cognition. Calm your mind for now and read on about how to get started on your practice.

How To Meditate For Better Concentration

 

There are as many ways to meditate as there are Buddhist monks.

By stripping away the religious practices, a secular, simple, and one-size-fits-all solution to meditation is available.

To start meditating, just follow these steps:

Find a quiet spot, empty of distractions.
Set a timer for the amount of time you want to meditate. Start with five minutes and move up from there.
Sit on a chair or on the floor, whichever is more comfortable.
Close your eyes and focus on your breath; on where it feels the strongest. When thoughts enter your mind, don’t reject them. Simply acknowledge them and gently return your attention to your breath.

If meditating in silence is too difficult, you can try a large variety of guided meditations. These include phone apps, such as Headspace and Breathe.

No research has been done showing any benefit to meditation less than four times a week. To get the most out of it, aim to meditate as consistently as you can, at least a few times per week.

And if you’d like a more advanced approach to meditation (the one I use most often), check out The Five Fold Path To Memory Improvement.

Enough Reflection, It’s Time For Action

 

Improving your concentration is a step towards improving your memory. Meditation is a powerful tool for improving concentration and bettering your cognition.

Especially in an age of endless distractions and heightened stress, incorporating practices to re-focus your mind is important.

For some, daily meditation might seem like an impractical use of time. However, think about the time you waste, lost in thought, unfocused, and scatter-brained. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand how meditation yields impressive dividends for a relatively small investment in time.

Results are not instantaneous, but you can be sure that they’re scientifically backed.

Carve out ten minutes today for your first meditation session. Your mind will thank you.

 

Further Resources

 

How To Improve Memory And Concentration By Reducing Stress.

3 Ridiculously Boring Ways To Add Focus And Excitement To Your Life.

Kozhevnikov, Maria, James Elliott, Jennifer Shephard, and Klaus Gramann. “Neurocognitive and Somatic Components of Temperature Increases during G-Tummo Meditation: Legend and Reality.” PLoS ONE (2013). Pubmed. Web. 28 Dec. 2015. .

Maclean, K. A., E. Ferrer, S. R. Aichele, D. A. Bridwell, A. P. Zanesco, T. L. Jacobs, B. G. King, E. L. Rosenberg, B. K. Sahdra, P. R. Shaver, B. A. Wallace, G. R. Mangun, and C. D. Saron. “Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention.” Psychological Science (2010): 829-39. Upaya. Web. 29 Dec. 2015.

Mrazek, M. D., M. S. Franklin, D. T. Phillips, B. Baird, and J. W. Schooler. “Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering.” Psychological Science (2013): 776-81. Sage Pub. Psychological Science. Web. 29 Dec. 2015.

Quach, Dianna, Kristen E. Jastrowski Mano, and Kristi Alexander. “A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining the Effect Of Mindfulness Meditation on Working Memory Capacity In Adolescents.” Journal of Adolescent Health. Science Direct. Elsevier. Web. 29 Dec. 2015.

Thomas, John W., and Marc Cohen. “A Methodological Review of Meditation Research.” Frontiers in Psychiatry Front. Psychiatry (2014). PMC. PMC. Web. 29 Dec. 2015.

Zeidan, Fadel, Susan K. Johnson, Bruce J. Diamond, Zhanna David, and Paula Goolkasian. “Mindfulness Meditation Improves Cognition: Evidence of Brief Mental Training.” Consciousness and Cognition (2010): 597-605. Print.

The Story Of How To Learn And Memorize German Vocabulary

I’ll never forget the day I made the most important discovery of my life. A discovery that would also prove important for thousands of language learners and students of various topics around the world.

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Here’s what happened:

I was on my porch down in Zehlendorf. (It’s really too bad about Zehlendorf …)

I really miss that part of Berlin. I used to walk to the nearby lake and through a wooded area leading to the stores and the M48 bus I often took to Potsdamer Platz where I would watch movies for my work.

Yes, watch movies. I was a Film Studies professor back then. Greatest job in the world – if you can get it.

 

And If You Can Keep It!

 

Anyhow, I was on the porch studying German and nearly tearing out my hair with frustration. No matter what I did, the German vocabulary wouldn’t stick in my mind.

Worse, the flashcard software I’d been using bored me to tears. I’ve never found anything more painful than banging foreign language vocabulary repetitively against my eyes in the vain hope that I would somehow magically remember the abstract and mysterious words.

In all fairness, some people can tolerate rote learning. In fact, there’s research suggesting that polyglots get great value from hard repetition. This happens primarily because they’ve trained themselves to be really good at it.

 

But Let’s Be Real

 

Most people do not want to be polyglots. Most people would be happy just to get halfway decent in one language, not several.

In fact, most people would be overjoyed just to get a couple of hundred words in their long term memory.

And most people would be ecstatic if they could turn those words into basic conversational fluency. All you need is about 800-1200 for that, plus a touch of understanding the grammar.

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So there I was with a fat dictionary pumping words into the spaced-repetition software I loathed like the plague.

I sure loved that dictionary, though. What a glorious thing, all thick and yellow.

Heavy too, almost as heavy as a brick. But that didn’t stop me from carrying it everywhere.

 

And That’s When It Hit Me!

 

With a bit of summer wind on my face, I asked myself a fundamental question:

Why on earth wasn’t I using memory techniques to help me learn German?

Seriously. They sometimes say that Ph.D. stands for “piled higher and deeper,” but Mann O Mann (as the Germans say), was I ever mystified.

You see, following a terrible and nearly suicidal depression that almost forced me out of grad school, I discovered memory techniques almost by accident. I was avoiding the looming field exams and dissertation defense by learning magic tricks.

Of course, procrastinating on my studies only made my depression worse …

But it’s at least a good thing that I was doing something constructive. I thought of my magic practice as developing a kind of “emergency paycheck,” because I was certain at that time I was going to wind up on the streets with nothing more to do than entertain people and pass around my hat.

And I suppose that would have been fun for awhile. Studying card magic was certainly better than jumping off a bridge, which the mounting pressure and the teeth of my depression were forcing me to consider.

Worse, if you’ve ever experienced the horrors of manic-depression in full swing, you know the impulses involved. They are sick and sweet and jump out at you from nowhere. It’s terrible too because once the urges pounce, they can keep trouncing on you for days and days on end.

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The most sinister part of the situation was that I couldn’t concentrate or read. It always felt like my eyes were slipping off the page. And when I could read for brief periods of time, I always wound up forgetting everything.

And that made me frustrated and even angry. Magic was my only relief.

And it was easy to study too because you can buy a lot of training in card and coin magic on DVD. I didn’t have a whole lot of money at the time, but it sure was worth it.

Especially when I came across the process that would save my life. I’m talking about the “Holy Grail” of all card tricks: The Memorized Deck.

There’s a ton of effects you can create with a memorized deck. The only difference is …

They Aren’t Effects! They’re Based On Real Magic …

 

… Or at least, the closest thing to real magic that exists. The ability to go through 52 cards, looking at each only once and being able to recall the entire order backward and forward …

This ability is a complete miracle.

So I bought a book on the topic and an audio program that included a section on card memorization. It would be years before I read the book, but my hungry ears gobbled up the audio like peasants on bread during a famine.

And what I heard nearly made my brain explode.

It’s true. I understood the procedures immediately. It’s shocking how simple it is, and yet …

… I was skeptical. How on earth was I going to put these techniques into action when I could barely concentrate on a book.

Not only that, but playing cards are essentially a kind of book, only they are made up of totally abstract and fragmented sentences and chapters. And the pages can be endlessly recombined.

But even so, I gave the technique a try.

What happened totally blew me away.

Why?

Because 15 minutes after learning the technique, I had memorized my first deck of shuffled cards.

I couldn’t believe it.

In fact, to this day I’m still in awe. And the reason I work so hard to promote memory techniques to people around the world is precisely because that awe remains.

And it grows and grows the more I hear from people who have read one of my books or taken one of my video courses.

 

They All Have One Special Characteristic In Common …

 

They, like me, learned the methods and took action. They experimented. They memorized vocabulary using the tools of the Magnetic Memory Method and they got results.

And then they repeated what they learned and got even more results. And those results led to even higher payoffs because things just keep getting better and better the more you use mnemonics as part of your learning.

Anyhow, as soon as I realized what I had done with the playing cards, I instantly saw how I could apply these techniques to learning and memorizing the 250+ books I needed to cover for my field exams.

These are mean and nasty affairs where seven professors sit around a table and drill you with questions for nearly two hours. They’re very protective of the university Ivory Tower, so they do everything they can to keep you out.

The hostility makes the process of sitting for those exams frightening an stressful in every possible way.

And frankly, most people never make it. I don’t know what the figures are now, but back then, the graduation rate from Ph.D. programs in Canada was a mere 13%.

In other words, out of every 100 people who enter grad school, 87 walk away without a degree.

But I wasn’t one of those who left the hallowed halls empty-handed. And it’s all because I took action and used the memory techniques I’d learned on that magical day during the depths of my nearly suicidal depression.

Of course, it’s not as if my studies were suddenly free from challenges.

 

Far From It

 

The memory techniques boosted my confidence and this gave me increased clarity. But I still struggled to read with the amount of focus needed to even discover and isolate the information I wanted to memorize.

So what I wound up doing was to read the books out loud. Unlike the memory audio program I had no problem following, the philosophy and history books I was reading had no audio editions.

Worse, they were so dense and so obscure … It was often like pulling teeth just to get through them.

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But by reading out loud to maintain my concentration and then listening to my narrations, I could finally concentrate.

And then I would write down the key points and facts from the books on index cards.

Next, I would order the index cards in particular ways to aid the memorization of them into the Memory Palaces I’d created.

Following that, I memorized the information on the cards. Kind of like memorizing a deck of playing cards, only in this case you’re not entertaining audiences but rather earning a degree.

But there was another level of difficulty.

The memory techniques and especially the Memory Palaces I was using at the time were far from foolproof.

 

And I Made A Lot Of Mistakes

 

You see, the techniques I had learned were actually kind of pedestrian. They weren’t made for higher levels of learning. And they certainly weren’t designed for language study.

So what I did was to develop completely new approaches to the memory techniques. I was still learning and memorizing information very well, but I knew I could do better.

Above all, I knew that my Memory Palaces could be much more precise. So I found better ways to begin the journeys through them. I discovered principles that reduced the errors many people make with mnemonics and massively reduced the cognitive load extensive learning places on the mind.

And the more I worked at it, the more streamlined the techniques became. Before I knew it, I had zoomed through most of the books and was ready to sit for my exams.

I had also finally landed on a feasible dissertation topic. And even though I still felt physically terrible and the mental illness remains to this day …

 

I Was Sitting On Top Of The World

 

I marched into those exams brimming with confidence and aced them.

In fact, when my final dissertation defense concluded and I was called “Dr. Metivier” for the very first time, the top examiner who had come up to Canada from the United States told me something I’ll never forget.

“Most people freeze up,” he said. “Some of them even break into tears. But you …

… the only person cooler than you is Miles Davis.”

I guess what he meant is that I was calm, collected and cool in the sense of being unshakable. And trust me, each and every one of the professors surrounding me at that table on the second floor of the Vanier building on the campus of York University in Toronto did all they could to shake me up.

But none of them could, not even the one hellbent on failing me.

Why?

Because I knew my stuff and could remember it.

 

All Of It

 

And when they awarded my degree, they even added a special comment on the form that I had presented my knowledge with originality and audacity.

I take that to mean that I did it all with nerves of steel, total confidence and the ability to create new knowledge, not just parrot what I’d memorized.

And that’s what the Magnetic Memory Method is all about: Creating knowledge while also being able to repeat information verbatim. Or in the case of memorizing vocabulary, being able to create unique and meaningful sentences.

But don’t get me wrong.

In some cases, being a parrot isn’t a bad thing.

 

Not A Bad Thing At All

 

But let’s flash forward a couple of years.

There I was on the porch. Stupidly I’d sat through six months of a German language course after landing a research and teaching grant at a university there.

Looking back, I still can’t believe it. But in all fairness, I had already used my memory to get my Ph.D. But researching and teaching didn’t require them in quite the same way. I used mnemonics only to memorize the names of my students and the basic architecture of my lectures.

But on that porch, I realized that I could have been using memory techniques all along to memorize German vocabulary. The only question now was …

How?

When I thought back to what I’d done during my graduate years, it all fell into place.

You see, when organizing the knowledge I needed to know in order to memorize the works of philosophers and literary or film theorists great and small, I had created at least one Memory Palace for each, sometimes up to five.

In many cases, the Memory Palaces weren’t so much centered on the career of a philosopher, but on a single book. For example, for Aristotle I concentrated only on memorizing the major details of The Nicomachean Ethics. But as for the rest of his cannon, I’m a sitting duck in water.

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Michel Foucault, on the other hand, had five Memory Palaces, four for individual books he’d written and one for facts about his life and how it intersected with important moments in his Zeitgeist.

Regardless of having one Memory Palace or five per philosopher, in each I got some kind of picture in my mind of what that person looks like. In the case of Aristotle, I had only paintings to work with. With Foucault, I could look at oodles of photographs.

Then, using a well-formed Memory Palace that obeys the principles of what would eventually become the Magnetic Memory Method, I followed these philosophers along carefully constructed journeys. At one point, for example, Aristotle fistfights with the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Foucault, known for his sexual escapades, got into some situations rather X-rated to at present mention.

I would eventually come to call these Magnetic little puppets of mine, “Bridging Figures.”

Why?

Because by following them around in my imagination, they “bridged the gap” between Memory Palace stations and engaged in behaviors that quickly and efficiently reminded me of the key points I needed to know. After that, it was just a matter of rehearsing the show a few times and writing out what I’d learned in summary format to ease the information into long-term memory.

As one commentator on a Magnetic Memory Method YouTube video puts it regarding my approach to memory techniques and mnemonics overall, it’s all …

 

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

 

Lemon squeezy, indeed.

Thinking about that practice and its tremendous power, I clearly saw that the same approach readily applied to German vocabulary. Abraham Lincoln helped me connect “ab” words in an “A” Memory Palace.

To give another example, Einstein took over the show in an imaginary reconstruction of my brother’s home.

Even more interesting, real people proved useful too.

For example, my ex-wife’s good friend Vera war sehr verantwortlich when it came to stuffing “ver” words into a very special Memory Palace that happened to be her home in Brooklyn. I had only visited the place once, but due to the mind’s uncanny ability to absorb the details of a building on autopilot, I used its rooms and hallways to great effect before moving to my old girlfriend Vicki’s home and on and on and on.

 

Nifty, Isn’t It?

 

You bet it is. And before I knew it, the fruitless hours spent on index cards and writing words out by hand became a thing if the past. I deleted every trace of the spaced-repetition software clogging my laptop and honored instead the unparalleled abilities of a well-trained memory.

Thousands of books and over a dozen video courses and public appearances later, the ancient art of memory finally had an innovation for one of its toughest opponents: language learning.

There had been other attempts. Harry Lorayne and Larry Bird devote three pages to memorizing vocabulary in The Memory Book. In Memo, Oddbjorn By talks about organizing a city into three parts to help organize gendered nouns, an idea he may have found in Host Von Romberch, who was a contemporary of the great mnemonist Matteo Ricci.

But none of these approaches had the rigor needed to memorize vocabulary en masse. Harry Lorayne is no fan of Memory Palaces and mnemonists like Dave Farrow use them sparingly.

 

Nothing Wrong With That

 

But for so many people like myself, pegs and linking do little or nothing. Without a track upon which to lay the associative-imagery, the choo-choo train of the mind has to grasp after ghostly images popped willy-nilly into the void, connected only by abstract relationships between silly images.

But a Bridging Figure moving along a Memory Palace journey matches two extremely concrete elements that are easy to follow. The Memory Palace serves as the rails, beautifully fixed in place. The Bridging Figure is the train conductor who stops at the stations and lets you decode the associative-imagery.

It’s simple, elegant and fun.

 

So Much Fun

 

Of course, it would be years later before I told anyone about this revelation. When I finally did release How to Learn and Memorize German Vocabulary following a mysterious and strange set of tumultuous adventures ranging from divorce to the biggest dental nightmare of my life, many people instantly got it. They went on to collectively memorize thousand of words and experience unheard if boosts in fluency.

But others didn’t get it. They cursed at my book and the books to come, calling the Magnetic Memory Method impractical, impossible and insane. Others called me a scammer and compared me to Kevin Trudeau, a memory trainer who had broken the law by making dietary claims. What his health niche crimes have to do with his memory training, I’ll never know, but one thing will remain eternally clear: haters gonna hate.

The critics and naysayers aside, I focused all of my attention on helping the dozens of people who emailed me their questions. I spent hours clarifying the technique on an individual basis. And to be perfectly honest, I loved each and every minute.

But it soon became impractical to spend the better part of each day sharing clarifications to one person at a time. It’s the Information era after all. So I started gathering email addresses and emailed the answers to every one interested enough to subscribe.

Soon, ever more questions started rolling in. And new subscribers asked me how they could get their hands on all the emails they’d missed.

More than a hundred requests later, I created the Magnetic Memory Method Newsletter. At the end of each month, I gathered the emails I was sending once a day into a Kindle book and put them up on Amazon. Although these never became Bestseller like my other books, they have become the stuff of legend. Not a day passes when someone doesn’t ask to be subscribed to the MMM Newsletter or get the entire collection.

I’ve put ten of them together so far, totaling over 1000 pages of the deepest investigations into the art of memory on the planet. Some people have called me the Simonides of the 21st century. Others think I’m the reincarnation of Giordano Bruno (probably because of my Heavy Metal/Stoner Rock look and sometimes stubborn and insistent ways).

But to quote the late, great master of copywriting Gary Halbert:

 

“Whatever.”

 

One day I will have to put together the mounds of other correspondence with readers that I’ve never published. I expect that this eventual set of documents will amount to 3000 or more pages of material, writing that some people will undoubtedly gobble up and put to immediate use in their personal memory practice.

But for now, my focus is on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast and creating second editions of the existing vocabulary books. After all, I now know so much about why people struggle with the MMM that it behooved me to incorporate it all into the first editions.

And now I’m excited to release the second edition of How to Learn and Memorize German Vocabulary. This new and revised edition includes:

* Illustrations of how to create a well-constructed Memory Palace so that you can see the principles right before your very eyes and model them.

* Drawings of a few pieces of associative-imagery so that you really understand how you can instantly memorize the sound and meaning of a word in just a minute or two.

* A lengthy list of suggested German words you will want to learn so that you aren’t stumbling around blind wondering what you should memorize.

* Notes on memorizing grammar principles and phrases so that you can speak sentences instead of just words. (Though the emphasis is on words because you can’t form sentences without them.)

* An expended discussion of Recall Rehearsal so that you know exactly how to get the words and phrases into long-term memory.

* A mega-conclusion that covers every possible question you may have so that no stone is left unturned, and you know exactly what to do to memorize hundreds of vocabulary words a week.

And make no mistake …

 

This Stuff Works

 

I heard a few months back from one person that he learned 1000 words in 6 weeks.

Just imagine what having that ability could do for you.

And even if you’re not learning German, the principles apply to any language.

So if this book is something for you, grab it. If you get it during this special promotion, I’d like to send you a special bonus.

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That’s right. For people who get the book, either for Kindle or in print, I have a 45-minute exclusive video training I gave for Jonathan Levi’s SuperLearner Masterclass.

In this training, we go into detail about the misconceptions and problems people have with creating Memory Palaces. It’s all in the book, of course. But sometimes having a “student advocate” ask me questions live can make all the difference in the world. Plus, Jonathan is a force unto himself when it comes to learning.

At the present moment, this interview is available only in his SuperLearner Masterclass. It’s an experience that costs several hundred dollars to access. And honestly, if you’re willing to take action, 45 minutes listening to me talk in detail about the MMM is priceless.

I’ll send you a link where you can download this exclusive interview.

It’s just as simple as that. So here’s what to do next:

– Grab the book now.

– Click forward on the email receipt you get from Amazon.

– Enter my email address (anthony/at/magneticmemorymethod/dot/com).

– Click send.

Just make sure you do so before 11:59 p.m. on January 1st, 2016.

Now you may be wondering what’s coming up in 2016 for the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. That’s a great question and so I can only urge you to stick around and see just what this grizzly old Wizard of Memory has up his sleeve. 2016 is going to be a big place indeed and if you want to learn a language, never forget a name or recite poetry or speeches, or pass even the most complicated math exam, the Magnetic Memory Method is here to help.

 

But Don’t Delay

 

Each and every day that you aren’t using the natural abilities of your imagination to integrate with the art of memory, you’re missing out on the massive power of flawless recall. You’re surrendering to the demon of forgetfulness when you could be eliminating its terrorist attacks on your life once and for all.

Grab your copy of How to Learn and Memorize German Vocabulary now and make 2016 the most amazing year of your life.

Your friend in memory,

Anthony Metivier

Foods That Improve Memory You CAN Pig Out On

[image error]If you’re lucky enough, eating is something you do every day. If you’re like most of us lucky ones, it might be something you do too often every day.

But for something you do so often, are you getting the most out of your eating, for both your body and mind?

Doctors, nutritionists, fitness instructors, and your mom are constantly preaching:

“You are what you eat.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

“Eat your fruits and veggies.”

 

Undoubtedly …

 

… diet is consistently cited as one of the more important aspect to weight loss and overall good health. What you eat can make you healthy, happy, and well-functioning, or throw you into a death-spiral of obesity, disease, and disability.

It should come as no surprise that diet also affects mental health. In fact, there is mounting evidence that specific types and classes of food can have beneficial –  or detrimental – effects on memory.

Is it possible to change your diet to maintain, and even achieve new and better levels of memory and information retention?

We are all salivating for a definitive answer, but for the most part, the jury is still out. Much of the research surrounding food and memory are in preliminary stages and tested on animal subjects. Not to dismiss the abilities of a lab rat, but making the connection between a rat and a human is dubious.

However, we aren’t entirely left in the dark. In fact, there is exciting new research pointing to real and impressive associations between food and memory.

This post (don’t forget to listen to the podcast version too) will dive into this salad bowl of findings and scoop out foods to help with memory conservation and retention.

All you’re left with is the easy – and delicious – part of figuring out how to incorporate these foods into your meals.

So, let’s dig in.

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The Ugly Nut That Should Get More Attention

 

They look like brains, are hard to crack, and have a slight bitter flavor. Walnuts taste as unique as they look, and cracking them open has been a strength test for bodybuilders everywhere.

Beyond their use as a party trick, these funny-looking nuts have some evidence pointing to their ability to improve memory.

It’s not due to their pretty appearance. Walnuts contain the highest source of antioxidants among their nut brothers and sisters (Vinson and Cai 134). Perhaps due to their impressive antioxidant profile, walnuts have garnered research specifically on their abilities to improve memory.

A recently published, cross-sectional American study was conducted analyzing the association of walnuts to several forms of cognitive function (Arab and Ang 284). The study included participants from a variety of ethnicities, age groups, and genders. It surveyed over 20,000 people about their dietary habits and had them take various cognitive tests. These tests included reaction time, numerical processing, and recall.

This is perhaps the largest walnut to cognitive function study ever done on the US population, and boasts impressive results.

The study showed strong associations between higher walnut consumption and progressively better scores on each cognitive test, including the memory recall test (Arab and Ang 284).

In other words, the more walnuts they ate per day, the better their memory became. These results applied to all of the age groups studied, ranging between the ages of 25-59.

The study concludes with an (albeit serious and scientific) ode to walnuts.

“These significant, positive associations between walnut consumption and cognitive functions among all adults [. . .] suggest that daily walnut intake may be a simple beneficial dietary behavior.”(Arab and Ang 284)

This study does not stand alone.

Another study focusing on elderly subjects found positive effects of walnut consumption on memory recall (Valls-Pedret et al. 773).

What all these studies are really trying to say is, “Walnuts. Get on that”. Raw or roasted, add them to salads, to your oatmeal or even to the your green smoothies in the morning. If the statistics are correct, you should be getting smarter and remembering more details than ever.

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How Green Tea Can Super-Charge Your Memory

 

Green tea is a favourite around the world. It’s found in a variety of drinks outside of its standard tea form, including lattes, soft drinks, and even ice cream. Green tea has been in the limelight for a while for its purported ability to aid in treating nearly any ailment.

Every other week there seem to be stories about green tea’s heroism in fighting cancer and diabetes. Hype aside, can green tea help your memory and mind as well?

In a study conducted on Japanese residents over age 60, higher green tea consumption was associated with lower incidence of dementia (Noguchi-Shinohara et al). Dementia is a common cognitive and memory decline associated with growing older.

The study suggests that green tea consumption could be beneficial for reducing our risk of memory decline.

But what about improving our memory here and now?

A very interesting, albeit small, study on college students, sought an answer to this question (Schimdt et al 3888). The study examined the effects of green tea extracts on brain activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. 12 healthy volunteers were given green tea infused drinks and asked to perform a working memory task while in an MRI.

During the task, the prefrontal cortex showed increased activity and the volunteers performance was heightened (Schimdt et al 3888).

A larger study looked at the effects of tea consumption on the cognitive abilities of middle-aged adults in community living in Singapore. This study didn’t test green tea exclusively, but it found protective and enhancing affects of green tea on cognition, including memory (Feng et al 438).

The evidence suggests that drinking green tea daily will protect from future memory decline and may even provide a memory boost.

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The Small Berry That Packs A Punch You’ll Remember

 

Blueberries aren’t just for toddlers and vanilla ice cream anymore. Blueberries are showing some promise in the protection of your memory.

In a study of nine older adults with memory decline, consuming blueberry juice over 12 weeks resulted in improved memory function. Each day this group of five men and four women drank blueberry juice. After 12 weeks of drinking blueberry juice, these nine test subjects showed improvements in recall and general cognitive functioning (Krikorian et al 4000).

Although small and preliminary, the research offers an interesting benefit to an already very health food. If you aren’t already eating blueberries, these findings should be the kick you needed to start adding them to your smoothies.

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Nothing Fishy About This Brain Food

 

If you’ve been on the internet at any point in the last ten years, you’ve probably heard about “Omega-3s”.

You may not know exactly what they do or what they are, but you know you need more of them.

The purported benefits of Omega-3s is the reason fatty fish have been promoted as a necessary addition to your weekly meals. Fatty fish, such as salmon, contain some of the highest levels of Omega-3s.

Similarly to green tea, Omega-3s have been touted as having a wide variety of health benefits. These include things like reducing pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis, ensuring the healthy development of babies, and aiding against dementia.

Setting the former two claims aside, it does seem that Omega-3s, as consumed through fish, have a protective effect against memory deterioration.

A large study followed 889 older adult men and women over nine years. It was hoping to understand whether differences in fatty fish intake impacted the prevalence of dementia by the ninth year (Schaefer et al 1545).

Researchers found that subjects with the highest intake of Omega-3 fatty acids had a lower risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s. Their subjects consumed a mean of three servings of fatty fish per week and the risk reduction was impressive. Subjects that consumed the most fish saw their risk of memory impairment decline by 47% (Schaefer et al 1545).

Another study followed a group of 281 people aged 65 to investigate the correlation between fish intake and brain deterioration. This study found that higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids in the blood, predicted reduced deterioration for its test subjects (Samieri et al 642).

In another very large study of over 1,200 people, Omega-3 fatty acid, along with various other micronutrient levels, were analyzed. The results were compared to the prevalence of an important biomarker for dementia, a compound in the blood that predicts Alzheimer’s. Sure enough, those with high levels of Omega-3 fatty acids had a lower amount of the threatening biomarker (Gu et al 1832).

What’s really interesting is that these results were not replicated through supplementation.

In a huge study, supplementation Omega-3 fatty acids were given to 4,203 subjects to determine whether memory function improved. The study followed subjects for five years, during which they tested various cognitive functions, including memory. The results showed that supplementation did not have a significant effect on cognitive function (Chew et al 791).

Moral of the story? There seems to be real memory benefits and protective effects to eating foods high in Omega-3 acids, such as in fish. Moreover, supplements have not proven effective. You’re much better off saving your money for a nice salmon filet once a week.

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The Simple Diet That Brings It All Together

 

It might get tiring eating walnuts, berries, green tea, and fish all the time. But you’re in luck! As it turns out, there is an entire diet which has been shown to be protective against memory degeneration. The diet, called the MIND diet, reduces the risk of cognitive decline and memory by 35%. And that’s just for people who followed the diet moderately well (Morris et al 1022).

For those who stuck to the diet closely, the study measured an impressive reduction of 53%.

This diet has not, as of yet, been shown to enhance memory for healthy adults. There are no super-memory foods in the MIND diet.

Nonetheless, the MIND diet and study has shown impressive results in its potential to protect you from memory deterioration.

The MIND diet is a combination of two very well-studied diets: Mediterranean and DASH. Unlike these two diet, it places a special emphasis on the consumption of berries, strawberries, and blueberries in particular (remember them?).

The diet involves the following:

At least three servings of whole grains a day
A salad and one other vegetable a day
A glass of wine a day
A serving of nuts a day
Beans every other day
Poultry and berries at least twice a week
Fish at least once a week

The MIND diet also calls for limiting or eliminating unhealthy foods, especially butter, cheese, and fast or fried food.

In a time when many countries are facing ageing populations and increasing rates of Alzheimer’s, the MIND diet offers hope. As of yet, there is no effective cure for Alzheimer’s. Every step to a more definitive prevention of Alzheimer’s is a step in the right direction.

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Don’t Be Tricked By Ginkgo

 

Apart from being a lovely decorative tree across North America, Ginkgo Biloba is an ancient species of trees. In fact, they are known to be the oldest tree species in the world, remaining unchanged for over 200 million years. That’s right, this tree has been around since the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinosaurs, they did not go extinct.

Not just a pretty tree, Ginkgo Biloba has also been used in east asian culinary. For example, Ginkgo seeds are added to a traditional vegetarian dish called “Buddha’s Delight”.

Otherwise, Ginkgo Biloba has earned a shining memory-boosting reputation in both alternative medicine circles and the mainstream population. According to the New York Times, it is widely marketed as a preventative treatment to Alzheimer’s disease. What’s more, it is America’s best-selling herbal cognitive enhancement.

But is there substance behind these claims?

Unlike many food claims, definitive answers are possible because Ginkgo is one of the most commonly studied herbs in the world.

Ginkgo has not shown evidence for preventing memory-loss diseases in later life, including dementia. In 2015, a study reviewing many previous studies available on Ginkgo showed no effect on memory loss prevention (Charemboon and Jaisin 508).

But can it help enhance memory for healthy adults?

Again, the evidence is lacking. A similarly large review conducted in 2012 found nothing to prove that Ginkgo Biloba enhances memory, despite the marketing (Laws et al.).

All that glitters is not gold, especially when it comes to claims made by herbal supplement manufacturers. Save your money on Ginkgo supplements and move on to other, better evidenced memory-supporting foods.

Start On Your Memory-Boosting Journey

(Without Supplements)

 

It’s difficult to isolate specific components in foods that make them effective. It’s been found that blueberries, walnuts, and green tea have amongst the highest levels of antioxidant among their respective food groups.

Antioxidants are thought to protect against cell damage from free radicals, which occur naturally in the body due to normal metabolism.

However, many studies analyzing the effects of antioxidant supplements have failed to show significant effects. It seems that you must take the food with the antioxidant.

Although there may be a time and place for supplementation, uprooting food in their place is a poor strategy.

In any case, the variety and availability of these delicious foods leaves no reason not to incorporate them into your diet. Memory-boosting foods and diets are surprisingly commonplace.

Above and beyond improving memory, eating a healthy diet will leave you feeling energetic and, most importantly, disease-free. It’s a fair statement to say that living a long and healthy life is a prerequisite to excellent memory. After all, you need to be living a long life to have something to remember.

No research needed to back that up.

 

Further Resources And Works Cited

 

Dave Farrow Talks About Focus, Fatigue And Memory Expertise

What The Flu Taught Me About Memory Skills

Arab, L., and A. Ang. “A Cross Sectional Study of the Association between Walnut Consumption and Cognitive Function among Adult Us Populations Represented in NHANES.” J Nutr Health Aging The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging (2014): 284-90. Pubmed. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Chew, Emily Y., Traci E. Clemons, Elvira Agrón, Lenore J. Launer, Francine Grodstein, and Paul S. Bernstein. “Effect of Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Lutein/Zeaxanthin, or Other Nutrient Supplementation on Cognitive Function.” JAMA (2015): 791. UpToDate. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Feng, Lei, X. Gwee, E. -H. Kua, and T. -P. Ng. “Cognitive Function and Tea Consumption in Community Dwelling Older Chinese in Singapore.” J Nutr Health Aging The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging (2010): 433-38. Pubmed. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. .

Gu, Y., N. Schupf, S. A. Cosentino, J. A. Luchsinger, and N. Scarmeas. “Nutrient Intake and Plasma  -amyloid.” Neurology (2012): 1832-840. UpToDate. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Krikorian, Robert, Marcelle D. Shidler, Tiffany A. Nash, Wilhelmina Kalt, Melinda R. Vinqvist-Tymchuk, Barbara Shukitt-Hale, and James A. Joseph. “Blueberry Supplementation Improves Memory in Older Adults †.” J. Agric. Food Chem. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2010): 3996-4000. Pubmed. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. .

Laws, Keith R., Hilary Sweetnam, and Tejinder K. Kondel. “Is Ginkgo Biloba a Cognitive Enhancer in Healthy Individuals? A Meta-analysis.” Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental Hum. Psychopharmacol Clin Exp (2012): 527-33. Print.

Morris, Martha Clare, Christy C. Tangney, Yamin Wang, Frank M. Sacks, Lisa L. Barnes, David A. Bennett, and Neelum T. Aggarwal. “MIND Diet Slows Cognitive Decline with Aging.” Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2015): 1015-022. Elsevier. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Noguchi-Shinohara, Moeko, Sohshi Yuki, Chiaki Dohmoto, Yoshihisa Ikeda, Miharu Samuraki, Kazuo Iwasa, Masami Yokogawa, Kimiko Asai, Kiyonobu Komai, Hiroyuki Nakamura, and Masahito Yamada. “Consumption of Green Tea, but Not Black Tea or Coffee, Is Associated with Reduced Risk of Cognitive Decline.” PLoS ONE (2014). NCBI. PLOS ONE. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Samieri, Cécilia, Pauline Maillard, Fabrice Crivello, Evelyne Peuchant, Catherine Helmer, Michèle Allard, Jean-Francois Dartigues, Stephen Cunnane, Bernard Mazoyer, and Pascale Barberger-Gateau. “Plasma Long-chain Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Medial Temporal Lobe Atrophy: A Longitudinal MRI Study.” Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2012). UpToDate. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Schaefer, Ernst J., Vanina Bongard, Alexa S. Beiser, Stefania Lamon-Fava, Sander J. Robins, Rhoda Au, Katherine L. Tucker, David J. Kyle, Peter W. F. Wilson, and Philip A. Wolf. “Plasma Phosphatidylcholine Docosahexaenoic Acid Content and Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer Disease.” Arch Neurol Archives of Neurology (2006): 1545. UpToDate. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Schmidt, André, Felix Hammann, Bettina Wölnerhanssen, Anne Christin Meyer-Gerspach, Jürgen Drewe, Christoph Beglinger, and Stefan Borgwardt. “Green Tea Extract Enhances Parieto-frontal Connectivity during Working Memory Processing.” Psychopharmacology (2014): 3879-888. Pubmed. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. .

Valls-Pedret, Cinta, Rosa Maria Lamuela-Ravent’os, Alexander Medina-Rem’on, Melibea Quintana, Dolores Corella, Xavier Pinto, Miguel Angel Martınez-Gonzalez, Ramon Estruch, and Emilio Ros. “Polyphenol-Rich Foods in the Mediterranean Diet Are Associated with Better Cognitive Function in Elderly Subjects at High Cardiovascular Risk.” Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 29 (2012): 773-82. IOS Press. IOS Press. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Vinson, Joe A., and Yuxing Cai. “Nuts, Especially Walnuts, Have Both Antioxidant Quantity and Efficacy and Exhibit Significant Potential Health Benefits.” Food Funct. (2011): 134-40. Royal Society of Chemistry. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.

Weinmann, Stefan, Stephanie Roll, Christoph Schwarzbach, Christoph Vauth, and Stefan N Willich. “Effects of Ginkgo Biloba in Dementia: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” BMC Geriatr BMC Geriatrics (2015): 14. Print.

Dave Farrow Talks About Focus, Fatigue And Memory Expertise

[image error]In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, Guinness World Record Holder Dave Farrow talks about developing focus, overcoming study fatigue and how advanced memory abilities can make you an expert in anything.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

* Why the Ancient Greeks are not the only source of powerful memory techniques.

* An amazing focus method for people with A.D.D. that’ll also work for anyone!

* How to beat any world memory record and maintain the information over long periods of time.

* The important of accuracy in memory and how to develop it fast.

* How Dave memorized 59 decks of cards, totally 3068 cards.

* The important difference between a memory championship and memory competition.

* The nearly magical power of pegs as a powerful alternative to using a Memory Palace.

* The secrets of bring longevity to memory without having to cram or spend tons of time reviewing.

* A stunning and colorful alternative to the Major Method, especially for people with dementia using an arrangement like this (you can create your own version):

1 = red

2 = orange

3 = yellow

4 = green

5 = blue

6 = purple

7 = brown

8 = silver

9 = gold

0 = black

* Exactly how to memorize the Major Method (sometimes called the Major System) using “mnemonics for mnemonics.”

* How to use memory techniques to “fill in the gaps” of anything you missed from a lecture.

* How to deal with being accused of cheating when you use memory techniques to ace every test.

* How to rebalance your brain after intense periods of learning so that you can maximize every minute you invest in your studies.

* How to study with zero fatigue, no matter what field you’re in (medical, legal, etc.)

* The relationship between the focus created by athleticism and what you need to maximize your scholastic studies.

* Why having a short attention span has little to do with the Internet Age and everything to do with our primal ancestors.

* The best places to study so that you have the space and the freedom of mind to get the most out of your memory.

* How to combine focus bursts and mnemonics to blaze through learning a language – even supposedly difficult languages like Chinese.

* Why you need to avoid memory techniques taught by people unqualified to explain them.

* How to find out your primary way of making imaginative connections so that mnemonics work for you at the highest possible level.

* The power of irony, oddity and personification as alternatives to action and imagery in your approach to memorizing information.

* How Dave used memory techniques to become expert in everything needed to build the animatronic FarrowBOT with fully articulated hands. It truly is the robot that memory built.

* The secret keys to developing motivation and passion so that you can make maximum gains with your memory over the long haul.

* … and much, much more!

 

Photos From Dave Farrow’s 2015 Canadian Memory Seminar And Tournament

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The 2015 Seminar and Memory Tournament took place on October 17th in Toronto, Canada at the Ontario Science Center.

Please feel free to read the full . You can also grab the Dave put together with Chester Santos for more information about being a memory competitor or putting together your own competition.

 

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At the competition, anyone can take turns being either a competitor or a judge. It’s amazing how quickly complete beginners pick up the mnemonics and get stunning results just minutes after receiving instructions in how to memorize vocabulary, numbers and playing cards. Even the most skeptical utterly surprised themselves!

 

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As you can see, I was having the time of my life overseeing some of the matches. It was actually a challenging experience because judges have to make some tough close calls. If one competitor makes a mistake, the other competitor can claim the point and then go on to rack up even more until they’ve exhausted the amount of vocabulary, numbers or playing cards they were able to memorize.

 

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These competitors are memorizing lists of vocabulary that they are seeing for the first time. A camera captures everything and detailed records of the results are recorded by the judge.

 

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At the end, everyone walks away as a winner just for taking up the challenge of exercising their imagination and memory abilities and it is a thrill to get a photo with the “Farrow” of Memory himself, Dave Farrow.

 

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Further Resources And Information Mentioned During The Interview

Dave Farrow article on Wikipedia

Pushbutton Memory

Canada’s  Best Memory

Eric Dinnerstein’s World Memory Statistics

Make A Wish Foundation

Ben Pridmore

PAO notes on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Harry Loryane

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

[image error]Let me ask you something:

If you had the cure for cancer, to what lengths would you go to get it into the hands of the people?

I’m guessing you would not rest until you could see the world freed from the disease in all its manifestations.

Matteo Ricci did not have the cure for cancer, but he did have the next best thing: A simple recipe for eliminating forgetfulness.

Not only that, but Ricci’s recipe helps with memorizing entire books and large volumes of vocabulary. Most impressively, Ricci developed a means for memorizing how to write in Chinese.

Yes, you really can memorize how to understand and sound those crazy characters, and even memorize the stroke order.

 

The Freakish Willpower Of A Memory Wizard

 

As an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary, Ricci’s memory techniques were so powerful that some of the people in China who heard him recite their books forward and backward thought he was a wizard. In some cases, people saw him as a religious threat because Ricci also believed he had the ultimate salve for the human condition: Christianity.

Indeed, as Jonathan D. Spence suggests in The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, “by impressing the Chinese with his memory skills, Ricci hoped to interest them in his culture; through interesting them in his culture he hoped to draw them to an interest in God.”

 

Talk About Ambition!

 

Although Ricci’s proselytization had only middling results in China, he was a friend of memory techniques, and we can learn a lot from him about how to use mnemonics at a much higher level.

He wrote about his approach to memory and quoted the scholars from whom he learned the Memory Palace technique in a book called Jifa.

But as with all interesting lives, Ricci’s was filled with drama. Along with his many thrills, chills and spills, this “wizard” of the dark mnemonic arts we can learn …

 

The Many Dangers Of Using Memory Techniques

 

The first danger with using memory techniques is that as your memory grows stronger, so do your powers. You may even find that special new powers grow, abilities that you did not anticipate.

And, as all fans of Spider-Man know …

 

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

 

This is certainly true, but those of us living today can probably ignore the idea that using mnemonics fuses your brain with the cosmos. But it was a common concern in the sixteenth century, the flames of which Giordano Bruno had no problem fanning.

But for Ricci’s contemporaries, the threat was real. Being accused of magical powers regularly led to imprisonment, disfiguring torture and public execution. Often all three.

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We can also probably dismiss the idea that rosemary helps with memory improvement, something promised by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance, pray you, love, remember.”

Other than that, the rest is golden. Drawing on Spence’s book about Ricci, we can now turn to …

 

Matteo Ricci’s 5 Memory Palace Tips For Total Memory Mastery

 

1. Cultivate eloquence by using familiar buildings.

Ricci grew up during a time when fortresses were taking on more prestige than cathedrals in European cities. This historical circumstance meant that Ricci could use the best of both worlds.

And you can too by visiting the most modern architecture where you live and the oldest remaining buildings. You can transform these buildings into well-formed Memory Palaces simply by following a few simple principles. This free Memory Improvement Kit teaches you each of these, so grab it now.

The great thing about many civic buildings is that they’re well-planned. You can also usually find a floor plan on one of the walls. If not, a guard or other official will probably know where it is and let you take a photograph for later reference.

 

Get Freakishly Insane Results With This DIY Memory Palace Strategy

 

Or, for very good practice, you can sketch out a floor plan of the building yourself. This activity translates your immediate impressions through your muscles and other representation systems directly into your memory, and if you can start memorizing information before you leave the site, all the better.

For more ideas about the kinds of buildings that make great Memory Palaces, check out the How To Find Memory Palaces episode of the Magnetic Memory Method podcast.

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The most important point Ricci draws out is that familiarity breeds eloquence when it comes to creating top-notch Memory Palaces. As he noted in his letters, even the biggest and most chaotic cities he visited during his travels became small and manageable in his mind through familiarity.

For us, this means spending more time visiting the homes of our friends and maximizing the value of all the Real Estate surrounding us. Even the most sprawling metropolis can provide you a tightly organized system of Memory Palaces if you take it just one corner cafe at a time.

 

This “Best Friend” Secret May Be The Best Way To Get Ahead With Memory Techniques Ever

 

2. You Don’t Have To Use Memory Palaces On Your Own

Memory improvement takes places in your mind and your mind alone …

Or does it?

Not for Ricci.

As Spence unearths, Ricci and his friend Lelio Passionei created Memory Palace systems together while studying in Rome. Twenty years later, Ricci still reflected on these Memory Palaces. No doubt they were even more memorable to him than others because he did not create them alone.

If you’re creating Memory Palaces all alone, you could be limiting your success. Check out this post on how to play memory games using your childhood with a friend to maximize the potential of your memory and the Memory Palaces you want to use.

3. Flexibility is king

All memory techniques involve encoding information, storing it, consolidating it and then decoding it when you want access to it later.

But many people think that using a Memory Palace and visual memory techniques requires creating perfect images. They sweat and labor and fight with their minds to come up with 100% accuracy.

 

The Best Way To Prevent Failure Is To Stab

Perfection In The Heart And Leave It For Dead

 

Not only is 100% accuracy not necessary. It also rarely works. There is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between what you want to memorize and the images you use to memorize that info.

What you need instead of verisimilitude is flexibility and trust. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the rabbit hole of perfectionism.

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Ricci, as Spence tells us, often made adjustments, getting things just right enough to trigger the right memories at the right time. It’s almost like getting a car engine running just well enough to get it on the road until it can either repair itself or coast based on that initial momentum. When it comes to mnemonics, that’s usually all you need.

 

Do The Right Work

 

Ricci did this not only in his mind but in his religious teachings as well. Indeed, to communicate the larger ideas of Christianity, Ricci often adjusted the Gospels so that the visual pictures he had fashioned could do, as Spence puts it, “the right work.”

Our takeaway as memory enthusiasts is that it really all comes down to flexibility and letting your mind fill in the blanks once you’ve got mnemonic imagery that is good enough to do the right work.

4. Information Can Be Broken And Put Together Again

Ricci had the mind of a strategist. Instead of trying to memorize Chinese ideographs as a whole, he would allow them to be as complex as he found them, but cut them into pieces so he could better create images for them.

By doing this, he had an easier time compounding multiple meanings onto the same ideograph.

Spence gives the example of “yao,” which may mean to want, to need, shall and fundamental. To fit all of these possible meanings into the single mnemonic image he placed in his Memory Palace, Ricci saw a Muslim tribeswoman from the Xixia territories. She has fundamental beliefs that oblige her to do certain things. In other words, her fundamental beliefs require that she wants, that she needs and that she shall.

Once created, Ricci places this image of the woman in his Memory Palace so “she will stay there, in the quiet light that suffuses the Memory Palace, calm and unmoving, for as long as he chooses to leave her.”

 

How Do You Stack Up When It Comes 

To Breaking Things Down?

 

The point being that most, if not all pieces of information can be broken down into multiple components. Even the smallest words, in a language like Chinese Mandarin, can be separated to learn better and memorize tone structures.

The Magnetic Memory Method for language learning takes this approach a step further by using Bridging Figures that we can apply to numerous similar word pieces and the various combinations they make with other sounds to form complete words.

Using the MMM, you can also trigger both the sound and the meaning of the word using the actions and interactions of the Bridging Figure in your Memory Palace.

Cool Stuff Or What?

5. Study As Many Memory Masters As You Can

It was common during Ricci’s time to quote from a number of different sources. We still do this in many books today, but in the world of memory, you’d be hard-pressed to find too many references to books written by other memory trainers. Many want you to think that they’ve got the best “system” and no one else exists.

That’s fine and dandy for branding and marketing purposes (though it’s ultimately destructive in the age of the Internet). Luckily, Ricci had no such concerns, nor did Spence. Here are just a few of the many names who come up:

 

Hear Be The Root Of All Eloquence

 

Cypriano Soarez. De Arte Rhetorica.

Spence thinks Ricci first learned about Memory Palaces in this book. Cypriano connects the structured placement of images to help recall information to the eloquence of the thesaurus (thesaurus eloquentae), which he calls the “root of all eloquence.”

Pliny’s Natural History.

In this book, Pliny apparently cites a number of memory experts, passages that Ricci translated and placed in his own book.

Frances Panigarola. Ars Reminiscendi.

 

War. What Is It Good For? Absolutely …

Mnemonics?

 

Ricci may have met Panigarola personally, a man said to have used one hundred thousand stations in a very large number of Memory Palaces. He apparently used a lot of puns to make his images memorable. These images tended to reference current political disputes and wars between nations.

 

Tip: Since wars involve a lot of historical figures and over-the-top activities, the history of war is a ripe source for exaggerated imagery and intensely memorable personalities.

We can also see that many of the mnemonists of Ricci’s era tended to use mnemonic imagery appropriate to their times. We, on the other hand, can use the Internet to examine swaths of history and come up with images as old as cave drawings and as new as Banksy. We’re in the finest moment of all times to be fully and completely visual. We are rich.

Guglielmo Gratarolo (sometimes spelled Gratoroli). De Memoria Reparanda.

 

The Weirdest Way To Use Emotions To Make Information Memorable

 

Gratarolo’s key tip is that the images we create should be so powerful that they “move one to laughter, compassion or admiration.” We could add to this disgust, fear and even anger. As people who need to remember, we need all the help from our emotions we can get.

Gratarol0 also appears to have been the first to use something akin to what we now call the Person Action Object technique (PAO).

“After designing a memory location on conventional lines, he then positioned in each an object – a chamber pot, a box of salve, a bowl of plaster were his first three examples – and then had separate figures, each based on individuals he knew well and each carefully named, jolt the scene into mnemonic action. Thus in rapid sequence Grataroli presented his friend Peter as picking up the chamber pot full of urine and pouring it over James, Martin putting his finger in the ointment box and wiping it over Henry’s anus, and Andrew taking some plaster from the bowl and smearing it over Francis’s face. If one could link these vignettes by pun, analogy, or association of ideas to given concepts, one could be guaranteed never to forget them.”

 

That Truly Is Disgustingly Unforgettable!

 

Ignatius Loyola. Spiritual Exercises.

Loyala stressed that Jesuits be mentally present at Christ’s death. “No violent detail is to be avoided,” he wrote, quoting Ludolfus of Saxony.

By focusing on the extremities, the priests would not only better remember the Gospels. They would strengthen their overall abilities with memory techniques.

Host von Romberch. Longestorium Artificiose Memorie.

Romberch described entire memory cities to be divided by categories such as shops, libraries, slaughter yards and schools. How specifically this kind of division should work is not clear.

Nor is his suggestion to use “memory alphabets.” These were to be based on the logical combination of humans, plants, animals and objects.

Of all Ricci’s contemporaries, Romberch seems to have been most closely aligned with the Magnetic Memory Method. The ability to use general methods to create specific systems for specific memory purposes is perhaps the most profound approach we have.

 

Hater’s Gonna Hate …

 

Not everyone in Ricci’s time held memory techniques and mnemonics in high esteem.

In Of the Vanitie and Uncertainties of Arts and Sciences, Cornelius Agrippe said that the “monstrous images” required by mnemonics dulled the mind. He even went so far as to suggest that mnemonics “caused madness and frenzy instead of profound and sure memory.”

Erasmus and Melancthon agreed and Rabelais went out of his way to mock memory techniques. In Gargantua, the title character learns to memorize bizarre books of grammar and the commentaries written on them by Bangbreeze, Scallywag and Claptrap.

 

The Worst Thing You’ll Smell All Day

 

Although Gargantua can recite these books backward and forwards, Rabelais does not present the skill in a virtuous light. Instead, Gargantua “became as wise as any man baked in an oven” and when speaking to him about his memorized knowledge, “it was no more possible to draw a word from him than a fart from a dead donkey.”

Those who mocked memory techniques and the ability to use a Memory Palace really missed out.

 

But Their Loss Is Our Gain …

 

… and their mockery contributed to the preservation of these extraordinary techniques for learning, memorizing and recalling anything.

 

The Enduring Tragedy

 

Sadly, Ricci spent so much time in China, but apparently wasn’t aware of the countless Chinese mnemonists capable of memory feats that made his abilities pale in comparison. So although we get a wealth of information in his writing about the Western mnemonic tradition, Ricci could not expose us to the untold treasures of the Chinese memory wizards as part of his extraordinary career.

For this reason, I’ve been inspired to start learning Mandarin Chinese. Two weeks deep into the language, my results using several Memory Palaces to memorize Pimsleur dialogs has been even more successful than anticipated.

I’ll be talking more about exactly what I’m doing, so stay tuned and be sure that you’ve got my free Magnetic Memory Method Memory Improvement Kit so that you’re subscribed for notifications and can learn the techniques to use along with me.

And like Ricci …

 

Use Knowledge To Change The Entire World For The Better

 

Until next time, keep busy learning and practicing the art of memory. And as always, keep Magnetic.

Jonathan Levi On ADD, Education And His TEDTalk Memory Palace

[image error]This Insanely Smart Guy Teaches You How To Learn Anything At Record Speed – Including Learning How To Engineer Your Own Body. Tap The Mental And Physical Wellness Secrets Of SuperLearner Jonathan Levi.

 

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method podcast, the host of the Becoming Superhuman podcast and the bestselling Become a SuperLearner video course and book shares a ton of actionable knowledge with you about learning quickly, efficiently and in ways that honor your memory instead of taxing it.

In this incredible hour, you’ll learn:

* The importance of developing your visual memory.

* How the process of using a Memory Palace can change over time – and become even more powerful when you have the best practices under your belt.

* How to create a powerful Memory Palace – even if it’s just minutes before giving a major presentation.

* How to use the most shocking locations in your personal history to memorize anything (graphic content).

* Why it’s never acceptable – and also never necessary – to have crappy grades in school.

* How Jonathan deals with ADD, both with and without medication.

* How to cope with listening to boring lectures.

* Why traditional education needs to change and what the future of education will look like.

* How to speed up the slow pace of learning as an independent learner on the road to autodidacticism.

* How to use stories in order to memorize and make what you have to say memorable.

* The magical power of tension and distress when learning, memorizing and recalling information.

* How to deal with feeling uneasy about things you don’t want to do and why this kind of action creates such powerful results.

* Why people don’t use memory techniques, even if they’ve mastered them.

* The connection between slouching and bad memory habits.

* How to build confidence in your memory for better conversations and social performance in practical situations.

* How to shape the muscle of your mind in order to increase raw memory ability.

* How to make using mnemonics second-nature.

* How to safely do N=1 experiments on yourself (and why self-experimentation may be the most important activity you ever engage in).

* The danger of doing exercises that aren’t optimized for endocrine.

* The rampant evils of estrogen in everything from your food to your cologne.

* Why there is no such thing as being in the “normal range” and why you need to go much deeper when exploring your own health.

* How to be more attractive to the opposite sex – even if you’re a weird and introverted memory enthusiast.

* Why you have a moral obligation to share what you know with the world.

* Jonathan’s core values and why you shouldn’t waste your memory on appointments and other small details.

* How to create deep knowledge in ways that create dense connections between the neurons in your brain.

* How to harness the power of dual-coding in your use of memory techniques.

* How to share your knowledge ethically as you navigate the changing educational landscape in the 21st century.

* … and much, much more!

Further Resources, People And Items Mentioned In the Podcast

Jonathan Levi Talks About Becoming A SuperLearner on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis On Memory, Tenacity, & Conquering Anything

Extreme Memory Improvement: How Nelson Dellis Pushes The Limits Of Recall For The Good Of Humanity

Ben Greenfield Fitness

Rob Wolf of Eat Real Food

Loren Cordaine of The Paleo Diet

Kombucha

N=1

Branding You: How to Make $1000 A Day Selling YOUR Knowledge

7 Minimalist Ways To Boost Success In The Face Of Soul-Crushing Overwhelm

[image error]Let’s face it – you’re burned out.

Work is killing you. Your Kindle app is bursting with unread books. Your credit card is melting from the heat of buying stuff you want but do not need. And that circles back to the job or entrepreneurial pursuits you need to keep the devil’s circle spinning.

Here’s the good news:

There are specific habits that can get you off of that wheel. They are easy and mostly inexpensive to do. They give you insight into your situation and can spring you from the prison of burnout faster than you can imagine.

The best part is that these seven techniques are also minimalistic. There’s almost nothing to them. And the “zen of almost nothing” is a great way to get started dealing with overwhelm.

 

1. The Shocking Truth About Meditation

 

Daily meditation feels good and creates many benefits ranging from stress relief to increased creativity and improved critical thinking.

The only catch is that taking time for this simple practice can be difficult to remember. And that’s somewhat strange, given how good it can make you feel, even after only five minutes of practice.

One way to make meditation a regular practice you won’t forget is to place a mat beside your bed. When you wake up, sit for even just a moment to connect with your surroundings.

You don’t have a spend a penny on your mat either. Just fold up a blanket, and for extra comfort, place a pillow on top of that. In this way, you can keep your ankles off of the hard floor and give some balance to your spine.

Many people think meditation is difficult. But it’s easy to do and gets even easier when you approach it without a lofty goal, like enlightenment. As Alan Watts said, the best way to approach meditation is “sitting just to sit.”

If you can make this simple approach to meditation a regular practice, even with thunder and lightning jolting through your soul, you have a chance at developing better balance in your life within a week or less.

 

2. How Taking A Simple Walk Can Protect Your From Harm

 

Many hold walking as a form of meditation. But walking also releases regulatory chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals not only create pleasure, but can also help reduce any physical pain you might be suffering.

And you can make walking even more soothing for yourself. Take some MP3s of calming music that you resonate with and focus on immersing yourself in the sound and rhythm as you walk.

Match your movements to the music and pay attention to the feeling of the world around you. It’s only important that the music you choose reduces overwhelm – not increase it.

And if you are interested in meditation, take a break and sit on a bench in a park. Just to sit.

 

3. How To Practice Vegging Out (In A Positive Way)

 

Well, not exactly “vegging out” in the traditional sense.

Practicing Shavasana has a funny catch to it. You will always lose the game. No matter how good you get at the stillness, your body will eventually force you to move.

But in this game, losing is a good thing. As you experience the relaxing feelings of stillness, you’re also studying your impulses and your need to react to the same thoughts and desires that lead to overwhelm in other areas of your life.

As you practice Shavasana over the coming weeks and months, try extending the periods of stillness longer each time. You’ll find that by extending your reactions in Shavasana, you’ll also be able to slow how you react to overwhelming elements of life too.

 

4. Do This With A Pen And Paper Every Day

 

When life hands you a car crash, we tend to react to the overwhelm by piling on worry, concern and more stress.

The way around this is to buttress yourself in good thoughts before tough things happen. That way, you’ll have a reference guide to which you can refer.

To complete this simple exercise, get a notebook and focus on writing down things you genuinely appreciate. Be specific. If you’re grateful to have a computer, list it. If you enjoyed the smile of a stranger on your walk, make a note of it.

And commit to doing this every single day for at least three months.

Please don’t think this daily writing habit is silly or will itself contribute to your overwhelm. In 59 Seconds, a book by Richard Wiseman, the author gives scientific studies that demonstrate the validity of journaling gratitude.

But you don’t take the word of science for it. Give it a try and you’ll find out on your own. Within as short a period as one or two days, you may find that you’re already feeling happier about your life and this new recognition of how things are for you will buttress you against future troubles that really can be overwhelming without a daily defense practice in place.

 

5. Have Two-Tiered Positive Goals You Can Achieve Now And Later

 

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals. They are goals that are:

* Specific

* Measurable

* Achievable

* Realistic

* Time-related

These are all great guidelines to keep in mind when making your goals, and they are designed to reduce overwhelm.

As a bonus to the SMART concept, my friend Daniel Welsch down in Madrid adds on two other components that work well. He notes two kinds of things he wants to achieve:

* Goals that cost nothing (like spending more time with a loved one)

* Goals that cost $1000

The former can be scheduled immediately. The latter can be worked towards and earned. It doesn’t have to be $1000, but the benefits of having a monetary goal in mind are huge.

After all, you’re going to work one way or another and saving up for a specific goal that costs money not only engages you in your work in a more meaningful way. It also lets you give yourself a gift for all that you do.

The trick is to make sure that your goals in and of themselves reduce overwhelm while leading to even greater states of calm and freedom in the future.

 

6. How To Make Your Favorite Poison A Cure

 

It was often said in Ancient Greece that the cure is always a poison, and the poison is always a cure. In fact, the word “pharmacy” partially descends from this concept (Pharmakia).

Computers are like that too. At the same time you can use them to achieve miracles, you can also let them run you into the ground.

Set specific limits. For example, no matter what, hit the off-switch at 10 p.m. and stick to it. Then go for a walk and sit on that bench.

Of course, everybody knows that setting limits is tough, but the benefits of doing so reduce overwhelm and open you up to receiving so many good things in life that cannot be achieved when you and your brain are chained to a machine designed to bombard all your senses.

 

7. How To Reduce Overwhelm While Chilling Out With Friends

 

Social media has many positive aspects. But it’s not a substitute for real life contact. It doesn’t cause your brain to create any of the healthy and helpful chemicals that social interactions bring. And in fact, keeping up with all those posts and liking all those likable links can bake your brain.

You also don’t get the challenges your brain needs while using social media. These include being asked questions and asking questions in return, complete with the body language and innuendo that only real life contact can offer. That said, like meditation, social contact needn’t have a lofty self-improvement goal. It can be valuable in and of itself just as something to do.

But if you do want something specific to do with your friends, tell them about your minimalist plans to bring more balance into your life. After all, they’re helpful for everyone else too.

And teaching something helps you organize information in your brain, leading to streamlined thoughts and crystal clarity that also help reduce overwhelm in your mind.

So what do you say? Are you ready to get out of the soul-crushing loop that you’re in and bring in some new habits that will help you reduce overwhelm and boost your success? I hope so, because the truth is that you can free yourself from the suffering of burnout, one small positive habit at a time.