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Hermann Ebbinghaus is remembered mostly for discovering the forgetting curve. Open any psychology textbook, any blog devoted to a flashcard app or any study-tips listicle, and you’ll find his name alongside a distinctive graph.
Memory expert Tony Buzan called it the most important graph in the world. That’s because its iconic line shows memory plummeting within hours of learning something new, then flattening out over days.
Countless discussions of how to reduce forgetting give you the same tidy recommendations. Usually they tell you to review your study materials at intervals, just at the point you’re starting to forget.
That way, many authors promise, you’ll beat the curve.
The problem, just one of many you’ll discover today, is this:
Ebbinghaus didn’t discover the forgetting curve. He discovered his forgetting curve.
He was one man, testing his own memory, on one kind of material, using one method.
And although the forgetting curve is indeed one of the most repeatable and reproducible principles in the history of scientific studies, reproducibility in laboratory settings does not mean you’ll stop forgetting by using the conventional recommendations.
Besides, here’s something almost no one else will tell you:
The deepest principles the Ebbinghaus experiments revealed were already written down more than two thousand years earlier by Aristotle.
You’ll find them in a short treatise that describes something remarkably close to using a Memory Palace in combination with the same kind of serial positioning Ebbinghaus described as a means for reducing forgetting.
So today I’m going to cover a few aspects of the forgetting curve all serious users of memory techniques need to know.
These are points I’ve been putting off writing about for a long time. However, a few emails and comments I’ve received over the past few years have convinced me that now is finally the time.
Especially since I’ve spent decades memorizing poetry, scripture, mantras, complex terms, the names of people from various backgrounds and vocabulary and phrases in multiple languages.
And I’ve done this all while teaching thousands of students to do the same. From where I sit as a practitioner, the forgetting curve is real, useful and badly misunderstood.
But treated correctly, it’s an invitation to success.
First, however, for the uninitiated, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about the definition of this term. That way, you’ll be able to discover your own curve and work on reducing its impact in your learning life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_qwUkfO65M
What Is the Forgetting Curve?In 1885, Ebbinghaus published Ăber das GedĂ€chtnis (Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology). In this monumental work, he reported years of experiments he had run on a single subject: himself. He memorized lists of sinnlose Silben, the German term for nonsense syllables.
These were consonant-vowel-consonant combinations like ZOF and KEB. After committing lists of such invented words, he then tested how much effort it took to relearn them after various delays.
Notice two things. First, these were invented words. Nothing with any meaning.
Second, pay attention to the word relearn. Ebbinghaus did not measure memory only by asking whether he could reproduce an entire list perfectly. He also measured what he called “savings” in the context of relearning. This study goes quite deep into the nuances and implications of this particular concept for memory.
To get the concept in brief, suppose it initially took you 20 repetitions to learn something. If it took only 10 repetitions to relearn it later, some trace of the original learning clearly remained. Your inability to reproduce the information perfectly would not mean the memory had disappeared completely.
Keep this idea of “savings” in mind. It matters more than the famous graph, and we’ll return to it when I show you what happened to a long Sanskrit mantra I intentionally abandoned for years. It also connects to some concepts in memory introduced by Richard Semon and studied more recently by Dr. Paul Garrett in relation to the role of fuzzy memory.
Back to Ebbinghaus, the result of his experiments is what we now call the forgetting curve. It shows how retention drops steeply at first, then the decline slows. He also documented what we now call the spacing effect. It describes how reviews distributed over time preserve more in long-term memory than the same number of reviews crammed together.
All of what Ebbinghaus found replicates, so his science is not in question here. What’s in question is what you and I should actually do with his findings. And that’s where things really start to get interesting.
Ebbinghaus Was an Early n=1 MemorizerNotice what Ebbinghaus actually was:
A practitioner running experiments on his own memory. In today’s language, he was doing n=1 self-experimentation. He had skin in the game, memorized real material with his own mind, and measured what happened.
I took his actions as both a lesson and an inspiration.
It’s just that rather than memorize nonsense (apart from a bit of Kurt Schwitters’ âUrsonateâ), I’ve focused on applying memory techniques to Chinese, scripture, poetry and facts related to law school.
But you will never see the results you can achieve by reading about Ebbinghaus. You’ll only see it by memorizing information yourself and paying attention to what happens next.
Tony Buzan was great about splitting the difference during his ThinkBuzan seminars. He taught memory techniques, but also had participants draw their own graph of the forgetting curve.
Here’s mine:
In sum, reading about the forgetting curve while never memorizing anything is like reading about swimming while refusing to get wet.
Is There Such a Thing As Too Much Scientific Literacy?Years ago, Harry Lorayne coached me on becoming a successful memory coach.
I followed just about everything he said, except one thing. He said, “whatever you do, don’t tell ’em about the science.”
The reason I ignored the advice is that:
I’m very interested in memory scienceStudying it has helped me discover many powerful memory activities and brain exercisesThe only problem I’ve seen is that about a year ago, students of all ages started writing to me in the language of science at an increasing rate. And for many, the various terms and memory statistics available online have created anxiety and perfectionism I don’t think needs to exist.
For example, a medical student taking the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass recently emailed multiple times with worries about whether his review schedule was set to properly combat the “decay function.”
Now, obviously, the research on memory genuinely matters. I cite it often and terms like this can be useful for forming a solid practice with using mnemonics.
But Lorayne’s warning has started to take on a strange and unexpected sense because something strange happens when the vocabulary of science replaces practice. After all, science is mostly there to describe, not proscribe.
We can certainly use scientific findings to improve our practice, but it’s not helpful to let techniques that have been used happily for thousands of years become the source of anxiety thanks to scientific papers.
Don’t Let These Terms Interfere With Your Memory TrainingIt’s not only beginners with memory techniques or medical students who would tend towards scientific verbiage when contacting me.
I regularly hear from people fluent in the terminology, sometimes with publications to their name.
A published researcher wrote me recently and had thoroughly reasoned himself into genuine paradox. Amongst other things, he wanted to know what a trained mnemonist’s memory does “without any technique.”
Now, you certainly can get a swimmer to demonstrate what a particular stroke looks like without the water.
And in the context of memory training, the question can sound rigorous.
But in my view, this kind of question suggests that the researcher has lost contact with the very thing he’s asking about. This is because someone with a trained memory can’t isolate a ‘raw baseline’ without risking cognitive paradox. I would have to reflect on my use of mnemonic methods while not using them.
And since he immediately followed-up with a pseudo-scientific claim about photographic memory, I knew he was not taking Ebbinghaus’ n=1 practice as an example by actually using the techniques himself. After all, photographic memory has been thoroughly debunked and I’ve demonstrated many times over that it not only does not exist. The term itself makes zero sense.
So this is where some nuance about the forgetting curve is very important to the serious user of memory techniques. No matter who you are, you need to make contact with actual remembering.
Aristotle Described the Core Principle Two Thousand Years AgoActually studying and practicing a wide variety of memory techniques will get you insight far more interesting and impactful than any psychology textbook could hope to provide.
In De Memoria et Reminiscentia, Aristotle describes recollection as movement through an ordered series. At one point in the book, he uses a sequence like the letters of the alphabet and gives strikingly practical advice that deeply inspired what I call Recall Rehearsal. This is a form of spaced repetition applied specifically to the Memory Palace technique.
As Aristotle puts it, if you forget something, don’t start over from the beginning. Start from the middle of the series and move outward from there.
Richard Sorabji, in his landmark study Aristotle on Memory, admits that he doesn’t understand what Aristotle is talking about in this passage. That’s a courageous confession, as many scholars would just make something up or speculate.
As a practitioner of memory techniques with decades of experience, I can tell you what I believe Aristotle is describing. It’s either:
An alphabetically labeled Memory PalaceAn early description of serial positioning and spaced repetitionOr a description that provided the inspiration for creating this kind of Memory Palace practice.It’s genuinely difficult to say which. But either way, the principle and how it reduces unwanted forgetting is unmistakable to anyone who has actually run the technique.
In case you have never used a Memory Palace, it involves ordered locations, deliberate starting points, and strategic entry into the middle of a sequence as part of several spaced repetition patterns that establish substantial retention.
Modern Practitioners Who Know How to Beat the Forgetting CurveYou can trace this practitioner lineage forward through Peter of Ravenna, Jacobus Publicius, Robert Fludd, Giordano Bruno, and in our own time, mnemonists like myself and Lynne Kelly (especially in her book, Memory Craft). Our combination of fieldwork and daily personal practice in particular sets the standard for studying these techniques.
Certainly Frances Yates deserves credit for reviving scholarly interest in mnemonics through her book, The Art of Memory, but she acknowledged never practicing the techniques herself.
Frankly, it shows. Her treatment of memory wheels, for example, creates the impression they were used as Memory Palaces, which is possible but unlikely. Practice changes what you can see in the Memory Palace books you read.
Why does the Aristotle passage matter for the forgetting curve? Because his advice that you should “start from the middle” of a sequence of information you keep forgetting is serial positioning in action. And serial positioning is the key to defeating the curve.
My Own Forgetting Curve, Observed in the WildThe reason I’ve never tried to reproduce Ebbinghaus’s experiment formally by memorizing nonsense is precisely because you see advice on how to beat the forgetting curve thousands of years before he conducted his research.
That said, I have watched my own forgetting curve operate over years, and the observations I’ve made are instructive.
For example, I worked daily with one long-form mantra built from a few dozen Sanskrit phrases for many years: the Song Celestial.
Then I deliberately let it lapse with no rehearsal at all for approximately two years. I was not as deliberate as I could have been in terms of tracking like Ebbinghaus would have. But since the research is so heavily reproducible and we know why Memory Palaces work, I was happy to be casual about it.
When I finally came back to this mantra, I was shocked by how much I could still recall. The forgetting curve had certainly caused some “decay.” But it was nothing like what Ebbinghaus’s graph would predict for material of that length after that much neglect. In Ebbinghaus’s own terms, the “savings” were enormous. And the relearning cost me a fraction of the original effort, because the trace was never gone. It was waiting for me.
The question is, why? After all, I can’t sing songs I used to know by heart when I was a kid?
Part of the answer is that I never stopped reciting the other three Sanskrit mantras I have memorized. They have very similar meanings, and in many cases, some of the same words.
The meaning element in particular suggests that I partly benefitted from stronger retention due to what scientists call context dependence. Because I never left the realm of reciting Sanskrit entirely, that must explain the higher rate of retention.
Compare this to my previous career as a Film Studies professor. I hardly watch movies anymore, let alone read theoretical books about them or lecture for weeks on end during a traditional university semester. The lack of context has accelerated the force of the forgetting curve and deskilled my chops as a film scholar.
Memory Palaces: Structured Spaced Retrieval Systems That Beat ForgettingApart from context-dependent memory benefits, another reason I could recall so much of a mantra despite not reciting it for years has to do with how I memorized it: using the Memory Palace technique.
Not as a party trick, but as a structured spaced retrieval system. To learn more about how it works, check out my Complete Guide to the Memory Palace technique.
In brief, the key is to place information tethered to associations along the stations of a Memory Palace and then practice Recall Rehearsal following patterns no software like Anki can guide you through.
Titus Andronicus and Recall Rehearsal in ActionMy favorite demonstration where I show you Recall Rehearsal in action involves Shakespeare, specifically a passage from Titus Andronicus I memorized for my case study of how Anthony Hopkins memorizes his scripts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhjIkGu32CA
I’ve retained the passage ever since running it through Recall Rehearsal with minimal repetition.
Or better said, I repeat these lines often, but now it’s performance, not just recitation.
But the interesting thing isn’t really that I can recite this passage. Anyone can chain words together through brute force rote learning and recite lines like these forward.
The proof of the power of Recall Rehearsal is that I can recite the lines out of order:
Jumping between sectionsRunning lines in reverseReciting the odd-numbered lines and then the even numbered linesIt’s now probably my favorite demonstration because it makes the power of serial positioning visible.
Even better: I’m not alone in enjoying the benefits of improved retention.
Magnetic Memory Method Students Who Have Bent the CurveI’ve watched this play out in my students for years, and two cases capture it especially well.
Jeannie Koh spent years learning Koine Greek using rote learning during years of what she said were filled with tears and pain.
But after learning to encode with Memory Palaces, she found memorizing “much less painful, and much more enduring over time,” now recalling whole passages in that ancient language with an ease she says feels almost suspicious. Same brain, same language, two encoding methods, two completely different forgetting curves. She’s a one-person controlled experiment.
For more success stories, including physicians who used these methods to retrieve high-volume, complex information under exam pressure months after encoding it, check out my testimonials page.
The pattern is always the same: the forgetting curve is not destiny.
So long as you’re using memory techniques optimally, you can resist it, if not beat it.
Should You Reproduce Ebbinghaus’s Experiment?One problem I see time and again is that many people want the exact steps needed to measure their progress. Especially when they hear me discuss how rigorously I use journaling as part of my memory activities.
I’m sorry, but the demand for “exact steps” is mostly a desire installed by content marketing. The truth is that there isn’t one exact path. There are several and the real lesson in Ebbinghaus’ story is that you need to get involved in creating your own.
You can journal manually by simply memorizing real words or nonsense words. Note the dates, and test yourself over time. What matters is that you work inside projects that matter to you. Whether that’s language learning, poetry, mantras, scripture, use a memory journal to help you test what holds and what fades as you use memory techniques.
If you’re competitive, you can study how memory athletes use journaling to sharpen their game. My podcast conversation with Johannes Mallow, in which he explains how journaling improved his competitive standing, will be useful in that regard.
Often Forgetting Is Actually a Crisis of CommitmentIf there’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years, it’s that people often take on learning projects connected to lives they do not actually want.
They study for a qualification because they believe they should, or to please a family member.
As a result, they struggle to memorize information for a job they already suspect will make them miserable. Then they interpret their resistance as a defective memory, when the deeper problem is in fact a conflict of purpose.
I’ve had to face this in my own law-school experiment.
I could not know in advance exactly what studying law would involve or how well the field would suit me.
The saving grace is that trying it has given me greater insight into what’s involved.
But now that I’ve seen some of the field from within, I have to ask a different question:
Just because I am a mnemonist who can memorize legal Latin quickly and an upcoming presentation I have to give does not mean I must continue pursuing every possible outcome associated with the degree. The ability to remember something does not prove that it deserves years of my life.
As I know from my studies in polymathy, memory mastery must include the development of careful selection parameters.
In other words, one of the best “meta level” ways to beat the forgetting curve is to decide whether the material deserves a place in your memory at all.
If you’d like help picking what to memorize on top of using the Memory Palace technique and Recall Rehearsal, my new training “The System” can help you pick a first project you actually care about.
Once you have a learning goal you love, keep a journal as you memorize.
Not to reproduce a nineteenth-century experiment, but to watch yourself break the forgetting curve, one piece of info at a time.
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Frustrated when you read an article about ancient memory techniques that only covers the Greek mnemonic tradition?
Me too.
See, when I first encountered memory techniques through Harry Lorayne and others, they mentioned the Greek tradition in passing.
Lorayne in particular mentioned âold techniques in dusty old books.â But he never went deep into what those techniques were until he wrote Ageless Memory.
And in that book, his focus was on the Greek mnemonic tradition.
Over the years, my research has continually shown that memory techniques are way older than Simonides of Ceos and his âMemory Palace.â
As a result, my practice in using them has deepened considerably, as have the outcomes.
Donât get me wrong.
The Greek version of the Memory Palace is a profound tool for learning faster and remembering more.
Itâs just that itâs not the only approach.
And the ancient world has so much to offer our learning lives right now. Not to mention in the future.
So if youâre ready to discover a much wider range of ancient mnemonic devices and add them to your arsenal, letâs dive in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0uw27EfCUw
Ancient Memory Techniques That Still WorkAs we go through this list together, two things:
Thereâs no particular order of importance. Iâm just laying out all the great techniques Iâve learned from around the world and throughout time.Youâll notice some crossover between these techniques, if not repetition. Thatâs because all memory techniques appear to be spatial in one form or another. Further, as Giordano Bruno has said in many of his memory books, if anyone thinks long and hard enough about these techniques, theyâll reach the same conclusions as he did.These techniques might seem like they belong to or originate with a particular group. Certainly, everyone should take pride in their history. But because there is so much crossover between these techniques, we should see the common humanity in them and not arrive at some kind of tribalism.This final point is made by Tyson Yunkaporta in his excellent book Sand Talk and repeated during our discussion on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.
So if you notice universal patterns in my list, I suggest being open to exploring the repetition. I used to dismiss things that seemed repetitive.
But over the years Iâve learned that not examining the patterns that repeat is almost always a mistake. If anything, repetition is difference. And in that difference lies so much to explore and benefit from.
Finally, itâs useful to note that âancientâ can mean many different things. We often use the word to mean âvery old.â
But more specifically it sometimes used to mean âbefore the fall of the Roman Empire.â That would rule out, for example, Medieval and Renaissance memory techniques.
For the purposes of this article, Iâm not going to exclude either of those periods. Both the Medieval and Renaissance periods definitely count as âvery oldâ in my mind, though Iâm certainly interested in your thoughts on this and hope youâll leave a comment if you think differently.
One: Aboriginal Memory Techniques & Songlines Rooted in LandscapeThere are many Aboriginal and Indigenous memory techniques. Some have caught the interest of scientists and been validated through contemporary testing methods.
These techniques include:
StorySonglinesLukasaMemory spacesHand mnemonicsSonglines are among the most interesting of these ancient memory techniques. As Lynne Kelly describes them in her book, The Memory Code:
Songlines, or Dreaming Tracks are pathways through the landscape connecting a large number of significant locations in a fixed order.
As she later clarifies in her book, Memory Craft:
Songlines were used to help memorize everything Aboriginal people needed to know about animals, plants, navigation, genealogies, the legal system, ethical expectations⊠the list goes on and on. The culture was entirely stored in memory.
How to Use a SonglineSonglines are all about being connected to the land. To truly understand how this works, I suggest you start by looking at an actual Songline.
Keep in mind that you can use both the land and the sky to help you construct a Songline. Hereâs an example of mine based on the Glass House Mountains:
I assigned this Songline based on a mountain range and used the Songline itself to help me remember the mountains and the ancestral stories about them.For this particular Songline, I memorized the names and the stories related to the main mountains themselves, Tibrogargan, Beerwah and Coonowrin.
The operation is quite simple: You place associations at predetermined points along the Songline. Then you use the Songline in combination with rules of active recall to usher the information into long term memory.
Two: The Ancient Mnemonics Hidden In Coins & Scrolls as AbbreviationsAccording to Eran Katz in Where Did Noah Park the Ark?, abbreviations entered use as mnemonic devices at least as early as circa 132 A.D.
As Katz explains, coins found during this period contain some of the oldest abbreviations in the form of reminders. Used by the Bar Kochba rebellion against the Romans, the abbreviations reminded the Hebrews of the year and their quest for freedom.
It seems like abbreviations are even older than that, however. Messages carved in stone used them, both to make it faster and easier to encode messages. And probably sometimes for secrecy through cryptography.
Medieval scribes also used lots of special abbreviations in their work, including the pecia system.
These days, abbreviations are used to help us remember the Periodic Table of the Elements and even our to-do lists.
For example, you can make simple abbreviations any time like WALK to help you remember a specific routine:
Walk the dogBuy applesLeave the night light onKiss your partner good nightToday, we use memory techniques based on something like abbreviations all the time. For example, the pegword method allows you to attach an image to each letter of the alphabet, which you can expand in many ways, use along a Songline, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuk2POY_3yM
Three: An Ancient Number SystemChances are, you already know about one of the modern memory techniques for memorizing numbers.
But itâs not as common for people to know about the katapayadi. The earliest examples are found in 683 CE, but itâs almost certainly much older than that. Iâve written more extensively about this system in the context of mental exercises, but itâs also a powerful memory technique.
I believe itâs probably the origin of number memory systems we use now like:
Major SystemDominic SystemPAO SystemIf you want to use the katapayadi, all you need to do is commit the code to memory and start practicing it with the numbers you want to remember.
If youâre an English native speaker, one of the more modern options will probably be easier for you.
Four: Buddhist Memory TechniquesIt was 2009 when I first heard Michael Roach talk about how Buddhist practitioners sometimes use their temples to help them memorize long form meditations.
Roach is not always considered a reputable source so I was glad when I encountered basically the same description in the work of Karen Armstrong. If you read her book, youâll find a very similar idea. And hers is solidly referenced. She also ties it to yoga.
So whatâs the idea?
Simple:
First, you chunk down the different parts of your meditation. Then you place these around the temple where your meditation sessions take place. Michael Roach walked his listeners through one such meditation, and the proof is in the pudding: I still remember the different parts of the meditation very well.
In many ways, this approach is a lot like the Stations of the Cross mnemonic in a church. The main difference is that youâre using your imagination to place images on parts of the building instead of visiting actual stations with permanent images in them.
Five: Ars Notoria & Angels as Mnemonic ImagesThis approach to remembering more has to belong to the weirdest of the bunch.
But as Dr. Justin Sledge and I agree, the Ars Notoria probably helped boost the concentration and focus of its users.
In brief, this memory hack asked you to stare at images and recite the names of angels and other words.
Once you know the names of the angels, these can be applied to helping you learn similar-sounding information in the future.
Even if parts of Ars Notoria makes some really wild promises, it got lots of things right too. For example, it encouraged its users to read books and attend lectures.
You might not normally think of going to class and reading books as a kind of memory technique, but actually those activities are mnemonic strategies in their own right.
If you find this approach interesting, you might want to check out the recent Matthias Castle translation of Ars Notoria.
Not only is it excellent, but his introduction to the book provides a fantastic overview of memory techniques in medieval and renaissance Europe.
He and I discuss his translation in-depth on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.
Six: The Memory Palace TechniqueNow we get to the ancient Greek memory techniques. But as youâve seen, many Indigenous people were already using space as a key mnemonic strategy much deeper into history.
The reason the Greek rendition of the Memory Palace technique has been continuously attributed to them probably comes down to one thing:
How memorable they made its origin story. Whereas songlines are kind of abstract to explain, the story of Simonides of Ceos is direct and easy to grasp:
He was giving a speech at a banquet hall. An earthquake tore the place to the ground and he was the only survivor. Because he remembered where everyone was sitting, he was able to help the authorities identify all the bodies.
He was literally recreating their positions in the building using a mental journey.
And because this journey took place indoors, the idea of a âMemory Palaceâ took hold. Thereâs more to the story than that, elements added by people like St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and teachers like Peter of Ravenna.
No matter who tells it, the story is memorable because of the drama in it. And that’s one major reason the Memory Palace technique survives to this day.
That said, you may have heard of this technique by many other terms other than Memory Palace:
Journey methodRoman RoomMind PalaceMemory castleMethod of Loci to name just a fewThe technique has also appeared throughout pop culture in recent years, most notably in the Sherlock Holmes and Hannibal Lecter stories.
Seven: Parallelism and EnvelopingHave you ever wondered why some song lyrics, poems and scriptures are easier to remember than others?
As explored in The Literary Guide to the Bible, this effect often has to do with two writing techniques in particular.
Parallelism happens when an original thought is repeated several times but each time comes with a different example. You see this throughout the Psalms (which one of my students talks about memorizing), but also lyrics in songs like My House by Lou Reed.
Enveloping is similar, but happens when images and ideas presented at the beginning of a piece appear again at the end.
Enveloping may involve straight-up repetition or be done with a twist, as Shakespeare often tantalized us by ending his sonnets with puzzling phrases that make you rethink everything he said at the beginning of the poem.
As Dave Farrow shared in his episode on my podcast, puns like those used by Shakespeare can be highly memorable.
Eight: The Hand Memory PalaceIn Medieval Music and the Art of Memory, Anna Berger details the use of the hand as a mnemonic device. People learning music during this period would transfer knowledge about the musical modes to their hands.
You can also use your hand to help you remember the months of the year.
Or you can use your hand to figure out how many days are in any given month.
Back to the Aboriginal memory techniques, if you check out my podcast with Tyson Yunkaporta, you can see me using his version of the hand Memory Palace to repeat some of the points made in his book.
For more on using your hand as a Memory Palace, check out The Medieval Craft of Memory and The Book of Memory, both projects by Mary Carruthers.
Nine: Noahâs Ark & Other Ancient StructuresI just mentioned The Medieval Craft of Memory. In that book, youâll read a few extracts from Hugh of St. Victor.
One of them details The Mystic Ark, which Hugh painted to help people memorize key points from the Bible.
What Hugh seems to be stressing is that you can make a lot more progress by fusing the content of a text with a Memory Palace related to that content.
In other words, if you’re memorizing a Biblical story, use either a church or a location indicated in the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv3WSP1f4y0
Youâve already read about me doing something similar when I talked about memorizing the names of the Glass House Mountains and using the mountains themselves as a Songline.
Another example would be something like the way Masons reenact various aspects related to Solomonâs Temple to help them remember key principles related to their philosophical beliefs.
Indeed, many of their rituals probably serve as a kind of spaced-repetition that help members remember key points and add more details over time.
Ten: The Statues of Giordano BrunoRenaissance memory master Giordano Bruno discussed using statues in Memory Palaces, specifically for remembering challenging, but important philosophical concepts.
After discussing Memory Palaces in both On the Shadows of the Ideas and On the Composition of Images, Bruno wrote The Lantern of Thirty Statues.
Scott Gosnell has released a recent translation of this text under the simpler title, Thirty Statues. Although it’s a challenging read, I recommended it.
In this work, Bruno shares how he used the bodies of figures in statue form as mini-Memory Palaces.
Using statues is not unlike using the hand. It’s the same principle extended to the entire body. You then attach mnemonic images to a journey laid out along a statue’s body to help you recall anything you wish.
Bruno suggests that you assign 30 stations to a figure like Atlantis:
As you can see in the example above, Bruno is âdouble-dippingâ by using only the parts of the body that have two parts.
This approach is effective, however. You can for example always have a foreign language word on the left eye and definitions on the right eye. You just repeat this pattern based on the rules you set as you move down the body of the statue.
Or, you can use body Memory Palaces like this for opposites. The word for black can be on the left ear in a foreign language, the word for white on the other.
For a modern and more simplified version of this approach, check out this interview with memory expert Ron White.
Or, watch my 2026 video where I take you through a series of applications for the Body Memory Palace I don’t think you want to miss, from dates and facts to numbers you might need to remember at random:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMddgm37Mi0
Brunoâs version is indeed something worth exploring. Just keep in mind that I donât use the thirty loci as he describes them myself. The full description of my approach is found in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.
Eleven: Ninja Mnemonics and⊠ScarringIâll bet you never thought ninjas would show as part of this tutorial.
But itâs true. Ninjas are ancient and they used at least two memory techniques to be successful in their trade, which essentially involved spying. Their particular version of espionage began in the 15th century proper, though some people think the ninja tradition goes back earlier to the 12th century.
While on their missions, ninjas required excellent long-term memory abilities. They couldnât always carry paper and needed to retain information sometimes for months in order to deliver it.
So, almost as if taking a tip from Giordano Bruno, they used their own bodies and linked numbers using something like the number-memory systems discussed above. Kioku-Jutsu involved basically the same strategy Bruno describes, except in this case, the ninja used his own body.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkg4A8GSjZk
Fubo-no-jutsu took things one step further.
Using this ancient memory technique, the ninja cut information into his own body.
A ninja might even shave his head before entering enemy territory. That temporary sacrifice would allow him to imprint information into his scalp and then hide it by letting his hair grow back.
Gruesome, but surely effective!
Twelve: The Memory Theaters of Robert FluddRobert Fludd was not as extreme as the ninjas. But as I’ve discussed in my post about Fludd’s mnemonic teaching, he was adamant about how people should use the Memory Palace technique.
For example, he wrote a book with a very complicated title: The metaphysical, physical, and technical history of the two worlds, namely the greater and the lesser.
In this book, Fludd seems to be addressing readers who wanted to create imaginary Memory Palaces. This desire is the equivalent of students wanting to use video games in our era.
Or perhaps, youâre spending time using AI to help you generate your Memory Palaces and mnemonic associations.
Iâm not saying whether you should or shouldnât because Iâve done some experiments myself. And experiments are always interesting.
But even more interesting is how Fluddâs advice probably still stands, even if it isnât quite right.
Robert Fludd insisted that we base our Memory Palaces on real locations to help strengthen our skills with memory techniques and avoid weakening our minds.According to Fludd, you shouldnât use imaginary Memory Palaces because this weakens the imagination.
Now, I donât personally agree that merely using an imaginary Memory Palace will weaken your visualization skills. Rather, you likely stand to gain a lot by experimenting with imaginary mnemonics as frequently as possible.
But I get Fluddâs overall point because in order to use an imaginary space, you have to spend mental energy on:
Creating the Memory PalacesMemorizing your journey through the mnemonic spacesFludd also points out the most obvious thing in the world to the audience of his era.
They were all theatregoers, so Fludd suggested they use one of their favorite locations for their Memory Palaces. He may also have been influenced by Giulio Camilloâs memory theater concept, though this is not known for certain.
I do something like this in our time by using movie theaters. They make fantastic Memory Palaces and you can readily use the characters in your favorite movies instead of statues.
And, if you stick with Brunoâs suggestions, you can use the bodies of those actors and add a number system. That way, no one has to get cut⊠at least, not outside of your imagination.
Thirteen: The Computational Memory WheelRamon Llull was passionate about his beliefs. So much so, he invented something we now call ars combinatoria.
Bruno, who you just learned about, wrote commentaries on Llullâs work and expanded the concept into what we now call the âmemory wheel.â
Hereâs the idea:
You reduce key concepts down to their first letter (benevolence becomes B, like an abbreviation)You place these letters on concentric wheels you build in your imagination or create using paperYou then rotate the wheels so that various concepts align, helping you either decide what to do or remember key pieces of informationBruno probably used his memory wheels while meditating as part of his faith and while completing certain duties, such as counseling others.
Martin Faulks has studied this concept intensively and has impressively demonstrated how the wheels work in practice.
And if you want to use memory wheels for better memory and help with creating mnemonic associations quickly, check out my full discussion of how Jacobus Publicius taught memory wheels in the 15th-century.
Fourteen: Rote LearningRote learning is ancient, even if itâs not the best possible way to learn. Iâve included it here because even if itâs not fun or easy (and sometimes as painful as Fubo-no-jutsu must have been for the ninjas), itâs important to understand a bit about its history.
The word âroteâ is connected to learning as early as the 1580s and probably stems from other words like âroute,â âroutineâ and ârotation.â
In Chinese, they have a funny expression for this technique: æ»èź°çĄŹè (Si ji ying bei). This means: death memory stiff back.
Use it with caution, my friends, and if you want an alternative technique, get my FREE Memory Improvement Technique now:
Fifteen: Knots & Twisted StringAs bad and boring as rote repetition can be, thereâs a place for it. For example, when reciting mantras or praying, repetition is the bee’s knees.
One way you can help yourself remember certain parts of a prayer, involves getting a string and either placing a knot in it or twisting a part of the string.
Next, you encode your desired information into each knot or twist.
Later, as you feel your way along the string, you practice recalling what you wanted to remember on a knot-by-knot basis. This practice is probably where we get the iconic image of a string tied around someoneâs finger as a memory aid.
Ancient Wisdom for Sharper Thinking Goes Far Beyond Greek Memory TechniquesAs I hope you’ve learned, these ancient memory techniques aren’t just fringe curiosities.
They were essential tools for survival that worked across the centuries for many different cultures.
You’ve learned how memories were sculpted into the landscape, encoded into knots, embedded in statues and even carved by ninjas into their flesh.
People used the techniques then for the same reason they use them today. For scholarship, spiritual development and shaping their identities while navigating the complexities of our world.
All without having to look up information from books or videos.
If just one of these techniques speaks to you, learn it and put it into practice.
And remember:
Just because it’s old doesn’t make it dated.
When you train your memory with these time-tested tools, you’ll do more than learn faster.
You’ll connect with a long lineage of polymaths and join them on the autodidactic journey.
Ready to join them?
Just get started.
Treat your memory as more than just a tool.
It’s a doorway.
And that door is open now.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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If you want to know how to improve cognitive function, you probably already know the basics.
You need to eat well, get regular sleep, exercise consistently and maintain social connections.
That last point hits me hard because as someone who has taught memory improvement for fifteen years, I recently moved away from all my friends. And I’m definitely feeling the impact of that decision.
And we’re all facing the consequences of the decisions we make because everything influences the quality of our minds.
So if you’d like to know what I’m personally doing to maintain focus as I age while leading an unusually isolated life, today I’m sharing my research and experiences.
It’s a bit unique because I’m the author of multiple memory improvement books, an independent memory researcher and someone with a reputation to maintain in the field of mental performance.
And since we all need to preserve our reputations, how I’m tackling my own concentration, memory and focus challenges might help you along your own journey.
Let me share this proclamation loud and clear as we begin: Tackling challenges to my own concentration and focus is my passion.
And it has to be a passion and a mission because I intend to enjoy a very focused mind with strong recall abilities for as long as I possibly can.
Ready to explore some of the best, science-backed strategies that are helping me?
Let’s dive in!
What Is Cognitive Function? And How Does It Relate To Memory?“Cognitive function” is a term used in a variety of fields, from memory science to Jungian psychology.
For Carl Jung, cognition boiled down to how your mind processes and experiences emotional feeling, intuition, a variety of sensations and thought.
When it comes to memory in the realm of learning, cognitive function specifically refers to:
Attention and how you focus on information like hearing someone’s nameWorking memory so you can temporarily hold an instruction or phone number in mindLong-term memory for accessing facts like names and locationsProcessing speed for thinking efficientlyExecutive functions like planning or switching between tasksHolding focus during conversations or while studyingSpeaking languagesNavigating a variety of placesMost importantly, cognitive function governs how we use memory techniques to remember things, specifically information related to data like numbers and information related to our professional work and studies.
Why Cognitive Function Slips (According To Science)First things first: If you’re concerned about your memory, please see a doctor. Or, if you’re concerned for a loved one, assist them in doing so.
Generally, the reason most of us have issues is because we distract ourselves with multitasking.
Good recall begins with paying attention. But far too often we clutter our lives with social media, creating digital amnesia. This is a term that literally refers to Internet-induced forgetting.
The good news is that we can improve.
Like focusing on diet, exercise, sleep and socializing, paying attention is a behavior. This was a point made by memory expert David Berglas in A Question of Memory. He’s worth listening to because his memory stayed sharp up until a very old age indeed.
How do you turn paying attention into a behavior?
Start making an effort to remember names, for one thing. Yesterday at the bank I did just that, and the clerk delighted in covering up her name tag to test me several times.
You can also engage in activities like memorizing scripture. Or other forms of long-form verbatim memorization, like poetry.
For an inspiring outcome from one of my students who was recovering from cardiac arrest, check out the memory improvement case study and scripture demonstration provided by Matt Barclay.
There are a few more activities to consider that I’ll cover below, but let’s look at what happens to our brain cells next. It will provide more context to this mission-critical aspect of our mental lives and why maintaining memory is so valuable throughout life.
Cellular AgingJudith Campisi was a pioneer in the field of cellular senescence. As one of her papers described this term, cellular senescence is “when bad things happen to good cells.”
It’s bad no matter where it happens in the body. But there are two ways it can affect memory:
Reducing the functioning of your brain cellsCreating pain and stress that distract you and reduce focusIf you find yourself dealing with cellular senescence, diet might help improve your cognition. This study found that adopting a ketogenic diet improved memory in aging mice.
Anecdotally, I’ve eaten either an entirely keto or near-keto diet for years. I have to regulary eat yogurt now, and that unfortunately causes some brain fog. But during the years I ate near-totally keto, I was sharper than I ever felt in my life.
GeneticsWe often think that things are just the way that they are. Our genes above all cannot be changed.
Assuming this is true now, will it always be the case that we have to just deal with the cards we’ve been dealt in the game of life?
Scientists are hard at work answering this question.
One interesting study on animals has shown promise with respect to potentially treating neurocognitive deficits with gene therapy. In this case, spatial memory was studied in particular, and treated animals were able to navigate mazes better.
In humans, how we use memory to navigate space is only starting to be understood. The science writer Christopher Kemp wrote a lovely book on the topic and shared his findings on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.
Although it’s not entirely clear that Kemp’s personal struggles with navigation are genetic in nature, Dark and Magical Places is well worth reading because some scientists have shown a substantial relationship between place cells and memory. I’d be surprised if gene therapies didn’t emerge in the future that improve both spatial and other types of memory, giving them greater longevity in our lives.
Environmental FactorsOne of the hardest things for many of us to change is our environmental conditions. As I mentioned, I moved away from the city and did not anticipate just how out of touch this would put me with my friends.
I also did not anticipate that it would be such a challenge to make new ones. It’s critical that I take care of this soon, however. As this study shows, poor social connections are a strong predictor of cognitive decline.
Another study found that people with stronger social networks have a lower mortality risk. The catch is that “naturally occurring social” relations are at the core of the benefit. Corny “interventions” by community groups or the recent explosion of rent-a-friend and rental family services don’t show much promise.
Quite the opposite, as this Afar story details. If it’s true that people work ten-hour days only to carry on eating and relaxing with their co-workers, that sounds like a very challenging environment to live in.
And that’s not to mention the possibility that worries over climate issues are causing anxiety-induced memory loss. If you’re struggling to think clearly and remember, you might want to think about how this kind of environmental issue might be affecting you. Research into eco-anxiety is underway at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences and likely to grow in importance as a field of therapy over the years to come.
How Memory Improvement Activities Can Improve Your Cognition (Even As You Age)Now that we’ve covered some of the key reasons mental sharpness slips throughout our lives, let’s look at activities that will help restore and improve your cognitive function.
Obviously, diet and nutrition for cognitive enhancement are assumed. And again, please consult a doctor for advice that directly addresses your personal situation.
Likewise with the following activities. If you have doubts, always run each past a qualified professional before engaging in them.
Even though I engage in them myself, critical thinking remains important and I always encourage you to seek at least one professional opinion before taking any action.
One: Mindfulness And MeditationI’m a strong proponent of meditation for concentration as a key activity for improving attention and memory.
Not only does my book, The Victorious Mind cover much of the key research on the benefits of meditation. I wrote it because combining meditation with memory training helped me in a variety of ways.
The key is to understand that there are many forms of meditation to explore. Not just sitting or chanting mantras.
For example, benefits of mindfulness on your cognitive function will likely start to flow for you through:
Sitting meditationWalking meditationBreathing exercisesJournaling for reflective thinking exerciseGoing on a retreatPracticing mindfulness while eatingYoga for concentration and memoryVarious practices that can help regulate your dopamine levelsAlthough studies like this one show that meditation can increase your working memory, there’s a catch. As these researchers recommend, meditation routines generally need to be systematized and conducted routinely.
I’ve certainly found that my own practices need to be consistent.
That’s why I optimize my environment to remind me of my meditation practice. I have my journal always in sight, the place I sit and the book of mantras I’m memorizing from.
Two: Have A Purpose As You AgeI know it sounds cliche.
But the findings of the Rush Memory and Aging Project demonstrate that having a goal linked to purpose is associated with lower incidences of Alzheimer’s Disease and related issues.
Interestingly, the study also demonstrated that “purpose in life was also associated with a reduced risk of incident disability and risk of death.”
I was fortunate to spend time speaking with the memory experts Tony Buzan and Harry Lorayne. They both were incredibly sharp when I met them, despite being in their seventies and eighties respectively.
Why?
It was not just the fact that they both engaged in regular memory training.
In my view, their strong sense of purpose was a huge part of it. Tony had the World Memory Championship he helped found, along with his work in mind mapping and his polymathic personality.
For his part, Lorayne wrote and published books and performed card magic almost until the end.
I myself have made teaching as a mnemonist and understanding as much as I can about memory science my purpose. It’s not clear yet that I’ll last as long as they did or make a similar mark.
That doesn’t matter nearly as much to me as enjoying the benefits that doing my best in this field brings. So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to craft your own vision statement and work on your purpose. From there on in, it’s just a matter of consistent execution.
If you’d like some help with this piece of the puzzle, check out:
My detailed training on crafting a vision statementThe mind mapping for my business I did under Tony Buzan’s tutelageThree: Engage in Regular Language Learning ActivitiesAnother reason you might suffer cognitive decline stems from not taking on enough challenges that create mental stimulation.
Few activities offer more variety and challenge than learning a new language.
The problem is that many people cringe at the first sign of challenge. Yet, the challenge itself is what’s so helpful for restoring and maintaining cognitive function!
As part of my mission and purpose, I’ve created many tutorials on language learning that will help you. Many of these lessons are geared to reduce the challenges and speed up the process based on my personal experiences with applying memory techniques to language acquisition.
But that’s not to remove challenges altogether. In many ways, it’s more about keeping the challenges fun and eliminating the boredom of rote learning.
Quick Memory-Based Exercises That Restore ConcentrationWe’ve just covered three areas of activity to engage in over the long-term. They’re not quick fixes, but tactics and strategies to explore across a lifetime.
What about things you can do within a few minutes a day and get some benefit?
Well, as I talk about here, completely crossword puzzles likely isn’t one of them (though they can be fun). It also isn’t fiddling with online brain games (which have been shown not to work very well).
Instead, give these quick activities a try.
Four: Repeat Conversations Silently In Your MindI don’t know about you, but sometimes I get caught up in thinking about what I’m going to say next instead of focusing my mind on my conversation partner’s exact words.
To combat this, years ago I started repeating what people were telling me in my mind.
Memory expert Jim Samuels teaches something similar in his book, Re-Mind Yourself. It’s a quick exercise that focuses your mind and leads to remembering more from conversations.
You can also practice this repetition game while listening to podcasts or watching movies. It’s powerful.
Five: Kirtan KriyaAccording to the Alzheimer’s Research & Prevention Foundation, just twelve minutes a day with this ancient concentration technique helps improve your memory while reducing stress.
Dr. Gary Weber teaches it in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvokeZnXMM
I’ve practiced it for years and it really helps. Usually I combine it with my walking meditation sessions.
Six: Incorporate Mnemonics Into Your Daily LifeAlthough it takes a bit of setup, applying mnemonics to everyday learning tasks is easy.
You can use them to remember appointments, where you parked and your shopping list.
Every time you do, you’re getting in a bit of cognitive exercise.
Seven: Listen Like An AudiophileMusic has become ubiquitous in our society. You almost can’t go anywhere without hearing it.
But that doesn’t mean it has to be background noise.
Pay attention deeply to the rhythms you hear. Repeat the melody in your mind.
When I do this, I find that my irritation with music I don’t want to hear goes away.
Even better, it connects me more deeply with music itself. And studies like this have shown that music is linked to memory in a variety of ways, including episodic memory, semantic memory and explicit and implicit memory. Just by listening to music in a serious way, you’re giving your memory a huge workout.
On another level, I try daily to listen seriously to music I’ve never heard before. Luckily, there are bloggers and vloggers who share their most recent acquisitions. Within seconds, I have them playing on Bandcamp or YouTube.
Then, the steps are simple:
Close your eyesListen deeplyImagine the different instruments (even if you don’t know what they are)Call back melodies later in the day to exercise your recall abilitiesFor an extra boost, read biographies about musicians. Go through their music in historical order. Read the assessments of professional critics about them during their era.
This simple act contextualizes the music and exercises your brain’s unique ability to make connections and expand with new learning.
If music isn’t your interest, you can do something similar by looking at and recalling art. Or even going to indoor or outdoor art galleries. I’ve got a whole tutorial on how to use art galleries as part of your lifelong memory improvement journey.
One simple exercise is to just think back to a painting or sculpture you’ve seen. In the feature image above, I’m standing under a sculpture in Brisbane, and I’ve combined it with the music exercise. I just asked what it reminded me of and thought instantly of the Canadian band Voivod, which I know from my reading has a relationship to Metallica.
Since the sculpture looks like a big M, I then turned it into a kind of virtual Memory Palace, a final type of mental exercise we’ll discuss briefly next.
Improving Cognitive Function Can Be Easy & FunAs you’ve seen, there are simple ways to combat cognitive decline.
The trick is putting aside the time and being consistent about the activities. I’ve shared some of the strategies I’m using to keep my brain sharp, and you’re welcome to explore even more.
Keep in mind that consistency is helped by a variety of cognitive activities, not getting stuck in just one or two. There are also benefits to be had by rotating between several, especially those where learning is involved. This is shown by the principle scientists call interleaving.
But you know, my favorite tactic of all is to use my memory in a variety of ways. And for that, I like to have multiple Memory Palaces. These mnemonic tools are very old and really fun to use.
To learn more about how to incorporate them in your quest to improve your cognitive function, get my free memory improvement course:
It will give your brain a workout with four free videos and some worksheets you can complete.
If some of the steps you discover in that course present a challenge, now you know that this is a good thing.
Lean into it and enjoy the results that taking on challenges brings to the long-term sharpness of your mind.
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What happens to your memory when artificial intelligence can imitate knowledge without actually understanding it?
How are truth, learning and creativity transformed?
In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, I reconnect with Phil Chambers, World Mind Mapping Champion, memory expert, author, trainer and long-time collaborator of Tony Buzan.
Phil shares a candid personal update regarding his diagnosis with myotonic dystrophy, including the mental strength required to focus on what remains possible when life changes dramatically.
From there, we explore how mind mapping can help with big decisions, why color and branching support memory and creativity, and how chunking helps reduce the load on working memory.
But the conversation goes much deeper.
Phil and I discuss whether AI truly âknowsâ anything, and why invented citations and synthetic content create serious risks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMsJpDd0enQ
My favorite part of our discussion revolves around why memory may become more important in a world where digital records can be copied, distorted, hacked or hallucinated.
As Phil puts it, memory gives us something the online world cannot easily provide:
A safer internal space for knowledge.
We also talk about:
How mind mapping helps with decision-makingWhy colors improve memory and creativityThe difference between semantic memory and episodic memoryHow memory athletes encode cards and numbersWhy AI can appear intelligent without understandingThe danger of false citations and fake authorityHow to trace claims back to original researchWhether human memory is truly âunhackableâTony Buzanâs legacy and archiveThe role of drawing in mind mappingHow wonder, teachers and early influences shape the mindWhy âluckâ may depend on perception, preparation and pattern recognitionIf you care about memory techniques, mind mapping, critical thinking, AI literacy, creativity, Tony Buzan, or the future of truth in an increasingly synthetic world, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.
Why Phil Chambers is One of the World’s most Experienced Memory ExpertsPhil is one of the rare memory experts whose knowledge is truly multi-dimensional. He’s involved in memory competition, mind mapping comeptition, teaching, coaching and writing.
A member of MENSA, Phil has served as Chief Arbiter of the World Memory Sports Council and has helped oversee national and international memory competitions around the world. He is also the only person to receive the Brain Trustâs âSpecial Services to Memoryâ Award twice.
In his book, How to Train Your Memory, Phil shows how practical memory systems can help with the kinds of challenges people face every day: remembering names and faces, giving speeches without notes, learning foreign language vocabulary, memorizing numbers, passwords, formulae and other difficult information.
His work in mind mapping and speed reading, accelerated learning and long-term review systems is second to none. He will help you sustain what you learn instead of watching it fade away.
I can think of no one else who has spent so much time and traveled so many miles to help people turn a variety of memory techniques into powerful habits that improve multiple aspects of life.
Ready for another episode related to AI and memory?
Check out the views and experiences of AI expert and author Andrew Mayne, host of the Open AI Podcast. Amongst other things, Andrew’s a skilled user of memory techniques and great person to follow-up with on the themes of AI and memory.
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I just sat my first open book exam, the format where you’re allowed to bring your notes.
You can even bring the physical textbook if you want, a testing format that was totally new to me.
Should be easy, right?
That’s what your tricky examiners want you to think.
And I know not to fall for it. I have a PhD in Humanities, two MA degrees and taught at three universities around the world.
During my years of teaching, I wrote, administered and graded more exams and assignments than I can count.
Now, back in school as I near my 50s, I’m working on a second Bachelor’s degree. This time in law so I can develop an exact understanding for what law memorization is all about.
For my first exam, I scored “High Distinction.” That’s the top grade here in Australia.
But here’s something to consider that probably no one else will tell you about open book exams:
There was one question I got wrong. And it wasn’t even the one I thought I’d missed.
This “error” suggests that having the textbook wouldn’t have saved me even if I’d brought it with me.
No, the problem was caused by the open book format itself.
In this experience-based guide, I’ll show you what this kind of exam actually tests, and how to prepare properly. That way you can avoid the same recycled study advice just about everyone else gives online.
https://youtu.be/_orag2IBwbA
What an Open Book Exam Actually Tests (It Isn’t What Most Guides Tell You)First, I have to tell you that I was initially surprised that open book testing exists in law school at all.
Especially since to pay for my earlier university studies I took some high-stakes exams for jobs I worked to help pay my tuition at York University.
For example, I worked as a store detective and having open book testing for the required security guard license would have been absurd. No employer wants a guard who needs to flip through a textbook to determine whether or not they’ve witnessed a crime, after all.
But now that I’ve taken my first exam of this type, I’m fascinated and did some research on why such tests are administered in the first place.
In this study, researchers Ming-Yin Chan and Kwok-Wai Mui reveal that open book examinations have existed since at least the 1930s.
Using my university library access, I found one such early study in the Journal of Higher Education from March, 1934.
As John and Ruth Stalnaker argue in Open-Book Examinations, such testing has many positives:
Emphasis falls on the course objectivesStudents utilize facts to solve problemsInference skills are exercisedMore time tends to be spent by students on preparation rather than crammingThey predict that these kinds of tests will be more widely used in the future and encourage more research into the best kinds of questions suited to this format.
Are the questions suitable to the format of studying law?
Now that I’ve sat for a couple, I think so. After all, law is the field where getting even just one section number wrong could change the outcome of a case.
That means this kind of testing is only partially about testing recall.
It’s more about determining whether you can read with precision and work with the exact information as worded on a variety of source materials while the clock is ticking.
Twenty Questions, Sixty Minutes, and No Authentic Way to “Look Things Up”So there I was at my laptop, the entire device reduced to just one screen by a lockdown browser called Respondus.
My first exam was for a course called “Legal Institutions and Processes.”
It is heavy on history and legislation. The first few weeks involved a ton of dense reading from multiple textbooks and a legal dictionary.
This is the kind of reading I really haven’t done since I changed my major from Political Science to English during the second year of my first undergraduate degree.
Although I had dreamed at my naive young age of one day becoming the Prime Minister of Canada, I changed my mind that year after interviewing the premier of British Columbia for the student newspaper. He clearly lied in response to my question and I determined right then that I was never going to be anything like him.
Anyhow, do the math with me.
Twenty questions during an hour-long exam gives you three minutes per question. During that time, you need to
Read each question carefullyCheck your answersFight off all kinds of urges and fidgety feelings that arise when you’re trappedAnd due to how the lockdown browser software works, I was literally trapped. The rules dictated that I could not leave the computer until I ended the session or the time ran out.
The Practical Reality of Flipping Through NotesIf you’ve never sat for an exam like this, ask yourself:
How much time can you really afford to spend flipping through fifty pages of notes looking for an answer you don’t know?
There’s no cookie-cutter answer here, but without preparation, the answer may as well be “zero.”
The research agrees. In a 2024 study involving 112 open book and 83 closed book cognitive psychology students, the open book group scored higher.
However, they also took longer to finish their exams.
One way to interpret these research findings is that having access to your textbook increases your accuracy. But at what price in a world where time is your scarcest resource?
How Long Did I Spend?As a time-poor entrepreneur with lots of polymathic projects on the go, I finished my first open book test in approximately thirty minutes.
But needing the time to do other things was only part of the reason.
A lot of the questions I was able to answer simply by using critical thinking, a skill I taught at university as a professor myself for four years. If you’re interested, here’s a list of my favorite critical thinking books.
But the real reason I finished early is because I took the exam without a textbook.
And that means for me, it wasn’t an open book situation at all. At least not in the normal sense.
Here’s what I mean:
My Notes-Only Experiment: Testing Digital Amnesia Under Exam ConditionsYears ago, I wrote about a condition the Kaspersky Lab researchers called “digital amnesia.”
In brief, your mind blanks out when trying to access information because you’ve stored it on a device you trust instead of in your head.
Back then, I argued that every time you reach for a search engine instead of pausing to ask your own memory first, you deskill it. This is not unlike the way your muscles droop when you stop performing pushups.
Here’s my original digital amnesia article if you’re interested.
Anyhow, I don’t know if I’ll take more advanced law school courses without buying the physical textbooks.
But for this exam, I took it as my chance to run a more high-stakes experiment with digital amnesia than I’d ever tried before.
Did I have to experiment under proctored conditions, with a grade attached?
Of course. Because real test conditions matter.
And all the more so in the age of Artificial Intelligence, which challenges many aspects of mind and memory as I’ve previously written about in the context of learning.
Let me take you a bit deeper behind the scenes. Because if you know my work with the Magnetic Memory Method, you’ve probably seen me with books frequently.
And it can be confusing to suddenly hear that I decided to study 100% online.
Why I Refused to Buy the Course Textbooks on PurposeTwo reasons.
First, I’ve said it on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast for years:
I don’t memorize well from screens.
In fact, 3x USA memory champion John Graham and I have talked about this “problem” of mine on more than one of our podcast conversations.
I’m not alone with this problem. Some researchers even have a name for people who forget what they read from digital devices: the screen inferiority effect.
Pablo Delgado and his research team probably gave away the best advice about how to handle the fact that we forget what we read from screens. They gave the solution away in the title of their 2018 Educational Research Review meta-analysis, “Don’t throw away your printed books.”
Don’t throw print away indeed.
Even some of the most pro-digital people I know follow this advice. For example, Andrew Mayne, host of the OpenAI podcast has been on my podcast to talk about how and why he still uses print journals and physical notebooks as part of training his memory.
Second, I made this choice to dimensionalize my work on Peter of Ravenna, the 15th-century jurist who wrote about his legendary memory techniques. In my imagination, he wouldn’t have bought the textbooks either.
All of which is to say that I knew what I was getting into when I made the deliberate choice to forgo ordering any of the physical textbooks for my first trimester of law school.
But when I learned that my first test settings were going to be open book?
I immediately had to reconsider my approach. And handle a frustration I faced with a contradiction in terms.
The Unprintable Textbook ProblemThe assigned textbook, Laying Down the Law, is available through the university’s online library. But they’ve offered it in a digital format that makes printing individual chapters impossible.
This means that a student who can’t afford the print edition, or doesn’t want to study from print, has exactly one permitted way to use the textbook: effective note taking.
Could I have opened the library copy on a second computer during the exam?
Technically, perhaps. But the rules make clear that accessing any secondary device counts as cheating.
So I showed up to the test prepared with my handwritten textbook notes instead.
I also prepared my own version of the lecture slides to make sure I could refer to them if needed.
This required a couple of steps:
Download them from the online course platformUpload them into Google SlidesExport them as text filesEdit the text into useful notes in a Google DocSupplement the notes with my own observationsPrint them outStudy them further from the printoutThese steps took time.
But I wound up with much more understandable notes as a result.
The notes not only fused the lecture content with the readings. I also got an additional review of the material.
An Absurd Study RequirementStill, part of my mind couldn’t let go of the absurdity of the situation.
I was preparing for an open book exam where the book is locked behind a screen you’re not allowed to open. Students willing to spend the money get to bring the textbook.
Anyone else has to bring whatever they managed to copy out by hand.
This is not a level testing field. It’s a paywall wearing an academic gown.
In my case, the absurdity of this barrier served my learning experiment. But I had a choice. Plenty of students don’t.
Think First, Verify Second: How I Actually Used My NotesSo how did my handwritten notes and transformed notes based on the slides perform against the clock?
At first, I didn’t use the notes at all.
Instead, I initially answered every question by thinking first.
Then I went over everything a minimum of three times, checking my answers for accuracy against the notes.
In other words, I used my notes as a verification instrument, letting the answers come first from my memory.
Now that you know how my exam went, let me consolidate everything into some tips for your own open book test.
How to Prepare for Your First Open Book Exam: My Best TipsMy study suggestions break down into practical strategies and mindset management.
You really can’t have one without the other because unexpected things can and do happen no matter how prepared you come to a test.
Build a Reading “Moat” Well In AdvanceEven before I knew about the assignment structure and course exams, I started reading the instant I had access to the course area.
But not just the textbook.
I made ample use of the included dictionary and memorized new terms using this tried and true vocabulary memorization process.
To supplement the reading, I also found as many YouTube channels and podcasts about Australian law as I could. I listened intensely and watched as many hours of video tutorials as possible.
Sometimes these audio and video supplements went quite ahead of the reading. So I took care to balance going too far afield of the requirements against making sure I was going through additional material related to legal institutions.
Placing guardrails on myself required vigilant self-monitoring and discipline, but I wound up with a “moat” around the core reading. In other words, my core reading was surrounded by related multi-media study.
How to Pass an Open Book Exam? Complete All the Readings & Every ExerciseOften students ask me about how to find the most important details in their study materials.
As I discussed in my tutorial on finding the main points in books and articles, many books include summaries and conclusions.
And some include dedicated exercises. That was the case with Laying Down the Law.
The instructor also included some additional exercises, and so I completed both.
And this is exactly what you need to do too.
Be a completist.
I know it is tempting to search for hacks of every kind under the sun. But in reality, the point of studying something is to become an expert in that topic.
Some experts certainly do skim and scan, but that doesn’t mean you should.
Frankly, I found both the readings and the exercises for my first exam a bit boring. But I went through them anyway to help develop my understanding of the material.
And to go beyond the call of duty so that later on, I will know I at least tried my best.
How to Pass an Open Book Test with Help from AIAs I discussed in my video tutorial on studying complex topics, I wrote an AI prompt to spar with and test my answers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfL5ygsYpyg
The prompt is called A.I.M. and you’re welcome to grab it below if you want to give this GPT I trained for myself a try with your study material.
Here’s an important point:
Getting your reading down early and supplementing it with additional material enriches how you complete your exercises.
Memorize Anyway, Even If You Have Textbook Access & Keep Flawless NotesOne thing I kept hearing early on were sentiments like, “No one cares if you can remember legal Latin.”
I took this point into consideration, but memorized the phrases I came across anyway.
It turns out one Latin phrase did show up on the quiz. If I hadn’t memorized it, I would have been underprepared (especially since I did not have the textbook with me).
Memorization of terms, dates, important names, sections and other minutiae related to your studies might not prove valuable in the end.
But more practice with a variety of memory training techniques will provide many benefits.
The core techniques I used for this part of the study process were:
Memory PalacesPegword methodPAO SystemSpaced repetitionAlthough it can take a while to learn and practice these mnemonic devices, it is well worth having them on your side.
Organize & Supplement Your Notes EffectivelyI actually got the idea to print out the slides and then rearrange them from my friend Nick.
At first, I thought it might be a waste of time. I already faced the problem of forgetting more from digital exposure.
But as I edited the slides in a Google document, I realized that the additional exposure involved looking at the information from a unique perspective.
While changing the format and organizing them into a structure I better understood, I was processing the information again.
I wouldn’t call this form of learning either deep or shallow. It was simply an integrative step that enabled further questioning after I printed out the notes.
And I found some initial study exercises in the notes that I later answered with a red pen after doing further research.
For example, I extended my understanding of the “Cab-Rank rule” as you see here:
Additionally, I took a moment to set up the footer area.
As you can see in the example, this simple trick indicates:
To which lecture slide the notes belongThe page numberThe total number of pages for this set of notesAlthough I felt a bit silly, and perhaps more like a secretary than a student doing this, the rewards were obvious as I was doing it.
Knowing that each set of notes was full and completed reduced my test anxiety. And because the pages were numbered and using the footer showed me at a glance that I wasn’t missing anything, I spared myself any and all mystery about the status of my notes during the testing hour.
This is not a small point because anxiety-induced memory loss is a real problem.
Seriously.
I can imagine nothing worse than my mind seizing up with worry that a page of notes had gone missing.
Especially when the rules of the test required that I remain in front of the computer throughout.
Finally, I bound each set of notes together with a simple clip from the stationery store.
Again, it felt a bit secretarial, but it was really useful in making sure all of my notes were organized.
I did the same with my handwritten notes.
In this case, my handwritten notes were based entirely on key terms I thought would be important for the exam.
What I found interesting is that most of what I had written out from the online textbook was the same as on the lecture slides.
For more tips on dealing with your reading, check out how to take notes from a textbook.
Follow up with my how to memorize a textbook training for what to do with your notes once you’ve got them.
Take Deliberately Timed Breaks While StudyingProvided you’ve started reading early and expanded your reading to include a variety of sources, it’s important to rest.
Frankly, taking breaks is a weakness of mine. I love to plow forward.
But I made myself take entire days off leading up to the exam where I didn’t read anything related to the exam.
However, I did engage in reflective thinking about my studies.
This simple activity while taking time off helps with memory formation and comprehension.
Verify Your Sources Before Exam DayAs a final step, I went through everything again the day before the exam.
This included checking the file names of all my notes and various citations.
Plus, there were various names and dates that I had memorized that were not on my notes. So I checked those, such as for the Mabo decision, an important legal case in Australia.
Although I knew it was unlikely that a multiple choice question was going to confirm that I knew Mabo’s first name was Eddie, I checked my memory of the fact anyway.
This simple verification step not only made sure that other details of the case were clear to me. It’s also just fun to check for accuracy.
For Online Open Book Exams, Test All Software In AdvanceSince I’m a remote student, I not only made sure I completed installing the Respondus software days in advance of the exam.
I also made sure all my software was up to date, from the browser to the operating system.
Not only is regularly updating software a best practice.
Knowing that everything is operational helps reduce exam anxiety.
Control Your Mind While the Clock is TickingAlthough I finished the exam quickly, it’s not that time wasn’t on my mind.
In fact, it was raining hard and I hadn’t slept well.
Both of these factors injected no small amount of misery into my mind.
In my case, I kept thinking about Peter of Ravenna and how disappointed he would be. There wasn’t much room for memory techniques to shine during the exam experience.
Then I started doubting that law school was such a great idea after all.
As soon as I caught myself doing that, I started running some of the mantras I memorized prior to writing The Victorious Mind.
Having this simple ritual focused my mind back on the task at hand by blowing the distracting thoughts away.
If mind wandering causes you issues while sitting for exams, it could be worth looking into various mental routines you can practice.
This complete guide contains multiple concentration meditations you might find useful as a learner.
Why Do Teachers Give Open Book Exams?Although I passed with High Distinction, my first exam of this type felt alienating.
I can’t quite put my finger on what bothers me about it. But to use a critical thinking tactic, I’ll try to steelman the format by way of understanding the reason behind the testing scheme.
It’s clear that this kind of test is less about knowledge and more about how detail-oriented the student is.
I also suspect that the reason the teacher gave an open book exam is twofold:
One: Anti-Guessing DesignThe open book format means that you will actually go through your learning material. There’s no incentive to guess when you can look at your study sources, leading to at least one more pass through the material.
Two: Blended TestingThis exam was only part of the grading for the course.
I still need to give an oral presentation and submit an essay.
By having an initial exam with the anti-guessing design optimized to generate an additional review of the study material, it does set the stage for stronger performance.
Summing up: A Plan for Your First Open Book ExamBecause time is always in short supply, I suggest that you:
Start reading as soon as possible, ideally before the course even begins.Take extensive notes and give yourself time to verify them.Complete all of the available practice questions.Use ChatGPT as a sparring partner, not as a source of answers.Schedule plenty of breaks.If you’re a remote student, check that all of your software is updated.If you would like access to the sparring partner I created for myself, it is called A.I.M.
As a study prompt, it’s simple and direct. But I found that it helped me identify a number of blind spots in my thinking.
Click or tap the image below to claim it:
I don’t know what Peter of Ravenna would have to say about exams like this.
But in my experience, the format rewards the prepared mind and the precise reader.
I expect my memory will be tested in future law courses and because of the amount of review this kind of testing promotes, I expect the experience has indeed helped my recall.
Even if in a different way than I’m used to when studying.
For more of my experience and teaching on that, check out my guide on How to Study Effectively next.
Above all, enjoy the learning process.
We sometimes forget what a blessing it is to be able to study at all.
Yet, here we all are, with more people on the planet studying than ever before.
Don’t forget to celebrate the opportunity you have and bring that awareness to the exam. Keeping a positive attitude is a major skill that promotes massive success in all of life’s many “tests.”
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Can you memorize entire books by using your concentration alone?
Some people claim such retention is possible, and often point to figures like Swami Vivekananda.
Frankly, I’m skeptical.
Not because Vivekananda wasn’t smart, influential and an author of interesting works.
No, I’m skeptical and concerned because such claims are unlikely to be true.
And not only has no solid evidence been presented, but when myths about people who aren’t here to be tested, stories about them tend to grow larger with each retelling.
Plus, there is so much value to be had from real techniques that actually work.
True, there’s a bit of effort involved in learning and using mnemonic devices properly. For some people, lots of effort.
But you can still get there with proper training, steps you might never find if you’re lost in mythology and chasing after outcomes that were never true.
That’s why I want to respond in depth to this question from a reader of this website and fan of the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass:
I like your MMM System, and I am learning and following it bit by bit.
But I have one doubt.
In India the Swami Vivekananda and other people read a book page by page without using any mnemonics techniques, and are still able to recall all of the concepts and vocabulary words.
Simply they say, and only by using concentration.
Which memory technique is this?
Is this better than mnemonics or journey system?
How do I develop this type of memory?
Thank you for your reply.
Quick answer:
Concentration certainly can assist memory when reading.
But reliable recall and verbatim memorization from books requires robust memory techniques for encoding and ample review.
I’ve done quite a bit of verbatim memorization and will share my process at the end of this post.
For now, let’s look deeper at the question of whether or not concentration will help with book memorization.
Can Concentration Alone Help You Memorize An Entire Book?Assuming Vivekananda did this or anyone exists who has memorized any substantial amount of information through concentration alone, then I guess that’s the word you would use to describe this memory technique:
“Concentration.”
Guess what?
Concentration does work to help you form memories. It’s also a great way to connect new information to older information that you’ve already learned. But you have to concentrate on the right things, such as using a mnemonic linking method to connect the information in your mind.
As far as I’m aware, there’s only ever been one documented case of what people sometimes call “photo reading.” But it’s an episode from the history of memory science that should make us all skeptical. I cover it in my full breakdown of why photographic memory doesn’t exist.
Long story short, such claims involve people who are probably not being honest.
Why Extraordinary Claims About Memory Need Scientific TestingLet me ask you this:
Do you really think such extraordinary claims about people reading one page or more of a book and repeating it perfectly would stand up to scrutiny through scientific testing?
Even if something like flashbulb memory were involved while reading (which is unlikely), the claims of being able to recall entire books remain dubious.
Part of the argument about concentration assisting memory does make sense, however.
Merely concentrating on a book does indeed help me personally learn and remember the material from it. But how exactly this increase would lead to memorization of the exact content without some kind of elaborative encoding in the mix is a mystery to me.
How I Use Memory Techniques While Studying LawFrankly, I’ve dealt with lack of concentration often in my life. I’m dealing with it now as I go through law school and apply memory techniques to help me get through it. I reported this new study project recently in my law memorization announcement.
In order to reliably memorize the tons of material I’m currently facing, I’m once again using the textbook memorization system that helped me so much while getting my PhD in Humanities at York University many years ago.
You can learn all about the process in this detailed video tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIQRiqQFKQY
Here’s the full written version of the video above on How to Memorize a Textbook if you prefer reading.
Quite frankly, there are so many advantages to this textbook method that I would sooner have people who are serious about learning take a few extra steps rather than experimenting with the claims of dead Swamis and their fans.
In the case of Vivekananda, he was called a srutidhara. This is a Sanskrit term used to describe an eidetic person. This condition is sometimes confused with, but is absolutely not the same as photographic memory.
Not only that, but eidetic memory has to do with visual memory, not the semantic memory involved in words on pages.
According to my research, eidetic memory has only been scientifically demonstrated as valid for a couple of minutes. And as the original study by Ralph Haber discusses, it’s a kind of recall practically unheard of in adults.
The Closest Case Still Involves Memory TechniquesIf there is one interesting case, you’ll find it in the story of Solomon Shereshevsky. But even then, there’s evidence that the potent memory skills of this figure involved the use of mnemonics.
In any case, I suspect that many people can recite the gist of what they read on a page for a couple of minutes after placing a book aside.
It’s long-term retention that matters. And this means that even if you could work on developing an eidetic memory to visually recall a page, it’s unlikely to help with developing the strong memory skills that help you retain information for the long haul.
What Did Vivekananda Say About His Own Memory?Of course, Vivekananda did not use either the term photographic memory or eidetic memory. A large part of how his memory was described comes from the diary of a disciple named Shri Sharat Chandra Chakravarty.
This disciple records the following statement from Vivekananda after being asked to explain how he quoted a variety of points from various texts:
Simply by the observance of strict Brahmacharya (continence) all learning can be mastered in a very short time.
Now, the fact that this quote comes from a diary doesn’t make it false.
But the text does not exactly say that Vivekananda recited anything verbatim. In fact, the diary recounts:
Disciple: Whatever you may say, sir, the manifestation of such superhuman power cannot be the result of mere Brahmacharya, something else there must be.
Swamiji did not say anything in reply.
Then Swamiji began to explain lucidly to the disciple the arguments and conclusions about the difficult points in all philosophies.
Notice that Vivekananda, referred to here as “Swamiji” declines to explain himself further, as if to let the disciple create an illusion in his own head.
A More Likely ExplanationAs for recalling a few passages here and there, which is what the text says Vivekananda actually did, I regularly perform this skill myself and often cite the page numbers of various quotes during my live streams.
Do I use “continence” to do it?
Partly, yes, in the sense that brahmacharya means to control the senses and bring one’s conduct into accordance with basic ethics.
But I also use a PAO System to help me recall page numbers. It’s based on an ancient memory technique called the katapayadi, which Vivekananda almost certainly knew.
He also likely knew:
Krama-pÄáčhaJaáčÄ-pÄáčhaGhana-pÄáčhaThese techniques are similar to the Recall Rehearsal process I’ll talk about in a bit more detail below. They help install lots of information in long-term memory that can lead to extraordinary results.
Above all, it’s important to understand how other people exaggerate things.
But unlike Vivekananda, when one of my private coaching clients exclaimed that I had spoken in eight languages in just fifteen minutes, I corrected him immediately.
I said, “I may well have quoted various lines in a handful of languages, and probably drew from four or five. But let’s not mistake knowing various quotes in various languages for speaking those languages.”
In other words, I did not sit in silence to bask in his praise or allow myths to grow. I nipped the false impression in the bud. Probably due to one of my biggest influences when I was younger.
Why We Must Debunk Extraordinary Claims About MemoryJames Randi was a magician and professional skeptic who spent decades challenging people to demonstrate and validate their claims to have super powers of concentration.
He even offered a million-dollar prize if they could prove their claims true.
That’s a lot of coin, so it’s hard to believe that more people didn’t rush to get tested. Their absence says everything, don’t you think?
I’ve read that the Randi prize was eventually terminated following his death, but it’s still worth knowing about and considering for its decades-long promotion of critical thinking.
If we don’t promote critical thought ourselves, we risk having more and more gullible people roaming the earth.
And we wind up with people thinking that everything is about memory and not another very important ingredient.
Recall Without Understanding Is Not EnoughBeing able to recall what you read is not just about retention. Parrots can retain and repeat, after all.
The results most people want involve (and should involve) developing deep understandings of written material. And content in any medium, for that matter.
This point is important because you want to turn raw information into knowledge that leads to wisdom. This was a point made by Thomas Aquinas that still holds true.
But to weave data and information into wisdom is likely only possible if you stop chasing after useless fantasies and worrying about which memory method or style is better than the others.
The only method that ultimately matters is the one that:
Youâll actually useGets you results reliablyBut if concentration works on its own for some people without using any kind of mnemonic method, what can I say?
Rock and roll. Good for them and hurray.
Personally, I’ll stick with memory techniques that can be, have been and will continue to be tested by authentic memory champions and polymaths in the future.
With their level of skill in mind, let me give you a brief overview of how I suggest you go about tackling books.
A Practical Formula for Memorizing Key Content From BooksThe path I suggest you follow is simple.
Build at least one Memory Palace based on a familiar locationEncode information inside of it using strongly elaborated mnemonic imagesPractice with material you care about in addition to books, such as poems, speeches, names and anything else you want to rememberRecall the information using Recall Rehearsal (the Magnetic Memory Method term for a simple spaced repetition procedure that harnesses the power of the primacy effect and recency effect using serial positioning)Work on improving your selective attention skillsKeep studying accelerated learning techniques for lifeYou might also find my walkthrough on memorizing Sanskrit phrases useful.
Apart from the passages from Shakespeare I shared in my Anthony Hopkins case study, memorizing verbatim from ancient Sanskrit books comprise the longest passages I’ve committed to memory. I’ve worked up to over 2000 words.
If you’d like similar results, the best place to start is with a proper understanding of Memory Palace development.
That’s why I created this free memory improvement course:
It walks you through the process step-by-step with tutorial videos and worksheets.
That way, you can stop wondering about whether memory techniques will work for you and start proving it to yourself with information you actually want to remember.
And real memory training will stop the temptations and seductions of myths. As interesting as these stories might be, if they can’t be reproduced, they don’t matter.
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When a three-time USA Memory Champion tells you that the exact strategy that made him a world-class competitor is the very thing that nearly broke him in half, you listen.
Especially since John Graham’s solutions to getting his focus and concentration back in order are so practical.
They might seem counterintuitive, however, especially for people who love using memory techniques.
That’s because we’re constantly burrowing around in our minds for associations.
It’s normal and exactly what we need to do. But spending so much time purely focused on the activities of the mind can also become a trap.
That’s why I’m excited to bring you this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. John Graham returns to share a radical paradigm shift.
It involves moving away from absolute mental dominance and dropping into what he calls embodied, living intelligence.
If youâve hit a wall where traditional mindfulness techniques donât click, you feel blocked, or your mind simply refuses to stop running the show, this conversation is going to provide a path for change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HD14NaHPyY
What Youâll Discover in This Episode:Why traditional meditation and visualization fails when you let your mind run the show.How John used pushups and loud podcasts to handle competitive stress, and why he eventually abandoned these strategies for something deeper.How dropping into raw physical sensations instantly dissolves negative programming, brain fog, and panic.Want to go deeper with John?
He is launching a 10-week live Embodiment Cohort to help you build a world-class capacity for handling life’s storms. Secure your spot on his webpage for the program.
For more with John, I’ve compiled our previous discussions on this Memory Training Secrets page. Since he almost never talks about memory techniques anymore, you’ll definitely want to check it out.
Anthony’s Concluding Notes: The Paradox of “No Mind”I know it sounds entirely backwards to say that you can make your memory sharper by letting go of thoughts.
But this is one of the ultimate secrets that the best memory athletes regularly report.
I believe it works because when you can clear out the mental noise and stop over-intellectualizing everything, you’re able to drop into your body.
As a result, your mind naturally clears, making space in working memory for the information at hand while drawing upon information in long-term memory to forge your mnemonic associations.
So, if you’d like to stop your mind from running in circles so you can get more from memory techniques, hit play on the recording above. You’ll learn how to unlock the “living intelligence” already inside you.
That way, you’ll stay grounded while memorizing. And, as I always love to say, be able to “keep yourself Magnetic.”
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What happens when someone who has spent decades teaching memory techniques enrols in law school to find out if everything he teaches actually holds up?
That’s exactly what I’m doing.
Mind you, I’m not the first person to try a learning feat like this. Nor am I the first to document the journey of applying mnemonic methods to the law.
In 1491, Peter of Ravenna published The Phoenix, a manual designed to teach his approach to the “Art of Memory.”
It’s a short, but detailed memory improvement book that explains Ravenna’s techniques and how they enabled him to possess a massive amount of civil law code in his mind.
His legal knowledge isn’t the only thing that made Ravenna legendary.
As I explain in my previous writing about him, he could also recite mountains of scripture and speak multiple languages.
Myself, I’ve memorized more than enough scripture to demonstrate the teaching I’ve offered in my own memory improvement manuals. Likewise, I’ve absorbed enough skills with enough languages to prove the concept.
I hold a PhD in Humanities from York University and two MAs. But what I haven’t done is attend law school.
Now, later in life, I have finally enroled after decades of thinking about it.
This isn’t a career pivot, mind you.
Having co-authored a well-received book with a lawyer years ago on memorizing legal terminology, I am already more than personally interested in law.
But since I never went to law school myself, I’ve always wanted to pressure-test every memory technique I teach against what has to be one of the most volume-intensive, high-stakes disciplines on the planet.
This page is the hub for that experiment.
Whether you are a law student drowning in “legalese” and tired of the “bad memory” excuse, or a memory enthusiast looking for a high-stakes demonstration of the ancient memory arts in action, you are in the right place.
I’m going to share with you all the learning tools I’ll be using throughout the experience.
And you can follow my real-time study log below to see exactly how the man Tony Buzan called a “Warrior of the Mind” intends to conquer the law, one Memory Palace at a time.
Why Legal Material Presents Special Problems for MemorizationIn my version of Ravenna’s original book, called Phoenix Reborn, the famous jurist is far from modest. He writes:
When I was young, I prepared 10,000 places because I wanted to surpass all the men of Italy with an abundance of remembered facts and holy scriptures, including both Canon law and Civil law. I also wanted to be an authority on many other things.
By “places,” Ravenna is referring to the method of loci. It is the basis of the Memory Palace technique, something many law students have used across history.
I’m only a week into my first trimester readings, and I have a feeling Ravenna might not be so boastful in our times. Medieval law was in no way simple. But it’s unlikely Ravenna dealt with nearly as much study material as contemporary law students.
For one thing, nearly everyone knew Latin back then. This means he wouldn’t have needed to memorize the Latin needed when he studied to become a Doctor of canon and civil law.
The topic of international law would have been much smaller during his time.
And laws relating to media, Internet and Artificial Intelligence? All of these vast fields of legal material would not appear for hundreds of years.
Nonetheless, many of his techniques still apply and will help contemporary law students avoid cramming. Here’s how I’ll be using them based on my own version of the techniques Ravenna describes.
What Happens When a Memory Expert Enrols in Law School:
The Magnetic Memory Method for LawA lot of study advice treats complicated topics like the law like any other memorization task.
Gareth Evans says in a YouTube video called How I Memorised Everything in Law School that he essentially used a combination of spaced repetition and the Leitner box technique.
There is nothing wrong with these approaches. I’ll be incorporating them too.
However, not everyone is going to get the same results from just those two fundamentals from the world of accelerated learning techniques.
The Memory Palace Technique for LawSince you don’t get partial credit for vaguely remembering that a case exists and need the name, the year, the principle, and how it applies, I’m pulling out the same technique Ravenna describes in depth as my core learning strategy: the Memory Palace.
In case you’re new to it, the Memory Palace technique for studying uses familiar locations subdivided into various sub-locations. It’s almost like a living, breathing mental filing system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4J5ZUzCxZY
By placing information on those sub-locations, or what I prefer to call “Magnetic Stations,” you provide yourself with a canvas for layering vivid mental associations.
For example, I’ve already memorized the name and date of Derry v Peek (1889) and the basic three-part test it established for fraudulent misrepresentation.
If you’d like more information on this technique, check out my full guide to the Memory Palace technique.
The PAO System For LawWhen it comes to section numbers and dates like 1889 in Derry v Peek, I’ll be using a 00-99 PAO System.
Now, this kind of mnemonic system is something I’ve developed over many years. And for most of us, it’s not something you can develop overnight.
Indeed, most of us base our PAO System on the Major System. Or, more rarely these days, some people still use the Dominic System.
The key is that when you have to memorize a section number, you can instantly place an association in a Memory Palace.
PAO System Example Applied to LawFor example, last week I memorized the name of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and a chapter and section I’m interested in (Chapter Two, Section 18).
I used a combination of my aunt Cassie’s computer station in a former home with associations drawn from my PAO System to rapidly commit this information to memory.
Later, I can add more relevant details. But for the time being, I have what I call a “Magnetic Bookmark” that helps me cite the act and find the relevant section quickly.
Think about what that means if you’re in an exam or a tutorial and someone references the Competition and Consumer Act. Or even just working as a lawyer who cares about your clients.
Instead of that sinking feeling where you know you’ve read it but can’t place where, the section number leaps to mind. You cite exactly what the situation requires and move on while everyone else is still flipping through their notes.
Active Recall Combined with Physical NotebooksI have been teaching active recall principles since long before I knew there was a scientific name for them.
In brief, the core process involves calling information to mind and then writing it down, ideally in a notebook reserved for testing. You do not use rote repetition or cheat by looking at the answers during the process.
You only make corrections later and use the data produced by your mistakes to work out how to fix issues in your recall.
Training yourself to write down answers from memory is mission critical for passing exams, as is analyzing your answers so you can make any corrections before handing your work in.
I’ll be doubling down on this practice substantially.
Optimized Flashcards and ZettelkastenWhether it’s for language learning, philosophy or general learning, I’ve used a particular process for taking notes that I’m already employing as I read as much as I can before my first class starts.
These processes have been covered before in detail in my posts and podcasts on:
FlashcardsThe Zettelkasten techniqueI don’t know what, if anything, will change about my approach as I enter law school at my age.
But I will keep you posted if anything does.
Mind Mapping Essay AssignmentsAlthough I sometimes do use mind mapping as a memory technique, I anticipate that I’ll be reserving it in law school for planning any essay assignments I have to submit.
That’s because mind mapping is a far greater tool for brainstorming in my practice than it is a memory aid.
But you never know. I might find ways to deepen the ways that I’ve combined mind maps with Memory Palaces for language learning that apply to the law.
For my existing teaching on mind mapping, check out this playlist of videos on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkZ2FGJhR5R8eS3kyuOwCTb47O72iyc-j
Keeping a Study LogAlthough creating to-do lists has its place, I’ve found throughout my BA, two MAs and PhD that using course syllabi and a simple calendar is more than enough to keep various deadlines sharp in memory.
What’s more useful for me is to diligently track what I’ve read and when.
I use a simple spreadsheet for this purpose, along with tabs for keeping various links.
Since I’ll need to read a lot of online resources for my first trimester, this habit is especially key and will keep all the links in one central location for easy access.
Other Law Memorization Tactics & StrategiesBeyond these learning tactics for law memorization, I’m not yet sure what else I’ll need apart from solid places to study and a decent group of fellow students.
So far, I’ve been studying at home and am already signed up for a group dedicated to discussing one of the first courses I’ve enroled in. It’s called “LA1101 – Legal Institutions and Processes.”
I’ve also signed up as a student member of the Queensland Law Society to receive regular updates.
The Benefits of Context & ImmersionAlthough this membership might seem like a distraction, I’m actually tapping into what scientists call context-dependent memory. Although far from bulletproof, this principle shows that we tend to remember more when we regularly dive deep into related topic areas.
In other words, if you study history regularly without interrupting yourself with biology, you’ll tend to remember more history with greater ease.
As my research on polymathy and autodidacticism shows, some people think that masters of multiple fields are scattered. In fact, most polymaths go deep into just a limited set of fields at a time.
And because they spend a lot of time in each lane, they benefit from more context as they learn.
More on Why This Mnemonist is Studying Law At Nearly 50 Years OldI mentioned above that I co-authored How to Learn and Memorize Legal Terminology years ago.
One reason that happened is simple:
Following the success of my first book on memorizing German vocabulary, tons of people reached out to me. Many of them were either law students or had used memory techniques during law school.
One of them asked if he could help me produce a book and so I took some of his examples and credited his contributions even though they weren’t that intense.
A Very Personal Background InterestBut the real reason I was interested in the law actually started many years prior. My nose had been broken and I was required to provide a victim impact statement when the case went to court.
Long story short, the defendant’s lawyer told her client that he should plead guilty right away rather than have me testify on the stand.
Her client took the advice and after the Crown lawyer representing the Canadian government asked me if I’d ever considered going to law school. When I asked him why, he said that my victim impact statement showed promise in how I’d written it.
“Clinical,” was the word he used to describe it. And he said he thought the field could use more people with that kind of descriptive skill.
But as someone who prefers to finish what I start, I kept going with my MA in English. And although law school regularly came to mind, I also finished the PhD in Humanities I had my eyes on, along with a second MA in Media & Communications.
The Real Estate DetourA few years ago, I decided I was going to develop a physical Memory Palace. Part of this project relates to my ongoing research into Simonides of Ceos. Another part relates to my polymathy research.
But above all, I realized that I needed to not only learn a lot about real estate to pull off the project.
I also needed to learn about how real estate agents use and abuse the law to avoid traps.
So, I completed a real estate license course and encountered a lot of law during that course. It has helped me proceed in many ways, and that’s part of what has kept my mind on the law leading up to starting this new study venture.
Enter Peter of RavennaI’d first heard of Peter of Ravenna when concentration and focus issues from depression drove me towards memory techniques during my PhD.
After I started the Magnetic Memory Method project, I would consult his memory training book, The Phoenix from time to time, always thinking that I should do my own edition.
But it was only when AI and various internet disruptions started challenging the idea that I’d be able to easily access Ravenna’s book that my “Reborn” series came to mind.
I finally did produce my own edition of his book, and it’s been one of my most popular memory training offerings.
Undoubtedly, that’s because we have independent confirmation of Ravenna’s memory skill. And although he was famed for his language learning prowess and ability to memorize scripture, it’s his command of the law upon which most of his legend rests.
As I continue my studies of ancient memory techniques, I expect I’ll keep revisiting and expanding based on how I’m applying some of Ravenna’s law-specific mnemonics.
In fact, there’s one part of his book that I think will apply to remembering sections in law that I’m excited to try very soon. I’m not sure it will change the Magnetic Memory Method approach that I’ll be using, but that’s the most exciting part of being a memory expert who applies these techniques frequently to course work.
I’m in the trenches and always taking you with me to learn more about memory techniques together.
Frequently Asked Questions About Memorizing the LawI’ve received dozens of questions about memorizing law over the years.
I believe all my answers still stand, but also expect I’ll be coming back to this page to update a few things as I get deeper into my own “legal immersion.”
For now, here are some direct answers taken directly from my inbox as I’ve helped people over the years.
What is the best way to memorize law?There is no one single best way. Rather, a combination of techniques is likely to work best.
The reason the Memory Palace technique is universally admired has to do with the power of spatial memory. Locations have long been considered a powerful resource going back thousands of years.
Combining the Memory Palace technique with spaced repetition and other active recall-based strategies leads to deeper encoding and recall than using any single technique on its own.
How many Memory Palaces do you need for law school?The core Memory Palace system I’ve used involves 26 Memory Palaces, one for each letter of the alphabet.
This choice is based around ideas in Aristotle’s On Memory, Ramon Llull’s Memory Wheels and innovations offered by the Renaissance memory master, Giordano Bruno.
When you have one Memory Palace per letter of the alphabet, you can run the art of combination, or ars combinatoria. This means that if you have a Latin phrase like Res ipsa loquitur in tort law to memorize, you never have to wonder what Memory Palace to use.
In my case, R is my friend Rick’s home because that’s the first letter of his name. I choose it and use him as a core mnemonic association due to the sound and spelling of the Latin term. Since the term means, “the thing speaks for itself,” I imagine Rick engaged in actions that remind me of the sound and meaning of the term.
For memorizing section numbers, it’s possible to build a second Memory Palace Network based on a 00-99 PAO System. I’m not yet sure if I will do that, but they are relatively easy to develop if you have developed skills with this kind of mnemonic system.
If you have both systems for law, you will have 126 Memory Palaces. That is almost certainly more than enough.
Can you use mnemonics for the bar exam?Yes, but make sure you know how to spot issues and actually provide the answers your examiners are expecting.
The BARBRI website talks about using memory techniques for the bar in this article. The only thing missing is that they don’t say nearly enough about Memory Palaces.
They also focus a lot on visualization, which is not technically necessary when using mnemonics.
How long does it take to memorize a legal rule using a Memory Palace?I consider this what I call a “magic number” question.
In reality, it’s not possible to know how long absorbing any piece of information is going to take. That’s because information is not equal.
However, if you get good at memory techniques, you’ll find that you can get quite fast. And all the faster when you combine the techniques of memory with regularly putting yourself in contexts where you use what you’ve learned.
Are flashcards or Memory Palaces better for law school?This question creates a false dichotomy because the answer is both.
Also, it’s helpful to understand that a well-created flashcard is not unlike a station in a Memory Palace.
If you include a quick sketch that involves three or more colors and use active recall principles to test yourself, you’ll find that you can think back to that card with greater ease.
Then, you can reproduce the target information, much like you would revisit a Memory Palace station and reconstruct knowledge through decoding during the learning process.
This still doesn’t mean that using one is better than the other. That’s because you can have each flashcard refer to a station in a Memory Palace for even better results. So in summary, I suggest you use both and combine them.
Join the JourneyPeter of Ravenna documents his memory methods exactly as he used them. I’m excited to do the same.
Except this time around, I’ve got more memory science on my side, a camera and a microphone.
If you’d like to join this journey and get regular updates, start now by completing my free Memory Palace course:
You’ll learn how to create well-formed Memory Palaces and apply them to anything you’re studying. And that includes complex, high-volume material like the law.
Before we go, let me recap how years ago, a Crown lawyer told me my writing was “clinical” and suggested I consider law school.
At the time, I had an MA to finish. Then a PhD. Then another MA, followed by many other courses, books and an edition of Ravenna’s The Phoenix (Phoenix Reborn).
It took me decades to finally get enroled in law school.
This page will grow along with my studies, so feel free to bookmark the page and check back in as things develop.
The “Warrior of the Mind” as Tony Buzan once called me is finally going to law school.
I hope you’ll follow along and apply how I’m using the Magnetic Memory Method to your own learning goals.
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Declarative memory is used when consciously recalling information, big or small, usually in a sustained way.
It’s also the type of memory you use every time you use memory techniques like the Memory Palace or basic mnemonics. That’s why these mental learning tools can sometimes feel effortful, especially when you’re new to using them.
But that’s also why the effort fades with practice.
So to give you a small sense of what declarative memory feels like, give this exercise a try:
What’s the name of your first friend in school? Can you think about a specific event from the time you spent together?
When I do this, my friend Ryan comes to mind. He was the first person to show me an American dollar, something that was unusual to see way up north where we lived in Canada.
These facts about what took place, where we were and my personal familiarity with the memory:
It all belongs to declarative memory. This is quite different from nondeclarative memory for reasons we’ll discuss on this page, updated for you on May 4, 2026 with more information and an audio podcast.
So if you’re ready to take a deep dive into the nature of declarative memory, the role it plays in human experience and how you can enjoy greater success when using memory techniques, I consider knowing terms like this part of the “owner’s manual of the mind and memory.”
Let’s get started!
What Is Declarative Memory?Declarative memory is another term for explicit memory. It’s also sometimes called conscious memory.
Knowing this definition matters a great deal for your memory training because this kind of memory is responsible for every act of encoding, from assigning Memory Palaces to placing vivid associations that make reviewing what you’ve studied using a Memory Palace much easier.
William James first defined this type of memory back in 1890 when he wrote:
The knowledge of a former state of mind after it has already once dropped from consciousness; or rather it is the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which we have not been thinking, with the additional consciousness that we have thought or experienced it before.
Note the nuance here:
Declarative memory isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes we confabulate certain facts, which means that memories can get distorted.
Dr. Gary Small has discussed our memory as a kind of neighborhood in which parts of our memories travel from house to house, getting changed each and every time they travel.
Nonetheless, declarative memory is the conscious awareness of knowledge that something in the past happened to you. And more often than not, our declarative memories are accurate enough.
The Science of Declarative MemoryScientists use the term encoding to describe how memories form in the first place. A declarative memory is better when the encoding is elaborate and deep. But all too often, our encoding is limited and superficial, which is why I have shared these elaborative encoding exercises with you.
In the absence of such exercises, a lot of the depth of encoding comes down to focused attention. If you’re not interested in something, you’re more likely to encode in a shallow way.
But when we’re interested in topics and having fun, encoding at a deep level tends to happen very quickly.
The Role of Declarative Memory Over TimeOnce encoding has been accomplished, declarative memories must be stored for future access in long-term memory.
Once the encoding and storage stages are complete, scientists call the result an engram. This term literally refers to the sum total of all the changes in the brain from the moment of perception to the ushering of the information into storage.
Engrams are distributed across the brain. Different brain regions seem to be specialized for particular kinds of storage to help with particular kinds of information retrieval.
Take chess openings, for example. William Chase and Herbert Simon asked chess players of varying levels of skill to analyze a chessboard featuring between 26-32 chess pieces arranged in actual configurations you might see in a game.
They found that Grandmasters vastly outperformed the analytical tasks they were given when looking at actual games.
However, when the scientists repeated the experiment with the pieces distributed randomly on the board, Grandmasters did no better than anyone else at recalling details of the chessboard. This is because the trained regions of their brains could not help them in this new context.
For this reason, when you wish to improve your working memory, it’s important to note that playing games might build you skills within the game environments. But those skills might not transfer much, and possibly not at all.
Declarative Memory ExamplesRemember how I gave a declarative memory definition above by saying that it’s the conscious recall of memories in a sustained way?
This means that accessing the memory takes place over time, often substantial amounts of time.
Here are some examples:
One: Where You Were When Something HappenedI was in a cafeteria at York University when a friend called. He said, “Find a TV!”
“What’s going on?” I asked, but all he could do was repeat himself.
That was the morning of September 11, 2001. And when I finally found a television, I was just in time to see the second tower struck during the September 11 attacks.
In this sustained example of flashbulb memory, I’m drawing upon semantic facts and episodic memory. It’s an autobiographical memory too, and the common denominator amongst all of them is that I am consciously aware that all of the material is memory.
This way of looking at declarative memory matters for your memory training because flashbulb memories show you what deep encoding looks like when you experience it naturally.
That’s why mnemonist David Berglas refers to it in his excellent book, A Question of Memory, when he discusses “the Kennedy Effect.”
His suggestion is that whenever you memorize something, you try to make the associations you use as striking as what happened to JFK. But you’re generating this kind of association between what you want to memorize and episodes of such historical impact not for entertainment.
You’re doing it with a depth of purpose tailored towards creating recall. Using that level of emotional intensity is tremendously helpful for ensuring the precious information you want to remember sticks.
Two: TriviaWho doesn’t love to play from home during an episode of Jeopardy?
As the answers appear on the screen, you get a great brain workout trying to arrive at the answer in the form of question.
This is all declarative memory due to your conscious engagement in the process. You’re not just passively trying to arrive at the answer. You’re actively searching your memory and trying to do so fast enough to beat the clock.
Now, this is not necessarily the same thing as sharing details about your favorite author, composer or artist during a conversation. Usually, there’s no pressure in such contexts.
How they do relate is that we usually don’t memorize such facts deliberately. Such facts enter your memory implicitly, a kind of memory we’ll talk about a little bit further on.
If you do want to deliberately memorize information for trivia night at the pub, however, here’s a tutorial on how to do it.
Three: Locations And DirectionsLocations are related to trivia in some contexts. But more broadly, if someone asks you for directions, you’ll be drawing on your declarative memory to explain how a person can find the desire target.
This process will take place even if you have aphantasia, which is the lack of a mind’s eye. People with this condition can both give and follow directions.
That said, as science journalist Christopher Kemp has shown in Dark & Magical Places, not everyone has the same navigation abilities. It’s not entirely clear if the issues he outlines come down to declarative memory, but something called place cells are involved in navigational accuracy.
Assuming you don’t have navigation issues like Kemp has reported, locations you know give your declarative memory rich and reliable options to work with for memorizing information.
Four: Critical ThinkingAnytime you turn on your thinking engines, you’ll be drawing upon declarative memory.
General reasoning draws upon facts, as does specific, objective reasoning.
And whenever you’ve got your inner Sherlock running to deduce or induce conclusions, you’ll probably also be drawing upon facts you already know.
This is why memory training does far more than help you pass exams or recall names. The quality of your thinking depends on the quality of what you can retrieve, how accurately and how quickly.
In other words, you can only reason using accessible facts. If your encoding is shallow when trying to memorize information, those facts won’t be there when you need them.
To help you better understand this, think about the last time you tried to form an opinion during a discussion about something complicated. Your brain needed to pull together things you’d read, heard and experienced, all while weighing one piece of evidence against the other.
All of this activity drew upon your declarative memory and the quality of how it fed your reasoning was based on how much material your brain could access.
This is why I often say, “the more you learn the more you can learn.” You’re able to use the element of thinking and reasoning while using memory techniques, as described by the great memory teachers Peter of Ravenna, Jacobus Publicius and Giordano Bruno.
Whatâs the Difference Between Declarative and Nondeclarative Memory?In brief, it comes down to your conscious intention to recall information. Whereas with implicit memory (also known as nondeclarative memory you’re not conscious of either learning or recalling, declarative memory involves awareness.
Larry R. Squire highlights another key difference in the Journal of Neuroscience. Your declarative memory can dictate how you describe your behavior in response to stimuli. As he explains it:
An aversive childhood event such as being knocked down by a large dog might lead to a stable declarative memory for the event itself as well as a long-lasting fear of dogs (a nondeclarative memory) that is experienced as a personality trait rather than as a memory.
In other words, our self-perception of early experiences guides how we describe their influence on their lives.
But the influence itself comes from an early, nondeclarative memory experience. Procedural memory can also play a role, such as constantly acting out a learned helplessness around dogs.
Why This Distinction Matters for Your Memory TrainingSince most people read the Magnetic Memory Method blog or listen to my podcast to improve their memory, it will be helpful for you to understand how declarative memory is involved in using most of the techniques I share in my mnemonics dictionary and Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.
Think about the last time you used a Memory Palace. (Or if the technique is new to you, check out my complete guide to using the Memory Palace technique).
When you select a station in a Memory Palace, you consciously choose it. Then, when placing a mnemonic association, you use mnemonic techniques to generate and elaborate it.
Every step requires your complete attention. And that’s an example of declarative memory doing the heavy lifting.
If it feels slow or awkward, that’s not because memory techniques don’t work. It’s just a lack of training and practice in using them.
Why Practice Will Always Remain EssentialWhen you use memory techniques frequently enough, you will eventually need to spend less conscious effort bringing Memory Palace stations to mind.
And the more familiarity you have with mnemonic tools like Memory Wheels, the Major System and a PAO System, your use of the techniques will happen faster.
Later, when you practice retrieval through spaced repetition, your memory will serve you the target information at a faster rate.
It might never feel completely effortless. But as procedural memory grows, using memory techniques will feel like riding a bike. You do have to rotate the pedals, but you don’t have to think about all the various operations that go into operating the bike and navigating it to reach a destination.
The more you use Memory Palaces while generating and placing associations, the more it will be just like riding a bike with a feeling of automaticity.
Mnemonic Encoding is Always DeclarativeEvery time I create a new association, whether for memorizing something in Latin, my new law school project, Sanskrit, Chinese or the poetry I memorize, I have to consciously draw upon parts of the mind that involve declarative memory.
And if you’re a medical student memorizing the cranial nerves, you can certainly use rote repetition. But that requires a lot of effort compared to using a Memory Palace paired with vivid associations.
That’s because when you revise the information you’ve placed, you’ll be drawing upon those associations, many of which will involve episodic and autobiographical memories. You’re exercising multiple levels, strengthening the memory from a number of angles.
Then, when you sit for an exam and face a question about the facial nerve, retrieval will have become procedural. And that will free up your mind to think about clinical applications rather than burning up cognitive resources just trying to remember basic anatomical names and facts.
So the next time your encoding feels clunky and taking too much deliberate effort, don’t worry. Part of what’s happening is just an effect of how memory works.
You’re actually drawing upon your declarative memory and it is doing its job relative to your study and practice of memory techniques. Chances are, you’ve just come across information that you’ve never tried to encode before and need a bit more time to think it through.
Keep studying memory techniques and you’ll get better and faster overall. And when the gears grind to a halt, you’ll know that you just have to keep moving. That’s what I’ve always done and it has helped me memorize far more than I ever thought possible.
How To Avoid The Corruption Of Your Declarative MemoryAs you’ve discovered, this aspect of your memory is not bullet proof.
You can consciously feel that a memory is 100% accurate, but wind up recalling things that are either exaggerated or simply not true.
Fortunately, there are ways to fend this off from happening.
For one thing, you can see a lot of improvement simply by focusing on improving your sleep.
You can also use memory techniques. There are countless studies showing just how strong these methods are for improving your ability to recall information accurately. Mnemonology is one particularly good and scholarly book that makes these studies accessible to anyone.
Other options involve studying music, learning languages or learning to give speeches. You can also focus on preserving your non-declarative memory as an indirect approach.
If you’d like help in any of these areas, I suggest you start with my FREE Memory Improvement Kit:
It will help you commit anything you wish to memory.
And give your declarative memory a great workout too.
So what do you say?
Do you now understand this critical aspect of your memory?
Get out there and “declare” that you are a master of memory and put it to good use. It’s a powerful asset!
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Memory aids and training techniques like the Memory Palace or Method of Loci donât materialize out of thin air.
But were they really the brainchild (pun intended) of Simonides of Ceos?
And was Simonides really the father of the Art of Memory and the mnemonic strategies people still use today?
Letâs dive deep into who Simonides of Ceos was and the secret lessons about the Memory Palace no one else seems to have explored… not even Frances Yates, in her famed book, The Art of Memory.
On this page, we’ll clean up the misperceptions and improve how you use memory techniques to retain anything you want to learn.
That includes your studies, your performance at work and your everyday satisfaction with life.
And when you get it right, the story of Simonides will also help you improve the lives of others.
What Is Simonidesâ Memory Palace?Simonides’ Memory Palace refers to the legendary origin story of the method of loci.
After a banquet hall collapsed, Simonides helped identify the victims by remembering where each guest had been sitting.
This story shows how observation, order, location and the use of mnemonic associations support recall.
But that’s only scratching the surface of the story.
Simonides was a very interesting figure and we can learn a lot more about how to use the technique by digging deeper into who he was and how the technique came into existence.
Who Was Simonides of Ceos?The poet and famous lyricist Simonides of Ceos was a prominent member of the Greek society in the 5th century. He was often called âhoney-tonguedâ by his many admirers, especially after reciting his famous lyrics and poems.
And in many ways, he was an epic learner with a “mercenary” quality about him. I use that word because he was the first poet to charge money for his writing and recitation.
But he was also quite self-directed in how he learned things, as I discuss in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3-OMYLmm6E
One of the best books I’ve read about Simonides is called Economy of the Unlost by Anne Carson.
According to Carson, Simonides was interested in more than just memorizing his own poetry and songs.
She claims that he was the first to suggest that artists sign their works, ostensibly so we could remember who created them.
That said, he was apparently greedy and more than a little vain. As Carson writes:
âAs to memory, I say nobody can equal Simonides!â said Simonides at the age of eighty.
The poet does not just use memory, he embodies it… His memory construct, unlike later mnemotechnic methods, is not artificial:
Simonides had sat in the room that becomes his theater of memory, he ate dinner amidst the data.
This poet is someone caught between two worlds, remembering both. His flame in every grain. For him, memory is both commodity and gift, both wage and grace.
How the First Memory Palace Was BornDuring the 6th century BCE, Simonides of Ceos was hired by a wealthy man named Scopas to give a speech and recite poetry at a banquet before a group of distinguished guests in a large and impressive building.
After concluding his presentation, Simonides thanked Castor and Pollux, two mythical boxers who represented heroism.
This is not a throwaway reference. Because both Castor and Pollux were given immortality by Zeus, they appear in the story as symbols of the enduring power of memory.
When Simonides asked Scopas to pay him his fee, the host expressed annoyance that Simonides thanked gods instead of him.
âGo ask Castor and Pollux to pay you,â Scopas replied.
At that moment, a servant arrived to tell Simonides that two men were outside and asking for him.
âIâll get back to this matter of the fee in a moment,â Simonides assured Scopas before exiting the building. After a short walk, he spotted two men on horses. They beckoned Simonides over.
âCloser please,â they said.
As Simonides approached them, he recognized the two men as none other than Castor and Pollux themselves.
Next, without warning, the building Simonides had just left collapses and everyone inside dies.
Later, as the dust from this shocking event settles, Simonides used his memory to help the authorities identify all the bodies so they could be properly buried by the mourning families, survivors who would never have experienced closure otherwise.
Exactly How Simonides Remembered the Names of the VictimsSimonides recalled where each person was sitting by drawing upon his memory of the seating arrangement in the banquet hall.
The process of following a journey in your mind came to be called the method of loci because loci is plural for location.
Later, probably due to the influence of St. Augustine, the term Memory Palace came into use.
Centuries later still, Sherlock Holmes fans popularized the term “Mind Palace.”
I personally prefer the term Memory Palace because it puts the focus on memory. If you’d like to learn how to use them for memorizing much more than names, check out my complete guide to the Memory Palace technique.
For now, there’s more we can learn from the story of Simonides.
Let’s go further.
The Art of PreparationEven before recalling the locations of the guests before the collapse, Simonides was prepared.
Heâd already primed his memory to observe, place and then recall each person.
In other words, as Yates points out, the first step Simonides took was to imprint the location itself in his mind before attempting to memorize anything.
And thatâs what all the most successful memory students do:
Creation your Memory Palaces before you need them. Even if that means doing it within seconds after entering a room where you’re going to give a presentation.
I do this every time I go to events and demonstrate the techniques I use to to remember names.
This simple step is so important because without visually noting where the guests were seated at the banquet, Simonides would not have been able to recall their exact locations or identify the bodies.
Likewise, if I don’t have a point of reference before memorizing names, I won’t do nearly as well. It pays to take a second to note the shape of the room before memorizing a single name.
Exaggeration is KeyOne reason the story of Simonides has stood the test of time is that it contains exaggerated and dramatic action. Each of the Magnetic Modes are accounted for when you feel the building crumbling to the ground.
What are the Magnetic Modes?
They are a form of mnemonic imagery that you can learn how to rapidly apply to anything you want to memorize by reading my free mnemonics dictionary.
You can practice right now by thinking about the story of Simonides itself:
Imagine hearing the rumble in your ears as the banquet hall crashes down. Even if you donât see pictures in your mind, you probably have an idea of what a collapsing building looks like.
Add EmotionsNext, feel an emotion related to the event. Even if you have never lost a loved one in an event like this, you probably have a flashbulb memory of when a famous building like the World Trade Center was destroyed.
As the mnemonist David Berglas pointed out in A Question of Memory, you want to create what he called the “Kennedy Effect.”
That’s because emotions easily lodge information in memory very deeply when something majestic is lost. And the tale of Simonides contains not just the lost of a building. It also speaks about people squabbling over fees.
There’s even an element of poetic justice when Simonides not only walks away unscathed. He also lives on to be the hero who established the Memory Palace technique.
Build in Tastes & SmellsWhen you let your imagination do its work, you can almost taste and smell the food and wine at the banquet hall.
Likewise, you can imagine smelling and tasting the dust coming up from the rubble after the building’s collapse.
Use Your Mental EarsEven without seeing a picture of where the attendees were sitting, you can imagine the sounds of plates clinking and people chattering as they sat around Simonides at their tables.
You can also imagine hearing Simonidesâ voice and how his footwear scuffed the floor as he moved from the interior of the building to the outside.
For more on how these suggestions work, check out this full tutorial based around lessons drawn from Simonides:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSn2qjuYjxs
The Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned from SimonidesAlthough Anne Carson has outlined many less than friendly aspects of Simonides’ character, it’s important to recognize that when the situation required it, Simonides did not use his memory to impress people or win a competition.
He used his memory to reduce the suffering of his fellow human beings.
Without the help of his extraordinary memory, the families of the victims would never have identified their loved ones.
That means no proper burials, something that was as important in Ancient Greek culture as it is now. If not more so.
I believe that this story changes the true value of the Memory Palace technique.
Yes, you can use it to pass exams, learn languages, give a speech from memory, or remember names at events.
But at its core, this practice makes you more useful to the people in your community, your family and your friends.
The sharper your memory, the more present you’ll be at dinner parties too. Or in any conversation. And being more present is really the ultimate gift you can give the world.
And that means being more reliable in your personal and professional life. You’ll almost automatically serve others at a higher level simply because better memory makes it impossible not to be more useful.
If you’d like to start building your first Memory Palace using the Magnetic Memory Method I’ve been teaching for over fifteen years, I have a free course that walks you through it step by step.
Just click the image below to register:
It’s the same foundational training thousands of students have used to go from “I understand the basic concept” to actually practicing this important memory technique daily.
So what do you say?
If I’ve done nothing else, I hope you’re convinced by Simonides’ story that you can train your memory well enough to help both yourself and others.
And when you do, you’ll also become the stuff of legend.
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I’ve received tons of questions by email about how to memorize grammar, including:
When to start studying grammarHow to use Memory Palaces for grammar rulesWhat about all the complexities of gender, tense and number?These are good questions and present one of the most challenging aspects of learning another language.
That said…
There’s a time and place for memorizing grammar amongst other activities that will provide many of us much faster gains along the road to fluency.
On this page, I’ll share some of my best tips as someone who studied languages as part of earning my PhD at York University. Later, I gave lectures in German as part of my work at the University of Saarland.
Sometimes I used memory techniques to help me understand various grammatical principles. Other times, I used different strategies.
Sometimes I used no strategies at all.
This statement might surprise you. So as we go through today’s tips, please keep this point in mind:
When you can memorize individual words, you can memorize phrases. When you can memorize phrases, you can observe how grammar works within your mind.
I mention this point because when you start memorizing how the language is used rather than what rules govern its use, grammar can stop being such a huge barrier.
And language learning overall can become a lot more fun.
So, if you’re ready to learn how to memorize grammar, let’s dive in!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPM-gNX4AAM
How to Memorize Grammar: 7 Powerful StrategiesThe following strategies have no particular order of importance. Think of them as a grab-bag of possible approaches.
It’s worth considering each and every one. But you don’t have to use them all.
Frankly, I found some of them tedious when studying various languages. Nonetheless, I’ve included them because different people have different needs and learning styles.
Not only that, but it’s hard to track certain outcomes. Sometimes you get more benefits out of techniques you don’t like than you might realize.
That’s why it’s important to experiment widely and let variety expand your horizons, especially when tackling a tough learning goal like mastering grammar.
One: Limit Yourself To Grammar Basics As Much As PossibleUnless you want to become a grammarian, you don’t have to know much grammar at all to learn a new language.
Prepare yourself, especially if you’re someone who is convinced that you have to master grammar rules to achieve fluency.
In this study, scientists found that young children were better at learning nouns and verbs before they learned to read.
As the researchers speculate, one reason for this effect is that children simply don’t overthink it. But thinking is precisely what looking at grammar in books causes us to do.
This is the reason behind why so many polyglots recommend that you simply limit how much grammar you study. It’s largely a distraction from the activities much more likely to help you become bilingual.
Now, of course, you came here to learn grammar better. And I won’t disappoint. I just want to make sure that you understand that in certain circumstances, it’s actually not all that recommendable.
Two: Apply Mnemonic Devices To Grammar RulesWhen I started accelerating my path to learning Latin again after a long break, I was instantly reminded that you have to know grammar with this particular language if you’re going to learn it alone.
That’s because there are a lot of cases, declensions and conjugations, amongst other features.
Unless you are able to read, write, speak and listen to a language frequently, you will need to not only memorize the names of these rules. You’ll have to learn how to apply them.
For this goal, I recommend learning to use a Memory Palace for language learning. Here’s an example of how I always start this process with a simple drawing:
I know that it can be hard to make out what’s going on here, so let me explain.
The square represents a Memory Palace based on my friend Mike’s home.
Along the left side you have the cases nominative, genitive and dative. On the right wall, accusative, ablative and vocative.
Each of the sketches helps me remember those rules. The man with the guitar for accusative is the guitarist in AC/DC, for example. That reminds me of the name of this case. Sega is shorthand for Sega Genesis to remind me of the genitive case.
There’s a chess piece in the middle for the Latin word “magnus” (large). Using the walls of Mike’s house, I learned the declension for this word by following a journey using the method of loci.
There are many other memory techniques you can learn about. The process you’ve just discovered is my favorite way to memorize grammar rules.
Three: Use Spaced RepetitionAs much as I wish the Memory Palace technique was a one-time strategy, the real reason to use it involves optimizing spaced repetition.
Basically, this term describes a finding from memory science that helps you determine how many repetitions you need to learn something. When combined with mnemonics, spaced repetition can help you skip rote learning.
Other ways to use spaced repetition without Memory Palaces exist. These include:
FlashcardsAnkiZettelkastenLeitner BoxesI’ve used each of these approaches. They’re all powerful.
Four: Diagram SentencesAlthough visualizing sentences using diagrams has fallen out of favor, and at least one dissertation failed to find that it helped seventh graders, some teachers are not happy that the technique has disappeared.
Dawn Burnette acknowledges, for example, that diagramming sentences is not for every learner.
But as the board-certified teacher behind English Writing Teacher has argued, its removal largely comes from the introduction of computers into the classroom.
Personally, I learn a lot by drawing out things that I don’t understand. It’s one of my go-to reading comprehension strategies.
To try it for yourself:
Write out a sentence you’re learning.Identify each part of speech by labeling it using arrows or lines (kind of like mind mapping).Study the relationships between subjects, predicates and modifiers, etc.Practice recognizing patterns as you work with more sentences over time.Visualize your diagram later while you’re resting, literally reconstructing it in your mind.When it comes to prefixes and suffixes, you can also diagram these in a different sense by understanding their general meaning.
This video gets deeper into how you can do that combined with the Memory Palace technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWz80vWvMU4
Five: Complete Grammar Games & PuzzlesHere’s one of the activities that I don’t like very much.
However, this study found that students who experienced games as part of language acquisition performed better.
More generally, in this study puzzles were found to help dental students learn as well.
I completed a lot of crossword puzzles when learning German in a Berlin school. Even though I didn’t enjoy this particular learning activity, I’m sure the research is right and that it helped me.
If nothing else, the variety on its own helps expand exposure to the core information from a different angle.
Six: Memorize Passages & Write Them From MemoryIn every language I’ve tackled, I have taken time to learn at least a few songs by heart.
This simple activity teaches you a great deal about how sentences work, while giving you an opportunity to memorize new vocabulary.
After memorizing the lyrics, I always combine writing them out with singing them from memory.
This combination of engagement with the song gives me multiple levels of exercise by engaging the levels of processing effect.
Want an example? Here’s me practicing the Mandarin song I performed at my wedding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCyPV6qfKkI
Although memorizing passages may not give you the names of various grammar principles, you’ll start using them.
And as you reflect on what you now know about the language, this meta-level thinking teaches you the grammar through observation.
In the case of the song in the video above, I learned a lot about possession purely through the observation enabled by memorization.
Seven: Immerse Yourself In The LanguageAt the end of the day, there is no substitute for combining what I call “the Big Five of Language Learning.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR15aAXv-F0
As we know from studies in interleaving, simply by rotating through a small set of activities, you will remember more.
In this case, the Big Five involves:
ReadingWritingSpeakingListeningMemorizingAll you need to do is get ample doses of each. And as many memory champs who learn languages have shared, it really helps to study in short blasts.
I’ve done this personally to learn German phrases, master enough Mandarin to enjoy small talk at my wedding and gain skills in Sanskrit.
You can too, and making strides in any language won’t take you nearly as long as you might think.
You Can Memorize Grammar Rules QuicklyAs daunting as grammar can be, you now have options that will make learning it much easier.
The best part is that every activity and approach we’ve discussed today is also fun.
If you’d like more help with the Memory Palace part of the puzzle, feel free to get my free course:
It gives you four video lessons and three worksheets.
Complete them, apply the techniques to grammar and before you know it, you’ll know grammar better.
And that way, you’ll avoid common grammar mistakes when writing and speaking.
You might even be able to identify a few of them when reading and listening too.
Native speakers make grammar mistakes too, after all. One more reason to go easy on yourself as you’re learning to master this area of human knowledge.
In many cases, it’s much closer to art than science.
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Have you ever parked your car, walked away, and completely blanked on where you left it?
And yet… somehow you walked straight to it anyway?
When that happens, it might not be luck.
Rather, it could be your brain using what scientists now call “fuzzy memory.”
And this might be the most important discovery about short-term memory in the last 20 years.
To learn more, I sat down with Dr. Paul M. Garrett, currently doing postdoctoral work at the University of Melbourne.
In addition to studying how your brain makes decisions when it’s uncertain, his recent article on The Conversation raised old and new questions related to how I think about forgetting, remembering, and every decision I make in between.
Here’s one aspect of Paul’s research that blew my mind:
The old theory said your brain has a fixed number of memory “slots.”
If something made it into a slot, you remembered it.
If it didn’t, it was gone.
But that theory is apparently wrong.Rather, Paul’s research demonstrates that even memories you’d swear are completely gone still leave a faint signal in your brain, precise enough to push you toward the right answer without you even knowing why.
That “gut feeling” you get sometimes? That might literally be a fuzzy memory talking.
In this conversation we go deep on why your brain caps out at 3 to 4 items in working memory and what that actually means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm6C08m3WUI
We also discuss why you remember better from a physical book than a screen (and the possible spatial memory scientific explanations behind it).
Next, we discuss:
How trained motor skills get so deep into procedural memory that even ten years away can’t break their strengthHow marketers and salespeople exploit your decision boundaries using time pressureWhy a tiny dose of Bayesian reasoning would make almost everyone a sharper thinkerWhat new EEG research on voluntary decisions reveals about whether or not free will is realHow to make memory science more accessible by finding good science popularizersPaul and I had such a deep conversation that we kept going well past the formal interview.
That bonus discussion covers experimental design for mnemonic research, Giordano Bruno‘s 16th century memory seals, the neuroscience of pitch detection and white matter volume, music therapy for Alzheimer’s patients, and a lot more on the topic of how memory works.
You can access the full bonus conversation in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. You’ll find it on the Bonus page.
More About Paul Garrett & His ResearchTo follow more from Paul, check out his:
LinkedIn ProfileGoogle Scholar pageProfile on The ConversationIf Fuzzy Memory Fascinated You, Go Deeper With These Science-Related EpisodesReady for more?
Check out my conversations with:
Dr. David Reser and Tyson Yunkaporta about Aboriginal Memory TechniquesDr. Gary Small on science-backed ways to keep memory strongDr. Christine Till on research into brain training with appsFinal ThoughtHere’s the final thing (for now) that comes to mind about fuzzy memory:
If your brain is already doing this much work behind the scenes with zero memory improvement training, just imagine what it can do when you actually give it the right tools.
That’s what the Magnetic Memory Method is built for, and that’s why it’s based around the Memory Palace technique.
After all, many of us have been using locations we barely remember to memorize tons of information.
So if you’re not familiar with this approach, or you’re worried that you can’t remember places you remember enough to use the method of loci, complete this Complete Guide to the Memory Palace technique.
You might just be pleasantly surprised by just how much your fuzzy memories help you remember more than you ever imagined possible!
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If you want to know how to think on your feet, you need to understand something most advice on this topic gets wrong:
Thinking on your feet is not a talent. Itâs a trained response.
And the training required goes far deeper than memorizing a few âpower phrasesâ or practicing small talk at networking events.
Real mental agility, by which I mean the kind that serves you in a boardroom, on a stage, in a heated conversation, and even in physical danger, is something you earn.
And to earn it requires systematic preparation across multiple domains.
I know this because Iâve spent decades training for exactly these moments.
As a university professor, Iâve lectured in multiple languages to rooms of students who didnât always want to be there. And to get my PhD, I had to sit for a dissertation defense in a room where some of the examiners delighted in throwing hardball questions.
As a performing musician, Iâve improvised solos on stages where the set list changed mid-show. While performing card magic, Iâve recovered from botched tricks in front of audiences who were actively trying to catch me out.
And as a martial arts practitioner, Iâve used my training to escape three real-world physical confrontations without throwing a single punch.
Then there was my TEDx Talk where I had to make real time adjustments when the audience failed to even smile at my scripted laugh lines, but chuckled substantially during parts I had not planned to be funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtDy68-gkY
How to Think on Your Feet: The Complete Training System for Mental Agility Under PressureWhat Iâve learned across all of these experiences is that every domain of âthinking on your feetâ shares one foundational requirement.
Itâs not intelligence. Itâs not quick wit. Itâs often not even confidence.
Rather, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that thinking quickly and responding in the best possible way comes down to the systematic reduction of ego.
That might sound philosophical, but itâs intensely practical.
And it will become the thread that connects everything in this guide. From how to recall information instantly in a conversation to how to physically escape a threatening situation without freezing.
Hereâs what weâll cover today:
Part 1: Why âThinking on Your Feetâ Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait
Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle)
Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters)
Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation)
Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage)
Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake)
Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility
Part 8: Loading Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think)
Part 9: The Paradox of Mental SilenceLet’s dive in with why most people struggle with the skill of spontaneously responding in optimal ways in the first place.
Why “Thinking On Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality TraitAs Freud pointed out, civilization is not our natural state. In Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which is usually translated as Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues that much of our inner tension comes from how our social training represses our instincts.
“Discontents” is not really a great translation for the title of this book. “Unbehagen” means something more like “unease” or “discomfort.”
And since languages and skills are something we learn, we literally have to undergo a process of discomfort to learn most things.
Thatâs not a political statement. Itâs a neurological one.
Your brainâs implicit memory system, the part that handles automatic behaviors, gut reactions, and how you repeat social patterns on autopilot, was shaped by millennia of environments that looked nothing like a conference room or a dinner party.
It was shaped by physical survival, tribal dynamics, and the need to read danger before it arrives.
This means that when youâre put on the spot in a modern context, your brain defaults to patterns it learned through observation, not through deliberate training. And those patterns were modelled on the people around you growing up. Especially in contexts like:
Being asked a question you werenât expectingGetting challenged during a meetingHaving someone force you to improvise a presentation at school or workIn such situations, you might find yourself freezing under pressure and not realizing that you’re actually repeating how you saw a parent go cold when you were young.
Or you might find yourself getting defensive in arguments the way a sibling did, or going blank during presentations based on someone else’s blip you observed.
When you repeat this behavior yourself, it’s not a character flaw. Thatâs implicit memory doing exactly what it was designed to do: replicate observed behavior.
And if you’re reading this and don’t have problems thinking on your feet, chances are that you were a lucky observer of someone who could when you were young.
Combatting Implicit Memory’s Hold with ReconsolidationThe problem is that your default patterns are not optimized for the situations modern life throws at you.
Theyâre survival patterns, not performance patterns.
Since you’ve learned to react like those you’ve observed instead of how you’d prefer to act as a fully realized being in this world, what can you do?
Fortunately, quite a bit.
Neuroscientists call the mechanism behind how you can shift the hold of implicit memory on your behavior memory reconsolidation.
Here’s how memory reconsolidation works in brief:
Every time you recall a memory, it temporarily destabilizes.
Researchers call this destabilization a “labile state.” And while the memory is transitioning, the memory can be modified before your brain stores it again.
This includes modifying behavioral patterns, not just facts. So when you clam up after being put on the spot and then reflect on what happened, that freezing response is briefly open to revision.
This process was first demonstrated in landmark research by Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux at NYU, which you can read about in Memory Reconsolidation.
As part of their investigation, Nader and LeDoux demonstrated that even deeply encoded fear memories could be altered during reconsolidation.
Unlocking TransformationBruce Ecker and colleagues later applied this principle therapeutically. I recommend their discussion in Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change.
As you’ll read, they discovered how long-held emotional patterns can be rewritten. Not through willpower, but through a specific process of activating the old pattern, introducing a contradictory experience, and allowing the brain to re-encode.
Monica Khosla explores a parallel idea in The First and Last Belief. This fascinating book is written by someone who experiences non-dual states similar to those I shared in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being.
Khosla discusses how our earliest family-formed beliefs become the templates for how we respond under pressure as adults. Her work in family therapy suggests that these templates aren’t permanent fixtures.
Rather, they’re “reconsolidatable,” provided you understand how they were formed and deliberately create new experiences that contradict them.
This is precisely what the training in the guide you’re reading now is designed to do.
Every exercise, every practice, every discipline I’ll share works by activating your default pattern (the freeze, the defensive reaction, the blank stare) and replacing it with a trained alternative in the moment it’s most labile.
The CatchBut there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?
The pattern that most resists reconsolidation is your self-image.
It’s also your self-image that most aggressively defends itself against change. People literally argue for hours with therapists that they cannot change.
I know because I made this argument myself for years in front of my own therapists.
This is precisely why thinking on your feet requires training. You cannot simply decide to be quicker, calmer, or more articulate under pressure.
You have to deliberately replace your default patterns with trained responses. And use deliberate practice to ensure those responses become the new default.
The training looks different depending on the context:
In conversation and debate, it means learning frameworks for organizing thoughts rapidly and practicing with real people.In professional settings, it means memorizing key information so thoroughly that recall becomes effortless, freeing your mind to think rather than search.On stage or in front of an audience, it means thousands of hours of performance practice that builds a reservoir of recoveries and pivots you can draw on automatically.In physical danger, it means martial arts or self-defense training that bypasses conscious thought entirely and produces trained physical reactions.Each of these contexts has its own training methods. But they all share the same underlying principle: the trained response must be so deeply encoded that it fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere.
The single biggest source of that interference? Your ego.
But never fear. As big of a problem as the ego can be, you’re going to learn how to solve and resolve it.
Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle)Hereâs the uncomfortable truth that almost no âhow to think on your feetâ article will tell you:
The reason most people freeze, fumble, or fail under pressure is not that they lack information or intelligence. Itâs that theyâre managing their self-image at the same time as theyâre trying to perform.
They experience serious cognitive drain as a result.
Why?
Well, when youâre in a meeting and someone asks you a question you donât know the answer to, your mind doesnât just process the question.
If your ego is not well-managed, your mind simultaneously processes: âWhat will they think of me if I donât know? Will I look incompetent? How do I maintain my status?â
That parallel processing consumes the very cognitive resources you need for actual thinking.
The Additional Cognitive Drain of Fantasizing Your Own WitThe psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made an observation that Iâve found profoundly useful in this context. He once pointed out that our fantasies are almost always better than the reality.
For example, when we fantasize about being the quick-witted person everyone admires, weâre constructing an idealized self-image that the real moment can never live up to. At least not all the time.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “the gods have clay feet.”
Well, spend enough time with accomplished performers, and you’ll start to see why. No one always has:
the perfect responsethe devastating comebackthe elegant pivotBut we fantasize that some people do. And then when we donât perform like our fantasy, we experience not just the failure of the moment, but also a painful collapse of our self-image.
Thatâs why a stumble in a presentation can feel catastrophic even when the audience barely notices. The ego is experiencing a much larger injury than the situation warrants.
How to Reduce Ego Before It Costs YouThere’s no quick fix for the ego.
And ego reduction exercises so you can respond with greater self-satisfaction in the moment require:
Practice in advanceConsistent application in a variety of situationsAnd in a variety of ways until responding off the top of your head from a clear mind becomes your default orientation.Then you maintain the practices that get you the spontaneous mastery you want over time.
Here is a powerful place to start.
Practice Stoic PremeditationThe Stoics called it premeditatio malorum or negative visualization.
Basically, you deliberately imagine everything that could go wrong related to the situations that regularly require your response.
If you regularly visualize yourself going blank in a meeting, stumbling through a presentation, or being publicly corrected, the actual event loses its power to destabilize you.
Youâve already experienced the worst in your imagination. The real version is almost always milder.
It’s the flipside of the point from Lacan we discussed above. You’ve now made the reality much better than the fantasy.
Modify the Classic Stoic Exercise
You can modify premeditatio malorum in two key ways.
I suggest you experiment with both techniques I’m about to describe.
One: Transform Old Memories of a Disastrous PerformanceFirst, you can excavate through your memory to find situations you recall where things have already been bad for you.
Then, you can “cleanse” those memories by placing them in a “Happy Memory Palace.”
The scientific basis for this process comes from research showing promise in therapy for trauma, such as this study of memory reconsolidation specific to declarative memory.
And there is the now classic Tim Dalgleish-headed research on using Memory Palaces or the method of loci for successfully reducing depression.
For more on this kind of research, the following livestream replay gives you an exact exercise and more about the memory science behind the positive outcomes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs9UHz4pVuM
In terms of how I’ve used this approach personally, I sometimes wince at one particular memory from when I sang a song during show-and-tell one morning when I was in grade two.
I don’t know why I used to feel embarrassed when the memory would arise as an adult, but I could feel the sting in my cheeks. And later when I first started sharing the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized, that little flush of shame would arise again.
So to forgive that kid whatever my memory was holding against him for his squeaky little voice, I turned the classroom into a Memory Palace and used it to memorize a delightful poem.
From the point that I finished learning the poem (you can learn the process from this poetry memorization guide), I can think of that episode without that old embarrassment reviving any of its sting. And I’ve used this approach to transform other lingering memories I don’t like as well, something I’ll share more in-depth in a forthcoming book.
Releasing old negative memories that involve shame makes me feel more spontaneous. And I’m confident you’ll enjoy a similar benefit too.
Two: Memorize Stoic QuotesMemorizing poetry is one thing, but it takes time. You can commit quotes to memory a lot faster.
I share one of my favorite quotes from Seneca in this YouTube short, one that took only a few minutes to memorize, even though it’s in Latin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISvX0-CfRkk
I found this quote in Kevin Vost’s Memorize the Stoics!
Although it’s not on my list of best Memory Palace Books, it provides a great look at memory training through a Stoic lens.
And Vost is right:
The value of having ancient wisdom on tap cannot be exaggerated.
Not just for correcting your ego. You’ll also find that you have more things to say when pressed to speak on the spot. Things that have stood the test of time.
Meditate Specifically for Ego ReductionEckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, often says in his talks that if you are empty of thought, you don’t have to worry about what to say next during a conversation. You’ll spontaneously produce the best possible reply.
I often wondered how it was possible to empty my mind of thoughts until I encountered Gary Weber’s Happiness Beyond Thought and Evolving Beyond Thought amongst other works.
Although Weber’s full program requires a fair amount of time, it’s worth it for the mental space and spontaneity you’ll enjoy.
Two Other Tactics for Detaching From Your Ego for Greater SpontaneityWhile you’re experimenting with Stoicism, here are two other tactics to explore.
They’re both counterintuitive, but powerful.
Embrace ignorance as a position of strengthSaying âI donât know, but Iâll find outâ is not a failure.
Itâs a demonstration of intellectual honesty that most people find more impressive than an imaginary answer.
If your ego tells you that not knowing something is a form of weakness, push back. Admitting when you don’t know something and then doing some research and following up, builds trust at the same time as it builds your knowledge base.
Detach from Needing Any Particular OutcomeYour job in any high-pressure moment is not to be brilliant.
Itâs to be present and responsive. Almost as if there is no “you” longing to be perceived in any particular way. Or desiring things to play out for or against you.
When you stop trying to produce the perfect response and instead focus on actually hearing the question, understanding the situation, and responding honestly, the quality of your thinking improves dramatically.
And it happens largely because youâve freed up the cognitive resources consumed by your egotistical needs. You’ll also enjoy your perception of the present moment much more.
Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters)One of the most common experiences of ânot thinking on your feetâ is this:
You know the information, but you canât access it in the moment.
You know your mind possesses the answer. But the pressure of the situation has locked the door.
Thereâs a neurological explanation for this. Researcher Amy Arnsten has documented how stress signalling pathways in the prefrontal cortex effectively shut down under acute stress.
As we know from studies in anxiety-induced memory loss, during stress, the amygdala takes prominence over the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for working memory, reasoning, and flexible thinking.
As a result, your brain redirects resources toward fight-or-flight responses that are useful for physical survival but terrible for articulate speech.
This is a major reason why you can know something perfectly in a calm environment and go completely blank when asked about it in front of an audience or in a heated discussion.
The information hasnât disappeared. Your brain has simply redirected resources away from the systems that retrieve it.
The Alphabet Retrieval TechniqueWhen I suddenly canât recall something (a name, a fact, a point I wanted to make), I have a technique that works more often than Iâd expect:
I mentally run through the alphabet from A to Z.
It doesn’t always bring back the information.
But the technique works often enough to make it a reliable first move, hitting the correct first letter while scanning through the alphabet triggers the retrieval.
When it works, it’s because the first letter acts as a cue that unlocks the rest of the word or thought.
It’s also the basis of how associative memory operates.
As Dr. Gary Small has explained, your brain stores information in networks that somewhat resemble neighborhoods.
And the first letter of a word is often enough of a âkeyâ to unlock the door on a full node of information.
Itâs the same principle behind why a songâs opening notes can bring back the entire melody.
Or how just a word or two of a lyric can bring back an entire verse.
The âLet It Goâ Retrieval Technique
If scanning the alphabet doesnât work, the next best strategy is counterintuitive:
Stop trying.
In other words, deliberately release any attempt to search your mind for the content.
Instead, move on to the next point, the next topic, the next question.
Often, within 5â10 minutes, the information you were grasping for will come racing back to mind.
This form of recall happens because your subconscious continues processing the retrieval request even after your conscious mind has moved on. Releasing the conscious effort actually accelerates the process, because youâve removed the stress that was blocking retrieval in the first place.
The Anti-Digital Amnesia Discipline You NeedIn order to ensure your memory gets stronger over time, you need to break the habit of immediately reaching for your phone or a search engine when you fail to recall something.
Every time you outsource mental retrieval to a computer, you weaken the neural pathways that perform recall.
Youâre training your brain that it doesnât need to do the work â and over time, it stops trying. This is the phenomenon Iâve written about as digital amnesia, and itâs one of the most insidious threats to mental agility in the modern world.
Preloading: The Real Solution to In-the-Moment RecallBoth alphabetical retrieval and simply letting go are recovery strategies. Theyâre useful when recall fails.
But the real solution to thinking on your feet is to ensure that recall rarely fails in the first place.
This is where a variety of memory training techniques enter the picture. Not as gimmicks, but as the foundational infrastructure for mental agility.
The Memory Palace TechniqueUsing Memory Palaces provides a core means of preloading information into your mind. Because this technique allows you to encode very large amounts of information, retrieval under pressure becomes qualitatively different from trying to recall something you passively read or heard.
You literally own that information, forwards and backwards.
It works because the spatial structure of the Memory Palace gives your brain a retrieval path that works even when the prefrontal cortex is under stress, because spatial memory is processed partly by the hippocampus. This is a different system than the one stress shuts down.
In practical terms:
If youâve memorized the key points of a presentation using a Memory Palace, you donât need to ârememberâ them under pressure. You just mentally walk to the next room.
The information is there, waiting. But it’s not merely attached to a place you know as well as your own home. It has also entered long-term memory.
To learn this approach, check out The Memory Palace Technique: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide.
Memory Wheels and the Art of CombinationRetrieving facts, quotes, even entire passages under pressure is one thing.
But what about those moments when you need to synthesize information on the spot? Such as when someone poses a complex question and the right answer isn’t a single piece of information but a combination of ideas you need to assemble in real time?
This is where most people’s recall fails them entirely. They might remember one relevant point, but they can’t pull together the three or four ideas needed to construct a substantive response on the spot.
I use a technique for this that dates back to the 13th-century philosopher Ramon Llull, later refined by the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno.
It’s called ars combinatoria or the art of combination. It works by pre-organizing your knowledge onto mental structures called memory wheels so that you can rotate through ideas rapidly and recombine them in novel ways during live situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opmb-mU-KPI
Here’s the simplest version of how it works in practice:
Imagine a circle in your mind with the letters A through Z arranged around it.
For each letter, you’ve pre-assigned a thinker, a framework, or a principle you know well.
A might be Aristotle.B might be a breathing technique.C might be a core value you hold.M might be Marcus Aurelius.S might be the Stoic concept of premeditatio malorum.When a difficult question hits you in conversation, instead of grasping for one perfect answer, you mentally spin the wheel.
Instead of searching randomly for something to say, you approach the task of coming up with something to say by scanning an organized inventory of your best thinking. Because you’ve pre-loaded and spatially arranged all of it, your mind can traverse what you’ve already learned quickly.
Memory Wheel ExampleOne of my favorite Memory Wheels is populated with philosophers (one for each letter of the alphabet).
When I’m confronted with a complex topic, I rotate through and consider what Aristotle would say and then move on through as many philosophers as I like, all the way to Zizek for Z.
I know this technique sounds elaborate and it requires having read the best philosophy books, but once you have a Memory Wheel built and practiced, the rotation takes seconds.
Here’s a rapid fire discussion with a few more examples from one of my YouTube shorts from the road in Brisbane:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/29nOib2ZS_4
Please don’t overlook this technique. It produces responses that are genuinely multi-perspectival, not just whatever my default opinion happens to be.
The deeper history of this technique and detailed instructions for building your own memory wheels are covered in my full guide to Ramon Llull’s memory wheel method.
But the principle you can apply immediately upon developing your own memory wheels is this:
If you pre-organize your knowledge into a spatial structure rather than leaving it scattered across your memory, you gain the ability to not just recall individual facts under pressure but to combine and recombine ideas on the fly.
That is the difference between someone who can answer a question and someone who can think through a problem in real time.
It’s not speed without purpose. It’s architecture with a sense of direction based on the shoulders of giants.
Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation)Verbal agility isnât about having a quick tongue. Itâs about having a calm mind with a deep well of material to draw from.
The people who seem effortlessly articulate in conversation are rarely making it up on the spot. Theyâre drawing on vast reserves of pre-loaded knowledge, practiced frameworks, and rehearsed transitions. What looks like spontaneous brilliance is actually the visible tip of an enormous iceberg of preparation.
Frameworks for Organizing Your Thoughts RapidlyWhen someone throws a topic at you and you need to respond coherently, having a mental framework prevents the rambling that makes people sound unprepared.
Here are several that work, provided you practice using them before they’re required in real-life situations:
The PREP FrameworkPREP stands for:
PointReasonExamplePointIt’s a very powerful formula to practice during debates as well as in conversation.
When using PREP, you state your position, give one reason, illustrate with one example, then restate your position. This takes 30â60 seconds and helps keep your replies structured without sounding rehearsed.
The WRAP TechniqueI learned this one from Chip and Dan Heathâs Decisive.
WRAP stands for:
Widen your optionsReality-test your assumptionsAttain distance before decidingPrepare to failI placed WRAP on a memory wheel and demonstrate how to run through it mentally in this ars combinatoria video tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg
What to Do When Youâre StumpedEven with the frameworks we just discussed or tactics like running through the alphabet, you will experience situations where you simply donât have a response.
Here are more strategies you can try.
Pause PeacefullyAlthough falling silent can feel painful when you first start practicing it, rest assured that it barely registers to the person listening.
And in many cases, a two or three-second pause before responding signals thoughtfulness, not ignorance.
Most people rush to fill silence because their ego canât tolerate appearing slow.
But a measured pause followed by a substantive response is always more impressive than a rushed response followed by backtracking.
Seek ClarificationThere’s nothing wrong with asking people:
âCan you say more about what you mean by that?â or âAre you asking about X or Y specifically?â
Such questions will not stall the conversation.
Itâs genuine intellectual engagement, and it often reveals avenues for further conversation that would not be revealed any other way.
Use the TruthYou might not know this, but many people find it refreshing when someone admits that something is outside of their area.
Nir Eyal did that on my podcast a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten his willingness to “stay in his lane,” as he put it.
The best part?
Nobody penalizes honest uncertainty and a request to move on if you really don’t have a settled opinion on some matter or any expertise.
Practice Physical AwarenessSometimes when we’re stumped, our body tenses up.
Shoulders rise, the jaw clenches and breathing shallows.
This physical tension feeds back into your mental state and makes mental freezing worse.
But deliberately dropping your shoulders and taking one slow breath can help break the cycle.
More on this kind of physical solution is coming up in Part 6.
Practice SteelmanningOne of the most powerful exercises for verbal agility is practicing steelmanning.
Related to the principle of charity in rhetoric, steelmanning is the practice of arguing for positions with which you disagree.
But not half-heartedly. No, you make the argument in the strongest possible terms.
One simple way to practice steelmanning involves getting a friend to throw topics at you randomly.
Your job is not to argue your own position, but to construct the best possible argument for the opposite side.
This practice accomplishes three things simultaneously:
It forces you to think through ideas from perspectives you wouldnât naturally adopt, which builds cognitive flexibility.It trains you to separate your ego from your position, because youâre explicitly not defending your own views.It prepares you for actual debates, because youâve already rehearsed the strongest version of your opponentâs argument.For more tips that will help you in this department, check out my guide to preparing for debates.
The Improv PrincipleIf you take one thing from this section and act on it, let it be this:
Take an improvisation class.
Why?
Improv comedy training provides you with the single most transferable skill for verbal agility in any context.
The core principle of improv is quite easy. You simply answer everything with either âyes, and…â or “no, but…”
This simple structure teaches you to accept whatever is thrown at you and build on it rather than blocking or deflecting. This is the exact skill you need in meetings, conversations, presentations, and debates.
Improv also provides the one thing you canât get from reading articles:
Real-time practice under social pressure while receiving immediate feedback. No amount of theory replaces the experience of standing in front of a group with nothing planned and having to produce something.
It’s been a long time since I took an improv class, or any class. But you really only need one round to create a permanent transformation.
Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage)If youâve never performed music, theatre, magic, public speaking, or any other form of real-time presentation, you may not realize how much of âthinking on your feetâ is simply having enough trained material that you can recover from anything.
The principle applies far beyond the stage. But the stage is where the principle is most visible, so let me share what Iâve learned from three performance disciplines.
Music: Improvisation Is Built on Structure & Self-AwarenessWhen I studied music, I learned something that most non-musicians find surprising: improvisational soloing requires more preparation than playing a written piece.
A written piece has every note specified.
You practice it, you perform it, youâre done.
An improvised solo, on the other hand, requires you to internalize the underlying structure so thoroughly that you can navigate it in real time without conscious planning.
You need to know the modes, the chord changes, the rhythmic patterns, the phrasing conventions. And you need to know them so well that theyâre available to your fingers before your conscious mind has time to think about which note comes next.
I know this from decades of musical experience. But my life in music almost never happened at all.
In grade five, I failed a recorder test. It was given as a prerequisite for joining band class in grade six.
The reason, though I didn’t have the language for it at the time, was a condition then called image-deficit disorder, now known as aphantasia.
I couldn’t visualize what my teachers were asking me to see on the recorder or the sheet music. And the boring mnemonic sentences they gave us for remembering the notes made no sense to me.
The school’s verdict in the face of my supposed failure? No band class.
My dad changed that. He rolled up to the school on his Harley Davidson and had a conversation with the administration that I wasn’t privy to.
Whatever he said, it worked. I was in. So long as I played the trombone instead of my dream bass guitar. They thought trombone would be easiest for me with its one simple slide.
The Art of Coping By CopyingBut getting into band class didn’t mean I could play.
In fact, for the entire first year, I sat beside another trombonist who picked up every note like it was nothing.
I survived by watching his slide positions and copying them. I wasn’t reading music. I was reading him.
The next year, in grade seven, the teacher gave us separate parts, and my copying lifeline was over.
I remember sitting alone in a room with that trombone, sweat rolling down my face, sheet music on the stand turning my brain into wet sawdust. It felt like staring at an explosive I didn’t know how to defuse.
But something shifted as my juvenile brain worked to solve the problem.
Once I was forced to actually engage with the notation instead of mimicking someone else, I started seeing patterns. The theory behind the notes began to click.
My teacher noticed the transformation quickly, both in performance and on my written tests. Later that year, she encouraged me to enter a sight-reading competition.
Even though I didn’t win, I remember the thrill of performing music I’d never seen before. And because my teacher saw how deeply I’d started engaging with music, she helped me secure a spot at the local summer school of music before high school.
That summer changed my trajectory. I studied with a celebrated trombonist from Canadian Brass. My skills went up substantially, and after a solo I played during the final concert, I was asked to audition for the Kamloops Rube Band.
I turned that invitation down and finally retired the trombone for a bass and joined a heavy metal band instead.
Over the years that followed, I played in multiple bands, learned increasingly complex music, and eventually realized a lifelong dream: going on tour with an established band.
Memory expert Anthony Metivier performing at a concert in Germany.The Lesson That Changed How I PerformAnd it was during that tour, playing with a sophisticated band called The Outside, that I received perhaps the most important lesson about thinking on your feet that music ever gave me.
After a show, our drummer Tito told me I’d missed a few notes. I braced for a critical lecture, but he said something I’ve never forgotten. It was an important tip that has everything to do with the practice of thinking on your feet:
“The real problem isn’t missing the notes. It’s looking like you made a mistake. If you look like you made a mistake, it is a mistake.”
From that moment on, I trained myself to improvise how I looked just as much as how I sounded. A missed note played with confidence reads as a creative choice. A perfect note played with visible anxiety reads as a near-miss.
The audience often doesn’t hear your mistakes, but they do see your reaction to them.
This principle extends far beyond music. It shows up in meetings, presentations and conversations.
Your stumbles themselves are almost never what people remember. They remember whether or not you flinched.
And to tie this all back to the beginning, flinching is an ego response. It’s the visible evidence of caring more about how you appear than about what you’re communicating.
Tito didn’t know he was teaching me about ego reduction back during that tour in 2013. But that’s exactly what his lesson was.
Card Magic: Multiple Outs and RecoveryIn card magic, which is especially useful in memorized deck magic, thereâs a concept called âmultiple outs.” I think about it constantly in non-magic contexts.
A multiple out is a tactic you might never use, but always have something prepared so that no matter what the spectator does, you conclude the trick successfully.
In other words, no matter which card they choose, which pile they point to, which decision they make, you have a prepared path to a successful conclusion.
The spectator thinks theyâre making free choices. In reality, every choice leads to the same place, or to one of several equally impressive endings.
This is exactly how preparation works for thinking on your feet.
If youâve prepared thoroughly for a meeting, you donât just have one argument. You have multiple arguments, multiple examples, multiple pivot points.
If someone challenges your position, you have an âout.â If someone asks an unexpected question, you have another âout.â The more preparation youâve done, the more outs you have.
Magician in TroubleThereâs also a sub-genre in magic called âmagician in troubleâ where the performer intentionally appears to make a mistake, building tension before a surprising recovery. What the audience doesnât realize is that the âmistakeâ was planned and the recovery was rehearsed.
But it only works because the performer has done thousands of hours of practice behind the scenes.
If you’re having trouble acting spontaneously, learning a few magic tricks is one of the best things you can do.
The more tricks you know, the more you can make mistakes and recover. If one trick goes wrong, you transition to another. If a spectator does something unexpected, you have a different trick that accommodates their choice. The depth of your repertoire is directly proportional to your ability to handle anything.
Translate this to your professional life:
The more tools, frameworks, examples, and stories you have memorized, the more âtricksâ you can draw from when a conversation or presentation goes sideways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM
Two Levels of TEDx Improvisation Where Preparation Met RealityMinutes before I was due on stage for my TEDx Talk, a long-time fan showed up without a ticket.
From what I gathered, he’d traveled to attend the event in Melbourne. And I could tell he was genuinely excited.
But he didn’t have a ticket. And when the venue staff told him he couldn’t come in, due to fire capacity rules, we were both frustrated.
Anyone with two eyes could see that the room wasn’t actually full. But there was no time to argue the bureaucracy. I was about to deliver the most important presentation of my career, after all.
This is exactly the kind of moment that derails people. Not the talk itself, but the things that happen right before you hit the stage. I’m talking about the unexpected disruptions that flood your system with cortisol at the worst possible time.
My ego wanted to fight for this person’s entry. It wanted to make a scene about the absurdity of empty seats and fire codes. It wanted to be the hero who fixes things.
Instead, thinking on my feet, I suggested we meet for dinner after the talk. He understood. We shook hands. And then I had approximately four minutes to completely reset my mental state before walking on stage.
Here’s what I did, standing backstage where nobody could see:
I placed my hands behind my back and began Kirtan Kriya. This is a four-syllable meditation (Sa, Ta, Na, Ma) combined with a sequential mudra where your fingers tap. Gary Weber teaches it in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvokeZnXMM
By using the technique with both hands behind my back so no one would see, I simultaneously slowed my breathing and brought myself back to center.
Between breath cycles, I also ran a quick body scan from my feet to my scalp, deliberately releasing tension wherever I found it. Jaw, shoulders, hands, the major muscle groups.
By the time they called my name, I was calm.
Not confident in the way people usually mean. I wasn’t puffed up or “psyched” to give my speech.
Just calm in the way that comes from having emptied the bowl.
The fan situation was gone from my mind. The ego’s need to intervene was gone. What remained was a mind with nothing in it except a memorized talk and the willingness to deliver it to whoever was in that room.
What To Do When the Room Doesn’t Follow Your ScriptShortly after my talk began, the room did something I hadn’t planned for.
A scripted joke that had worked perfectly to create laughter during the dress rehearsal the day before landed in silence.
Not awkward silence. Just… nothing.
The audience looked at me with interest but no laughter. A few minutes later, during a section I hadn’t intended to be funny at all, they laughed.
Genuinely.
A speaker working from notes would have been buried in their script at that moment, unable to read the room because their eyes were on the page.
But my entire talk was encoded in Memory Palaces using the technique I teach in my guide, How to Memorize a Speech. I didn’t need to look at any notes. I could look at everyone and connect with them directly.
So I did and leaned into their laughter.
I let it breathe. I adjusted my pacing to ride the energy they were giving me rather than forcing the energy I’d planned.
Going with the flow, I made an unscripted joke and it landed.
And when the moment passed, I stepped to the next station in my Memory Palace and continued on with the talk.
What the Audience Saw vs. What Actually HappenedThe audience experienced this as spontaneity. They saw a speaker who was loose, present, reading the room.
What actually happened was decades of training expressing itself through a four-second decision.
The musical performance training that taught me to keep playing through mistakes without flinching. The card magic training that taught me to have multiple outs when a planned effect doesn’t land. The teaching experience that taught me to read a room full of people who may not be responding the way I expected.
And underneath all of it, my ego-reduction efforts shone through, including the willingness to let go of the talk I’d planned and deliver the talk the audience needed.
After the event, several people told me how natural and relaxed I seemed. One person said it felt like I was just talking to them, not giving a speech.
That’s the highest compliment a speaker can receive. And it was entirely the product of preparation.But nothing about that talk was spontaneous other than the joke I made up on the fly. Otherwise, every word of that talk was memorized verbatim.
The audience saw someone thinking on their feet. What they were actually seeing was someone falling back on their training. That, and they witnessed someone with enough training to fall back on.
That is the difference. And it’s available to anyone willing to put in the work before the moment arrives.
Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake)There are situations where âthinking on your feetâ has nothing to do with being articulate or quick-witted.
Quite the opposite. There are many moments in life when thinking itself is the problem, especially during situations where what you need is a trained physical response that fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere.
Iâve been in three of these situations.
Each time, it was my years-long Systema training that kept me safe.
In case you don’t know it, Systema is a martial art focused on breathing, relaxation, and fluid movement under stress.
To be clear, it didn’t help me fight. It helped me because it stopped fights from erupting in the first place.
Let me explain.
Incident One: The Attempted MuggingWhile writing my dissertation, I was living in Washington Heights, a district north of Harlem in New York City. I was walking south, down to the 170s from the corner of 187th and Cabrini, where I’d stopped to use a bank machine.
On my way out, a man stood in front of me with something resembling a gun in his pocket. Exactly as it happens in the movies, he gestured in quick spurts of energy so that my eyes dropped and looked at his pocket.
“Give me your wallet and all your money,” he demanded.
My Systema training kicked in. Instead of having my shoulders shoot up with anxious tension â the default I’d seen in almost every new student Emmanuel Manolakakis worked with, including me during my first lessons â my mind automatically followed the training I’d received. Without willing it, my shoulders dropped and my mind and body synced with my breath.
In a way that still completely bewilders me, a smile came across my face.
I don’t know what I looked like, but my expression unnerved the mugger. It created the stress in him that should have been in my body.
After what seemed like an eternity, the mugger said, “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll shoot you.”
At this point, my smile grew wider and I started to laugh. An instant later, it felt right to move.
I took one step forward into his space and angled to the left with the second and third steps. I didn’t break his gaze and watched as his eyes and entire head tracked me as I moved past him.
Then, still operating completely on autopilot, I started to run and found myself in a cleaning supplies store filled with mops and buckets.
No confrontation. No escalation. No ego.
Just a trained body responding faster than a thinking mind would have. My Systema training, from breath coordination to deep muscle relaxation and long hours of practice with dropping into calm during situations of simulated threat, delivered exactly what it was designed for: bypassing the conscious mind that would have frozen me and let the body handle the situation.
Incident Two: The Dark Path in TorontoSome time later, walking in Toronto, I approached a path at the end of a high school field. It was too late to be taking this popular shortcut, but there I was during a night that was far darker than I would have liked. There was just one street lamp hanging over that path, and its bulb was barely working.
Before I stepped onto the path, I put a dime on my thumb. I didn’t think about why. There was no conscious strategy at work. My body simply did what training had taught it to do: prepare for the possibility of contact without committing to a plan.
Sure enough, someone stepped into my path. I flicked the dime. The coin caught his gaze and seized his attention, producing a few seconds of involuntary visual tracking. This is the same reflex that makes every human eye follow sudden movement.
Thanks to the distraction created by the spinning dime, I moved past him easily and paced off into the distance before his focus returned.
The entire encounter lasted maybe three seconds. There was no conversation, no confrontation, no mental calculation. Just a trained response that created a tiny window of distraction and an immediate exit through it.
I still think about the fact that I put the dime on my thumb before anything happened.
It wasn’t a decision so much as it was a product of procedural memory â the same memory system that helps a musician’s fingers find the right fret before their conscious mind has named the note.
Systema trains you to read environments the way musicians read chord changes. Not by analyzing, but by responding to patterns your body has trained to respond to inside the dojo.
Incident Three: Outside the Post OfficeThe third incident was the strangest. Outside a post office, someone with a grievance I didn’t fully understand began yelling at me aggressively. His body language was escalating and the situation felt like it could turn physical.
My response was immediate: I raised my hands into a prayer gesture. With my palms together and fingers standing straight up, I found myself saying “thank you” over and over.
I wasn’t being clever. I wasn’t trying to defuse the situation with wit. The gesture came from training, and it served two purposes simultaneously that I was only partially aware of in the moment.
First, it put my hands in a position to quickly block any incoming strike. The prayer position is a natural guard because your hands are high, elbows close and forearms ready to redirect.
I mean, it’s not going to make you bulletproof, but it’s just as disarming as the smile I delivered back during the mugging I survived in New York.
Second, my response psychologically short-circuited the man’s aggression.
Being thanked while you’re on the offensive is so dissonant that the brain doesn’t know how to process it.
This person’s rhythm broke. His volume dropped. The escalation stalled because the script he was running had been interrupted by a response that didn’t fit.
He didn’t thank me back. But at least he stopped. And I walked away unscathed.
The Common Thread: No Ego, No Thinking, Just the Fruits of TrainingIn all three incidents, the pattern is identical:
Because the ego was out of the way, I wasnât trying to prove anything or âwinâ the encounters.
There was also no conscious thinking. The responses were physical, automatic, and executed faster than mental deliberation would have allowed.
Plus, there was relaxation under threat. The counterintuitive act of relaxing when threatened, which Systema specifically trains, prevented the freeze response that ego and fear typically produce.
Finally, the strategy in each case was oriented toward getting away, not engaging.
For anyone who wants to develop this dimension of thinking on their feet, I strongly recommend studying a martial art that emphasizes relaxation, awareness, and movement rather than aggression and force.
Finding Your Own Physical Practice
If personal experiences make you want to sign up for Systema, I’d encourage it. But I’d also encourage any martial art that emphasizes awareness, breathing, and relaxation over aggression and force.
The point is not to become a fighter. The point is to develop a body that responds to threat with trained composure rather than untrained panic.
Beyond martial arts, I practice Qigong daily and have for years. It’s not a combat discipline, but it trains the same foundational skills experienced in a gentler format:
Breath coordinationBodily awarenessRelaxation under tensionFor someone who has no interest in martial training, Qigong offers many of the same benefits for composure and physical presence without ever throwing or receiving a strike.
Whatever physical practice you choose, I’d offer one caution:
Don’t romanticize these practices or turn them into a glamorous fantasy. Remember the lesson from Lacan and the Stoic lessons that make sure reality is better than fantasy if and when real situations of trouble land.
The three incidents I described above weren’t action sequences. They were awkward, brief, and slightly absurd.
I didn’t defeat anyone. I smiled, flicked a coin, and said thank you.
The training didn’t make me dangerous. It made me calm enough to exit each situation without a scratch.
And that brings me to what I consider the most important physical skill of all, one that doesn’t require any formal training: situational awareness.
Train for Situational AwarenessIn each of the three incidents, there was a moment before contact where my body registered something my conscious mind hadn’t articulated yet.
In Washington Heights, I noticed the man’s posture before he spoke. In Toronto, something made me put a dime on my thumb before I entered the dark path. Outside the post office, I registered the escalation in body language before any words were exchanged.
To train for greater situational awareness, walk with your phone in your pocket instead of your hand.
Move around the world with your ears empty instead of listening to music or podcasts.
When you enter a room, notice the exits.
When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, pay attention to who is around you and how they’re moving.
These aren’t paranoid habits. They’re the same environmental reading skills your ancestors used every day. Modern life has simply given us the luxury of ignoring them.
There is almost no better way to think on your feet than the thinking that steers you clear of sticky situations in the first place. When it comes to physical confrontation, the best-trained response is the one you never have to use.
Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental AgilityEverything discussed so far requires ongoing practice. Here are the specific daily exercises I use and recommend, organized from quick (2 minutes) to involved (30+ minutes).
Breathing Techniques (2â5 minutes)Before any high-pressure situation, be it a presentation, a meeting or a difficult conversation, controlled breathing is the fastest way to shift your nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (calm and focused).
The simplest technique:
Breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 6 counts. The extended exhale activates the vagus nerve and physically slows your heart rate.
Do this for 2 minutes and youâll enter any situation calmer and more mentally available.
For more advanced breathing techniques, check out this video tutorial I made for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeO06_uZZcg
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (5â10 minutes)Systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups, from your feet to your face, trains your body to release the physical tension that accumulates under stress. Over time, you develop the ability to detect and release tension in real time â during a conversation, during a presentation, during a confrontation.
This is the body scan component that I used before my TEDx Talk, and itâs a core element of Systema training as well. The ability to scan your body for tension and deliberately release it is a physical skill that directly supports mental agility.
Steelmanning Practice (15â20 minutes)Get a partner. Have them throw random topics at you. Your job: argue the strongest possible case for the position you naturally oppose. Switch roles.
Do this twice a week and within a month youâll notice a dramatic improvement in your ability to think through problems from multiple angles under time pressure.
Now, you might think about going to Chat-GPT or some other LLM. You can certainly give this a try.
However, beware of context-dependent memory and state-dependence issues. If you only train in digital environments with a bot, you will likely find that you perform fine when sparring with a computer, but flounder with a human.
As this study found, training in certain environments creates less cognitive fatigue than others. So if you come to develop certain beliefs about the difficulty of discussing things based on experiences with chatbots, you will probably not like the energy-drain you encounter when dealing with humans.
Remember: we tend to fight the way we train, so practice all rhetorical argumentation in a variety of environments, never just one.
Random Topic Riffing (10â15 minutes)
Have someone give you a topic and speak about it for 2 minutes without stopping.
What you say doesnât need to be brilliant, but work at speaking continuously. The exercise trains your brain to keep producing output even when it doesnât feel ready, which is exactly the skill you need when put on the spot.
Increase difficulty by having the topic-giver interrupt you with new topics mid-stream. This trains your ability to pivot and shift directions without losing composure.
Memory Palace Practice (15â30 minutes)
Every time you encode information using a Memory Palace, youâre doing more than memorizing.
Youâre building the retrieval infrastructure that makes recall under pressure possible. Regular Memory Palace practice is the single most important investment you can make in your ability to access information when you need it.
The more you memorize, the more you should seek to incorporate memorized material into your steelmanning and random riffing practice routines.
Alphabet Drills and Multiple Mentality (5â15 minutes)One of the most unusual training systems I’ve encountered comes from Harry Kahne, a performer from the 1920s who could write with both hands simultaneously while reciting poetry from memory.
He called his approach “Multiple Mentality” because it’s the deliberate practice of running several mental operations at once.
His exercises sound deceptively simple. The foundational one: write out the alphabet backwards from memory. Not from Z-A printed on a card.
From memory, cold.
Most people find reciting the alphabet backwards surprisingly difficult the first time. But once you can do it? That’s when the real training begins.
Kahne then asks you to pair the alphabet’s extreme ends mentally: A-Z, B-Y, C-X, working inward. Then start from the center and pair outward in reverse. These are pure concentration drills because they force your brain to hold a structure in working memory while performing various forms of recall.
I go deeper into the full Multiple Mentality system and all of Kahne’s exercises in my detailed review of his course, including the parts I think are brilliant and the parts where I respectfully disagree with him.
Part 8: Prepping Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think)Most of us know that the quality of your thinking is directly proportional to the quality of what youâve committed to memory.
A mind loaded with poetry, philosophy, scientific principles, historical examples, memorable quotes, and well-understood frameworks will produce richer, more nuanced, more creative responses under pressure than a mind that relies on whatever it happens to recall from last weekâs reading.
This is not about showing off. Itâs about having raw material that makes you mentally dexterous. And gives you information you can use in an instant.
What to Memorize for Maximum Mental AgilityAs you’ve seen, I strongly recommend memorizing quotes and poems.
Because memorized poetry gives you access to compressed wisdom, beautiful language, and emotional resonance that you can draw on in conversation, writing, and thinking.
Likewise, you can learn how to remember a story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4TxD6ez1Y
When youâve memorized a poem or story, you own the content in a way that reading on its own never provides. The lines and structures become part of your mental vocabulary.
Iâve memorized dozens of poems and passages of verse, and they surface constantly in conversation, in my writing, in my thinking about problems that have nothing to do with literature.
Memorize Speeches for Mental DexterityLikewise, you can seek out speeches from people like Churchill, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Marcus Aurelius.
The words of leaders who were themselves masters of thinking on their feet make for excellent training material.
When youâve memorized their words, you internalize their patterns of thought. You donât just quote them. You begin to think in the structures they used.
Learn to Tell JokesLike improv, humor provides you with one of the ultimate forms of thinking on your feet.
And telling jokes is far more learnable than people assume.
To get started, commit a few jokes to memory and study their structure.
You’ll soon notice that a good joke is a tiny argument:
The setup establishes expectationsThe twist violates the expectationsThe punchline resolves the violation in a surprising or ironic wayThis simple structure is not so different from the PREP framework we discussed above.
Practice Parroting and Accent ImitationImitating a famous actor might sound like a party trick, but itâs actually a profound exercise in sharing another person’s perspective and behavioral patterns.
To imitate someone convincingly, you have to at least try and understand how they think, how they move and how they use language. As a result, the understanding you develop translates directly to the ability to read and respond to different people in different contexts.
I’m not particularly good with foreign accents or imitating people. But merely by putting time into practicing a few people, I’ve learned a lot and become more spontaneous on my feet.
Reflective Thinking PracticeMemorization alone isnât enough. The material you memorize needs to be processed through reflective thinking. This is the practice of deliberately considering what youâve learned, connecting it to other things you know, and forming your own positions.
I do a lot of my reflective thinking through journaling, through conversation with carefully chosen friends, and through a practice Iâve maintained for years: regularly re-reading books Iâve already read, looking for things I missed the first time.
All of these practices transform static knowledge into dynamic intellectual resources you’ll draw upon with great ease when you find yourself put on the spot.
Part 9: The Paradox of Mental SilenceWeâve covered a great deal of ground today: ego reduction, memory techniques, verbal frameworks, performance training, martial arts, daily exercises, and the art of loading your mind with quality material.
And now I want to end with something that sounds like a contradiction but is, in fact, the deepest truth about thinking on your feet:
The goal is not to think faster. Rather, it’s to create the conditions where you donât need to think at all.
I know this sounds paradoxical. How can âthinking on your feetâ require not thinking?
It’s because the highest level of performance in any domain doesn’t just look like effortlessness. It actually is, if only in the present moment.
I’m talking about the musician who plays a transcendent solo. That performer isnât thinking about which notes to play.
Nor does the martial artist who evades a strike sit there thinking about which direction to move.
And the speaker who delivers a perfect response to an unexpected question isnât thinking about what to say. They’re drawing upon deep preparation.
In each case, the performer has trained so deeply that the right response emerges from a place beneath conscious thought. The preparation started long ago.
Practice has quieted your fantasies, both positive and negative. And what remains is a mind so well-prepared that it can be still during the demands and in that stillness, the right response simply appears.
This outcome is common in the world of mindfulness and meditation, where practitioners describe the experience of being âfull by being empty.â
In order to receive the moment as it actually is (not as your ego wants it to be, nor as your anxiety fears things might go wrong), you just have to empty your mind of the noise that normally fills it.
Your Next Step
If this article has shown you anything, I hope itâs this: thinking on your feet is not a gift. Itâs the product of deliberate, ongoing training across multiple domains â mental, verbal, physical, and philosophical.
The foundation of all of it is memory. Not âgood memoryâ as a vague trait, but trained memory â the ability to encode, store, and retrieve information on demand, under pressure, in any context.
If you want to start building that foundation, Iâve created a free course that teaches you the core Memory Palace technique in four video lessons. Itâs the same starting point my Masterclass students use, and it will give you your first experience of what trained recall feels like.
For even deeper training that includes the Memory Wheel technique, ars combinatoria, advanced Memory Palace strategies, and the Recall Rehearsal patterns that make long-term retention predictable, my Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass takes you through the complete learning system.
And if you want to explore the meditation, breathing, and muscle relaxation routines Iâve combined with memory training for maximum mental composure, I go into all of that in The Victorious Mind.
So what do you say?
Are you ready to stop worrying about what you’ll say next and start training so deeply that the right response arrives on its own?
Remember: the secret every performer, martial artist, and memory expert discovers is ultimately the same.
You don’t rise to the level of the moment. You fall back to the level of your preparation.
Start prepping now. You won’t regret it.
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Nelson Dellis delivers yet another epic memory improvement book with Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving and Much More.
In my view, this book is also a corrective to the increasing mountains of bad memory training advice online.
I mean, spend ten minutes browsing memory improvement forums and you’ll start to see the rot.
Same recycled advice.
Same flat explanations lacking nuance.
Same people “teaching” techniques theyâve:
Never stress-tested in publicNever pushed to the limitsNever offered anything more than mostly copied explanations of standard mnemonic methodsThe toxicity for the serious student of the memory arts and mental skills is only getting worse as people ramp up their use of AI to produce even more untested “teaching” of these techniques.
So the fact that Nelson actually demonstrates and performs a kind of “immersion journalism” when it comes to the techniques he teaches provides just one of many reasons why Nelson Dellisâs Everyday Genius matters so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJoc5gLIx2c
How Everyday Genius Takes Memory Training Into New TerrainIt’s not that Nelson has invented any new memory techniques in this book, which you can learn more about on Abrams Books.
He hasn’t. And it’s unlikely that anyone ever will.
Nelson told me as much at the opening of our interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcTJuCiDVqE
Anyhow, “new” doesn’t come into the picture for people serious about memory and accelerated learning.
As someone who has received and read Amazon reviews on memory improvement books for decades, I always find it odd when someone writes, “nothing new here.”
Since even Giordano Bruno essentially announced that nothing new would be coming to the field of mnemonics back in the 1600s, the real task is to:
Stop Confusing Activity with AccomplishmentNelson’s book matters first and foremost because it comes from a mnemonist of actual accomplishment.
A real practitioner, not just a reader of memory improvement books who then comments on them.
He’s someone who has put his mind on the line under pressure, in competition, with nowhere to hide.
In other words, Nelson’s history of accomplishment adds weight to every page.
And you can feel it almost immediately.
Everyday Genius is written by someone who has actually lived inside the machinery of memory and various mental tactics and then extended these into real life situations:
Giving a speechMaking new business contactsSolving real-world problemsExploring the nature of the mindAt the risk of repetition, this distinction matters more than ever, because the internet is drowning the memory arts with all kinds of secondhand certainty written by people lurking behind anonymous user accounts.
What Kinds of Real-World Problems Will This Book Help You Solve?As most memory improvement books worth their salt do, Nelson covers the Memory Palace technique, a.k.a. the method of loci.
But he doesn’t just recite the classic approach to this technique. He describes it from lived experience.
And his approach to mnemonic images and pegword systems likewise comes from accomplishment.
Then, when you go through his explanations of how to apply these mnemonic systems to remembering names or speeches, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how to implement them.
Likewise when it comes to critical thinking.
Nelson takes you through actual real-world scenarios and shows you how various critical thinking examples can make life a lot smoother and more successful.
Making Memory & Learning Both Relevant & FunAnother major thing Nelson gets right in Everyday Genius is that he doesn’t shy away from blending the use of memory and thinking tactics for fun with more serious learning outcomes.
I know that I’m guilty of not finding that balance in my own writing, even if personally I perform card magic with a memdeck and play music, etc.
The cost, however, is that using memory techniques for activities like card counting can be learned a lot more readily when you have at least some of the foundational mnemonic strategies working for you.
In reality, learning them doesn’t have to be a grind. And the stories and profiles of polymathic geniuses Nelson shares throughout the book will help you see the multiple layers of fun in store for you.
The key is to find ways to make these techniques integrate into your everyday life. Figuring out how to do that can be a challenge, but that’s all the more reason to pay attention to the examples distributed throughout Everyday Genius.
The Potentially Controversial Aspect of Everyday GeniusNow, you might be wondering…
Is Everyday Genius perfect and free from critique?
No. And unlike his previous books like Remember It! and Memory Superpowers, Nelson takes risks that I partly admire and partly question.
And one of my criticisms goes back to at least two years prior to its publication when Nelson first told us about his “remote viewing” experiments on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j240eFZNq04
Now, I worry about being hypocritical if I lean too heavily against Nelson when he enters such contested territory. I’ve run similar experiments myself at various times, and perhaps entered just as questionable territory with The Victorious Mind.
I’m talking about:
Intuition. Remote viewing. Out-of-body experiences. Lucid dreaming.
To take just one example, learning to remember your dreams is easy enough to do. But Nelson talks about practicing memorizing a deck of cards while lucid dreaming, and it’s just not clear how you could test the accuracy or measure the contribution of such untestable practice to your skills.
At least in the case of remote viewing, Nelson has practiced a kind of immersion journalism.
He’s gone to various labs and institutions where people conduct tests in remote viewing and out-of-body experiences.
Whether those tests are “scientific” or not is itself a critical thinking exercise, but I admire that Nelson:
Goes into the field to report back from lived experienceIs willing to face tough questions about the claims people make about such phenomenaAnd unlike the lucid dream claim, various aspects of the claims about remote viewing and out-of-body experiences can be testedIn any case, Dellis doesnât build the book on the foundation of these more experimental activities. And it is of great importance that you are invited to experiment using the protocol Nelson provides.
I tried the provided remote viewing protocol myself.
And frankly, I would rather explore strange terrain from Nelson Dellis who has proven all kinds of astonishing accomplishments than from yet another forum philosopher who has yet to demonstrate… anything they make claims about.
The Future of Memory TrainingAnd the whole realm of claims that people make is the larger issue here for me.
In our growing culture of cognitive indifference, people forget names, forget what they read, forget what they meant to say halfway through saying it, then shrug and call it normal “because internet”.
But digital amnesia is not normal.
And you don’t have to outsource your memory or your attention.
Your standards can go up.
And your self-respect along with it when you join the ranks of those who have actually done the work.
That is why I think you should read Everyday Genius.
Not because it is safe.
Not because it is perfect.
But because it is something that few books ever are:
It is alive.
Alive with real accomplishment.
Alive with a pulse that pushes ancient tactics into modern use and combines them with other disciplines.
Alive with the real signs of genius that anyone can achieve.
And it treats memory as something you train, not something you talk about.
But donât stop with reading and implementing this book.
Do your part to help fix the culture.
Stop letting the swamp of bad information on the internet define what memory training is.
Memorize the most challenging information you can find and demonstrate that you can do it.
Take on hard skills and prove that you’ve got them.
That is your duty now if you want to distinguish yourself from the swamp and the robots.
Raise the standard.
That would be truly genius.
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I have an uncle who used to sing the craziest (and often off-color songs).
He was a WWII vet and looked like the Canadian actor Lorne Greene. He would rip out the kinds of songs that sailors sang and I would rush to write down the lyrics so I could learn them.
And learn them I did.
The hard way.
It was irritating and frustrating.
Even though they say the hand builds the mind and it wasn’t the end of the world that I spent so much time writing them down and rewriting them, I was still relying on rote learning.
If only I knew then what I know today about memory techniques!
You see, I now memorize and regularly demonstrate poems I’ve committed to memory almost every month during my live memory training bootcamps.
I’ve memorized everything from ancient Sanskrit poems to some of the most inventive contemporary poetry.
And today I’m going to share a few case studies and key tips I know you’re going to love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUQYVUEBJVc
How to Memorize Poetry FastThe fastest way I know to memorize poetry involves a combination of ancient memory techniques.
These are:
The Memory Palace TechniqueAlphabetical associationNumerical association (where relevant)Spaced repetition based on solid active recall principlesNow, I know that weaving together so many memory techniques to memorize poetry or even song lyrics, sounds like a lot. But if you want to memorize poems fast, stick with me. Bringing all of these strategies together is much easier than it might seem at first glance.
But first, let me further demonstrate that I actually do successfully memorize poetry to bolster the demonstrations given in the video tutorial above. I believe proof is important because there are a lot of people out there who talk about skills they cannot do.
In the case of mnemonics, there are even entire forums filled with people giving advice about memory techniques when they clearly haven’t lifted a finger to memorize a poem. That, or they’ve used rote memorization and are only pretending they used mnemonics.
So with those issues in mind, here are a few more videos with demonstrations from a variety of verses in various states of retention. Please be sure to watch each example because I will refer back to these recitations to help you rapidly memorize poems of your own.
Example One: A Univocalic PoemIn this video, you’ll see me at the Memory Palace Bookshop I’m developing practicing the recitation of a univocalic poem by Christian Bök:
https://youtube.com/shorts/b6oFIOnAwng?feature=share
That’s from a fantastic book of poetry called Eunoia.
Example Two: ShakespeareThis video not only shows me reciting lines from Titus Andronicus. It includes a very important teaching point.
That’s because I also demonstrate reciting the lines forward and backward to help teach you how to more easily commit even the most difficult poem to memory using a process I call Recall Rehearsal:
https://youtu.be/nhjIkGu32CA?si=s6gIJz6Poq9Zpo6C&t=1380
Now, I regularly memorize Shakespeare.
But in the case of the example shared in the video above, I had a special purpose in mind.
I was doing it to reproduce the memory technique Anthony Hopkins describes in his autobiography. Here’s the full case study.
Example Three: Song LyricsIn this video, you’ll see and hear me singing a famous song called The Moon Represents My Heart in Chinese:
https://youtu.be/dCyPV6qfKkI
The entire song took just over forty minutes to commit to long-term memory.
Even though it’s been a few years since I sang the whole song, I still remember most of the lyrics to this day. Every once and awhile, I whip it out and it always brings a smile to my wife’s face.
The reason this Chinese poem set to music took a bit longer to memorize other poems I’ve memorized is because it’s in a foreign language that I was only just beginning to study at the time.
Example Four: Poetry Quoted in a SpeechWhen I wrote my TEDx Talk, I incorporated lines from a Sanskrit piece called the Ribhu Gita.
This was an interesting challenge because it called me to recall the speech and the poetry that had already been memorized.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM
This particular performance was a lot of fun, but also challenging due to the combination of a live audience, cameras and the fact that the world was starting to go into lockdown at the beginning of Covid.
I had a lot on my mind, but thanks to the memory techniques you’re about to discover, I still think the talk came off fairly well. It’s been seen over four million times now, so I must have done something right.
Example Five: Real-Time Poetry MemorizationIf you want to see me memorize in real time, check out this discussion with Guru Viking.
Steve, the host, throws Shakespeare at me and I memorize a few lines and discuss how I did it in real time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62IN_ngYH0
Now let’s get into the steps, many of which come directly from my premium course on memorizing poetry.
Step one: Use the Memory Palace TechniqueA Memory Palace is essential for memorizing poetry, or anything verbatim.
What is this technique?
A Memory Palace is a mental recreation of a familiar location.
For example, in the first video example above from the poem Eunoia, I used my mom’s home from where she lived years ago.
I moved from the master bedroom to the kitchen and living room, to a few other bedrooms and finally out the door and down the driveway in front of the house.
How to Memorize a Poem in an Hour (or Less) Using This TechniqueUsing the method of loci, you place mnemonic images along a mental journey.
As I just mentioned, I started in one room, then moved to the kitchen, the living room, and so forth. On each corner and wall, I placed an association.
For example, for the line, “Awkward grammar appals a craftsman,” I placed an image of Apollinaire in a state of awe changing into being appalled.
Now, what exactly it means to “place” an association along a journey in an imaginary version of a building can feel a bit abstract in the beginning.
But basically, you’re taking a corner, a wall or a piece of furniture and elaborating it with strange, exaggerated ideas and feelings that remind you of each word of the poem or song lyric.
You can do it in any language and if you look at the Guru Viking video above, you’ll see me demonstrate exactly how and why it works in any language. In that particular example, I use the wall behind me for Shakespeare in the same way I memorize Sanskrit phrases when memorizing ancient mantras.
To Speed Up The Process When You’re Just Starting Out, Do ThisLearning to use the Memory Palace technique can feel challenging in the beginning.
To reduce the cognitive load, I suggest making a quick sketch of a familiar location that you will turn into a Memory Palace.
You don’t have to be artistic. I don’t try to make fine art of it at all.
To wit, here’s a quick sketch of a bookstore in the Zamalek area of Cairo I have used many times to memorize poetry and other types of information:
A Memory Palace drawn on an index card to maximize its value as a mnemonic device. This one is based on a bookstore in Zamalek, a part of Cairo.The reason for drawing out the journey is to get it clear in your mind.
That way, you can spend more time on the next step.
But failing to simply draw a Memory Palace in advance can lead to a lot of unnecessary frustration.
That’s because you will ultimately wind up trying to encode the poem while developing the Memory Palace at the same time. To memorize any poem as quickly as possible, you need to separate the two activities.
Step Two: Lay Down Your Associations One Word At A Time (Most Of The Time)Shakespeare opens King Henry the Fifth like this:
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold our swelling scene!When I memorized these lines, I started at station one with an image of the constellation Orion over the Statue of Liberty.
Using the pegword method, I associated Orion with O. Then, using the general concept of a woman that inspires people, I placed the Statue of Liberty in the Memory Palace.
In this case, the Memory Palace was a workplace where I was writing curriculum in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
You might choose a completely different image for the words “muse of fire.”
But the technical point is that you want to find a direct sound and spelling correspondence that is:
Based on ideas and images already in your memoryMakes sense to youMaking sure that the associations you choose are personal is part of what scientists call active recall.
For me personally, Lady Liberty is an especially apt choice not only because she represents inspiration, as the muses. She’s also holding a torch, which helps me encode the word “fire.”
But I also lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn for awhile and often crossed the Manhattan Bridge. This makes the memory of the Statue of Liberty even stronger for me, and another reason why you need to think about the images that make most sense for you.
How to Associate “Little Words” for Rapid MemorizationWhat about a word like “that”? Tricky and abstract, right?
Not really. You just need to pick an association that makes sense to you while sounding or seeming as close as possible to the target information as you can get it.
In the case of the Henry the Fifth line, I just took “th” and linked it with Thor and then used rhyming to have him put on a hat in a dramatic way. Thor + hat = that.
When it comes to the Bök poem, there’s a part of the sequence (full poem here) where I used Thor with his hat again:
Awkward grammar appals a craftsman. A Dada bard
as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an
alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars
all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal).For a small word like “all,” I used the Punk Rock band All, but only in part. Drawing upon the mnemonic teaching of people like Peter of Ravenna, Jacobus Publicius and Giordano Bruno, I used the principle of reduction. Rather than imagine the entire band, or even an entire mascot, I just imagined the eyes of the mascot.
To memorize at speed, I suggest you practice this principle of reduction. Also develop what I call the Magnetic SRS in my full poetry course in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. By taking an hour or so to assign association to all the pronouns and other “operator” words like “that,” you won’t have to stop and come up with associations ever again.
The Magnetic SRS training in my full program goes into further detail. It will help you develop dozens of images for words that seem like they’ll be tricky or repetitive. Done well, they can be used repeatedly, but never cause confusion.
Step Three: Memorize Multiple Words When You CanMemorizing more than one word in a poem at a time is called mnemonic compression.
This term can mean more than one thing. But in this case, I’ve technically just given you a description of how compression works with the Statue of Liberty example. After Orion for O, she represents five words: “for a Muse of fire.”
In this case, it works because I’m familiar with the workings of English grammar.
But you can’t always get away with this kind of compression, especially when memorizing poetry in another language.
It’s just best to keep an eye out for compression opportunities as much you can.
When I memorized my TEDx talk using these techniques for speech memorization, thanks to compression, I loaded one station in my Memory Palace with up to 17 words using just 3-5 images (depending on how you count them).
Keep in mind that you don’t have to start with poems with long passages like the ones I included in my TEDx Talk.
A lot of people like to start with short Bible verses. I’ve put together a list of Bible verses to memorize that address the theme of memory if you’d like to select a few for practice.
Step Four: Use Intelligent, Creative RepetitionAs I mentioned above, rote learning is a real problem.
What you want instead is something called spaced repetition. It provides a simple means of reviewing memorized material on a schedule that keeps it in memory.
Different poems and lyrics will require different amounts of repetition, and it’s not easy to predict in advance how much content will require how much repetition.
However, there’s something called context-dependent memory. Basically, it gives you a boost when you use a lot of content frequently. Or read continually within particular categories of information.
So if you read literature and quote it often, you’ll probably need less repetition than someone who doesn’t.
And if you memorize the sonnet form more than free verse, you’ll likely develop a stronger and faster reliability because you’ve internalized its rules.
Creative Repetition for Long-Term MaintenanceFor most of us, poems will fade over time no matter what we do.
Fortunately, there are creative repetition strategies that can help make sure you maintain them.
One is to follow in the footsteps of geniuses.
For example, Anthony Hopkins keep common place books where they store and regularly revisit favorite poems. People like Thomas Jefferson used this strategy too.
Another strategy is to use reflective thinking to compare various poems you’ve memorized. You can do this from poem to poem or between poems and your favorite philosophy books, historical events, etc.
Finally, look for opportunities to recite the poems.
Even if you just quote isolated lines, this smaller recitation will help keep the full poem within your mental reach.
3 Alternative Ways To Memorize PoetryYou might be wondering if it’s possible to memorize poetry without using the Memory Palace technique.
Indeed, there are. Here are some options.
Rote RepetitionAlthough I personally don’t like how rote learning feels, it is an option you can explore.
It’s a slower option for most of us. But one simple way to get more mileage out of sheer repetition is to choose the time of day and location where you practice it strategically. You’ll need a lot of focus and concentration on top of sheer will power to keep repeating the same lines without the fun of mnemonics, so make sure you aren’t interrupted.
I’d also suggest focusing on shorter poems for use with rote. That way you can memorize more poems in their entirety and enjoy substantial accomplishments more often.
Cloze MethodsA cloze test involves showing yourself parts of a poem. As you read through the poem, you try and fill in the blanks. This activity can trigger some of the positive benefits of active recall.
Here’s an example of how you would apply the cloze test methodology to help yourself remember The Tyger by William Blake:
Tyger Tyger, burning _____,
In the _____ of the night;
What immortal ____ or ____,
Could _____ thy ______ ______?
Visual FlashcardsFinally, if you’re willing to make simple drawings, you can draw on flashcards.
This approach is kind of like a visual cloze test. Instead of hiding the word “bright” in the phrase “burning bright,” you would sketch an image that helps trigger the phrase.
I’ve done this a fair amount with memorizing the books of the Bible. It’s a fast and easy way to help the mind make connections without having to use a Memory Palace.
That said, drawing can take a lot of time. I would save this approach for when you feel like an experimental learning experience.
How to Practice Reciting Poetry from MemoryThere are three key ways that I practice reciting poetry, not only to ensure that they’re locked in long-term memory.
The point is also to get the lines as fluid as possible and bring out various parts you want to emphasize.
After all, it’s not fun to sound robotic. The point of poetry is to convey meaning and beauty, humor or to stimulate some kind of emotion.
One: Write the Poetry from MemoryAnother aspect of proper active recall practice is to call the information to mind by revisiting your associations in your Memory Palace, then write the words down.
When writing out what you’ve committed to memory, don’t worry about mistakes. If you catch yourself making a mistake, just scratch it out.
Then, once you’ve written as many lines as you can recall, test them against where the verse is written in a book or online.
Here’s an example of a test from another part of Eunoia I recently memorized:
At this point, I hadn’t memorized the entire poem and had to start a new journal. But the important point is to test in this exact manner so that you don’t fall into rote repetition.
Two: Recite VerballyAs demonstrated in several of the video examples above, I practice recalling the poetry verses from memory out loud.
This step is important because it gets the poetry into the muscle memory of the mouth.
And this is the best way to practice adding gravitas to your performance.
I suggest that you also recite the poetry out of order as you see in the Anthony Hopkins video above.
This will give each line primacy and recency using the serial positioning effect, as was codified by Hermann Ebbinghaus.
During the learning process, it can also be helpful to make up a little tune to go with the poetry.
Even if you don’t sing it later, there’s something to chanting and singsonging that aids memory. This is something Bruno notes in his memory guide, Cantus Circaeus (Song of Circe), available in this English translation.
Three: Recite MentallyIt’s also valuable to practice reciting what you’ve memorized purely in your mind.
You can do this solely by reciting the lines while moving through your Memory Palaces.
Or you can do it without thinking of the Memory Palace journey, which is a point you should practice as soon as possible.
If you are going to perform the poem live, it’s also helpful to imagine yourself delivering it live on camera or in front of an audience.
I’ve done all of these things and it has really helped make sure my performance is fluid. But it also creates that priceless feeling of preparation.
Your audience will appreciate your delivery much more as well.
Make Poetry Memorization Part of Your Daily LifeFinally, I’d like to discuss how to make poetry memorization a daily activity.
We’re all different, but I personally prefer to encode new poems during the morning.
This is simply because my energy is highest. Then I practice reciting in the evening.
You might find that you prefer the opposite pattern.
The key is to experiment, all based on having developed your mnemonic tools.
Plus, it only makes sense to have a lot of poetry that you like within reach. Along with having the right memory techniques for this kind of verbatim learning task.
That’s ultimately the most important tip of all. To get fast with memorizing poetry, you need to have your mnemonics prepped in advance.
If you’d like more help on how the Memory Palace technique and related mnemonic strategies will help you memorize poems of any length, please consider signing up for my FREE Memory Improvement Course:
It will take you through developing Memory Palaces for memorizing any poem at speed.
Those poems can be as short as a simple song or as long as the Bible (which as I discuss in this tutorial, is possible to memorize).
Or you can memorize songs from your weird uncle like I often did… even if I can’t always repeat them in polite company.
Frankly, I wish I’d known these techniques back when I was young. Not only because I’d remember more of the words to the songs he sang.
I’d remember more about him too.
And that’s ultimately the greatest thing about memorizing poetry.
We’re memorizing the ideas, feelings and images that impacted others, literally integrating ourselves with the stuff of life through memory.
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Imagine being able to recall names, speeches or the key points from complex books with ease. That’s the power you’ll enjoy after you use today’s tips to master the method of loci.
Also known as the Memory Palace technique or Mind Palace, this approach to learning leverages your spatial memory to help you transform even the most abstract ideas into unforgettable mental associations.
You’ll be able to recall both the mnemonic association and the target information because of how this technique helps you anchor them in familiar locations.
However, there are a few aspects to the technique that a lot of people miss, a key one being that the method of loci is actually part of a larger equation.
Your loci are meant to be used in combination with mnemonic associations and a rehearsal process people now call spaced repetition. One of the earliest descriptions of loci being used with associations and review patterns was given by Aristotle, and his approach is very powerful.
On this page, I’ll give you the complete, no-nonsense guide to how this system works, drawn from history, my personal experience as the founder of the Magnetic Memory Method and acknowledged demonstrator of these techniques.
I used them to help me pass university, learn languages, deliver a very popular TEDx Talk and more.
Fortunately, I learned from the best, including Tony Buzan while he was still alive. And I’ve also learned a lot from the thousands of people I’ve taught.
So whether you’re just starting or refining your practice, this guide gives you the historical foundations, practical tactics and real-world examples you need to make the method of loci your own.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVr7K7x6Bo
What Is The Method of Loci?Loci is the plural of locus, meaning a place, location, or as I prefer to call it a “Magnetic Station.”
For example, have a look at this image of one of my Memory Palaces:
Each of the tritons is an individual locus. The red string shows the journey between the loci. And that’s ultimately what the method of loci is: a strategy for stringing together a number of places along a journey used to help us recall information.
Because this method helps you move across a series of locations, the technique is synonymous with a technique called the “Journey Method” as well as âMemory Palaceâ and âMind Palace.â
To help you see exactly how it works, check out my Memory Palace Guide and watch the Memory Palace walkthrough video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STlYIiF9RzI
Core Uses for The Method of LociAlthough many people think the technique is restricted to memorizing lists, that’s just not true… lists are involved, but with a twist.
That’s because all of the uses below essentially involve committing lists to memory. You can use this technique to:
Memorize speeches (a list of sentences)Learn monologues as an actorCommit numbers to memory (including up to 100,000 digits)Learn languagesRemember namesPass examsWin memory competitionsSet recordsRead and understand more thoroughlyEnjoy a greater quality of mindOrigins of the Term and Other Uses:
From Simonides to SonglinesThe terms “loci method” or “method of loci” mean at their core that we’re turning space itself into a mnemonic device. In other words, you can think of this memory tool as a “location-based mnemonic.”
No one knows exactly where the term comes from. But memory expert Frances Yates details how the Greek tradition of memory entered into the medieval world through Rome in her book The Art of Memory.
The Greeks attributed the loci technique to Simonides of Ceos, but as Lynne Kelly demonstrates in The Memory Code, it’s actually much older.
In fact, Aboriginals and other cultures around the world have been using the sky and landscapes to help them remember information since prehistoric times. Using the sky as part of the method of loci is sometimes called a “Songline,” just one of several ancient memory techniques.
It was probably the Romans who influenced the development of the term Roman Room, which is yet another variation of the term method of loci.
But in my view, the earliest and most thorough description is found in Aristotle. Yates discusses it, but does not fully understand why Aristotle labels each locus with an alphabetical letter as I share in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3N2i73LKt0
The reason Aristotle does this is because he’s teaching you his version of spaced repetition. Noting that the exact text has been corrupted, here’s an extract of what Aristotle says.
I am taking this from my version of Aristotle’s On Memory, where I also provided ample commentary of this work:
It often happens that you cannot recall at the moment, but can search for what you want and find it… But you must seize hold of the starting point. For this reason, some use places (or loci)…
Then, when discussing the act of recollecting from loci, Aristotle says:
Generally speaking, the middle point seems to be a good point to start from: for one will recollect when one comes to this point, if not before, or else one will not recollect from any other.
For instance, suppose one were thinking of a series, which may be represented by ABCDEFGH: if one does not recall what is wanted at E, yet one does at H. From that point it is possible to travel in either direction, that is either to D or towards F. Suppose one is seeking for either G or F, one will recollect on arriving at C, if one wants to G or F.
Yates finds this confusing, and admits that she never actually tried the techniques. Richard Sorabji also admits his confusion in Aristotle on Memory, one of my favorite books of all time. But it’s not clear to me whether or not he ever tried the techniques.
How the Method of Loci Works to Assist Spaced RepetitionIn my interpretation, Aristotle is describing a process of revisiting your loci in different orders.
By using this specific version, you can increase your retention, because you have revisited the information forward, but also from the middle to the end and by applying a few other patterns.
I might be seeing what I want to see in this passage, but as a long-time professional mnemonist with decades of personal practice and professional teaching, I believe that if we were to ever find an uncorrupted text of Aristotle’s work on memory, we would find that he’s describing principles similar to those described by Hermann Ebbinghaus thousands of years later.
These patterns create the primacy effect, recency effect and serial-positioning effect.
You can spend a lifetime studying the memory science. In brief, these patterns provide essentially the same kind of science-backed review that is built into spaced repetition software like Anki, which I have covered in detail in this guide.
The important point is that our species has been using the core principles of the method of loci for a very long time. And they have all been well-demonstrated by the scientists of our time.
For more on how spaced repetition worked in the ancient world and our time, please see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CthE_Napjg
Why the Method of Loci WorksOur ancestors noticed that we naturally tend to remember where things happened. We now call this spatial memory and training specifically to pair information more tightly with locations has been shown in scientific studies to produce superior memory.
You can test how the method works quite easily by simply thinking back to a location from your childhood or youth.
For example, think about where you went to elementary school or high school. Mentally walk around. Most of us will be able to reconstruct a fair amount of these buildings.
As an additional exercise, see how many teachers and friends you can name by thinking specifically of the classrooms where you spent time with them.
Or, if you find reaching that far back is too foggy, think about the rooms and hallways of your workplace or even your home.
The Method of Loci in Action: Two Quick ExamplesTo give you a quick example from my life when I needed to quickly use the technique to memorize the name of a philosopher named Rawls and a few of his ideas, I went through my memory and recalled that I had a grade nine science teacher named Mr. Ralston.
I instantly used the method of loci to chart out a journey in Mr. Ralston’s classroom.
In other words, I linked one name starting with R to another. This additional strategy is called mnemonic linking and you can use it not only create a journey, but have that journey remind you of where you placed the information.
Likewise, the other day I started memorizing a poem. The first word starts with the letter P so I chose my Parkcrest Elementary School Memory Palace.
I sketched it out quickly, numbered the loci and started memorizing the poem.
Because of the link between P in the first word of the poem and the P in the first name of where the loci are laid out, the method of loci is much stronger in practice.
The numbered loci in my Parkcrest Elementary Memory Palace
How To Get Started:
Simple to Advanced with More Than One Method of Loci ExampleSuccess begins with the decision to get started and learn the methodology.
But sometimes people feel like they’re not familiar with enough locations, or their past is too foggy.
Rest assured, you’re not alone.
Personally, whenever I get stuck on how to best use the technique, I mind map out as many method of loci examples as I can.
Or, I draw out the alphabet and name as many locations as I can, one per letter. For example:
A = Apple StoreB = BakeryC = CafeD = Dentist officeEtc.Once this list has been compiled, draw out each area and label it with your loci. Here’s an example Memory Palace drawing from one of my students in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass:
As you can see, my student has numbered each locus.
He also has linked his goal alphabetically to the location. He’s memorizing Morse Code, so has chosen Mitchell’s home.
This is one of the parts Yates misses in her analysis of this technique in The Art of Memory. It’s also not as well-covered in the more recent Moonwalking with Einstein either.
But let’s move from the basics problems introduced by many Memory Palace books (other than these fantastic texts you should read).
Instead, let’s take things a step further right there and now.
I want to help you learn the loci method well and in a way that is completely stress-free.
That’s why I’ve put together these nine practical tips that will help you practice the technique once you’ve learned it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tNZZEt83Jw
#1: Learn To Use The Method of Loci SimplyThis means exactly what you think. Just keep it simple when you’re first starting out.
Donât overcomplicate or overthink the loci technique.
Itâs easy to overthink and analyze, of course. Itâs in our nature, right? Well, we can still scrub overthinking out.
To make learning this memory technique simple, start with just 5-10 loci. Yes, you can build up to hundreds, if not thousands of loci, but what use will they be if you don’t know how to reliably use just a handful?
Keep it simple and then build up to more advanced mental journeys by following the next step.
#2: Add Complexity To Your Method of Loci Strategy As Your Skills GrowJust because we want to keep things simple, doesn’t mean we’re going to remain simple forever. Adding complexity as your skills grow is important.
For example, your first simple Memory Palace of your childhood bedroom can grow to include:
Your entire homeYour blockThe walk to schoolThe drive to workChurches, cafes, art galleriesOther Memory Palace examples where the method of loci has been usedBut before you expand, you’ve got to get good with just one execution of the method of loci, ideally by drawing out the journey from station to station by hand.
That means starting with your existing competence. Don’t overcomplicate things.
With practice, you will see that there are some places where simplicity will always rule and complexity is not desirable.
Ever heard of the phrase, âJust because you can, doesnât mean you should?â
That’s a great rule of thumb to keep in mind when using this memory method.
An Example of a Complex Use of the Loci MethodOne of the longest pieces I’ve attempted to memorize is the Atma Bodha.
To accommodate all of the verses, I sketched out all the loci based on a neighborhood I grew up in:
This pre-numbered Memory Palace example shows you how I prepared to memorize the Atma Bodha in full. I know the text and the number of each verse in an ancient Sanskrit text thanks to my favorite memory technique.All of the loci are numbered and the journey is logical.
It’s also all based on my memory of those locations. This means that I haven’t memorized anything in order to assign the journey. I’ve only selected those areas that I remember.
In your practice with the technique, that may mean missing out a number of houses or entire streets.
This is perfectly fine. You’re better off using the technique based on what is in your memory.
#3: Use Different Sized JourneysOnce you have grown your practice to where you have built several palaces, you’ll want to start using them. But not all information is created equally, and this is where developing a variety of variously sized locations comes in handy.
Simonides of CeosThe matter of size when using the method of loci goes at least as far back as Simonides of Ceos, who is thought to have discovered the technique after recalling the names of people at a banquet after they died in a tragic earthquake.
His use of the technique was obviously not that big, since banquet halls in the ancient world probably weren’t as big as our contemporary shopping malls.
Nonetheless, writers like Thomas Aquinas, Giordano Bruno and Matteo Ricci all recommended small distances between the stations.
Some of the ancient texts are very specific and say you should have five feet between stations. Others recommend much more space.
Consider this, however:
These ancient memory experts lived in a different era.
They did not have the compact buildings and roadways that we enjoy now. They definitely didn’t have this great method of loci book list from which to learn the ideas we have in our time.
If they had, I believe our ancestors would have made very different choices when using the kinds of memory techniques Boris Konrad used to establish Guinness World Records and Anastasia Woolmer used to combine memorization techniques with dance.
You can use very big journeys, or small ones. You can use entire buildings or your body.
The point is to know the purpose of why you’re using the method of loci.
You can have shorter and longer journeys and more complex and simpler journeys. You can have a variety and have each serve you differently, so long as you’re clear about what you want these spatial memory tools to help you remember better.
Have I tried using Mega Mind Palaces myself? You bet, but always with mixed results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfAbOvR0zfE
#4: Use White SpaceâLess is more.â
While it can be useful to have very condensed Memory Palaces, and those can be filled and overloaded with tons of stations, it can also be very beneficial to see what happens when you have less. Try working in a manner thatâs spaced out, instead of overloaded.
You can apply this idea to not only your use of the method of loci, but what you encode when using it. Memorize less, encode less, and see if youâre able to have more recall from focusing on fewer pieces of information.
The goal is to avoid the âDr. Faust effect.â
The legend of Faust warns us against a downfall caused by a greed for all knowledge. He was unsatisfied with a mastery of law, logic, science and theology, and turned to the dark arts, where he eventually was damned after he sold his soul to Mephistopheles for more knowledge.
Instead of just collecting information, and never feeling satiated, why not be satisfied with the big ideas, and having an appreciation of the “white space”? Youâll find that your mind will fill in the blanks and you donât need that overload of information. The white space will take care of itself. Let your Memory Palaces breathe.
#5: Complete Both Short Term And Long Term ProjectsTo keep your practice fresh, have both short and long term projects you are working towards.
A classic short term project is to have a daily run through of memorizing playing cards. Keep a deck handy (maybe beside your coffee pot in the morning, or near your reading nook) so you can shuffle and memorize a handful in your downtime.
For a longer term project, this may be learning a new language, studying human anatomy or memorizing a collection of poetry.
Toggling these two projects will keep you from becoming bored and burnt out with a singular goal.
#6: Explore Indoor vs. Outdoor OptionsAs you toggle between short and long term projects, explore using indoor and outdoor locations for your memory journeys.
As an alternative to viewing your memory tools as simply one large Mind Palace, what if you thought of it as a collection of smaller locations?
Okay, Kevin… Not that far outside!For example, a home is a collection of rooms, and a room is a collection of areas and corners. A park can be seen as a playground area, hiking trail, community pool.
(Or you can skydive and wander your Memory Palaces like Kevin Richardson does while using Recall Rehearsal for learning Japanese with mnemonics.)
Be flexible and bring a sense of playfulness to using this memory technique. It will be far more beneficial as you develop living and growing entities using the method of loci instead of a static, fixed creation.
For more on using outdoor locations, check out my discussion with Lynne Kelly on the craft of memory.
#7: Understand That The Method Of Loci Creates Pegs To Which You Can Add PegsThink of each spot you create using the method of loci as a peg to which you can add pegs. In other words, each is a space to which you can add a peg.
When people first get started with memory techniques they may see these tools as mutually exclusive, instead of elements that can be used in partnership.
Yet, the Peg System works exactly how you would imagine, pegging or linking one thing to another. Building upon what you do know, you connect the new information to it in your mind.
(No, peg system is not that different from the pegword method, but it’s worth exploring both.)
#8: Persist with S.I.P.Now even though Iâve broken down mastery of the Method of Loci down to nine simple tips, it may not always be easy peasy. You will encounter challenges along the way. Thereâs just no getting around it. Success with these methods is not about not having those setbacks, but that you know how to deal with them.
And one of the best ways to deal with those challenges is to make sure you have a good library of memory training.
Use all of the information you have available to you. Utilize it constantly and consistently. Take S.I.P. to heart:
S = Study the techniques for yourself consistently over time
I = Implement what you learn from your study of memory techniques and its tradition.
P = Practice these techniques with information that improves your life.
Be ever vigilant in tweaking your practice and improving it. As Nicholas Castle found, this practice can release you from some big problems in life, as it did with his PTSD.
#9: Keep A Memory JournalFinally, keep a memory journal. It is crucial to have a place, a record of what youâre doing, how youâre doing it. Only then are you able to proceed and know where youâre going if you know where youâve come from.
Although you could use digital tools for better memory journaling, I personally don’t see the attraction.
Instead, consider going back to âkeep it simple.â
When it comes to memory training exercises in a world overloaded by digital temptations, sticking with traditional methods is itself a discipline well worth developing.
#10: Treat Using Your Loci Like A GameOne of the best ways to enjoy the process of using this memory technique is to not take things so seriously.
When I invented my game, Memory Detective and wrote the memory-themed mystery novels Flyboy and Vitamin X, this was my attempt to help people maximize their own fun with the learning experience. You can read my novel and learn the techniques along with the detective. Or when you play my game, you can get passive memory exercise and active memory exercise in a fun community.
The memory competitions also bring a level of gamification to memory training, or you can create your own process. For example, when using the loci method, you can set a timer.
Or you can roll dice to determine how many of your loci you’re going to use during a single learning session.
The important thing is to have fun so that you can learn and practice memory techniques in ways that you find mentally stimulating.
Additional Benefits of Using The Method of LociPeople report many benefits of using this particular memory method.
One of the most exciting developments in recent years comes from Dr. Tim Dalgleish. He’s shown that using the method of loci can help alleviate symptoms of depression. I’ve enjoyed this benefit personally, something I reported on at length in my most popular book, The Victorious Mind.
Other benefits include confidence, getting a raise or promotion, or even starting a career as a professional mnemonist.
I’ve also had many of my students on the podcast who have:
Mastered JapaneseBecome proficient in nursing knowledgeExperienced healing from PTSDAlthough many people come to the method of loci in order to pass exams, the outcomes are incredibly diverse.
Getting The Method of Loci Right The First TimeA memory journal also helps you get it right the first time. I highly recommend that you draw when using the method of loci. No software. I’m talking about using pencil or ink on paper.
Sure, method of loci software might be an option for some, but for the majority of us, I think it reduces our abilities. We need to train our brains to think spatially and in concrete terms.
This was one of the key points covered in Rhetorica Ad Herennium. Although a lot of it covers strategies for delivering speeches, it also teaches the method of loci. In fact, it’s one of the key memory training books.
Why is it so important, especially given that it first appeared circa 90 BCE?
Because it essentially nailed exactly what the technique is and how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3rtsx8mvYU
However, it doesn’t exactly tell you, as I do, to sketch your Memory Palaces.
I recommend you do this because even a rudimentary drawing helps you quickly “see” your Memory Palace journeys better in your mind.
This simple step is not about being an artist. Any simple sketch will do.
It’s helpful because when create them visually on the page, you can easily strategize each station before using the Method of Loci. That way, you never need to “renovate” your Memory Palaces later.
Plus, simple sketches help you use Memory Palaces even if you cannot visualize them. That’s been my case for a long time, but I still manage to use the technique thanks to sketching.
I know that this can seem like a lot of work in the beginning. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just start with just one of the tips on this page.
See how implementing it improves the ease and speed of which you can create palaces and progress through the Method of Loci.
Mix and match these principles to maximize your efforts and youâll see just how effortless the process can be with practice over time. Then move on to these more advanced Method of Loci training exercises.
Method of Loci FAQOver the years, I’ve fielded hundreds of questions.
Here are my best answers to those questions that are most important when it comes to mastering this mnemonic device.
What is the Method of Loci?It is a well-proven memory technique that helps you recall a wide variety of information by linking it to two “free” resources that are already in your memory:
A locationSome kind of associationUnless you have an issue with the place cells in your brain, like Christopher Kemp has reported on, your memory naturally remembers rooms, paths, landmarks and other locations.
After using the technique in combination with elaborative encoding, when you want to recall information as part of learning, you simply mentally walk the same route you developed and decode the associations you placed on each locus.
At its core, you’re using physical space to help you learn and retain information.
Is the Method of Loci the same as the Memory Palace/Mind Palace/Journey Method?Effectively, yes.
Some people do use “journey method” to describe loci they’ve placed outdoors exclusively, however.
The flourishing of terminology can be frustrating, especially since people also use terms like “Memory Castle” or memory spaces, on top of Roman Room or even Virtual Memory Palaces.
So long as you understand that the core idea is to give your mind an organizational structure, the exact term you use doesn’t matter that much.
How do you choose suitable loci?Unless you want to create more cognitive load by memorizing locations, the whole point of the technique is that each locus should already be in your memory.
You’re simply drawing from the resources you already have.
More technically, it’s helpful to:
Rely on walls and corners because, unlike furniture and wall decorations, they do not move.Avoid overcrowding a space with the amount of loci you choose.Select places you feel positive about so your use of the technique does not bring up any bad feelings or sensations.How many loci should you start with?There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but most rooms easily allow for ten and create an elegant and easy to navigate mental journey.
The four cornersThe four wallsThe ceilingThe floorYou can use this simple encoding principle in almost every room in existence. The approach is just as good for beginners as it is for advanced users of the technique.
What are the most common beginner mistakes?One of the biggest mistakes is waiting to understand the technique before diving in to take action with it.
Another mistake is not sketching out your journeys. Although it is possible to use the technique purely in your mind, you will still save time by making quick sketches because you’ll process the journey differently.
Not only will you avoid having to renovate the journey later, you’ll also see opportunities you might have otherwise missed.
Fearing mistakes or trying to “get it right” the first time is another major error. In reality, we all need to make mistakes to learn.
Even the most skilled practitioners still make mistakes anyhow, but they always treat them as opportunities for analysis.
If you’d like help experimenting with the technique and are willing to learn by the much needed trial and error all skills require, grab my free course now:
It gives you several video tutorials and worksheets along with exercises that will have you mastering the method of loci in no time flat.
The best part?
You can submit your sketch for feedback. I love helping people by looking at what they’ve done so they can optimize.
So what do you say?
Are you ready to lock in your loci and start memorizing with confidence?
Make it happen!
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It’s actually a good thing that some books push you to the edge of your ability to understand.
But there’s no doubting the fact that dense, abstract and jargon-filled works can push you so far into the fog of frustration that you cannot blame yourself for giving up.
But here’s the truth:
You don’t have to walk away frustrated and confused.
I’m going to share with you a number of practical strategies that will help you fill in the gaps of your reading process.
Because that’s usually the real problem:
It’s not your intelligence.
Nor is it that the world is filled with books “above your level.”
I ultimately don’t believe in “levels” as such.
But as someone who taught reading courses at Rutgers and Saarland University, I know from experience that many learners need to pick up a few simple steps that will strengthen how they approach reading difficult books.
And in this guide, you’ll learn how to read challenging books and remember what they say.
I’m going to go beyond generic advice too. That way, you can readily diagnose:
Why certain books feel so hardUse pre-reading tactics that prime your brain to deal with difficulties effectivelyApply active reading techniques to lock in understanding fasterLeverage accelerated learning tools that are quick to learnUse Artificial Intelligence to help convert tough convent into lasting knowledge without worrying about getting duped by AI hallucinationsWhether you’re tacking philosophy, science, dense fiction or anything based primarily in words, the reading system you’ll learn today will help you turn confusion into clarity.
By the end, even the most intimidating texts will surrender their treasures to your mind.
Ready?
Let’s break it all down together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9HLbY4jsFg
Why Some Books Feel “Too Hard” (And What That Really Means)You know exactly how it feels and so do I.
You sit down with a book that people claim is a classic or super-important. But within a few pages, your brain fogs over and you’re completely lost.
More often than not, through glazed eyes, you start to wonder… did this author go out of his or her way to make this difficult? Are they trying to show off with all these literary pyrotechnics? Or is there a deliberate conspiracy to confuse readers like me?
Rest assured. These questions are normal and well worth asking.
The difficulty you might feel is never arbitrary in my experience. But there’s also no “single origin” explanation for why some books feel easier than others.
It’s almost always a combination of factors, from cognitive readiness, lived experience, emotions and your physical condition throughout the day.
This means that understanding why individual texts resist your understanding needs to be conducted on a case-by-case basis so you can move towards mastering anything you want to read.
Cognitive Load: The Brain’s Processing “Stop Sign”“Cognitive load” probably needs no definition. The words are quite intuitive. You start reading something and it feels like someone is piling heavy bricks directly on top of your brain, squishing everything inside.
More specifically, these researchers explain that what’s getting squished is specifically your working memory, which is sometimes called short-term memory.
In practical terms, this means that when a book suddenly throws a bunch of unfamiliar terms at you, your working memory has to suddenly deal with abstract concepts, completely new words or non-linear forms of logic.
All of this increases your cognitive load, but it’s important to note that there’s no conspiracy. In Just Being Difficult: Academic Writing in the Public Arena, a variety of contributors admit that they often write for other specialists.
Although it would be nice to always compose books and articles for general readers, it’s not laziness. They’re following the codes of their discipline, which involves shorthand to save everyone time.
Yes, it can also signal group membership and feel like an intellectual wall if you’re new to this style, but it’s simply a “stop sign” for your brain. And wherever there are stop signs, there are also alternative routes.
Planning Your Detour “Roadmap” Into Difficult BooksLet me share a personal example by way of sharing a powerful technique for making hard books easier to read.
A few years ago I decided I was finally going to read Kant. I had the gist of certain aspects of his philosophy, but a few pages in, I encountered so many unfamiliar terms, I knew I had to obey the Cognitive Load Stop Sign and take a step back.
To build a roadmap into Kant, I searched Google in a particular way. Rather than a search term like, “Intro to Kant,” I entered this tightened command instead:
Filetype:PDF syllabus Kant
These days, you can ask an LLM in more open language to simply give you links to the syllabi of the most authoritative professors who teach Kant. I’d still suggest that you cross-reference what you get on Google, however.
If you’re hesitant about using either Google or AI, it’s also a great idea to visit a librarian in person to help you. Or, you can read my post about using AI for learning with harming your memory to see if it’s time to update your approach.
Narrowing Down Your OptionsOne way or another, the reason to consult the world’s leading professors is that their syllabi will provide you with:
Foundational textsCore secondary literatureCommentaries from qualified sourcesEssential historical referencesOnce you’ve looked over a few syllabi, look through the table of contents of a few books on Amazon or Google Books. Then choose:
1-2 foundational texts to read before the challenging target book you want to master1-2 articles or companion texts to read alongsideIn this way, you’ve turned difficulty into a path, not an obstacle.
Pre-Reading Strategies That Warm Up Your Reading MusclesA lot of the time, the difficulty people feel when reading has nothing to do with the book. It’s just that you’re diving into unfamiliar territory without testing the waters first.
Here are some simple ways to make unfamiliar books much easier to get into.
Prime Like a ProTo make books easier to read, you can perform what is often called “priming” in the accelerated learning community. It is also sometimes called “pre-reading” and as this research article discusses, its success has been well-demonstrated.
The way I typically perform priming is simple. Although some books require a slight change to the pattern, I typically approach each new book by reading:
The back coverThe indexThe colophon pageThe conclusion or afterwordThe most interesting or relevant chapterThe introductionThe rest of the bookActivate Prior KnowledgeSometimes I will use a skimming and scanning strategy after reading the index to quickly familiarize myself with how an author approaches a topic with which I’m already familiar. This can help raise interest, excitement and tap into the power of context-dependent memory.
For example, I recently started reading Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht.
Since the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno comes up multiple times, I was able to draw up a kind of context map of the books themes by quickly going through those passages.
Take a Picture WalkBarbara Oakley and Terence Sejnjowski share a fantastic strategy in Learning How to Learn.
Before reading, simply go through a book and look at all the illustrations, tables, charts and diagrams.
It seems like a small thing. But it gives your brain a “heads up” about upcoming visual information that you may need to process than prose.
I used to find visual information like this difficult, but after I started taking picture walks, I’m now excited to read “towards” these elements.
If still find them challenging to understand, I apply a tip I learned from Tony Buzan that you might like to try:
Rather than struggle to interpret a chart or illustration, reproduce it in your own hand. Here’s an example of how I did this when studying spaced repetition:
As a result, I learned the graph and its concepts quickly and have never forgotten it.
Build a Pre-Reading Ritual That Fits YouThere’s no one-sized-fits-all strategy, so you need to experiment with various options.
The key is to reduce cognitive load by giving your mind all kinds of ways of understanding what a book contains.
If it helps, you can create yourself a checklist that you slip into the challenging books on your list. That way, you’ll have both a bookmark and a protocol as you develop your own pre-reading style.
Active Reading Techniques That Boost ComprehensionActive reading involves deliberately applying mental activities while reading. These can include writing in the margins of your books, questioning, preparing summaries and even taking well-time breaks between books.
Here’s a list of my favorite active reading strategies with ideas on how you can implement them.
Using Mnemonics While ReadingOn the whole, I take notes while reading and then apply a variety of memory techniques after.
But to stretch my skills, especially when reading harder books, I start the encoding process earlier. Instead of just taking notes, I’ll start applying mnemonic images.
I start early because difficult terms often require a bit more spaced repetition.
To do this yourself, the key is to equip yourself with a variety of mnemonic methods, especially:
The Memory Palace techniqueThe Pegword MethodThe Major SystemThe PAO SystemAnd in some cases, you may want to develop a symbol system, such as if you’re studying physics or programming.
Once you have these mnemonic systems developed, you can apply them in real time.
For example, if you come across names and dates, committing them to memory as you read can help you keep track of a book’s historical arc.
This approach can be especially helpful when reading difficult books because authors often dump a lot of names and dates. By memorizing them as you go, you reduce the mental load of having to track it all.
For even more strategies you can apply while reading, check out my complete Mnemonics Dictionary.
Strategic QuestioningWhether you take notes or memorize in real-time, asking questions as you go makes a huge difference.
Even if you don’t come up with answers, continually interrogating the book will open up your brain.
The main kinds of questions are:
Evaluative questions (checking that the author uses valid reasoning and address counterarguments)Analytical questions (assessing exactly how the arguments unfold and questioning basic assumptions)Synthetic questions (accessing your previous knowledge and looking for connections with other books and concepts)Intention questions (interrogating the author’s agenda and revealing any manipulative rhetoric)One medieval tool for questioning you can adopt is the memory wheel.
Although it’s definitely old-fashioned, you’ll find that it helps you rotate between multiple questions.
Even if they are as simple as who, what, where, when, how and why questions, you’ll have a mental mnemonic device that helps ensure you don’t miss any of them.
Re-reading StrategiesAlthough these researchers seem to think that re-reading is not an effective strategy, I could not live without it.
There are three key kinds of re-reading I recommend.
Verbalize Complexity to Tame ItThe first is to simply go back and read something difficult to understand out loud. You’d be surprised how often it’s not your fault. The author has just worded something in a clunky manner and speaking the phrasing clarifies everything.
Verbatim Memorization for ComprehensionThe second strategy is to memorize the sentence or even an entire passage verbatim. That might seem like a lot of work, but this tutorial on memorizing entire passages will make it easy for you.
Even if verbatim memorization takes more work, it allows you to analyze the meaning within your mind. You’re no longer puzzling over it on paper, continuing to stretch your working memory.
No, you’ve effectively expanded at least a part of your working memory by bypassing it altogether. You’ve ushered the information into long-term memory.
I’m not too shy to admit that I have to do this sometimes to understand everything from the philosophy in Sanskrit phrases to relatively simple passages from Shakespeare.
As I shared in my recent discussion of actor Anthony Hopkins’ memory, I couldn’t work out what “them” referred to in a particular Shakespeare play.
But after analyzing the passage in memory, it was suddenly quite obvious.
Rhythmical Re-readingThe third re-reading strategy is something I shared years ago in my post detailing 11 reasons you should re-read at least one book per month.
I find this approach incredibly helpful because no matter how good you get at reading and memory methods, even simple books can be vast ecosystems.
By revisiting difficult books at regular intervals, you not only get more out of them. You experience them from different perspectives and with the benefit of new contexts you’ve built in your life over time.
In other words, treat your reading as an infinite game and never assume that you’ve comprehended everything. There’s always more to be gleaned.
Other Benefits of Re-readingYou’ll also improve your pattern recognition by re-treading old territory, leading to more rapid recognition of those patterns in new books. Seeing the structures, tropes and other tactics in difficult books opens them up. But without regularly re-reading books, it can be difficult to perceive what these forms are and how authors use them.
To give you a simple example of a structure that appears in both fiction and non-fiction, consider in media res, or starting in the middle.
When you spot an author using this strategy, it can immediately help you read more patiently. And it places the text in the larger tradition of other authors who use that particular technique.
For even more ideas that will keep your mind engaged while tackling tough books, feel free to go through my fuller article on 7 Active Reading Strategies.
Category Coloring & Developing Your Own Naming System For Complex MaterialI don’t know about you, but I do not like opening a book only to find it covered in highlighter marks. I also don’t like highlighting books myself.
However, after practicing mind mapping for a few years, I realized that there is a way to combine some of its coloring principles with the general study principles of using Zettelkasten and flashcards.
Rather than passively highlighting passages that seem interesting at random, here’s an alternative approach you can take to your next tour through a complicated book.
Category ColoringIt’s often helpful to read with a goal. For myself, I decided to tackle a hard book called Gödel Escher Bach through the lens of seven categories. I gave each a color:
Red = ConceptGreen = ProcessOrange = FactBlue = Historical ContextYellow = PersonPurple = School of Thought or IdeologyBrown = Specialized TerminologyExample Master Card to the Categorial Color Coding MethodTo emulate this method, create a “key card” or “master card” with your categories on it alongside the chosen color. Use this as a bookmark as you read.
Then, before writing down any information from the book, think about the category to which it belongs. Make your card and then apply the relevant color.
Obviously, you should come up with your own categories and preferred colors. The point is that you bring the definitions and then apply them consistently as you read and extract notes.
This will help bring structure to your mind because you’re creating your own nomenclature or taxonomy of information.
You are also using chunking, a specific mnemonic strategy I’ve written about at length in this post on chunking as a memory tool. Once you’re finished a book, you can extract all the concepts and memorize them independently if you like.
And if you emulate the strategy seen on the pictured example above, I’ve included the page number on each card. That way, I can place the cards back in the order of the book.
Using this approach across multiple books, you will soon spot cross-textual patterns with greater ease.
The catch is that you cannot allow this technique to become activity for activity’s sake. You also don’t want to wind up creating a bunch of informational “noise.”
Before capturing any individual idea on a card and assigning it to a category, ask yourself:
Why is this information helpful, useful or critical to my goal?Will I really use it again?Where does it belong within the categories?If you cannot answers these questions, either move on to the next point. Or reframe the point with some reflective thinking so that you can contextualize it.
This warning aside, it’s important not to let perfectionism creep into your life. Knowing what information matters does take some practice.
To speed up your skills with identifying critical information, please read my full guide on how to find the main points in books and articles. Although AI can certainly help these days, you’ll still need to do some work on your own.
Do Not Let New Vocabulary & Terminology Go Without MemorizationOne of the biggest mistakes I used to make, even as a fan of memory techniques, slowed me down much more than necessary.
I would come across a new term, look it up, and assume I’d remember it.
Of course, the next time I came across it, the meaning was still a mystery.
But when I got more deliberate, I not only remembered more words, but the knowledge surrounding the unfamiliar terms also stuck with greater specificity.
For example, in reading The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner, memorizing the ancient Greek word for will or volition (Prohairesis) pulled many more details about why she was mentioning it.
Lo and behold, I started seeing the word in more places and connecting it to other ancient Greek terms. Memorizing those as well started to create a “moat of meaning,” further protecting a wide range of information I’d been battling.
Understanding Why Vocabulary Blocks ComprehensionThe reason why memorizing words as you read is so helpful is that it helps clear out the cognitive load created by pausing frequently to look up words.
Even if you don’t stop to learn a new definition, part of your working memory gets consumed by the lack of familiarity.
I don’t always stop to learn new definitions while reading, but using the color category index card method you just discovered, it’s easy to organize unfamiliar words while reading. That way they can be tidily memorized later.
I have a full tutorial for you on how to memorize vocabulary, but here’s a quick primer.
Step One: Use a System for Capturing New Words & TermsWhether you use category coloring, read words into a recording app or email yourself a reminder, the key is to capture as you go.
Once your reading session is done, you can now go back to the vocabulary list and start learning it.
Step Two: Memorize the TermsI personally prefer the Memory Palace technique. It’s great for memorizing words and definitions.
You can use the Pillar Technique with the word at the top and the definition beneath it.
Or you can use the corners for the words and the walls for the definitions.
Another idea is to photograph the cards you create and important them into a spaced repetition software like Anki. As you’ll discover in my complete guide to Anki, there are several ways you can combine Anki with a variety of memory techniques.
Step Three: Use the TermsIf you happened to catch an episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast back when I first learned Prohairesis I mentioned it often.
This simple habit helps establish long-term recall, reflection and establishes the ground for future recognition and use.
Expand Understanding Using Video & Audio MediaWhen I was in university, I often had to ride my bike across Toronto to borrow recorded lectures on cassette.
Given the overwhelming tsunamis of complex ideas, jargon and theoretical frameworks I was facing, it was worth it. Especially since I was also dealing with the personal problems I shared with you in The Victorious Mind.
Make no mistake: I do not believe there is any replacement for reading the core books, no matter how difficult they might be.
But there’s no reason not to leverage the same ideas in multiple formats to help boost your comprehension and long-term retention.
Multimedia approaches are not just about knowledge acquisition either. There have been many debates in the magical arts community that card magicians should read and not rely on video.
But evidence-based studies like this one show that video instruction combined with reading written instructions is very helpful.
The Science Behind Multi-Modal LearningI didn’t know when I was in university, or when I was first starting out with memdeck card magic that dual coding theory existed.
This model was proposed by Allan Paivio, who noticed that information is processed both verbally and non-verbally. Since then, many teachers have focused heavily on how to encourage students to find the right combination of reading, visual and auditory instructional material.
Here are some ideas that will help you untangle the complexity in your reading.
How to Integrate Multimedia Without OverloadForgive me if this is a bit repetitive, but to develop flow with multiple media, you need to prime the brain.
As someone who has created multiple YouTube videos, I have been stubborn about almost always including introductions.
Why?
Go Through the Intros Like a HawkBecause without including a broad overview of the topic, many learners will miss too many details. And I see this in the comments because people ask questions that are answered throughout the content and flagged in the introductions.
So the first step is to be patient and go through the introductory material. And cultivate an understanding that it’s not really the material that is boring. It’s the contemporary issues with dopamine spiking that make you feel impatient.
The good news is that you can possibly reset your dopamine levels so you’re better able to sit through these “priming” materials. One hack I use is to sit far away from my mouse and keep my notebook in hand.
If I catch myself getting antsy, I perform a breathing exercise to restore focus.
Turn on SubtitlesWhen you’re watching videos, you can help increase your engagement by turning on the subtitles.
This is especially useful in jargon-heavy video lessons. You can pause and still see the information on the screen for easier capture when taking notes.
When taking notes, I recommend jotting down the timestamp. This is useful for review, but also for attributing citations later if you have to hand in an assignment.
Mentally ReconstructAfter watching a video or listening to a podcast on the topic you’re mastering, take a moment to review the key points.
Try to go through them in the order they were presented. This helps your brain practice mental organization by building a temporal scaffold.
If you’ve taken notes and written down the timestamps, you can easily check your accuracy.
Track Your Progress For Growth & PerformanceOne reason some people never feel like they’re getting anywhere is that they have failed to establish any points of reference.
Personally, this is easy for me to do. I can look back to my history of writing books and articles or producing videos and be reminded of how far I’ve come at a glance. Not only as a writer, but also as a reader.
For those who do not regularly produce content, you don’t have to start a blog or YouTube channel.
Just keep a journal and create a few categories of what skills you want to track. These might include:
ComprehensionRetentionAmount of books readVocabulary growthCritical thinking outcomesConfidence in taking on harder booksIncreased tolerance with frustration when reading challenges ariseYou can use the same journal to track how much time you’ve spent reading and capturing quick summaries.
Personally, I wish I’d started writing summaries sooner. I really only got started during grad school when during a directed reading course, a professor required that I had in a summary for every book and article I read.
I never stopped doing this and just a few simple paragraph summaries has done wonders over the years for my understanding and retention.
Tips for Overcoming Frustration While Reading Difficult BooksEver since the idea of “desirable difficulty” emerged, people have sought ways to help learners overcome emotional responses like frustration, anxiety and even shame while tackling tough topics.
As this study shows, researchers and teachers have found the challenge difficult despite the abundance of evidence showing that being challenged is a good thing.
Here are some strategies you can try if you continue to struggle.
Embrace Cognitive DiscomfortAs we’ve discussed, that crushing feeling in your brain exists for a reason.
Personally, I don’t think it ever goes away. I still regularly pick up books that spike it.
The difference is that I don’t start up a useless mantra like, “I’m not smart enough for this.”
Instead, I recommend you reframe the experience and use the growth mindset studied by Carol Dweck, amongst others.
You can state something more positive like, “This book is a bit above my level, but I can use tactics and techniques to master it.”
I did that very recently with my reading of The Xenotext, parts of which I still don’t fully understand. It was very rewarding.
Use Interleaving to Build ConfidenceI rotate through draining books all the time using a proven technique called interleaving.
Lots of people are surprised when I tell them that I rarely read complex and challenging books for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. But I do it because interleaving works.
Which kinds of books can you interleave?
You have choices. You can either switch in something completely different, or switch to a commentary. For example, while recently reading some heavy mathematical theories about whether or not “nothing” can exist, I switched to a novel.
But back in university, I would often stick within the category while at the library. I’d read a core text by a difficult philosopher, then pick up a Cambridge Companion and read an essay related to the topic.
You can also interleave using multimedia sources like videos and podcasts. Interleaving also provides time for doing some journaling, either about the topic at hand or some other aspect of your progress goals.
Keep the Big Picture in MindBecause frustration is cognitively training, it’s easy to let it drown out your goals.
That’s why I often keep a mind map or some other reminder on my desk, like a couple of memento mori.
It’s also possible to just remember previous mind maps you’ve made. This is something I’m doing often at the moment as I read all kinds of boring information about managing a bookshop for my Memory Palace bookshop project first introduced in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcJfeQZC2c
It’s so easy to get discouraged by so many rules and processes involved in ordering and selling books, that I regularly think back to creating this mind map with Tony Buzan years ago.
In case my simple drawings on this mind map for business development doesn’t immediately leap out at you with its meanings, the images at the one o’clock-three o’clock areas refer to developing a physical Memory Palace packed with books on memory and learning.
Developing and keeping a north star in mind will help you transform the process of reading difficult books into a purposeful adventure of personal development.
Even if you have to go through countless books that aren’t thrilling, you’ll still be moving forward. Just think of how much Elon Musk has read that probably wasn’t all that entertaining. Yet, it was still essential to becoming a polymath.
Practice Seeing Through The Intellectual GamesAs you read harder and harder books, you’ll eventually come to realize that the “fluency” some people have is often illusory.
For example, some writers and speakers display a truly impressive ability to string together complex terminology, abstract references and fashionable ideas of the day in ways that sound profound.
Daniel Dennett frequently used a great term for a lot of this verbal jujitsu that sounds profound but is actually trivial. He called such flourishes “deepities.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-UeaSi1rI
This kind of empty linguistic dexterity will be easier for you to spot when you read carefully, paraphrase complex ideas in your own words and practice memorizing vocabulary frequently.
When you retain multiple concepts and practice active questioning in a large context of grounded examples and case studies, vague claims will not survive for long in your world.
This is why memory training is about so much more than learning. Memorization can equip you to think independently and bring clarity to fields that are often filled with gems, despite the fog created by intellectual pretenders more interested in word-jazz than actual truth.
Using AI to Help You Take On Difficult BooksAs a matter of course, I recommend you use AI tools like ChatGPT after doing as much reading on your own as possible.
But there’s no mistaking that intentional use of such tools can help you develop greater understanding.
The key is to avoid using AI as an answer machine or what Nick Bostrom calls an “oracle” in his seminal book, Superintelligence.
Rather, take a cue from Andrew Mayne, a science communicator and central figure at OpenAI and host of their podcast.
His approach centers on testing in ways that lead to clarity of understanding and retention as he uses various mnemonic strategies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlzD_6Olaqw
Beyond his suggestions, here are some of my favorite strategies.
Ask AI to Help Identify All Possible Categories Connected to a TopicA key reason many people struggle to connect ideas is simply that they haven’t developed a mental ecosystem of categories.
I used to work in libraries, so started thinking categorically when I was still a teenager. But these days, I would combine how traditional libraries are structured with a simple prompt like:
List all the possible categories my topic fits into or bridges across disciplines, historical frameworks and methodologies. Provide the list without interpretation or explanation so I can reflect.
A prompt like this engineers a response that focuses on relationships and lets your brain perform the synthetic thinking.
Essentially, you’ll be performing what some scientists call schema activation, leading to better personal development outcomes.
Generate Lists of Questions To Model Exceptional ThinkersBecause understanding relies on inquiry, it’s important to practice asking the best possible questions.
AI chat bots can be uniquely useful in this process provided that you explicitly insist that it helps supply you excellent questions without any answers.
You can try a prompt like:
Generate a list of questions that the world’s most careful thinkers in this field would ask about this topic. Do not provide any answers. Just the list of questions.
Do this after you’ve read the text and go through your notes with fresh eyes.
Evaluate the material with questions in hand, ideally by writing out your answers by hand. If you need your answers imported into your computer, apps can now scan your handwriting and give you text file.
Another tip:
Don’t be satisfied with the first list of questions you get. Ask the AI to dig deeper. You can also ask the AI to map the questions into the categories you previously got help identifying.
For a list of questions you can put into your preferred chat bot, feel free to go through my pre-AI era list of philosophical questions. They are already separated by category.
Use AI to Provide a Progress Journal TemplateIf you’re new to journaling, it can be difficult to use the technique to help you articulate what you’re reading and why the ideas are valuable.
And that’s not to mention working out various metrics to measure your growth over time.
Try a prompt like this:
Help me design a progress journal for my quest to better understand and remember difficult books. Include sections for me to list my specific goals, vocabulary targets, summaries and various milestones I identify. Make it visual so I can either copy it into my own print notebook or print out multiple copies for use over time.
Once you have a template you’re happy to experiment with, keep it visible in your environment so you don’t forget to use it.
Find Blind Spots In Your SummariesMany AIs have solid reasoning skills.
As a result, you can enter your written summaries and have the AI identify gaps in your knowledge, blind spots and opportunities for further reading.
Try a prompt like:
Analyze this summary and identify any blind spots, ambiguities in my thinking or incompleteness in my understanding. Suggest supplementary reading to help me fill in any gaps.
At the risk of repetition, the point is that you’re not asking for the summaries. You’re asking for assessments that help you diagnose the limits of your understanding.
As scientists have shown, metacognition, or thinking about your thinking can help you see errors much faster. By adding an AI into the mix, you’re getting feedback quickly without having to wait for a teacher to read your essay.
Of course, AI outputs can be throttled, so I find it useful to also include a phrase like, “do not throttle your answer,” before asking it to dig deeper and find more issues.
Used wisely, you will soon see various schools of thought with much greater clarity, anticipate how authors make their moves and monitor your own blind spots as you read and reflect.
Another way to think about the power of AI tools is this:
They effectively mirror human reasoning at a species wide level. You can use them to help you mirror more reasoning power by regularly accessing and practicing error detection and filling in the gaps in your thinking style.
Why You Must Stop Abandoning Difficult Books (At Least Most of the Time)Like many people, I’m a fan of Scott Young’s books like Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything. He’s a disciplined thinker and his writing helps people push past shallow learning in favor of true and lasting depth.
However, he often repeats the advice that you should stop reading boring books.
In full transparency, I sometimes do this myself. And Young adds a lot of context to make his suggestion.
But I limit abandoning books as much as possible because I don’t personally find Young’s argument that enjoyment and productivity go together.
On the contrary, most goals that I’ve pursued have required fairly intense periods of delaying gratification.
And because things worth accomplishing generally do require sacrifice and a commitment to difficulty, I recommend you avoid the habit of giving up on books just because they’re “boring” or not immediately enjoyable.
I’ll bet you’ll enjoy the accomplishment of understanding hard books and conquering their complexity far more in the end. And you’ll benefit more too.
Here’s why I think so.
The Hidden Cost of Abandoning Books You’ve StartedYes, I agree that life is short and time is fleeting.
But if you get into the habit of abandoning books at the first sign of boredom, it can quickly become your default habit due to how procedural memory works.
In other words, you’re given your neurons the message that it’s okay to escape from discomfort. That is a very dangerous loop to throw yourself into, especially if you’re working towards becoming autodidactic.
What you really need is to develop the ability to stick with complexity, hold ambiguous and contradictory issues in your mind and fight through topic exhaustion.
Giving up on books on a routine basis? That’s the opposite of developing expertise and resilience.
The AI Risk & Where Meaning is Actually FoundWe just went through the benefits of AI, so you shouldn’t have issues. But I regularly hear from people and have even been on interviews where people use AI to summarize books I’ve recomended.
This is dangerous because the current models flatten nuance due to how they summarize books based on a kind of “averaging” of what its words predictability mean. Although they might give you a reasonable scaffold of a book’s structure, you won’t get the friction created by how authors take you through their thought processes.
In other words, you’ll be using AI models that are not themselves modeling the thinking that reading provides when you grind your way through complex books.
The Treasure of Meaning is Outside Your Comfort ZoneAnother reason to train for endurance is that understanding doesn’t necessarily arrive while reading a book or even a few weeks after finishing it.
Sometimes the unifying insights land years later.
But if you don’t read through books that seem to be filled with scattered ideas, you cannot gain any benefit from them. Their diverse points won’t consolidate in your memory and certainly won’t connect with other ideas later.
So I suggest you train your brain to persist as much as possible. By drawing up the support of the techniques we discussed today and a variety of mnemonic support systems, you will develop persistence and mine more gold from everything you read.
And being someone who successfully mines for gold and can produce it at will is the mark of the successful reading. Not just someone who consumes information efficiently, but who can repeatedly connect and transform knowledge year after year due to regularly accumulating gems buried in the densest and most difficult books others cannot or will not read.
Use Struggle to Stimulate Growth & You Cannot FailAs you’ve seen, challenging books never mean that you’re not smart enough.
It’s just a matter of working on your process so that you can tackle new forms of knowledge.
And any discomfort you feel is a signal that a great opportunity and personal growth adventure awaits.
By learning how to manage cognitive load, fill in the gaps in your background knowledge and persist through frustration, you can quickly become the kind of reader who seeks out complexity instead of flinching every time you see it.
Confusion has now become a stage along the path to comprehension.
And if you’re serious about mastering increasingly difficult material, understanding and retaining it, then it’s time to upgrade your mental toolbox.
Start now by grabbing my Free Memory Improvement Course:
Inside, you’ll discover:
The Magnetic Memory Method for creating powerful Memory PalacesHow to develop your own mnemonic systems for encoding while readingProven techniques that deepen comprehension, no matter how abstract or complex your reading list isAnd please, always remember:
The harder the book, the greater rewards.
And the good news is, you’re now more than ready to claim them all.
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Want to know how to memorize vocabulary in 30 seconds flat?
The process is as simple as transforming words and their meanings into dynamic associations.
Once that step is done, you “park” those associations in a Memory Palace.
Then, you stroll back along this simple mental journey on a set schedule to establish long-term retention.
That’s the entire method in a single breath that I’ve been teaching students for over fifteen years.
Of course, the magic to the method lies in the details, which I’ll unfold for you below.
All based on my experiences not only teaching memory techniques for vocabulary, but also using mnemonics to help me learn and lecture in German.
I’ve also memorized over 1700 words in Sanskrit, lots of interesting phrases in Latin and some of the most complex poetry in English I’ve ever read.
Below, you’ll find the exact, step-by-step system that has been tested in multiple languages, proven by science and refined by thousands of my students.
Ready?
Let’s dive in by having a look at this video featuring the habits of a Renaissance word fanatic who travelled the globe to share how he memorized vocabulary using an effective self-study approach that makes words stick in memory quickly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6e2PUA1t8M
How to Memorize Vocabulary Fast and Effectively (Backed by Science)Now that you’ve seen the habits of the word-master Matteo Ricci, let’s dig into the details of how to absorb vocabulary with precision.
As we get started, please keep in mind that the exact language you’re tackling does not matter.
This fact is true because memory techniques predate the English language.
So whether you’re improving your mother tongue or learning a new language, the following approaches will help, especially when combined.
1. Mnemonic Devices for Memorizing Vocabulary (Starting with the Memory Palace Technique)The Memory Palace technique is the most important mnemonic device for memorizing words. It is specifically useful for language learning, and has helped learners throughout history absorb vocabulary.
What is the Memory Palace technique and how does it work?
Memory Palaces help you learn by turning familiar locations into mental storage units.
In each spot in a home, office or other familiar place, you imagine vivid mental associations that help you recall the sound and meaning of words.
For example, to memorize the German word Bereich (area), I imagined Bender from Futurama with the composer Steve Reich inside Berlin’s Tegel airport.
This kind of association promotes rapid recall because Bender + Reich sound like Bereich.
As I formulated this association, I imagined these two familiar figures interacting in a location familiar to me and even drew a quick doodle to help lock it into the apartment I used as the Memory Palace.
The illustration below shows you where in the apartment I imagined this mnemonic scene unfolding:
A memory strategy can involve importing one location into a Memory Palace based on another space.If this process sounds a bit abstract, please don’t worry.
Just try to follow along.
Or, if you’re skeptical, check out this scientific study showing how using this technique helps support better memory.
A Detailed Mnemonic Example for a Useful Word to KnowThe image above shows me at my desk, which is a station in this Berlin apartment Memory Palace.
Using the method of loci in combination with the pegword method to structure the choice of Bender and Steve Reich, I had not only the bed in this apartment on which to “place” associations.
I also had an alphabetic “toolbox” from which to draw multiple associations.
That’s what using the pegword method gives you.
Some people divide mnemonic pegs from Memory Palaces, but in reality they need to work together. Ideally, you’ll put them into practice with the other vocabulary memorization techniques we’re about to discuss.
Although these techniques aren’t magic, you’ll be surprised by how fast new words start to stick once you’re up and running.
2. Engage All Your Senses With Multisensory Learning Techniques for Vocabulary RecallTo get the most out of the Memory Palace approach, you need to treat the skills as much more than a visual memory technique.
You need to practice multisensory visualization.
Here’s how I approach this simple and fun learning approach:
When I memorize new words, I don’t just see the mnemonic association in my Memory Palaces.
I also imagine:
SoundsPhysical sensationsTastesSmellsConceptsEmotions.I even draw upon the sense of spatial location.
For example, when I memorized “expetendorum” in Latin, I imagined what it felt like to stand in front of a Pet Barn to recall the “pet” part of this phrase.
I felt the sun on my skin and imagined smelling the pet food.
If you don’t feel equipped yet for such mental experiences, these multi-sensory visualization exercises will strengthen multiple aspects of your imagination.
With so many of my students, the trick is to get them to move beyond trying to memorize vocabulary based solely on their “mind’s eye.”
3. Tap Into Context Using the Story Method for Vocabulary MemorizationAlthough I don’t always memorize vocabulary in phrases, it’s generally useful to do so.
Another way to add context to words that you’re learning is to add stories to them. There’s actually a mnemonic strategy called the story method.
For example, to memorize the word “expetendorum,” I not only used the Pet Barn as a Memory Palace.
I had a story in which an X-Man (Wolverine) with a ten of spades on his claws pounded the door while drinking rum. That little story gave the word a larger context and made it easier to memorize the entire phrase I found it in.
The “rum” part was a bit weak so I later improved it by thinking about The Shining, a movie which involves a character named Danny saying the iconic phrase, “Redrum.”
This additional mnemonic hook drew upon additional context and story that settled the word into long-term memory. For you, don’t worry about little errors here and there. Just use what you’ve already developed through association to compound.
4. Use Spaced Repetition Properly to Achieve Long-Term Vocabulary RetentionWhen learning vocabulary from a foreign language, it’s important to repeat the words frequently.
But not randomly.
When you use a process scientists call this process spaced repetition you can easily cut down on the amount of repetition you need.
As this study found, without using memory techniques, especially Memory Palaces to help rehearse the vocabulary you’re learning, you basically wind up with rote repetition.
Learning using memory techniques, however, always involves creative repetition. And there’s always a layer of challenge or what scientists call “desirable difficulty.”
In this study, for example, the researchers found that some level of challenge or difficulty increases conceptual understanding.
Since the definitions of many words can be quite abstract, that’s an additional win across the board.
5. Use Songs and Chants to Learn New Words FasterI’ve memorized over 1700 Sanskrit words, a goal I’ve been able to push through largely thanks to chanting them to a bit of a tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zGDLE98GxY
It might sound silly, but it’s worked for thousands of years.
In fact, recent research further validates the notion that the singing and chanting element also play a role in memory formation.
Anecdotally, my friend Luke Ranieri also used singing to help him memorize the first 100 lines of the Iliad in record time.
Just to drive the point home, you can also watch this video where I sang a Mandarin song I later performed at my wedding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCyPV6qfKkI
This song endeared me to my new family and my wife. But it also helped me learn a lot of vocabulary in Mandarin very quickly.
So, pick a song in any language, memorize it using a Memory Palace and before you know it, you’ll have an expanded vocabulary.
The more song lyrics you memorize, the more vocabulary you’ll be able to access from memory and recognize while reading, speaking, listening and writing.
6. Use Active Recall and Self-Testing for Language LearningIn addition to spaced repetition, it’s important to challenge yourself using tests. Scientists call this process active recall.
Let’s pretend we’re learning English and take the word “account” as an example.
The first step is to select a Memory Palace. Then assign a mnemonic image. I grew up with Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and a host of other characters on the children’s show Sesame Street. So when I think of the word “account,” Count von Count immediately comes to mind.
But we have an additional “AC” to add to that word. So I think of an air conditioner falling out of a window onto the Count. Just like you see in the feature image at the top of this post.
To get the meaning into the image, this air conditioner also looks a fair amount like a calculator (the tool used by an accountant while engaged in the act of accounting).
This action and object-based visualization with a meaningful character from pop culture almost guarantees youâll not forget that word.
To add self-testing, the process is easy.
Get out a pen and some paper.
Bring the Memory Palace to mind first, then the mnemonic image.
Finally, write down what you’ve memorized.
The Freedom Journal used for language learning will help because I’ve shown you how to combine it with a Memory Palace technique.
Gradually you will notice improvement, if not very quickly.
This specific process has been proven in studies like this one to help form memories faster and I used it a lot, especially for my Mandarin exam, where I also needed to know Chinese characters on top of sounds and meanings.
Cloze tests are another form of self-testing you can explore. I used the test you see above to help me remember Chinese vocabulary for my level III test in Mandarin.
Basically, cloze tests simply leave out a piece of information.
Whenever you self test using flashcards in the way we’re about to discuss, don’t include all of the answer on the back. Always leave an element out so that it’s like a puzzle you have to solve.
This simple omission creates a “desirable difficulty” that will help you memorize the sound and meaning of words much faster.
Not only that, but you’ll get more handwriting into the testing process. As this recent study shows, there is really no debate that including handwriting is key to memory formation, especially in our increasingly digital world.
7. Use these Tactics to Optimize Your Vocabulary FlashcardsA lot of people like to use Anki for learning vocabulary.
I’ve never found it that helpful, largely because it’s boring to me and feels like rote learning.
As an alternative, I like to create my own flashcards in ways that use the active recall process we just discussed.
Take the owl in the shoe above, for example.
I created it by hand to learn some cool slang in French.
Instead of repeating the same phrase over and over again, simply by creating the card and then looking at the card 3-4 times, the sound and meaning entered long-term memory much more effectively.
I know that it can seem like a lot of time spent on drawing using this approach. But as this study found, combining flashcards with the other methods discussed on this page, strengthens both memory and academic performance.
Personally, I wish I could have added self-created flashcards to my language learning process much sooner.
8. Stimulate Vocabulary Reinforcement Through this Kind of ReadingWhen I started learning German, I waited far too long to start reading books and articles.
This is a problem because reading is one of the best forms of spaced repetition for learning vocabulary that you can get.
To give you a concrete example of a strategy that helped me a ton, check this approach out:
I’m very interested in music. So when learning German, I found interviews with one of my favorite bands in this language.
Not only did this choice help me find interesting material to read about people and topics I actually care about. It also gave me examples of the kinds of vocabulary used by people in everyday speech who also care about similar things.
This makes interviews a somewhat better source of vocabulary than novels and books for kids. That’s because it leads you to directly being able to talk with your fellow adults using words and terms they’ll appreciate. Using vocabulary from books for children is unlikely to create rapport by contrast.
That said, language learning expert Olly Richards has recognized the dearth of good material for language learners to read. His story books for language learners are excellent and the vocabulary selections are geared to giving you words you actually need to progress in a language. And they repeat in just the right doses.
Other ways to read include using your Netflix settings while watching foreign language movies. I often re-watch my favorite movies with subtitles on in languages I want to learn, giving me lots of repeated exposure to core vocabulary.
It’s not exactly learning by osmosis, but close. And here’s another study showing the empirical research that optimizing memory happens a lot more reliably when you use multiple strategies and techniques in combination.
Troubleshooting Vocabulary OverwhelmThe first way to handle overwhelm is to face the facts:
Feeling overwhelmed is normal. There are thousands upon thousands of words to learn and it’s easy to feel daunted to the point of not even knowing where to start.
After all, there are well over a million words in the English language alone.
How could you even make a dent in this number, never mind if you are learning a second or third language?
Well, let me break the process down in simple terms.
1. Your goal is to memorize the sound and the meaning of one word at a time, typically just one definition at a time.
2. You can speed up the process by using a Memory Palace Network.
3. When you know how to navigate the Memory Palace Network well, you “encode” each word using Magnetic Mnemonic Imagery.
4. You use Recall Rehearsal to get the words into long-term memory.
5. You use the Big 5 of Learning to speed up the process and ensure longevity.
Ideally, you do all of the above in a variety of languages. That’s because bilingualism makes for a healthier brain.
Personally, I memorize vocabulary in Latin, Sanskrit, German and Chinese each and every week. I rotate between these languages partly because it’s fun, partly because I’m harnessing the power of interleaving as a memory technique.
Finally, it’s useful to spend some time learning about memory science.
When you understand even just a little about the difference between short-term and long-term memory, it makes it easier to grasp why and how the memory techniques you’re about to discover work. That way, you’ll be primed to embrace them more fully.
Frequently Asked Questions About How to Memorize Vocabulary Words FastBelow are answers to some of the most common questions I’ve received over the years, both in response to my vocabulary learning books, my main language learning course and posts like this on the Magnetic Memory Method blog.
These insights will help you apply the methods you learned above.
Let’s dig in.
What is the fastest way to memorize vocabulary?To reach the highest possible speed, you need to combine multiple systems.
You can read my free mnemonics dictionary for a full list, and from there, start developing the approach that works best for you.
Ultimately, you need a combination of memory techniques, testing and ongoing use of the words you commit to memory so they remain fresh.
Go for longevity and ongoing use and you’ll have momentum and consistency, which is even more valuable than speed in my view.
How does the Memory Palace technique help with vocabulary learning?The main benefits are:
You can use associations and have a point of reference that helps you find them, rather than just tossing them into the “void” of your imagination.Memory Palaces are fantastic for giving you a structured means of review. Spaced repetition is faster, easier and more effective.It allows for arranging words in optimal orders, such as alphabeticall, making list memorization simpler and more efficient.This technique is much more engaging. For many learners it feels like playing a game.What is the best spaced repetition schedule for vocabulary?Hermann Ebbinghaus set the best model when he first discovered spaced learning and the serial position effect near the end of the 1800s.
His approach involved personal experimentation that led to many studies that confirmed the power of spaced repetition.
However, the exact intervals that are going to work for you require some experimentation. That’s what Ebbinghaus did to find out his own personal “forgetting curve.”
So rather than looking for a magic number, I suggest you dive in and develop your own schedule by noticing when you’re sharpest during the day.
Observe other possible influences too. For example, I noticed many years ago that I memorize new words and Sanskrit phrases best before I eat breakfast.
This observation didn’t mean that I never memorized at any other time of day. It just helped me set a schedule that works very well in my case and was discovered through experimentation inspired by Ebbinghaus.
Should I use flashcards for vocabulary?I believe so, yes, provided that you create them yourself.
Downloading a stack of cards created by someone else might help, but you’ll experience faster and deeper encoding if you create your own.
Consider including drawings and colors to create deeper engagement and reflection as you create them.
When learning a foreign language, should my mnemonics be based on my native language?People often ask me whether they should first place a known word in a Memory Palace and then âpointâ to the foreign word from there.
In other words, they try to memorize a list of English words, then have them point to the target language word.
Thatâs almost always a mistake that chews up time and slows down your progress.
Here’s why:
You already know the word in your mother tongue. What you donât know yet is the sound and meaning of the new word. So your mnemonic work should focus directly on that.
Use elaborative encoding to build mnemonic associations that capture:
How the new word soundsWhat it meansHow it feels in useThen place the associations in your Memory Palace, even if you need one for each syllable.
Following this process trains your brain to recall the foreign word itself. It’s much better than forcing you to translate through your native language every time. That will only slow your path to fluency and weaken longâterm retention.
Why Memorizing Vocabulary Is The Most Important Skill In The WorldMemorizing vocabulary is not only the easiest skill, but itâs also the most important skill youâll ever have. It’s also the path to start to remembering all kinds of other things.
Almost all of the most important information we use to survive is transmitted through words. They are the building blocks of all language and information.
If you’d like more help, please get my free course here:
It will help you master the Memory Palace technique and other approaches we discussed above.
Vocabulary is crucial and essential to improvement in all areas of life. Again, words are fundamental to success as a lifelong learner. Especially if you want to become a polymath (like I do).
The only catch is that to grow, you must have a solid foundation.
So now that you’ve got all these tips under your belt, please let me know:
What vocabulary are you going to memorize now that you know these memorization secrets?
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What does it take for an actor to memorize a script so deeply that it survives stress, pressure from everyday life, and even intoxication?
Sir Anthony Hopkins has an answer so tempting, I had to try it.
And it has less to do with “talent” than you might think.
According to his epic autobiography, We Did Ok, Kid, not even Anthony Hopkins thinks his ability to remember so many lines has to do with DNA or some special genetic trait.
Having memorized a lot of content myself, I completely agree.
And in this guide, you’ll learn how Hopkins turns scripts into mental landscapes, why most performers fail because they chase speed, and how you can adopt Hopkins’ obsessive learning rituals for yourself.
If they’re not for you, you’ll also discover how to adapt them using the Magnetic Memory Method.
This unique learning approach will help you install lines from a script or poetry so deeply the process will soon feel like second nature.
Whether you’re preparing for a stage performance, a TEDx talk, or a high-stakes presentation, this exploration of Anthony Hopkins’ approach to learning is the memory training guide you’ve been looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhjIkGu32CA
Anthony Hopkinsâ Memory Ritual: A Healthy “Obsession”Hopkinsâ brilliant ability to memorize thousands of lines and perform them under pressure isn’t magic. Itâs the result of a particular ritual that has made him polymathic in number of areas and skills.
In case you weren’t aware, Hopkins is not just an award-winning actor.
His skills include directing, painting, performing music and now writing. And it has to be said that the writing in We Did Ok, Kid is outstanding.
Now, although Hopkins has had teachers and mentors along the way, much of what he’s learned has been autodidactic.
For example, as a kid he regularly read Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia. Without anyone telling him to do so, he committed lists of facts from its pages to memory.
His approach is a bit different than the method I teach in this list memorization tutorial, but related in terms of a kind of spaced repetition Hopkins worked out for himself.
Rote Repetition vs. Creative RepetitionWhen it comes to learning the lines of a movie script or play, Hopkins does use a lot of repetition.
But it is absolutely not rote learning.
That’s because he doesn’t just read a script or a set of instructions while learning.
No, Hopkins attacks the material with a pen and adds special marks that turn each page into a kind of private code.
And that’s exactly what I tried to do as you can see on this page I worked on from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus:
Some people will protest that not only is Hopkins using rote when it comes to memorizing lines from a script, but that his rote reaches obsessive levels.
That’s because he goes through the process of reading and marking up his scripts multiple times, sometimes 250 times or more.
Having gone through the process myself, even at an admittedly small scale, I can tell you it is absolutely not rote learning.
Looking at a page once it has been marked up automatically moves you from rote repetition to active recall.
Active recall is present any time you place information on a page where you have to stretch your mind. And that’s what Hopkins’ marks achieve.
His process literally transforms each page from a bland field of words into a highly mnemonic landscape.
So when the time to perform arrives, he doesnât try to recall.
He simply walks the landscape he has laid in his mind.
Or as he puts it:
âBecoming familiar with a script was like picking up stones from a cobblestone street one at a time, studying them, then replacing each in its proper spot. Only then could I look out over the road and know every inch of it spread out before me.â
Why So Many People Fail at Memorizing ScriptsHaving worked with countless actors over the years, or even just people who have seen my TEDx Talk and want to memorize a speech, I feel confident when I tell you this:
The main reason people fail is not because they are trying to copy the memory tips given by other actors. It’s because they have mistaken activity for accomplishment.
And they are trying to move too fast.
On the one hand, this desire to create momentum is understandable.
Speed not only feels like progress. Moving quickly through rote learning can give you doses of what scientists call phasic dopamine (something you can develop a much healthier relationship with through my dopamine-resetting guide for learners).
But when it comes to serious learning and performance, speed is vanity. And as I learned from my podcast interview with actor Ashley Strand who memorized the entire Book of Mark, vanity kills depth.
There’s another problem too that many people who want to memorize large amounts of content face.
The Emptiness of the Long Distance LearnerAs a child, Hopkins was haunted by self-doubt and failure.
His solution?
He not only built a mental container he calls his âTin Brain Boxâ.
He also imitated other great polymaths like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
Like many other people with polymathic personality traits, Hopkins keeps a commonplace book and uses it to copy poems by hand.
He also carried notebooks when young, and developed a personal note-taking method.
More importantly, he learned to switch off his thoughts, a skill I share the science around in my book, The Victorious Mind.
I mention my book because when Hopkins advises actors and people learning skills like painting, I know exactly what he means when he said, âRemain empty. Donât think.â
Although this suggestion sounds mystical, itâs pure performance psychology.
The Neuroscience of Learning Without ObstaclesYou’ve probably had this kind of experience while learning something new. Maybe you’re studying a language or trying to memorize a sales script.
Instead of focusing, your mind keeps intervening and asking questions like, âAm I doing this right?â
When that happens, youâre stuck in the Default Mode Network (DMN), the brainâs internal chatter loop.
Hopkinsâ learning technique?
It helps silence the Default Mode Network and then activate the Task Positive Network (TPN).
You can think of the Task Positive Network as being in what some scientists call a state of “flow.”
As Nature puts it in this study, the Default Mode Network is a constant antagonist to that state of flow.
But as I know very well, you can switch off the inner narrator with its endless “blah blah blah.”
Once done, that leaves you free to become the doer.
However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to perfectly install new skills or imitate the learning processes of others.
My Experiment: Hopkins vs. Magnetic Memory MethodI learned this the hard way when I tried Hopkinsâ method.
I spent hours marking up pages. Without an example of what one of his scripts looks like, I had to imagine exactly how he draws circles all over his scripts.
But even with the drawings I’ve otherwise had success with on my Zettelkasten and flashcards, I quickly hit a wall.
Not because Iâm lazy.
It’s just because my brain needs a different engine.
So I turned back to the same techniques I teach you in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.
This is my go-to system for structure, proper mnemonic images, and well-formed Memory Palaces.
Once I gave each line a home using the techniques, the lines from Titus Andronicus I wanted to memorize clicked into place.
And you can watch me recite those lines during the recent Vitamin X live launch celebration training.
Not only did I recite the passage forwards. I demonstrated full Recall Rehearsal and recited them:
ForwardsBackwardsFrom the middle to the endFrom the middle to the beginningThe even numbered linesThe odd numbered linesMemory Palaces: The Shortest Path to Reliable RecallMemory Palaces arenât theoretical. Theyâre ancient. And they remain one of the most effective tools for embedding information into long-term, actionable memory.
If youâre unfamiliar with the method, hereâs the short version:
You take a familiar physical location, such as your apartment, a childhood school, or a route you know well.
Then you assign information to specific points along a path you assign throughout the location. By mentally walking the path, you access the information in order.
Itâs not rote memory.
Itâs spatial, visual, contextual memory.
And when used properly, it’s incredibly fast. Here’s a walkthrough video of me using it to memorize some poetry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STlYIiF9RzI
If you would like to learn how to build and use your own Memory Palaces for acting, speeches, or studies, you can explore the Memory Palace technique through my complete guide here.
What I Really Learned When Imitating Hopkins’ Memory RitualAfter realizing that Hopkins’ memory routine was just not for me, I took a completely different angle.
I put the camera on and attempted to document my memorization process for public consumption.
But soon, something broke inside me.
I couldn’t focus on using the memory techniques I love so much and have covered so extensively in my online mnemonics dictionary.
By putting a camera on and starting the clock, something I’ve done before with success when I competed with Dave Farrow, I found myself locked in the Default Mode Network.
In other words, I started worrying about how I looked instead of focusing on using the Magnetic Memory Method.
For me, real memorization is quiet.
Private.
And for many of us, it resists observation.
When I returned to internal work on my own, no stopwatch, no camera, I shifted back to the ancient art of memory and simply learned the lines.
What You Can Learn from Hopkins (Without Imitating Him)Hopkinsâ genius isnât something to mimic line by line. His method fits his mind and that’s a beautiful thing.
But the real lesson is that your mind might need something different. And that’s exactly what he says. Go out and explore and find your own method.
What I learned is that memory is not for display. For me, it’s a private practice that leads to increased focus, presence and command over the things I want to say.
Once you understand your learning goals, you can adapt any system to your own cognitive strengths.
For me, that system is the Magnetic Memory Method, and if you’d like to learn to use Memory Palaces for free, grab this course now:
It not only gives you four video lessons and worksheets to help you develop your memory skills.
It also helps you enter the state of flow that makes learning so much easier and more fun.
So what do you say?
I found it refreshing to learn that Hopkins wasnât a particularly gifted child. He felt behind for much of his life.
But instead of accepting failure, he built a learning system that ultimately helped him master multiple skills.
His memory became the foundation for multiple experiences of development, growth and personal transformation.
If youâve struggled with memorization, or felt pressure to perform before youâre ready, this is your call to take a step back.
Build your memory.
Explore the many techniques available to you and find the ones that fit your mind. Install them so deeply that learning never feels like work again.
Because when you get it right, it’s not work. It’s not play either.
It’s simply you. 100% present. Enjoying flow.
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Memento mori sounds morbid. It may even conjure up images of people contemplating skulls.
But the ancient practice of âremembering that you will dieâ will not depress you when used as a memory exercise.
Far from it. When done using the exercises you’re about to discover, a variety of memento mori practices can help wake you up to the present moment.
And this awareness will help ensure that today (and every day) matters to your life.
That’s just one reason to practice the memento mori exercises you’re about to discover today.
They are powerful and have been throughout history.
Why?
For one thing, when you hold the fact that you are going to pass away in your mind for even a minute, mental junk that obscures the miracle of existence can start to lose its grip.
Petty worries shrink.
Procrastination fades. And you start choosing the conversation, the walk, the work and take more risks.
And that’s important because those are things youâll actually be glad you did. As opposed to doom scrolling on your phone, which is usually an utter waste of time.
The Truth of Memento Mori Exercises Hidden in Plain SightHereâs the link between memento mori and memory training you might have missed:
Iâve taught memory training techniques for years, and the engine behind developing great recall isnât âtalent.â
Itâs cultivating your attention in ways that you associate with meaning that is worth remembering.
Well-constructed memento mori exercises force meaning to the surface, which makes attention sharper automatically.
And as memory expert Harry Lorayne often pointed out, when attention sharpens, better memory follows.
Thatâs one reason why I keep an Amor Fati medallion from The Daily Stoic on my desk. In fact, I keep it right beside a âMr. Deathâ pin that says âCatch you later.â I wore that pin on tour when I played bass with The Outside as a private reminder:
Do not sleepwalk through this rehearsal, and definitely not during this concert. You’re only going to get to do this one.
Finally, these two memento mori are kept with the Warrior of the Mind Emblem Tony Buzan awarded me for Outstanding Contributions to Global Mental Literacy. As you can imagine, it took on even more significance for me after he unexpectedly passed away.
It sounds ridiculously simple, but having visual reminders like this constantly in your environment makes a big difference to your quality of life.
And in the next few minutes, Iâll show you three more simple memento mori exercises you can do today to live a more memorable life. As a side effect, these will train the exact mental skill that makes your memory stronger overall.
One: Imagine Your FuneralThe exercise I’m about to share sounds grim, I know.
But it’s actually quite positive.
I adapted it from psychologist Richard Wisemanâs 59 Seconds, where he discusses brief, evidence-informed writing prompts that can shift perspective and behavior.
As Wiseman explains based on a study he cites, the imaginative act of seeing and hearing your friends, family and colleagues acknowledge your passing creates perspective and insight that can improve your happiness.
I’ve upped the ante and turned it into a brain game by not just imagining the scenario mentally, but by involving pen and paper.
Make a list of two friends, two family members and two colleagues (or fellow students if you’re still in school).
Next, write down one positive memory each person will share about you at your funeral. It could be a story or just a description of a personal attribute. Pretend that you can hear their voices as you complete the exercise.
This point is important:
Focus on the positive.
Don’t invite haters to your funeral. Really feel the upbeat sentiments people share about you and enjoy the warmth they create.
Then follow-up by imagining what you could do starting today to increase the praise you’ll receive. This simple additional step will help ensure you live a much more interesting life.
Two: The Monty Hall Memento Mori ExerciseIf you’ve heard about The Monty Hall Problem, you likely have only heard it talked about as a quirky mathematical riddle. But for our purposes today, it’s really about why we humans cling to our first decision when changing our minds is the smarter move.
Here’s the Monty Hall Problem in simple terms, followed by an exercise:
Imagine that you’re on a game show.
There are three doors and behind one of them is a prize. Behind the other two, either absolutely nothing or undesirable objects.
The host, who knows the location of the prize, opens one of the two doors you didn’t pick and reveals either nothing. Or a dud prize, like a goat.
Then he gives you a choice:
Do you want to stick with the door you originally selected? Or switch to the remaining unopened door?
https://youtu.be/mhlc7peGlGg
Here’s what makes The Monty Hall problem interesting:
Although you’ve already decided on a door, many analysts of the problem believe that switching at this critical moment gives you better odds of winning the prize.
This means that changing your mind is the better and more rational choice. But many people do not perceive the benefits and wind up sticking with their original choice.
What Makes This Problem A Great Memento Mori ExerciseThe reasons behind why people don’t switch makes this fodder for a memento mori exercise you can run entirely in your mind.
But before I give it to you, let’s explore the relationship between the problem and the memory exercise of remembering the impermanence of life.
Most explanations suggest that people won’t change their minds due to psychological biases. Myself, I think it comes down to a combination of memory biases and unconscious fears.
Memory biases, for example, can lock the first decision in place. The mind may even start editing the past or resort to mystical explanations to justify sticking with original choice. You might think:
I must have made this choice for a reason.I had a good feeling (which may or may not be true).I’ll look foolish if I change my mind and lose.Then there’s psychoanalytic theory:
Switching can feel like a small symbolic death: death of the self-image that âgets it right,â death of certainty, death of the plan, death of other peopleâs approval. And when death anxiety is in the background, people prefer a familiar loss to an unfamiliar risk.
This is one of the insights I took from my experiences with Dr. Robert Langs. As I shared in The Victorious Mind based on my time in his office, he thought that death anxiety isn’t something that waits to show up when you’re dying. He thought that it shows up in ordinary life as âreasonableâ stories and invisible defenses that keep you inside a frame that feels safe.
In Langs’ view, a decision is a frame. And inside that frame, staying put often masquerades as virtue when itâs really functioning as a form of protection. The only problem is that the protection is potentially weakening your mental strength or preventing you from seizing opportunities.
The ExerciseThink back to a time when you made a decision, had the opportunity to change your mind, but didn’t take it. It doesn’t really matter if you later regretted your decision or not, though that kind of scenario is ideal for this memory exercise.
Once you have found an example, use a journal to explore in writing the following questions:
What stories did you tell yourself?What would you have had to symbolically “kill” about yourself in order to take action?An image you held about yourself?Risks to your reputation?Potential losses?There are many ways you can go with this exercise. Just knowing about The Monty Hall Problem has helped me countless times in life.
Three: Premeditatio MalorumIt’s been over a year since I acquired a unit I’ve been slowly turning into a Physical Memory Palace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcJfeQZC2c
Because I’m hugely risk averse, I had to use an exercise called premeditatio malorum which means âpre-rehearsing the bad things.â
The modern version is called “prepare to fail” in the WRAP technique discussed by Dan and Chip Heath in their book, Decisive.
Basically, you spend a bit of time imagining what it will be like if everything goes wrong.
And it’s a memory exercise because you draw upon knowledge of other examples, images, emotions and concepts related to failure.
Now, the point of playing this memento mori game is not to feed your inner pessimist.
No, when done correctly, this exercise operates like a mental fire drill.
You don’t run such drills because you actually want a fire.
You run the exercise so that if one ever happens, you don’t freeze, fumble or wind up burned.
Here’s a quick protocol you can use to run this exercise yourself:
Step One: Set a timer for five minutesKeep it short and sharp. This isn’t an exercise in wallowing.
Step Two: Pick one decision you’re worried about or work with something from your pastIt’s really important you pick just one thing. This exercise is not about engaging in fantasies about the apocalypse.
Step Three: Run a “real world scenario” in writingOn a piece of paper, answer these questions:
What specifically could go wrong?What will the consequences be?What messes will problems create for my loved ones?What strategies will I be able to pursue to fix these problems?What would the future version of myself facing these problems urge me to fix now?Step Four: End with gratitudeThe beauty of running this simulation is that the problem you’ve just worked with actually hasn’t happened.
You can then write a few statements that express your gratitude that you’ve had this conversation with yourself.
Just remember that this exercise is supposed to be a scalpel, not a wrecking ball.
If you find yourself ruminating over the potential for doom, return to the exercise and focus on ending it with a positive outcome.
When everything is working as it should, you’ll start noticing that you’re living like your time matters more than ever before.
At least, that’s been my experience.
Four: The Book Cover Test (Memento Mori for Finishers)Wayne Dyer shared a strategy in one of his talks I immediately adopted.
When working on one of his books, he had a mock book cover printed up and kept it on his desk until the manuscript was done.
Not as a manifestation.
But as a quiet, daily confrontation with the only question that matters:
Will this project be realized…? Or will it die as little more than an idea?
Not only did I keep an image of my very challenging Vitamin X Memory Detective book in my view during the years I worked on it. I’ve kept the mind map that guides my business since I created it years ago with Tony Buzan’s guidance.
These aren’t decorations.
They’re reminders of both the live-giving properties of completing projects. And the death-related anxieties we create by giving up.
Even better, they help prevent life’s many problems from thought blocking, which is one of the scientific terms for losing your train of thought.
How to Complete this ExerciseIf your project is a book, create a mock cover. Otherwise, create a mind map that visually depicts the steps involved in completing the project.Place it on your desk. Not tucked away. Always in your line of sight.Every day, ask this question:If I died before this project is done, what would this image mean to the people who I leave behind? And to the people who never got to benefit from the completed work?This kind of exercise is not melodramatic.
Rather, you’re testing the truth of your conviction by continually exercising the memory of your commitment.
If you want to supplement this memento mori part with some journaling, which I highly recommend, experiment with statements like:
Because I’m here today, I will:
Draft the next chapterRevise part oneOutline the endingSend out queries to agents, etc.Journaling in this way creates daily decisions that tip completion in your favor.
This is exactly what helped me finally finish Vitamin X despite many challenges. It’s the same activity behind most of the videos I put out on my YouTube channel, articles on this site and the audio podcast.
Five: The Black Dog of Memento Mori MeditationAlthough I don’t personally follow any particular belief system, I’ve studied various teachers and methods as intensively as possible.
Twenty years ago, I found the abundance of meditations offered by Michael Roach quite impressive, if only in terms of volume.
Although I’ve seem some people warning that he’s running some kind of cult, he certainly does seem to have quite a memory for maintaining and sharing dozens of meditations. In this video he says he knows over 100, which is not at all impractical in my view.
Indeed, I have memorized approximately 2000 words of Sanskrit, and would argue that each Sanskrit phrase is its own meditation. It’s just more fun for me to group a bunch together, rather than repeat the same one and wind up suffering the deleterious boredom of rote repetition.
In any case, of all the Roach meditations I followed, my favorite involved him describing various scenarios playing out in a Buddhist temple. It was essentially an example of the method of loci combined with the story method.
I won’t go through all the parts, even though they all involved images and situations of threat.
The third part struck me the most because it involved imagining yourself at the third station of the temple and suddenly becoming aware of a little black dog nipping at your heels.
The purpose of the meditation?
To remind yourself that death is always behind you. And its potential as an event is continually as close as the faithful companion pet dogs symbolize.
You can easily practice it by picking a location you’re familiar with and imagining yourself walking when you suddenly notice this presence with you.
Then submit the sensations that arise to inquiry. You can use reflective thinking to post questions like:
Why does this meditation use a small puppy as a symbol for death?In what ways does death influence my life?What happens if I embrace the reality of death rather than fear it?What exactly is it that we fear when we fear death?Although these questions might sound strange, they will potentially create what the psychotherapist Monica Khosla calls “memory reconsolidation” in her book, The First and Last Belief: Liberation and the Sense of Self in the Age of Neuroscience.
The idea is that we can now identify what she calls “neuropatterns of belief.”
By questioning them and using other mental practices, we can change those patterns. Or at least change the ways the brain prioritizes attention to various ideas implicit memory has helped usher into our brains.
Our thoughts and ideas about death are perhaps the most pernicious when it comes to creating anxiety-induced memory loss. I’m sure glad I found practices like these to ease up my own anxiety. My mind has been much more open and my memory stronger ever since.
And many people who use the Magnetic Memory Method or have read The Victorious Mind report similar results.
A Better Life Is Rarely Built By “Motivation”If you take nothing else from my adaptation of the memento mori concept in offering these exercises, please realize that the mental skill you desire is built by training.
That’s what memento mori does when you realize the role of our symbolic fears of death and use them as reminders to take action now. While you have a chance.
Over my years of experience, I’ve realized that Lorayne is perhaps more right than he ever imagined.
If you cannot train your attention, it will be very difficult to train your memory.
That’s why the exercises I shared with you today aren’t just philosophical.
They provide mental reps that keep you focused on what really matters.
And if you loved discovering these exercises, you’re really going to appreciate what I’m about to give you next.
I’ve put together a free course that teaches the most important foundation of memory. All without fluff, gimmicks, or needing photographic memory.
Grab this free memory improvement course now:
In four quick video lessons, you’ll discover how to:
Encode information so it sticksRecall what you need on demandAnd build memory skills you can trust in real lifeNow, if the idea of using memento mori sounded morbid at the start, now you know the truth:
Itâs a wake-up call.
So what do you say?
Are you ready to develop a mind that actually holds onto the life youâre living and realizes the goals your beautiful imagination has placed in your mind?
Carpe diem!
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