by Tansel Ali
• Show off your skills to friends. This is a good way of testing your competence.
CHAPTER 12
BECOME A MEMORY ATHLETE
‘The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.’—colin Powell
Each year people of many nations come together for the World Memory Championships, where participants sit and memorise for an allotted time. Once memorisation time finishes, a recall period is given allowing competitors to show what they remembered. The purpose of the competition is to see who has the best and most effective memory. It sounds extremely nerdy and only for really smart people. That’s what I first thought, too, before entering it myself.
When I did I was shocked to see everyday, average people like you and me doing truly extraordinary things with their brain. This is what the World Memory Championships and this book are all about—the ordinary person doing extraordinary things. What’s even more exciting is that the participants don’t just remember hundreds of digits or randomly shuffled decks of playing cards, they take away skills to assist them in their everyday life—skills such as fast memorisation, brain training for mental performance and improved concentration and focus. People ask me about entering the World Memory Championships because they understand that taking memory training to a competitive level enhances mental capabilities and massively improves everyday performance.
Entering a memory championship will help you with:
• greater memory and recall
• improving focus and concentration
• self-discipline
• accountability
• accomplishing goals
• managing time better
• completing tasks faster.
The World Memory Championships comprise ten distinct events held over three days. Entrants compete in all ten events for the chance to be crowned the World Memory Champion.
Names and faces. Fifteen minutes memorisation. Thirty minutes recall.
Twelve faces are shown on one A3-sized sheet of paper with their first name and surname. You have to correctly memorise as many names as you can in fifteen minutes. Spell a name incorrectly and you lose a point!
Binary numbers. Thirty minutes memorisation. Sixty minutes recall.
Remember as many 0s and 1s in rows of thirty as you can. A one-digit mistake reduces your score to 15 out of 30. Two or more incorrect digits mean you score 0.
One-hour numbers. Sixty minutes memorisation. Two hours recall.
Numbers are presented in rows of forty digits. One digit wrong scores 20 out of 40. Two incorrect numbers mean you score 0.
Abstract images. Fifteen minutes memorisation. Thirty minutes recall.
Five abstract images are displayed per row for a total of ten rows per page. For a correct row you get 5 points. A mistake means a deducted point.
Speed numbers. Five minutes memorisation. Fifteen minutes recall.
Digits are presented in rows of forty. A one-digit mistake means you score 20. Two or more mistakes mean you score 0.
Historic/future dates. Five minutes memorisation. Fifteen minutes recall.
Made-up dates are presented on multiple pages to be memorised. Points are given for correct date recall and deductions for mistakes made.
One-hour cards. Sixty minutes memorisation. Two hours recall.
You can select as many decks of cards as you can memorise in one hour. Results can vary from no decks memorised up to a whopping thirty decks!
Random words. Fifteen minutes memorisation. Thirty minutes recall.
Four hundred words are presented in rows of twenty. Get one word incorrect and you score 10 out of 20. Two or more incorrect words mean you score 0.
Spoken numbers. 200, 300 and 400 seconds. Up to twenty minutes recall.
Digits of numbers are spoken by an official at one-second intervals for 200, 300 and 400 seconds. The person who has memorised the most consecutive numbers in a row from the very beginning wins the event.
Speed cards. Five minutes memorisation. Five minutes recall.
This is the competition finale. The winner is whoever can memorise a deck of randomly shuffled cards within five minutes. Just keep in mind that the current record (at time of writing) stands at 20.44 seconds by Simon Reinhard of Germany.
So the memory competition is not just about who can memorise the most, but who can memorise the most, most effectively, and fastest. My experience as a mental athlete helps me enormously when teaching others how to memorise effectively, without the need to go back and repeat again and again.
It’s interesting, too, that the more I learned about memory, the more I got from speed reading—and vice versa. To help explain this let’s turn to the speed numbers event of the Memory Championships.
There are various ways of using the Major system to memorise a row of forty digits. One way is to memorise two digits per location, which gives you twenty stories to remember per line of forty digits.
The story for the above can be something like this:
A dog (17) bites the front door (Loc. 1).
A gnome (23) jumps up and down on the couch (Loc. 2).
A bike (97) is ridden into the TV (Loc. 3).
chocolate (67) is smothered all over the window (Loc. 4).
Now most people could remember these stories if they spent time imagining them. But with only a few seconds to memorise them, you may forget part of a story, which means forgetting the number. And as there are twenty short stories to remember in a row of forty digits, there is a high possibility of making one mistake, or even two, out of that twenty.
To reduce this risk my approach was to memorise four digits at one location. This means ten stories to remember for each forty digits.
The story for the above can now be something like this:
A dog (17) bites a gnome’s (23) bottom at the front door (Loc. 1).
A bike (97) was painted with chocolate (67) on top of the couch (Loc. 2).
A net (21) was wrapped around a seat (01) to smash through the TV (Loc. 3).
A mop (39) was mopping away rice (40) surrounding the window (Loc. 4).
It’s a little longer but now there is more of a storyline instead of very short connections using two digits. A storyline is always more effective than a simple link because we can relate to it, because it has meaning. It is much more difficult to create meaning or a storyline for one particular image, and there is simply not enough time in the competition and not enough elements to drive the story further. While these techniques both accomplish the same task in remembering a row of forty digits, the four-digit memorisation method is a far more effective strategy.
In fact, it’s possible to memorise even more digits in a location. What if you were to try ten? This means making a story with five images linked to one another four times for each row. So if you only have four stories to remember per row of forty digits, chances are you will remember them—especially if your story is imaginative.
So what does this tell us about speed reading and memory? It tells us that they are essentially the same thing. The more stories we bunch together, the more effective the recall, which is proof of the saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.
The things you need to become memory champion are the same as those needed to excel in any other field whether it’s competitive sports, business, education or entertainment. They include hard work, self-discipline, sound strategies, supportive, strong, positive people around you and a genuine passion and love for what you do.
The World Memory Championships training program
Here is a program of activities to help you train for the World Memory Championships. For those who don’t wish to enter the competition this is sti
ll a great brain-training program.
Names and faces
1. Jump on a site such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
2. Find a page where it displays a list of people’s names and their photograph.
3. Memorise their names using SMASHIN SCOPE through linking and association.
4. Start timing yourself both with memorising and recall. Try recalling the name by viewing their photograph only, ensuring you cover the name if it’s directly under the photo.
Binary numbers
1. Download binary digits file from tanselali.com. Or use the two pages of binary code here to make a start.
2. Memorise the following binary code using the Major system or Dominic system for the digits.
000 = 0
001 = 1
010 = 2
011 = 3
100 = 4
101 = 5
110 = 6
111 = 7
3. Memorise the binary code in pairs (as below) in rows of thirty for five minutes.
100 111 001 010 000 011 111 001 010 010
100 111 (rock), 001 010 (ton), 000 011 (sumo), 111 001 (cat), 010 010 (nun)
As you get better, increase your memorisation time from five to ten minutes. Then from ten to twenty minutes.
One-hour numbers
1. Download the random numbers file from tanselali.com.
2. Memorise six decimal digits per location for twenty minutes, then go back and review for ten minutes. Repeat this process for a total of one hour. There are various ways of doing this. You may prefer to memorise for ten minutes, then go back and review—just don’t memorise for one hour straight, you’ll become tired and may end up forgetting everything!
3. Memorise numbers in groups of three pairs, and in rows of forty. For the last four digits of each row you can use the Dominic system.
4712037122946340315909488277103566271978
[471203] [712294] [634031] [590948] [827710] [356627] [1978]
It makes sense to use more digits in a location for one-hour numbers so you have fewer stories and locations to remember.
Abstract images
1. Download samples from tanselali.com.
2. Memorise by linking each abstract image together in a row of five.
3. Memorise for fifteen minutes straight.
4. Test your recall.
Speed numbers
1. Download the random numbers file from tanselali.com.
2. Memorise for five minutes straight using any method you prefer. Five minutes of memorisation with no review helps strengthen your longer term memory and allows you to memorise more. At first you’ll make a lot more mistakes but with practice you’ll get a whole lot better.
Historic/future dates
1. Download the random dates file from tanselali.com.
2. Memorise as many dates as you can in five minutes using any number system.
3. Here are the sorts of things you’re likely to find:
1971: a cat jumped over the fence.
2012: a mobile phone floats on water.
1766: Peter Pan flies over Antarctica.
1335: the first painting of a chimpanzee is sold to a merchant in France.
1818: wife divorces husband for forgetting wedding anniversary.
One-hour cards
1. Have shuffled decks of cards ready. (The number depends on how many you would like to memorise in an hour.)
2. Download recall sheets from tanselali.com and print them out.
3. Memorise three cards per location for twenty minutes, then go back and review for ten minutes. Repeat this process for a total of one hour. There are various ways of doing this and you may even choose to memorise four decks, then review and repeat the process.
Random words
1. Download random words list from tanselali.com.
2. Practise by memorising two words per location for fifteen minutes.
3. Spend thirty minutes to recall the memorised words in order.
4. Go back and review your mistakes: visualise them.
5. Memorise again for another fifteen minutes.
6. Repeat step 4 to remove any mistakes.
Spoken numbers
1. Go to tanselali.com and download the spoken numbers file.
2. Press start and, using your number and location systems, memorise as many numbers spoken at one second intervals as you can.
3. When the numbers have all been spoken, write down as many as you can recall. Recall from the first number onwards, because any number not memorised after that is where you stop scoring.
Speed cards
1. Have two decks of playing cards ready—one deck shuffled and the other deck in suit order.
2. Have a stopwatch ready to time yourself.
3. Start your stopwatch upon memorisation of the deck of shuffled cards.
4. Stop the clock once you’ve finished the memorisation.
5. Pick up the ordered deck of playing cards.
6. Start your five-minute timer and rearrange the ordered cards to match the memorised first deck.
7. When five minutes is up, or as soon as you’ve completed rearranging your ordered deck, put both decks side by side and flip them over, card by card, at the same time. If you have memorised and ordered the deck correctly, the cards should be identical as you flip. If they are not, then you have either made a memorisation mistake or memorised from the bottom up, in which case turn the re-ordered deck upside down and flip both decks over that way.
• Memory championships training can fast-track effective memorisation.
• Adding more information to be remembered into one location makes it more memorable.
• Speed reading and memory engage in the same brain function—converting abstract to image.
• Self-discipline, hard work, and practice, practice and more practice will make you a memory champion.
PUT YOUR MEMORY TO WORK
‘Everything is practice.’—Pele
DID YOU KNOW
When awake, the human brain produces enough electricity to power a small lightbulb.
Now that you have learned the principles, the techniques and their many applications, it’s time to practise these new skills. This section will provide hours of fun and ensure that you make the most of your amazing mind. Just remember to build the memory foundation first by using SMASHIN SCOPE before applying memory techniques.
SMASHIN SCOPE
Create stories using the following:
pencil + door + lemons
………………………………………………………………………………….
excited + television + leaves
………………………………………………………………………………….
exasperated + conundrum + toys
………………………………………………………………………………….
fork + windows + shower + web
………………………………………………………………………………….
cabinet + excellent + noodles + deluxe
………………………………………………………………………………….
disturbance + sensitivity + immaculate + technique
………………………………………………………………………………….
forest + computer + brochure + painting + kite
………………………………………………………………………………….
diligence + football + absence + playground + cloth
………………………………………………………………………………….
fascination + golf + humorous + exhibition + freak
……………………………………………………………………………�
��….
intelligence + strictness + beauty + adoration + idiosyncrasy
………………………………………………………………………………….
Speed reading test
Have a stopwatch ready and hit start when you begin reading the following article. When you come to the end hit stop and record your time. Follow the instructions to get your reading speed in words per minute (WPM).
The deepest dispute in education is based on a mistake
Daniel Kilov
In what must be now the most watched talk on the Internet (and likely all of human history: what other speech could have reached twenty-six million viewers?) Sir Ken Robinson calls for a revolution in the way we are educating children. He calls for a move away from fact-filled curricula and instead champions the teaching of creativity. He does not offer much in the way of a positive vision of what this revolutionary classroom would look like, but others using his talk as a rallying point often speak in terms of ‘twenty-first century learning skills’ which include information literacy, critical thinking, analysis and creative thinking.
The putative dispute between defenders of fact-based learning and advocates of twenty-first century thinking skills is, however, based on a false dichotomy, and this dissolves once we understand the relevant science of memory. A synthesis of these views, as we will see below, suggests that the best way to promote twenty-first century skills is to embrace Art of Memory techniques from 500 Bc.
Supporters of twenty-first century learning skills conceive of thinking skills as being, in some important way, beyond the mere accumulation of memorised facts. Scientific research, however, has determined that memory is central to complex cognitive processes such as thinking and problem solving.
The ability to sift through and critically appraise the value of information in any subject cannot be acquired without a significant body of knowledge in that area. The scientist George Miller demonstrated the importance of background knowledge to the use of reference materials, for instance, by asking a group of students to use a dictionary to learn new words. The results are humorous but clearly demonstrate the pitfalls of the anti-fact philosophy:
