RailsConf 2014 - Secrets of a World Memory Champion by Chris Hunt

[music]

V.O.: Balance. Balance. Balance. Balance.
Balance.

[music]

V.O.: Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.
Four. Three.

Two. One.

Yay!

C.H.: Let me pull out my mic real quick.

Wow, that was awesome. OK. So, we don't know

that much about memory, but what we do know

is that if I were to start reading off

a list of random words, you would only be

able to memorize about four of those things.
And

then, if we wait twenty to thirty seconds,
and

talk about anything else, you're only gonna
remember about

two, or one, or none.

We kind of know that, right. Almost every
person

I've met has told me, I have a really

bad memory. So that's understood. But at the
same

time, if I walk up to anybody in this

room and I ask how to get to the

restroom, you could probably tell me. And
you could

probably tell me with, like, really good detail.

Like, walk out of that door. There's gonna
be

the thing with the coffee and the tea on

it. Just passed that is the registration desk.
Take

a right. We're gonna pass the escalators.
And we're

gonna have two sets of elevators. The one
on

the left that only goes up to the seventeenth

floor, right. The one on the right starts
at

the eighteenth floor. Keep going. We're gonna
see the

women's restroom first and then the men's
restroom.

We could all do that. So, on one hand,

we have a memory that completely sucks, but
at

the same time we're able to, like, magically
memorize

the blueprint of this building. And we don't
even

try to do it. So has does that work?

What memory athletes do when they memorize
gigantic lists

of words is, instead of using that short term

memory that we call it, or present memory,
they

use their spatial memory. The same memory
that we

use to memorize location. Which is what I
tried

to do today. So we'll see how we did

with ten random words, which is more than
double

the amount of words that we're supposed to
be

able to memorize.

So the first word was me staring at my

watch, right. Anticipation. Does anyone remember
what happened next?

Clown. Perfect. And then what? Yes. Clown
and opera.

And we did a little trick there where we

combined the two, right. I was wearing the
clown

thing and I was singing. Does anyone remember
what

happened next when I came over to this side

of - yeah, I don't even need to remind

you. Perfect. Car.

And then what happened over here? Discovered
an orange.

That's awesome. You guys are doing really
well. After

that, what happened next? Sprint. Great. So
I balanced

on my hands, and then we sprint back over

to the other side of the stage, and there

was a countdown playing on the speakers, right.
And

then we ended up applause. That's excellent.
That's the

entire method. That's what everybody uses
to memorize thousands

and thousands and thousands of digits, or
hundreds and

hundreds and hundreds of random words. Is
just by

visualizing it and using that spatial memory.

So now we're gonna see how to apply that

to a few different things. The first thing
is

gonna be names, cause everybody has a hard
time

with names. How many people do you think you've

met this conference? I think I've met maybe
like

two hundred people. All right. I think there's
fifteen

hundred people. I remember about half of those
names,

and I was actually trying to remember them.
So

it's probably a lot worse for some of you

who weren't trying.

When you first meet somebody, what you want
to

do is actually listen to them tell you their

name. Cause a lot of the times when we're

meeting somebody, right, we're five seconds
into the conversation

and we completely forgot their name. Well,
our memories

actually aren't that bad. We just weren't
paying attention

when we were introduced to them. So remember
their

name.

The second thing you want to do is kick

in that spatial memory. So to do that, this

is Ryan. Everybody say hi Ryan. All right.
So

you've got the first thing down. You've listened
to

the name. Now you want to look at Ryan

and find something that stands out to you.

Now Ryan's got, obviously he's got his own
look

going on, so he, he's given us a lot

of things to look at but first thing I

notice for him is his tattoo on his neck.

So if I want to remember Ryan, I'm gonna

look at that tattoo, and I'm gonna think of

a word that rhymes with the word Ryan. Something

that I can easily visualize, and then attach
it

to that tattoo.

So Ryan, for me, makes me think of lion.

So I'm gonna imagine, coming up on Ryan's
right-hand

size, a big lion running. He's got like a

bright-orange main, he's breathing hard. He
jumps up in

the air and he bites Ryan in the neck

and just, like, rips off his tattoo, and he's

flailing it around. There's blood everywhere.
The lion's like,

throwing the tattoo at you and you're super
grossed

out. The most offensive you can make the image,

the better, because then it's gonna be more
memorable.

So the next time we see Ryan, we'll immediately

notice his tattoo. We're gonna remember that
crazy scene

of a lion ripping off his tattoo and throwing

it around the room, and then we'll be able

to connect that again with Ryan. Make sense?
So

names are pretty easy. And I bet you all

can start doing that right now.

Let's move on to the next thing. And that

is memorizing a shuffled deck of playing cards.
This

is, this is, the first thing that I started

getting interested in when I got into memory.
It's

actually more, more useful than you think
it is.

The reason you want to memorize cards is because

it's the only thing that you can memorize
that

will actually impress your friends, for number
one, the

second reason is because it teaches you everything
you

need to know to compete in the world memory

competition. All the techniques that are important
for that.

So, looking at a card, here we have the

seven of diamonds and the seven of hearts.
The

reason why this is so difficult to memorize
is

because they're just hard to visualize. These
two cards

almost look exactly the same. If I wanted
to

just close my eyes and try to use this

visual technique we've been talking about
and I visualize

the seven of diamonds and I visualize the
seven

of hearts, I'm probably still gonna forget
it. It's

difficult.

So what the pros do is, instead of memorizing

cards, they memorize people. So the seven
of diamonds,

for me, is Isaac Newton. The seven of hearts

is Einstein. So these guys are much easier
to

memorize. They're completely different. You
can imagine them interacting

with each other, doing different things, right.

So the next step is to think of a

person for every single card in the deck.
That's

fifty-two people. And when I first heard this,
I

almost stopped. Because that sounds like,
I mean, I

gotta use my memory to do that, right. But

there's a technique, a trick, it's called
mnemonic. And

mnemonics just take information that's available
to you, that's

already right in front of your face, and uses

that information to remind you of the thing
it

is that you want to remember.

So, looking at a card, we have two bits

of information. We have the value of the card,

so for, for, four of hearts, it's a four,

and then we have the suit of the card.

Just looking at those two things can remind
us

of the person it is that we associated with

that card. So we'll go through the values
really

quickly here. You'll reference these later
I'm sure. But

every ace and every two in the deck is

an athlete. Doesn't matter what the suit is.
Ace

of clubs, ace of spades, ace of diamonds.
These

are all athletes. Ace is a male athlete. Two

is a female athlete.

Every three and four is an actor. Three is

a male actor, four is a female actor. Every

five and six is a controversial or sketchy
person,

somebody that's done something that not everyone
agrees with.

And these are people that you can think of.

Five is a male, six is a female. So

you might see a pattern. Every single odd
card

in the deck is a male. Every single even

card in the deck is a female.

Seven and eight. These are people of, like,
any

kind of science field. Physics, math, any
scientist. Remember

my seven of diamonds, seven of hearts, had
Isaac

Newton and Einstein. Again, seven's a male,
eight's a

female. Nine and ten, these are people of
power.

That can mean political power or super human
powers.

Any of that stuff. And queen and king, this

is a couple. This could be a famous couple.

A couple you know. This could be you. Whatever.

And finally jack. There are four of these
in

the deck, too. And these are all religious
figures.

K.

The second thing. Suit. There are four suits
we

have. Each of these are a specific type of

person. So a diamond is a rich person, or

a fancy person, or a shiny person. Think diamonds,

right. Shiny, fancy. Hearts, these are people
you love.

This can be family, friends. Clubs, these
are, like,

bad people. You can think strong, Arno - I

have, I use Arnold Schwarzenegger for one
of my

club cards. Sylvester Stallone, another good
example. Or people

who are just, like, bad at what they do.

Spades. This means funny. These can be comedians,
friends,

joksters, or other things that are funny to
you.

So taking those two things combined, now,
we can

try to memorize three cards. So we have ace

of diamonds, jack of spades, and four of hearts.

So first thing we want to do is look

at the suit, right. You may not remember,
but

ace is a male athlete. And diamonds is super

fancy, or extravagant or rich. So this, for
me,

is Michael Jordan. And for the rest of my

life, this will always be Michael Jordon.

The next card we have is jack of spades.

Remember jack is a religious person, spades
means funny.

So a funny religious person. The Dali Llama.
Next

card is four of hearts. Remember four is a

female actor. Hearts is somebody you love.
So it's

a female actor that I love. Well, we may

have all different opinions on this, but I'm
married.

So this is my wife. Remember, this is just,

you can use whatever pictures you want. This
is

just a reminder. So four of hearts is my

wife. She's not an actor. And she's putting
a

Santa hat on my dog Baxter.

So now we have three very different images
that

we need to memorize. And we could, if we

wanted to, build a story, like we did with

the words. And we already know you guys can

do that, cause we just did it, right. So

you can imagine there's a basketball court.
Michael Jordon's

dribbling down the basketball court. He jumps
up, slam

dunks the basketball and for, for whatever
reason, the

Dali Llama is like, he's down below the basketball

hoop praying, and so the ball just hits him

in the back of the head, and boom, his

head hits the ground. There's blood everywhere.
My dog

comes running out of the locker room. He's
running

around in the blood. He's leaving footsteps
all over

the ground. Loise is screaming. It's crazy,
right.

So you won't forget that. And that's how you

would memorize three cards.

But there's actually a more popular technique
of memorizing

when you have lots of things to memorize.
So

we have to memorize fifty-two cards. So we're
probably

gonna wanna use this. This is called the method

of Loki. Also known as the journey method
or

the memory palace. Most people have heard
of this.

The way this works is you take a location

that you're really, really familiar with.
You're probably gonna

start with your house cause you're probably
really familiar

with your house. And you imagine yourself
walking from

room to room to room. So you would walk

through your front door into your bedroom,
and here

you would place the first thing you want to

remember. So if it's Michael Jordon, you might
see

him jumping off your bed and slam dunking
into

your laundry basket. The important thing is
to look

at everything in your room and imagine your
memory

interacting with those things so it's firmly
planted.

And then you go to the next room, say

the bathroom. You do the same thing here with

your second memory. So here we'd have Dali
Llama.

Maybe he's in the shower and the Buddha's
in

the sink. I don't know. You then leave the

bathroom. You walk into the living room. And
here's

where you place your third memory. You look
at

the TV, you look at the carpet, you look

at the couch, you imagine your memory interacting
with

all of those things. And then you retrace
your

steps from the beginning of the journey, and
everything

will be right where you left it. So if

you're like me and you're from, I'm in Portland

now so I have a little bit more room,

but if you're coming from San Fransisco or
even

here in Chicago, you're memory palace might
look something

like this.

So I would actually recommend, and this is
a

better method, is to go outside to make your

journey. Cause you have a lot more room this

way. So this is a run that I do

a couple times a week, and I've ran it

so many times that I could close my eyes

and run it and I have thirty-four locations
that

I could place memories. And then I just start

my run over again and I go back through,

and they'll all be sitting there waiting for
me.

And thirty-four doesn't seem like, like a
ton, but

that's actually enough to memorize two shuffled
decks of

playing cards. And I'm gonna explain how that
works

right now.

Professional memory athletes need to memorize
a lot of

stuff. And they don't want to be building
journeys

that are like thousands and thousands and
thousands of

locations long. So they're actually able to
compress their

memories to take up less space. So if we,

instead of just coming up with a person for

each of our cards, we also come up with

an action and an action - for example, the

first card is Michael Jordon slam dunking
a basketball,

the second card is the Dali Llama praying
in

front of the Buddha. The third card is my

wife Loiussa putting a Santa hat on my dog

Baxter. We can then compress those three cards
into

a single image, a single memory by taking
the

person from the first card, Michael Jordon.
The action

from the second card, praying. And the object
from

the third card, which is, in this case, my

dog, and then we combine those into a single

image.

So we have Michael Jordon praying to my dog

Baxter. And the really, really, really great
thing about

this technique, is not only have we compressed
our

memories to take one third of the space that

they used to before, but we automatically
get these

images that are extremely memorable, and we
don't even

need to think about it. You know, I'm not

gonna forget Michael Jordon, like, on a, on
a

mat in my bedroom praying to my dog who's

on my dog, like ripping up pillows, like.
It's

very memorable and it's easy to retrace.

So that's good. If you want to get started,

the gift shop here, I checked actually has
Chicago

themed gift cards, playing cards. So you can
go

check those out. If you start getting quicker
and

want to just have shuffled decks to practice
on,

you can go to this url. It's just spitting

out shuffled decks of cards, and it'll time
you.

This is also a GitHub repo that shows the,

the people that I use for these associations.

That may be a good starting point but it's,

it's pretty good to come up with your own

pictures so you actually remember them.

All right. So that was kind of intense. So

we're gonna take a quick thirty second break
and

practice our memories. So, find a person to
your

left or to your right, to front, to your

back, that you haven't met, and memorize their
name.

And I'm gonna give you a quick reminder. Quick

reminder. Hold on. Hold on. Quick reminder.
OK. Find

something on their face. Attach their name
to that

something on their face and don't actually
tell them

the image you create. That's important. Go.

OK. Time's up. Sit down. Time's up. Time's
up.

Everybody back. Get it down. All right. Good
job.

So does anybody remember this guy's name?
Yes. Good.

I was hoping no one would get it and

I'd give you a prize but I don't have

enough prizes for everybody. OK.

Moving on. We're now going to memorize something
that

is probably the hardest thing to memorize,
but since

we've all learned how to memorize cards, it's
not

as hard as it once was. We're going to

memorize numbers. This is definitely the hardest
thing to

memorize, but the person who sets the world
record

for this is able to memorize nine hundred
and

thirty-seven random digits in fifteen minutes,
which is four

credit cards a minute. Kind of amazing, right?
Like

this guy can make bank at a restaurant.

So. Memorizing these sixteen digits isn't
actually that difficult.

We're gonna use a system a lot like we

did for the cards, because numbers are basically
impossible

to memorize, we're not gonna memorize numbers
at all.

We're gonna memorize pictures instead of numbers.

So here's a grid I've made. You could do

the same exact thing. Each of these squares
represents

a two digit number, from zero zero to ninety-nine.

It's your task to fill all of these squares

with different pictures that you can memorize
every two-digit

number. So if you started with cards, like
I

recommended, then there's no problem just
using those images.

So numbers one through fifty-two can just
be the

same images you used for your playing cards.
So

now you're over halfway there. You're basically
done. You

only have forty-eight more pictures you've
gotta come up

with. Some of these are gonna be super obvious.

Like zero zero is a person favorite of mine.

This, every time I see it, I see a

set of eyeballs. So it's really easy to remember

that one. It could be eyeballs. It could be

sunglasses or goggles. You might imagine,
like, Arnold Schwarzenegger

putting on shades.

So then we only have now forty-seven numbers
left

that we need to memorize. And some of these

will have special meaning to you. So 1984,
that's

the year I was born. So I imagine a

birthday cake with big bright candles, burning
fire. 1974,

that's the year that the Rubik's cube came
out,

and I really love the Rubik's cube so I'm

never gonna forget that. 1991 was the year
that

the first episode of Doug aired, so I imagine

the Quail Man every time I see the number

ninety-one.

And, and, so that leaves with with now forty-four

more pictures that we need to come up with,

and none of these have any meaning to us

whatsoever, so we'll use another mnemonic
to build pictures

and remind us of those pictures. And a mnemonic

for this is called the major system. The major

system is also known as the phonetic system.
Because

each number from zero to nine is assigned
a

phonetic sound. So zero is z or zeh. One

t, teh, teh. Two is n, neh, neh, neh.

Three is m. Or muh, muh, muh. Four is

R, ruh. Five is L, luh. Six is J.

Juh. Seven is K. Or keh, keh. Eight is

F, or feh, feh. And finally nine is P.

So. Those are all the phonetic sounds. So
let's

break out a number real quick so we see

how this works. We'll grab a number, eighty-three.
This

number we don't yet have a picture for. And

we'll apply the major system to give us a

picture and be able to remind us of that

picture later. So we take eight and we grab

the phonetic sound for the number eight, which
is

F, and then we do the same with three,

so we have M. So some of you might

see FM and go, oh, FM radio. Well, that's

totally fine. So your picture now for eighty-three
could

be an FM radio. And that's all you need

to remember that.

But you could also just start sticking in
vowels,

things that aren't part of the major system,
until

you make a word that makes sense to you.

So foam is the first word I found. And

this is a really good word cause it's extremely

visual. You can imagine being in your room
and

just spraying foam all over the place. You're
not

gonna forget that. But I kept searching just
to

see if I could find something else. And I

found FIM. Does anyone know what FIM is?

No. FIM is not actually a word. But it

sounds like Vim. Now, remember this is the
phonetic

system, so you're looking for things that
sound similar,

not necessarily spelt the same. So eighty-three,
for me,

is Vim. So I imagine, maybe, my beautiful
color

scheme. Working on some Ruby. Just, basically
sitting behind

the computer, it would be my memory for eighty-three.

So, we could take the major system and apply

it to all the rest of the pictures, until

eventually we have one hundred unique images
that are

easy for us to recall, either by the major

system or they just have special meaning to
us.

So now, memorizing a credit card number is
just

like memorizing the cards. We go through and
break

the number down into sets of two. So we

look at forty-four, we grab our image for
forty-four.

We place it in the first room of our

memory palace.

We go to the next room. We grab the

image for eighty-five, we place that in the
next

room. We then move over to maybe the living

room. We take the image for thirty-four, and
we

put it in there. And then, again, we retrace

our steps to remember the number. And if you've

taken the time to create the person, action,
and

objects that we did for the playing cards,
then

the same exact compression can be used here
too.

So you can memorize a binary number like this,

which is huge, in a single image. This is

one image. So when someone memorizes something
like, you

know, fifty-thousand binary digits, it's not
quite as impressive

when you realize this is a single image in

their memory palace. The way this words is
you

can break it down, just like you might imagine.

So zero zero one is one. Zero one zero

is two. One one zero is six. One zero

one is five. One one one is seven, and

one zero zero is four. So we now we

have three two digit numbers, which can either
be

three pictures or we could compress them,
right, with

person from the first, second an action, and
action

from the third into a single image.

Well, it's not as difficult as it sounds.
So

I'm, I'm coming up on time, so I'm going

to give you something to read in the future,

and that is this book here. This is by

Dominic O'Brien, and he is the eight-time
world memory

champion. So he really, really knows his stuff.
He's

a horrible writer, but the techniques are,
are, are

very good. So he's gonna talk about everything
we

talked about today and then give a little,
little

bit of advice and like practice problems for
some

other techniques. But they all come from the
same

technique of using your, your spatial memory.

Another book, if you're interested in competing,
or just

learning more about how competitions work,
this is a

very popular book that you may have already
read.

It's Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer,
and he

is a journalist that decided he'd start learning
how

to memorize and he ended up just winning the

US Memory Championship, so it's, it's pretty
impressive.

That's it. I'm Chris Hunt in real life and

on the internet. If you have any questions.
Thank

you.