David Epstein

Where...

So there were, I was taking French in middle school at the time.

And we had these tests where you had to listen to a recording and there were blanks and you had to write in the blank word, but like you had to hear the audio and fill in the blank with the right word that you heard.

And when I did this, I didn't have my writing arm.

I started realizing I had to memorize them and then go back and write them all because I wasn't fast enough to keep up with my left hand.

And I started using mnemonic devices, like relating them to things in sports usually that would help me remember.

And I was doing better than I'd ever done.

I use mnemonic devices for everything now.

I memorize an hour-long keynote talk using mnemonic devices.

And people think I have a photographic memory when I finish a talk.

And I'm like, if I put my keys down and spin in a circle, I lose them.

But it's not a photographic memory, but I use these mnemonic devices.

Years later, I learned probably the most famous study ever done of memory improvement.

involved taking a student at Carnegie Mellon university who could only memorize seven digits and getting him up to 80 digits using sports related mnemonic devices.

Really?

Right.

So it's that constraint forced me to, it also got me into running because I couldn't do contact sports.

I ended up becoming a division one, like all East runner.

And so something that I thought was devastating, it was devastating at the time.

in the long run paid these, these incredible dividends.