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Chapter 1: What common memory issues do people face today?
How many times have you thought to yourself, I want to remember something, and then you forgot it almost immediately? And maybe it's a name, it's a fact, or maybe even it's why you walked into a room. This probably sounds familiar. It happens to all of us. It happens to me. We live at a time when our attention is pulled in every direction, and that's a fundamental problem.
what happens instead is that a lot of people start to assume they are just bad with names they can't focus or maybe they're not fast learners but what you want to remember is that memory focus and learning are not fixed traits these are skills and like any skill they can be trained that should be deeply inspiring to anybody listening and my guest today knows this better than anyone
Nelson Delis is a six-time U.S. memory champion who not only trained his brain to work better, but he also wrote about it for his new book called Everyday Genius. So today, we're going to do a deep dive into how memory actually works, how to improve it, and then how to focus and even learn better in a world that's full of distractions.
I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, and this is Chasing Life.
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Your memory is at another level. It's sort of super human memory. And this is something I think about a lot. But you were not born this way. I mean, this was something that you were able to develop. What do you think the message is then to anyone who's listening?
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I wasn't born with an amazing memory. That's often the assumption people have that I just had this gift, but I only worked on my memory in my mid twenties.
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Chapter 2: How can memory and focus be improved?
I only got interested in it because of my grandmother and her situation with Alzheimer's. But the message is that everybody, no matter where you are in life, what you think your memory currently is capable of, we all can transform our brain, our memory, our minds. There's so much potential there. And I don't think a lot of people realize that.
Just to put an exclamation mark, I'm gonna embarrass you for a second, but for reference, Nelson has memorized the most names in 15 minutes. That was 235 names. The most words in 15 minutes, 255 words. I mean, that's just some of it. And Ken, I'm blown away when I think about this. And when you and I spent time together, you walked me through this memory palace
And it's funny, I think that was several years ago. I don't even remember how many years ago, but I do remember that palace. And I do remember remembering all the presidents by actually walking around the room and assigning those presidents to things in the room. I have a good memory, but the idea that I was able to remember that many things that quickly was pretty stunning to me.
And I think anybody who wants to do that, should read your work and read your books and things like that because it is possible. You're an athlete. Do you approach memory like you do your physical endeavors?
I do. I think that's what maybe sets me apart from others who have dabbled in the sport. And even in the memory coaching that I do now, I always approach it with my clients as like, how can we train this as if it were essentially a muscle, setting goals for yourself, pushing the limits, trying to understand how to break around these barriers.
And the mind is, and memory is just like any other skill that you can learn. And it's not a fixed thing.
Well, I imagine when you're starting to coach somebody, you probably have to dispel with some misconceptions to start. And maybe that's what you're doing right now, this idea that it is like a muscle, it can be trained that way. Poor memory is often something that's, if you really dig down, is attributable to distraction, to lack of attention for people. But how do you start?
When somebody comes to you for memory coaching, where do you begin?
A big part of it is trying to erase this label that people so easily attach to themselves and their own memory. It's very common that you meet people who are just like, I'm a goldfish. I have a terrible memory. I'm terrible with names. And they've just fixated that idea onto themselves. So educating them that this is actually something you can work on is another part of that first step.
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Chapter 3: What techniques does Nelson Dellis use to enhance memory?
And I try to give them little quick wins, do little exercises where they'd be like, oh, I didn't think I could memorize that. And lo and behold, I did just by Nelson walking me through this very seemingly easy exercise.
Yeah, it is interesting. So we've been talking about the memory palace for, for people who don't know what that is, aren't familiar with it. Can you just in a few sentences, describe what you mean?
Sure, so it dates back thousands of years. This is a technique in some shape or form that ancient civilizations would use to remember the things that propelled their knowledge forward by generation. And what they did is they attached associations or imagery for the things they wanted to remember to actual locations that they could visualize or that they were familiar with in their mind.
So translate that to modern day. What is a memory palace? Well, you can imagine your home, for example. It's not a palace, or maybe it is. I don't know. But it's a place that you know very well. If I ask you to close your eyes and walk from the front door to your bedroom in your mind, that's easy. It's not like you sat down and memorized it.
You just know it because you live there and you go through it hundreds and hundreds of times in a year. And so we can use these familiar places as a piggyback to store information. And so when I'm memorizing cards, I'm choosing a memory palace. I'm looking at the first few cards and turning them into pictures and attaching it or imagining it at the first location of this memory palace.
And then I go in my mind to the next place in the memory palace, which after I walk in the door, maybe it's the entryway to my house or apartment. And I put the next images and so on. And you can create this pathway through this structure. And then when you want to recall the information, all you have to do is think back to the place
and walk back through it again and pick out the images that you laid there. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's one of these things that when you try it, you see how natural it feels to think that way.
And do you use that like in your regular everyday life? I mean, a competition's one thing, but let's say you're at a cocktail party and you're meeting 20, 30 people. Could you use a memory palace or what's your technique to remember 20 new people, for example?
Yeah, so strategy's the same. The memory palace component of it looks a little different and I'll explain why. So if you think about memorizing a list of words, let's say, and placing them in a memory palace. Uh, when you're going to recall them, you probably are going to need to go back through them, uh, and, and pick them out, right? You have 20, 30 words, whatever.
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Chapter 4: How does distraction affect memory retention?
Uh, it could be personal things. It could be work related. It doesn't matter. Whatever comes first, In my mind, I'm writing it down. What that usually leaves me with is kind of this empty, clutter-free brain space that lets me know, okay, I've got that out of my system. I can work at this. That helps a lot. Another thing I do is I'll set a timer for 25-minute sessions.
This is called the Pomodoro technique. You can set a timer for 25 minutes. Why 25 minutes? Well, because 25 minutes is some – block of time that's reasonable, that's not too long to intensely focus on something without doing anything else. And what you do is you do 25 minutes, you can take a five minute break doing something mindless, come back and do another session,
And then repeat this for three, four sessions, depending how much time you have and what you're trying to do. And then you can take a longer break and you can stack these, right? And I find them super helpful, especially in this day and age where, you know, I have kids constantly running down here to ask me to do this, or, you know, I do have a bunch of calls and things that I need to do.
So having these short spurts that are meaningful lengths of time, still, I can get a lot done in 25 minutes if I focus on the one thing are super helpful for me.
we have a small memory trick right now that maybe people who are listening can try for themselves as well. And this is an interesting one, one that you know well, but I hadn't really thought about this ever, but it's basically memorizing the alphabet backwards. Yeah. So. You want me to walk you through it? Yeah, can you just talk us through this?
So, and people at home, maybe as Nelson's talking us through this, just start thinking about this yourself, memorizing the alphabet backwards.
It's a fun little party trick, and it's a little example, as I'll share, to learn it very quickly using memory techniques. And so we mentioned the memory palace, but there's also an even simpler way to go about memorizing things if you don't care too much about building your memory palace or... having this kind of endless possibility for a sequence of things. And it's a story method.
So we remember stories really well. So you can connect pictures of things via a story to help you remember a short sequence of things. So perfect for an alphabet. Now there's 26 letters in the alphabet. That's a lot of things. So what we can do is something else called chunking, where we can group meaningful patterns in chunks so that there are less things to memorize.
So if you follow along with me for this story, you'll have the alphabet memorized, okay? So, and again, picture, imagine. This is the key root of memorizing better is to have these intense visuals. So really take a moment to visualize what I'm about to tell you in your mind with the colors, the sounds, the feelings, the actions, all these things.
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Chapter 5: How does the memory palace technique work?
Um,
My wife gives me a hard time because she says it's coupon instead of coupon, but I say coupon, whatever. All right. So this is part of the story so far. So we have these waves, these six waves that come crashing on the shore and it's the UTSR, but it's a discount one. So there's a coupon involved. Okay. Then out of nowhere comes out a milk jug.
So like your former carton or a carton of milk doing a jig. Okay. a funny old dancing jig. All right. So the milk is MLK. And then the jig is, it's a little taking liberties here, but it's J I H G. So jig with a little, uh, um, uh, thrown in H there, silent H. So the milk is doing a jig on the beach there. Um, And then finally, this milk jug stops dancing and feeds or fed a cab.
There's a taxi cab there with the letter A on it. And so it's just feeding it something with a spoon. And this cab just munches it up. It's so bizarre. I know. But again, we have the six waves that crash on the UTSR. Not the USSR. That has a coupon code. Then the milk jug comes in doing a jig. And then it fed, F-E-D, the CAB, which had the letter A on it. CAB is the C-B. CAB, CAB, CAB-A.
And so just to recap everything, the six waves is to help you remember ZYX, Z-Y-X. Z-Y-X. The wave is W-V.
W-V.
Wave. U-T-S-R.
U-T-S-R. The discounted UTSR. Yeah, with a coupon. By a coupon, Q-P-O-N. The milk, MLK. MLK.
And then the jig, J-I-H-G. That fed, F-E-D, the cab A, C-B-A. Yeah. That's fascinating. A little bit of practice. I can say that very fast. Z-Y-X-W-V. Six waves.
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