Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0350: Recommended reading for beginning mnemonists

Episode Date: July 10, 2015

Brendan is looking for a good book to read as he begins his mnemonic journeys. What is a good place to begin reading about specific techniques such as PAO systems, the Major system, and other standard mnemonic practices? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed […]

Master of Memory 350 Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Brendan submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Brendan says, Hi, I just finished reading Moonwalking with Einstein. I enjoyed it, but as you probably know, it's not really an instruction book.

I now want to read a very good book on specific techniques with much more detail on how to do things like build PAO systems, major and Dominique systems, etc. Can you recommend one? So, Brendan, the number one book that I generally recommend for people who are really wanting to get into mnemonics but are just kind of starting out is Dominique O'Brien's book, How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week. That was one of the first things that I read on mnemonics besides Moonwalking with Einstein, like you're mentioning. But, of course, like you're saying, that book is more inspirational than actually instructional. Dominique O'Brien's book, again, How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week, will give you some introductions into how to build these systems for memorizing numbers and cards, remembering names and faces, and lots of things like that. And it's still really sort of a starting point. It has some advanced stuff.

It even includes things like how to figure out what day a particular historical date was. But it doesn't get into some of the more advanced mnemonic things on memorizing cards and numbers. So it's a good starting point and it covers a lot of territory just to get you started in each of those different areas. After that, there are some online resources that you can use. Unfortunately, the information isn't as easy to find as it should be, which is actually why I started Master of Memory in the first place. There's no really good single resource where you can find all the information in one place. And unfortunately, Master of Memory isn't really there yet, but for now I would recommend searching the Master of Memory site at

masterofmemory.com, but using a Google search, actually. So go to Google and search for some words, and then type s-i-t-e colon masterofmemory.com, and it'll search the masterofmemory.com site for you. And then you can do the same with the artofmemory.com website. That's a pretty good one. It used to be, the forum there used to be called the Nemotechnics Forum, and there are a lot of really high quality mnemonists out there who are much more advanced than me in their card memorization and number memorization and things like that. So there's some great discussion going on and some good resources as well just on the wiki in the Nemotechnics site or what is now artofmemory.com. But again, it's not all there in

one place. So you want to do some searching around and just, you know, use it again as a starting point and kind of explore from there. But again, just to answer your question directly, start with Dominique O'Brien's book, How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week. And that'll both get you started in several areas and inspire you to keep going through all the resources that you can find online. Now, like hundreds of other listeners, you may be wondering how you can support Master of Memory and keep it free for the world, particularly if you don't have a lot of time or any money to spend. So right now, I'm going to tell you that, believe it or not, right now at this moment,

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