Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0441: Memory party tricks for “showing off” your memory

Episode Date: November 16, 2015

Gareth asks for some party tricks for showing off memorization. I provide some examples of the tricks that are both most impressive but also most inspiring to get other people to take action and improve their learning abilities. 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 441. 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. Gareth submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Gareth says, I'm fascinated by memory and I'm catching up on all your episodes, which is taking some time. I was wondering what the top three show off memory tricks you've seen or done.

I'm keen to spread my fascination and would like to demonstrate some of the cool tricks to catch others' interest. So basically, Gareth, I think of memory and memorization not so much as a trick as as something valuable for learning. And so for me personally, I'm a fan of tricks that inspire people to take action themselves and to get into this, not just for the party trick aspect of it, but because they can see the potential for actually learning lots of stuff. So there are plenty of party tricks out there, but I focus on the ones that actually get people inspired, show them that what things are possible and get them excited about learning. And at the very least, no matter what tricks you're doing, I would recommend that you kind of strip it down to the essentials. And whether you're memorizing a bunch of names, memorizing a bunch of information or whatever, you show them that basically what you're doing is you're using one or two essential principles. And so you show them that you're, for example, associating uninteresting information with interesting information so that it's easier to remember. Or that you're using exclusivity to focus on the most essential things and everything else is sort of swept in by the coattails because of what you're focusing on.

So one trick that I really like is name memory. It's kind of obviously practical if you go into a crowd and you remember everybody's names. That catches people's attention. And whether it does or not, it raises your social value. But if it does catch people's attention, they can immediately see that that's practical. And they can get see that that's practical, and they can get excited about that, and whether or not they really listen to the way that you are, you know, whether you shared your tactics with them or not, or whether they're turned off by your tactics or not, they at least

respect you for that ability, and they may come back to you later to ask you how it is that you're remembering people's names. Another trick is number memorization, which is really valuable for showing people how uninteresting information, things as abstract as numbers, can be converted into really interesting information. And it's very difficult to explain the whole process of number memorization to someone who isn't familiar with mnemonics, but you can explain the essentials of how you make things memorable, and then that can at least pique their interest so that they'll look into mnemonics a little bit more and get excited about techniques for making things that

are not normally easy to remember, much more easy to remember, absorb, and learn thoroughly. Now, Gareth and everyone listening, I don't necessarily recommend listening to every single Master of Memory episode, although I'm flattered that lots of people actually do that. That's a lot of episodes to get through. But I would recommend that you actually start first by going to masterofmemory.com slash start, which is a free starter guide with all of the essentials of what I talk about on these episodes, from how to do number mnemonics, to how to create your own mnemonics for anything to how to use memory palaces and things like that. All of the stuff that sounds, or pretty much all the stuff that sounds pretty technical

that I go over on the show, you'll have a thorough introduction on in that guide at masterofmemory.com slash start. Thanks for the question, Gareth. And for everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.