[00:02.500 --> 00:03.540]  Let's go over it.
[00:03.780 --> 00:04.730]  You'll keep hearing this.
[00:04.920 --> 00:05.960]  We'll go over it a couple more times.
[00:06.160 --> 00:06.540]  It's all good.
[00:07.480 --> 00:08.460]  Tesla is on schedule.
[00:09.180 --> 00:18.400]  Everything at Tesla is just as advertised with the exception that the midnight steel talk spy improv is going to actually be in Tesla.
[00:18.580 --> 00:19.760]  It won't be here in Lovelace.
[00:21.860 --> 00:22.340]  Lovelace.
[00:22.650 --> 00:23.080]  Bell.
[00:23.620 --> 00:24.740]  Everything is delayed an hour.
[00:25.780 --> 00:28.980]  Of course, we'll have to make a couple exceptions to that.
[00:29.540 --> 00:33.020]  Telephone Pioneer in Bell is at 10 o'clock, not at 8 o'clock.
[00:33.600 --> 00:39.780]  And the Hacker Cinema is going to be here at 1am instead of being over in Tesla.
[00:40.460 --> 00:41.100]  Clear as mud?
[00:41.580 --> 00:42.040]  Yes.
[00:42.380 --> 00:42.780]  All right.
[00:46.590 --> 00:47.130]  Exactly.
[00:47.970 --> 00:55.370]  So to throw one more thing at you, a concert downstairs on the mezzanine by the Video Temple area at 11.30 tonight.
[00:55.490 --> 00:55.830]  Check it out.
[00:55.910 --> 00:56.950]  It's supposed to be some pretty good stuff.
[00:59.850 --> 01:01.050]  So memory, right?
[01:01.270 --> 01:05.610]  Chester Santos is here to talk to us about memory and improving our memory.
[01:05.810 --> 01:10.790]  I would make a Malik and Free joke here, but I honestly haven't been able to think of one.
[01:11.190 --> 01:14.110]  But let's have a hand for Chester.
[01:25.650 --> 01:26.130]  Hello?
[01:26.510 --> 01:26.610]  Oh.
[01:34.920 --> 01:36.360]  Can everybody hear me?
[01:36.820 --> 01:37.240]  Yes.
[01:37.440 --> 01:38.280]  You can hear me fine?
[01:38.700 --> 01:38.980]  No.
[01:49.770 --> 01:50.910]  Can you hear me now?
[01:51.490 --> 01:51.630]  Yeah.
[01:51.950 --> 01:52.370]  Perfect.
[01:52.630 --> 01:53.570]  In the back?
[01:58.540 --> 01:58.640]  Yeah.
[01:58.940 --> 02:00.900]  Can everyone hear me in the back?
[02:01.140 --> 02:01.340]  Yes.
[02:02.110 --> 02:02.380]  Okay.
[02:03.260 --> 02:05.140]  So my name is Chester Santos.
[02:05.140 --> 02:08.980]  I am the 2008 USA National Memory Champion.
[02:09.700 --> 02:14.540]  I'm going to be talking to you today about how you can go about improving your memory.
[02:15.720 --> 02:21.540]  Just before this started, I met some people in the first couple rows.
[02:21.540 --> 02:23.520]  If I met you, please stand up.
[02:26.370 --> 02:30.550]  And if I give your name correctly, please have a seat.
[02:30.550 --> 02:56.870]  So over there we have Carol, Rick, Pedro, Jack, Andy, Valdemar, Michael, Mike, Steven, James, Leah, Leslie, Timothea, Jason, Matt, Aaron, Malcolm, Ashley, Bob, and Albert.
[03:04.460 --> 03:10.680]  I had originally planned only to do a name demonstration to start out with.
[03:10.840 --> 03:20.140]  But Malcolm here walked up and mentioned that he had to memorize packets of numbers coming in.
[03:20.240 --> 03:23.740]  So I'm going to do a quick number demonstration.
[03:29.340 --> 03:31.440]  Is that showing up on the screen, what I wrote?
[03:31.640 --> 03:31.800]  Yeah.
[03:35.980 --> 03:45.920]  So if I could have some people, one at a time, come up to one of those mics over there and shout out a number.
[03:47.560 --> 03:48.920]  A social security number.
[03:50.960 --> 03:52.380]  So maybe just...
[03:52.380 --> 03:54.960]  Actually, I'll just ask people from the front couple rows.
[03:55.180 --> 03:55.760]  That's easier.
[03:56.100 --> 03:57.520]  So Carol, can you give me a number, please?
[03:58.300 --> 03:58.580]  Nine.
[03:59.880 --> 04:01.220]  Can everybody see that nine?
[04:01.420 --> 04:01.660]  Yes.
[04:02.020 --> 04:02.300]  Okay.
[04:04.400 --> 04:05.520]  Rick, give me the number.
[04:05.700 --> 04:05.940]  Five.
[04:09.360 --> 04:10.680]  Pedro, you want to give me a number?
[04:10.840 --> 04:11.080]  Thirty.
[04:11.760 --> 04:13.220]  One digit from zero through nine.
[04:13.400 --> 04:13.560]  Eight.
[04:17.920 --> 04:18.500]  Go ahead.
[04:18.720 --> 04:18.940]  Six.
[04:21.740 --> 04:22.180]  One.
[04:25.380 --> 04:25.820]  One.
[04:38.890 --> 04:39.330]  Zero.
[04:52.340 --> 04:54.100]  Let's go, I guess, over there with Steven.
[05:02.300 --> 05:02.740]  Two.
[05:16.650 --> 05:17.090]  Zero.
[05:17.930 --> 05:18.370]  Four.
[05:22.650 --> 05:26.890]  Oh, so it was eight, you said?
[05:27.050 --> 05:27.250]  Yeah.
[05:27.450 --> 05:27.650]  Okay.
[05:28.130 --> 05:30.370]  I got a little rattled there.
[05:31.090 --> 05:31.310]  Four.
[05:31.310 --> 05:31.430]  Eight.
[05:34.590 --> 05:35.230]  Five.
[05:35.990 --> 05:36.310]  Four.
[05:36.310 --> 05:36.410]  Okay.
[05:36.610 --> 05:36.730]  Five.
[05:40.850 --> 05:41.490]  Five.
[05:47.040 --> 05:48.820]  Anybody else want to give a number?
[05:49.320 --> 05:49.840]  Five again?
[06:02.140 --> 06:02.780]  Five.
[06:07.540 --> 06:08.180]  Okay.
[06:14.620 --> 06:15.920]  Does it hurt me to do that?
[06:16.320 --> 06:19.600]  No, I'm just trying to make sure I see all the numbers there.
[06:37.450 --> 06:37.890]  Yeah.
[06:38.230 --> 06:38.470]  Okay.
[06:38.690 --> 06:41.030]  So I will not look at the...
[06:41.730 --> 06:42.710]  Where should I...
[06:42.710 --> 06:46.070]  Maybe I'll just stand backwards and just tell me if I get anything wrong, okay?
[06:47.710 --> 06:48.390]  Um...
[06:48.390 --> 07:07.530]  So the number should start out nine, five, eight, six, one, one, seven, two, zero, eight, three, eight, two, five, three, zero, eight, four, five, five, seven, eight, zero, nine.
[07:13.900 --> 07:28.080]  And just to prove a point that this is actually filed away in my brain and basically like mental filing cabinets, I'm going to recite the number backwards now, starting from the bottom right to left and then...
[07:28.080 --> 07:28.180]  Okay?
[07:28.880 --> 07:29.840]  So let me attempt...
[07:29.840 --> 07:30.680]  Tell me if I mess up.
[07:30.680 --> 07:49.400]  So it should be backwards nine, zero, eight, seven, five, five, four, eight, zero, three, five, two,
[07:52.970 --> 08:02.030]  eight, three, eight, zero, two, seven, one, one, six.
[08:06.380 --> 08:07.810]  Eight, five, nine.
[08:14.180 --> 08:23.620]  So those are just a couple of quick demonstrations to show you what is possible for you if you take the time to train your memory.
[08:24.060 --> 08:28.520]  All of you in this audience are capable of doing extraordinary things with your memory.
[08:28.940 --> 08:31.760]  You just need to be taught how to do it.
[08:33.100 --> 08:38.600]  Before I get into the exercise, by the way, this is going to be a very interactive presentation today.
[08:38.940 --> 08:41.660]  Quite different from the presentations I've seen earlier.
[08:41.820 --> 08:46.500]  I'm going to actually have you as an audience memorize a lot of things and recall them.
[08:47.240 --> 08:50.180]  Hopefully you'll find this to be fun as well as educational.
[08:52.180 --> 08:53.320]  Quick little background.
[08:53.660 --> 08:56.560]  How did I win the 2008 USA National Memory Championship?
[08:56.740 --> 08:57.840]  Well, there are many different events.
[08:57.840 --> 09:04.160]  Some of the things I accomplished, I memorized 85, the names of 85 different people perfectly in only 15 minutes.
[09:04.920 --> 09:09.840]  Spelling counts, so if you spell Katie with a Y but it ends I-E, it's as if you didn't remember it.
[09:10.240 --> 09:18.900]  I perfectly memorized a 132-digit sequence of computer-generated random digits in only five minutes and was able to repeat it forwards and backwards with no mistakes.
[09:18.900 --> 09:28.720]  I memorized the exact order of an entire deck of 52 shuffled playing cards in only two minutes and nine seconds perfectly with no mistakes.
[09:29.080 --> 09:32.340]  I memorized a 50-line poem in about 15 minutes.
[09:33.120 --> 09:37.700]  Those are some of the things that I did in order to win the National Memory Championship.
[09:39.640 --> 09:40.700]  So, thank you.
[09:43.440 --> 09:51.280]  So, now we are going to get into the exercises for you so that you can all do some amazing things with your memory today.
[09:52.320 --> 10:02.580]  I want to say up front that a lot of what I asked you to do today may seem a bit silly, but just bear with me because I promise you that it will help you to improve your memory.
[10:02.800 --> 10:03.000]  Alright?
[10:03.000 --> 10:14.880]  So, I would like for everyone to close their eyes and I want for you to just do your best to imagine what I described to you.
[10:15.020 --> 10:19.320]  Do your best to picture what I described to you and see it happening in your mind.
[10:19.500 --> 10:22.980]  This is a warm-up visualization exercise that we are going to do.
[10:23.420 --> 10:30.060]  So, I want for you all to imagine that you walk into your residence, the place that you live.
[10:30.060 --> 10:35.340]  Imagine that you are walking into the living room area of your residence.
[10:35.840 --> 10:36.400]  Alright?
[10:36.560 --> 10:43.260]  In the middle of your living room, you see there, standing behind podiums, Barack Obama and John McCain.
[10:43.620 --> 10:43.900]  Okay?
[10:44.720 --> 10:50.640]  Barack Obama and John McCain are standing in the middle of your living room and they look as if they are about to debate.
[10:51.060 --> 10:59.180]  Now, this seems rather strange to you, but instead of asking any questions, you decide to just hang back and observe what's going on.
[10:59.660 --> 11:00.140]  Okay?
[11:00.340 --> 11:01.580]  So, they begin to debate.
[11:02.220 --> 11:03.560]  Picture that as best you can.
[11:03.660 --> 11:04.440]  They begin to debate.
[11:04.860 --> 11:09.280]  And you notice that the debate appears to become more and more heated.
[11:09.840 --> 11:14.020]  And McCain visibly becomes very upset at something that Obama says.
[11:14.200 --> 11:18.540]  And he reaches behind his podium and he pulls out a pie.
[11:18.540 --> 11:19.260]  Okay?
[11:19.740 --> 11:28.160]  He pulls out a pie, he takes this pie, and he throws it at Barack, and Barack now has pie splattered all over his face.
[11:28.680 --> 11:30.240]  Do your best to picture that.
[11:31.120 --> 11:46.240]  Now, Obama is pretty upset by this, so believe it or not, he reaches behind his podium and also pulls out a pie, takes it, throws it at McCain, and apparently Obama has pretty good aim as well because McCain now has pie splattered all over his face.
[11:46.240 --> 11:48.380]  Just do your best to picture that.
[11:49.460 --> 11:54.720]  Now, what was once a debate has turned into a full-blown pie fight.
[11:54.920 --> 11:58.520]  And the politicians are continuously throwing pies at each other.
[11:58.660 --> 11:59.880]  Just do your best to picture that.
[12:00.160 --> 12:03.660]  Now, if the imagery isn't crystal clear, that doesn't really matter.
[12:03.780 --> 12:05.940]  Just do your best to see that happening in your mind.
[12:07.560 --> 12:08.040]  Okay?
[12:08.380 --> 12:13.220]  Now, at this point, you are all primarily experiencing visual images in your mind.
[12:13.520 --> 12:15.400]  You're seeing that pie fight happen.
[12:15.400 --> 12:21.580]  But what I want you to do now is attempt to get even more senses involved as you experience this in your mind.
[12:22.040 --> 12:25.940]  Imagine now that you can not only see the pie fight happening, but imagine you can hear it happening.
[12:26.560 --> 12:29.740]  Imagine that you can hear the pies flying through the air.
[12:30.020 --> 12:33.100]  You can hear the pies as they are splattering all over the politicians.
[12:33.300 --> 12:35.000]  Do your best to imagine hearing it happen.
[12:37.520 --> 12:37.960]  Okay?
[12:38.460 --> 12:42.300]  Now, go ahead and imagine that you can even smell the pie.
[12:42.640 --> 12:43.080]  Okay?
[12:43.160 --> 12:44.980]  Imagine you can smell the pie fight happening.
[12:45.720 --> 12:46.760]  Just do your best.
[12:50.140 --> 12:50.580]  Okay?
[12:50.740 --> 12:58.620]  Take it a step further now, and imagine walking up to one of them, and imagine that you take some of the pie off of their face, and you feel it in your hands.
[12:58.700 --> 13:00.040]  Maybe it feels sort of sticky.
[13:00.040 --> 13:02.720]  Just do your best to imagine doing that.
[13:04.880 --> 13:05.340]  Okay?
[13:05.580 --> 13:09.900]  And now go ahead and take some of the pie, and put it in your mouth.
[13:10.000 --> 13:10.680]  Taste the pie.
[13:11.660 --> 13:12.120]  Mmm.
[13:13.340 --> 13:16.320]  Hopefully you're imagining some pie that tastes pretty good.
[13:18.400 --> 13:18.860]  Okay?
[13:19.280 --> 13:20.840]  Go ahead and open up your eyes, everyone.
[13:20.920 --> 13:21.600]  Open up your eyes.
[13:23.040 --> 13:25.400]  Now, that was a pretty simple exercise, right?
[13:26.080 --> 13:27.520]  Pretty simple for everyone to complete.
[13:27.800 --> 13:38.680]  Well, what I want you to know is, that if you are able to complete that exercise, then you actually have the ability to remember anything that you want to remember quickly and easily.
[13:39.180 --> 13:41.220]  And here are some reasons why.
[13:41.400 --> 13:42.260]  Reason number one.
[13:42.520 --> 13:49.260]  I had you exercise your visualization ability there, and your visual memory is incredibly powerful.
[13:49.260 --> 14:00.680]  An example that I always give in my speeches and presentations is a situation that we've all experienced at some point in our life, where we will see someone that we may have met even years in the past.
[14:00.820 --> 14:00.920]  Right?
[14:01.140 --> 14:03.400]  We see them and we recognize their face.
[14:03.680 --> 14:05.280]  We know that we met the person.
[14:05.460 --> 14:07.080]  We know that we met them somewhere before.
[14:07.220 --> 14:10.980]  But no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to come up with a name.
[14:11.120 --> 14:11.900]  Why is that?
[14:12.060 --> 14:16.100]  Well, when you met the person, you actually saw their face with your eyes.
[14:16.560 --> 14:17.640]  You saw the face.
[14:17.640 --> 14:20.220]  The face was recorded into your visual memory.
[14:20.380 --> 14:22.940]  But at no point did you ever see the name.
[14:23.720 --> 14:26.940]  That's why it's more difficult to remember the names.
[14:27.180 --> 14:33.880]  At the end of this presentation, I'm going to talk to you about how you can picture names so that you are better able to remember them.
[14:34.140 --> 14:37.100]  But for now, just note the power of your visual memory.
[14:38.120 --> 14:40.380]  Another thing to take away from the simple exercise.
[14:40.380 --> 14:46.180]  I had you get many of your senses involved as you were experiencing that scenario happen in your mind.
[14:46.300 --> 14:46.360]  Right?
[14:46.760 --> 14:55.140]  As you get more and more of your senses involved in the encoding process when trying to memorize something, you are actually activating more and more parts of the brain.
[14:55.320 --> 14:55.580]  Alright?
[14:55.820 --> 15:02.360]  When you are activating more and more parts of the brain, you are building more and more connections to that information that you want to remember.
[15:02.360 --> 15:05.420]  So, it becomes very easy to recall it later on.
[15:06.480 --> 15:09.280]  A third thing to take away from that simple exercise.
[15:09.480 --> 15:13.280]  I had you imagine something that was a bit unusual, right?
[15:13.380 --> 15:16.160]  Something out of the ordinary that you wouldn't expect to see every day.
[15:16.420 --> 15:17.680]  Something a little funny, right?
[15:17.880 --> 15:21.200]  That's because there is a psychological aspect to memory as well.
[15:21.300 --> 15:29.480]  When we see things happening that we wouldn't ordinarily see, if we see something funny or interesting happening, we're much more likely to remember it.
[15:30.680 --> 15:41.480]  So, now what we are going to do is, we will take everything that we've learned from that simple exercise and we will now apply it to memorizing a random list of words, okay?
[15:41.780 --> 15:52.840]  The random word list is monkey, iron, rope, kite, house, paper, shoe, worm, envelope, pencil, river, rock, tree, cheese, and quarter, okay?
[15:53.060 --> 15:54.640]  That is the random word list.
[15:54.860 --> 16:03.240]  And as usually happens, I'm getting looks from people in the audience like, you know, there's no way I'm going to be able to memorize that, at least not with quite a lot of time.
[16:03.800 --> 16:10.360]  But in fact, you will all have that random word list perfectly memorized within a few minutes, okay?
[16:10.660 --> 16:19.300]  And how you will accomplish that is, again, you will merely listen to what I described to you and just do your best to picture it and see it happening in your mind, okay?
[16:19.480 --> 16:21.240]  So the first word was monkey.
[16:21.640 --> 16:26.760]  I want for you all now to imagine that you see a little monkey dancing around in your mind.
[16:26.760 --> 16:32.480]  Little monkey's dancing around, he's making monkey noises, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whatever a monkey would sound like.
[16:32.680 --> 16:34.420]  Just do your best to imagine that.
[16:34.600 --> 16:39.880]  The monkey's dancing around and he picks up now a gigantic iron because the next word was iron.
[16:40.280 --> 16:44.540]  So the monkey picks up a giant iron, he's dancing around with that iron, okay?
[16:44.880 --> 16:50.360]  The iron starts to fall now, though, and a rope attaches itself to the iron because the next word was rope.
[16:50.580 --> 16:52.120]  A rope attaches itself to the iron.
[16:52.400 --> 16:53.220]  Feel the rope.
[16:53.380 --> 16:54.420]  Imagine feeling the rope.
[16:54.420 --> 16:58.300]  You look up the rope and you see that it's attached to a kite.
[16:58.520 --> 16:59.800]  Because the next word was kite.
[17:00.100 --> 17:00.820]  You see this kite?
[17:01.020 --> 17:02.240]  It's flying around in the air.
[17:02.400 --> 17:03.560]  It's flying around in the air.
[17:03.880 --> 17:06.640]  Maybe you try to reach up, but you can't quite get it.
[17:06.720 --> 17:07.800]  The kite's flying in the air.
[17:07.960 --> 17:10.740]  Now you see the kite crash into the side of a house.
[17:11.140 --> 17:12.540]  Because the next word was house.
[17:12.900 --> 17:15.360]  So the kite crashes into the side of the house.
[17:16.020 --> 17:21.660]  And you notice that this house is for some strange reason completely covered in paper.
[17:21.660 --> 17:22.440]  Okay?
[17:22.800 --> 17:26.040]  It's completely covered in paper, because that was the next word.
[17:26.820 --> 17:31.920]  And a shoe now magically appears and starts to walk all over that paper.
[17:32.180 --> 17:37.060]  The shoe is walking all over the paper, and it smells really bad for some reason.
[17:37.080 --> 17:43.460]  So you decide to investigate, and you see a little worm crawling around inside of the shoe, because that was the next word.
[17:43.540 --> 17:44.600]  Do your best to picture that.
[17:44.820 --> 17:47.520]  You see the little worm crawling around inside of the shoe.
[17:49.120 --> 17:54.640]  Now you see the worm jumps out of the shoe and into an envelope, because that was the next word.
[17:54.760 --> 17:55.340]  So picture that.
[17:55.500 --> 17:57.540]  The worm jumps out of the shoe and into the envelope.
[17:59.140 --> 18:02.620]  And a pencil now appears and starts to write all over the envelope.
[18:02.860 --> 18:05.800]  A pencil appears and starts to write all over the envelope.
[18:07.660 --> 18:08.060]  Okay?
[18:08.060 --> 18:10.760]  Now that pencil, you see, jumps into a river.
[18:11.060 --> 18:12.020]  There's a huge splash.
[18:12.160 --> 18:12.960]  It's just a little pencil.
[18:13.240 --> 18:17.060]  But it splashes really big when it hits the river, because the next word was river.
[18:17.060 --> 18:18.380]  So see that happen?
[18:18.440 --> 18:19.380]  The pencil goes in the river.
[18:19.580 --> 18:22.320]  Next, the river crashes up against a rock.
[18:22.700 --> 18:24.920]  The river crashes up against a rock.
[18:27.160 --> 18:30.300]  The rock now flies out of the river and into a tree.
[18:33.380 --> 18:37.300]  And you notice that tree is, for some strange reason, growing cheese.
[18:38.320 --> 18:38.800]  Okay?
[18:39.660 --> 18:40.960]  That was the next word, cheese.
[18:41.140 --> 18:42.980]  So for some strange reason, it's growing cheese.
[18:43.420 --> 18:46.720]  And out of each piece of cheese shoots a quarter.
[18:48.120 --> 18:48.480]  Okay?
[18:49.020 --> 18:50.900]  Out of each piece of cheese shoots a quarter.
[18:51.660 --> 18:55.220]  Now, I will go through this again, but very, very quickly.
[18:55.420 --> 18:58.340]  And as I do, just do your best to play through this story in your mind.
[18:58.480 --> 19:00.040]  So we had a little monkey dancing around.
[19:00.160 --> 19:01.180]  Picked up the giant iron.
[19:01.420 --> 19:02.460]  Attached to that was the rope.
[19:02.500 --> 19:03.860]  You looked up the rope attached to the kite.
[19:04.060 --> 19:05.160]  The kite flew in the house.
[19:05.260 --> 19:06.360]  The house was covered in paper.
[19:06.580 --> 19:08.200]  The shoe walked all over the paper.
[19:08.300 --> 19:10.620]  Inside of the shoe was a little worm crawling around.
[19:10.700 --> 19:11.880]  The worm jumped into the envelope.
[19:12.180 --> 19:14.220]  The pencil appeared, wrote on the envelope, right?
[19:14.440 --> 19:15.660]  Pencil jumped into the river.
[19:15.660 --> 19:17.540]  The river crashed into the rock.
[19:17.680 --> 19:18.800]  The rock flew into the tree.
[19:19.020 --> 19:20.200]  The tree was growing cheese.
[19:20.440 --> 19:22.820]  And out of each piece of cheese shot a quarter.
[19:23.300 --> 19:23.740]  Okay?
[19:24.060 --> 19:32.760]  So now you should all be able to recall that random list of words in order by simply playing through the store in your mind and recalling each major object that you encounter.
[19:32.760 --> 19:36.880]  So we will do that now as a group starting with the first word which was monkey.
[19:37.680 --> 19:38.320]  Iron.
[19:38.800 --> 19:39.180]  Grove.
[19:39.640 --> 19:40.280]  Kite.
[19:40.680 --> 19:41.260]  House.
[19:41.660 --> 19:42.220]  Paper.
[19:42.660 --> 19:43.180]  Shoe.
[19:43.560 --> 19:44.120]  Worm.
[19:44.540 --> 19:45.100]  Envelope.
[19:45.480 --> 19:46.120]  Pencil.
[19:46.440 --> 19:46.840]  River.
[19:47.300 --> 19:47.880]  Rock.
[19:48.240 --> 19:48.640]  Tree.
[19:49.160 --> 19:49.680]  Cheese.
[19:50.120 --> 19:50.360]  Water.
[19:50.500 --> 19:50.820]  Excellent.
[19:50.960 --> 19:52.020]  Give yourselves a round of applause.
[19:57.600 --> 19:58.980]  Very nice job.
[19:59.180 --> 19:59.900]  Very nice job.
[20:00.040 --> 20:00.280]  Excellent.
[20:00.860 --> 20:10.100]  So you can see you are actually capable of doing incredible things with your memory if you learn the right techniques if you make the most efficient use of your brain.
[20:10.340 --> 20:15.760]  That first technique is what you start out with with memory improvement techniques.
[20:15.940 --> 20:16.860]  It's called the story method.
[20:17.440 --> 20:18.960]  It's incredibly powerful.
[20:18.960 --> 20:25.320]  If you practice memorizing random bits of information with the story method, you'll notice many benefits.
[20:25.620 --> 20:31.920]  Over time, your memory will improve because you're exercising this memory muscle in your brain.
[20:32.240 --> 20:32.540]  Okay?
[20:33.000 --> 20:35.820]  Your visualization ability will improve.
[20:36.020 --> 20:41.060]  Over time, you'll notice that your ability to create these images in your mind will improve.
[20:41.160 --> 20:45.440]  You'll create the images more quickly and also the imagery will become clearer and clearer.
[20:46.740 --> 20:52.020]  Another benefit, your creativity and your imagination will improve as well.
[20:52.280 --> 20:56.880]  I think you can already tell this is a very good exercise in creativity and imagination.
[20:57.780 --> 21:01.540]  Also, this type of thing is a very good mental workout.
[21:01.840 --> 21:03.840]  It's a very good exercise for your brain.
[21:04.100 --> 21:11.480]  And all of the current research is showing that we should try to exercise our brains as much as possible throughout our lifetimes.
[21:11.480 --> 21:26.980]  They're showing that your memory ability does not necessarily decline due to the aging process in of itself, but rather due to the fact that our memories tend to be less challenged later in life than they were earlier in life.
[21:27.140 --> 21:28.480]  Some examples they give.
[21:29.040 --> 21:39.680]  In elementary school, junior high, high school, college, even grad school, you were constantly challenged to learn tons of new information from many different areas.
[21:39.920 --> 21:43.400]  And you had to recall that information all the time for exams, right?
[21:43.580 --> 21:46.920]  You were constantly exercising that memory muscle in your brain.
[21:47.280 --> 21:51.240]  They say that when you first start a new job, it's also the same thing.
[21:51.340 --> 21:57.160]  You have to learn tons of new things and recall all of those things in order to do your job properly.
[21:57.160 --> 22:04.980]  But then what tends to happen is we enter this 20 or 30 year period where we basically do the same types of things every day.
[22:05.180 --> 22:12.140]  Even if you have a very mentally challenging job like many programmers, hackers do, you're still doing the same type of thing.
[22:12.240 --> 22:15.840]  You're not challenging your brain with many different things from many different areas.
[22:16.920 --> 22:27.360]  So the good news to take from that research is that you can actually improve your memory at any age as long as you take the time to exercise it and work it out.
[22:27.980 --> 22:39.060]  They can actually image the brain and they can see that some people that are much older in age have brains that look like people that are younger in age.
[22:39.060 --> 22:47.120]  And when they interview those people, they find that those people were engaged in lifelong learning, constantly challenged their brains throughout their life.
[22:47.300 --> 22:47.700]  Okay?
[22:48.540 --> 22:55.400]  So I wanted to get that point across as well as another benefit of these types of techniques.
[22:55.680 --> 23:03.960]  Now, the story method is very powerful, like I mentioned, but it primarily exercises the right side of your brain, which deals with creativity and imagination.
[23:03.960 --> 23:13.460]  That's very good, but the remaining techniques that I teach allow you to utilize both the left and right sides of your brain at the same time to encode information.
[23:13.620 --> 23:16.700]  So then it becomes even easier to recall it later on.
[23:16.920 --> 23:17.020]  Okay?
[23:17.140 --> 23:20.480]  So the story method is actually the least powerful technique that I teach.
[23:21.260 --> 23:24.660]  The left side of the brain deals with order and logic.
[23:25.020 --> 23:32.520]  So we are now going to get the left side of the brain involved in the encoding process by learning a list of locations that we are familiar with.
[23:32.520 --> 23:37.460]  We are going to learn this list of locations in an order that makes sense to us.
[23:37.600 --> 23:37.660]  Alright?
[23:37.780 --> 23:39.660]  In an order that is logical to us.
[23:40.900 --> 23:45.900]  This will be very easy because the locations that we will use are locations from our body.
[23:46.100 --> 23:46.420]  Okay?
[23:46.740 --> 23:50.520]  So the first location is going to be your left foot.
[23:51.160 --> 23:51.640]  Alright?
[23:52.760 --> 23:55.460]  The next location will be your right foot.
[23:57.260 --> 23:59.860]  The third location will be both knees.
[24:01.420 --> 24:03.440]  After that will be your waist.
[24:04.300 --> 24:06.140]  Just above that, your belly button.
[24:06.740 --> 24:08.460]  Just above that, your chest.
[24:09.040 --> 24:10.540]  Just above that, your neck.
[24:11.160 --> 24:12.720]  Just above that, your mouth.
[24:13.400 --> 24:14.720]  Just above that, the nose.
[24:15.520 --> 24:17.060]  And just above that, the top of your head.
[24:17.060 --> 24:19.360]  So I will go through these locations again.
[24:19.400 --> 24:28.040]  As I do, I recommend that you either wiggle that body part, touch that body part, somehow make yourself more aware of that particular body part.
[24:28.120 --> 24:31.380]  You're getting more senses involved that will help you to remember this list.
[24:31.380 --> 24:48.560]  So again, we have left foot, then right foot, next, both knees, then the waist, then the belly button, then the chest, then the neck, then the mouth, then the nose, then the top of the head.
[24:48.660 --> 24:50.260]  Great, I like seeing people do that.
[24:50.260 --> 24:53.960]  Okay, so this will be the last time that I go through it.
[24:54.460 --> 25:05.440]  Left foot, right foot, both knees, waist, belly button, chest, neck, mouth, nose, top of the head.
[25:05.620 --> 25:05.780]  Great.
[25:06.220 --> 25:12.340]  So now that we know those locations in order, we have the left side of the brain ready to go.
[25:12.540 --> 25:18.260]  Now we will use our creativity and imagination to create images that remind us of what we want to remember.
[25:18.260 --> 25:22.540]  And we will link those images to the locations on our body to learn a new list of words.
[25:22.760 --> 25:30.000]  The new random word list is apple, watch, umbrella, racket, car, football, bee, earring, stapler, and comb.
[25:30.660 --> 25:36.440]  Okay, you will learn that list again by merely concentrating on the imagery that I give you, okay?
[25:36.600 --> 25:44.420]  If you concentrate on the imagery that I give you, do your best to see it happening in your mind, then the remembering will come naturally, quickly and easily, okay?
[25:44.420 --> 25:46.320]  So the first word was apple.
[25:46.880 --> 25:51.880]  Underneath your left foot, there's this giant apple underneath your left foot, and you're rolling the apple around.
[25:52.020 --> 25:53.300]  Imagine rolling the apple around.
[25:53.620 --> 25:56.640]  You start to step on the apple, crunch it, okay?
[25:57.540 --> 26:01.220]  Then attached to your right foot, there is a watch.
[26:01.280 --> 26:08.280]  And the watch is ticking louder and louder, faster and faster, and eventually the glass part of the watch shatters, okay?
[26:09.900 --> 26:14.480]  Next, attached to both knees is a giant umbrella, because that was an X word.
[26:14.680 --> 26:20.160]  And you push on the button to open the umbrella, and it snaps open with a really loud noise, okay?
[26:20.660 --> 26:21.980]  Umbrella attached to both knees.
[26:22.500 --> 26:23.800]  Next word, racket.
[26:23.980 --> 26:30.900]  So at your waist, you see a handle, you pull on it, and oh my gosh, somehow there was a racket lodged into your waist.
[26:31.040 --> 26:34.980]  If you imagine pulling that racket out of your waist, you will definitely remember it, okay?
[26:35.660 --> 26:41.080]  Next, from your belly button, you hear and you feel a rumbling coming from your belly button area.
[26:41.360 --> 26:42.480]  And it sounds like a car.
[26:42.580 --> 26:47.380]  Sure enough, a car shoots out of your belly button, and you can see the tire spinning.
[26:47.400 --> 26:50.760]  You can hear the engine roaring when that car shoots out of your belly button.
[26:51.680 --> 26:52.940]  Next, there's a football.
[26:53.320 --> 26:56.200]  A football is hitting you in the chest, continuously hitting you in the chest.
[26:56.440 --> 27:02.140]  You try to stop it, but no matter how hard you try, you can't stop this football from hitting you in the chest, okay?
[27:02.140 --> 27:02.200]  Okay?
[27:02.880 --> 27:03.660]  Next word.
[27:04.160 --> 27:04.500]  Bee.
[27:04.760 --> 27:06.620]  So buzzing around your neck is a bee.
[27:06.880 --> 27:08.460]  You're afraid the bee is going to sting you.
[27:08.580 --> 27:12.420]  Sure enough, the bee stings you in the neck.
[27:12.660 --> 27:14.980]  If you imagine that, you'll definitely remember it.
[27:16.060 --> 27:16.860]  Next word.
[27:17.000 --> 27:17.340]  Earrings.
[27:17.480 --> 27:18.640]  So from your mouth, you feel pain.
[27:18.640 --> 27:19.620]  It's coming from your tongue.
[27:19.820 --> 27:22.380]  And oh my goodness, there's an earring attached to your tongue.
[27:22.620 --> 27:27.140]  You pull on it and it starts to stretch your tongue when you pull on that earring at your tongue.
[27:28.460 --> 27:29.260]  Next word.
[27:30.020 --> 27:30.420]  Stapler.
[27:30.760 --> 27:32.780]  So on top of your nose, there's a stapler.
[27:33.100 --> 27:35.880]  And you're trying to perfectly balance the stapler.
[27:35.980 --> 27:42.340]  So it's teetering back and forth and you're moving around until you finally get that stapler perfectly balanced on top of your nose.
[27:43.680 --> 27:44.320]  Last word.
[27:44.560 --> 27:44.840]  Comb.
[27:45.000 --> 27:46.200]  So on top of your head, there's a comb.
[27:46.300 --> 27:50.660]  You start to use the comb and it starts to yank on your hair.
[27:51.000 --> 27:51.140]  Okay?
[27:52.700 --> 27:55.080]  Now, I'll go through these again, but very, very quickly.
[27:55.660 --> 27:57.920]  Underneath your left foot was the giant apple you rolled around.
[27:58.040 --> 27:58.700]  Attached to your right foot.
[27:58.780 --> 27:59.100]  The watch.
[27:59.200 --> 27:59.680]  It getting louder, louder.
[27:59.860 --> 28:00.120]  Shattered.
[28:00.560 --> 28:00.920]  Knees.
[28:00.980 --> 28:02.220]  The umbrella snapped open.
[28:02.400 --> 28:02.700]  Waist.
[28:02.760 --> 28:03.880]  The racket you pulled out.
[28:04.140 --> 28:04.640]  Belly button.
[28:04.720 --> 28:05.720]  The car shot out.
[28:05.840 --> 28:07.460]  Football was hitting you in the chest, right?
[28:07.700 --> 28:08.000]  Neck.
[28:08.060 --> 28:09.040]  The bee stung you.
[28:09.300 --> 28:09.620]  Mouth.
[28:09.700 --> 28:10.300]  The earring.
[28:10.580 --> 28:10.920]  Nose.
[28:11.020 --> 28:12.240]  The stapler you were balancing.
[28:12.380 --> 28:12.880]  Top of the head.
[28:12.960 --> 28:13.480]  The comb.
[28:13.480 --> 28:21.980]  So now you should all be able to recall this random list of words by merely thinking of the locations on your body in order.
[28:22.200 --> 28:22.340]  Okay?
[28:22.620 --> 28:26.280]  So let's do that as a group, starting with the first word, which was apple.
[28:26.540 --> 28:26.540]  Apple.
[28:27.160 --> 28:27.640]  Water.
[28:35.650 --> 28:35.890]  Cal.
[28:35.990 --> 28:36.470]  Excellent.
[28:36.570 --> 28:37.530]  Give yourselves a round of applause.
[28:41.720 --> 28:43.240]  Now, what was here?
[28:44.520 --> 28:45.800]  What was here?
[28:46.420 --> 28:46.780]  Umbrella.
[28:46.780 --> 28:47.660]  Umbrella at your knees.
[28:47.800 --> 28:47.920]  Sorry.
[28:48.200 --> 28:48.760]  Can't see that.
[28:48.880 --> 28:49.160]  Waste.
[28:49.640 --> 28:50.120]  Filing.
[28:50.360 --> 28:57.080]  Okay, so what's happened here is we've basically created what equates to mental filing cabinets, okay?
[28:57.240 --> 29:04.820]  When we now merely think of the location on our body, the information that we stored there automatically comes out back to us, okay?
[29:04.980 --> 29:06.700]  It's like double-clicking a file.
[29:07.140 --> 29:09.840]  You double-click the file, the information there pops out.
[29:10.100 --> 29:11.100]  It's the same type of thing.
[29:11.260 --> 29:16.320]  This is incredibly powerful because it gives you a way to organize the information, all right?
[29:16.320 --> 29:22.960]  Organize it in your mind, and also, it gives you a specific place to look for the information that you've memorized.
[29:23.980 --> 29:30.280]  This is hugely advantageous over the regular ways of going about memorizing things.
[29:30.380 --> 29:38.160]  The common methods, which are reading it over and over, writing it over and over, reciting it to yourself continuously.
[29:38.660 --> 29:44.040]  When you do that, you know, oftentimes you'll draw a blank, and when you draw a blank, you're kind of screwed, right?
[29:44.040 --> 29:45.460]  There's nothing you can do.
[29:45.520 --> 29:47.360]  You just hope that it comes back to you.
[29:47.600 --> 29:50.400]  Here, you have a specific place to look for the information.
[29:50.600 --> 29:51.520]  It's a huge advantage.
[29:51.700 --> 30:03.240]  Also, if at any point you draw a blank, say you drew a blank, you forgot that the right foot was watch, you simply get more of your senses involved at that particular location.
[30:03.240 --> 30:09.380]  So, I just described mainly a visual, right, and hearing the watch was ticking louder and louder, you see the watch shatter.
[30:09.560 --> 30:16.280]  But maybe when the watch shatters, pieces of the watch hit your hand, and then you eat those pieces because it's made of candy.
[30:16.760 --> 30:23.840]  If you get those additional senses involved, then it becomes very, very easy to recall the information.
[30:24.700 --> 30:24.960]  Okay?
[30:26.360 --> 30:30.880]  Next thing I want to talk about is remembering names, okay?
[30:30.960 --> 30:32.880]  How can you better remember people's names?
[30:33.360 --> 30:37.700]  Remembering names is incredibly important in business and in your personal life.
[30:37.840 --> 30:42.100]  I often quote the famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
[30:42.420 --> 30:54.980]  In that book, Dale Carnegie wrote that the sweetest sound to a person in any language is the sound of their own name, and also that everyone's favorite subject is themself, okay?
[30:55.280 --> 31:05.620]  So, if you are able to remember people's names and other information about them, it helps you to build better business as well as personal relationships with them.
[31:06.140 --> 31:12.700]  So, I'll first give you some practical steps to take when meeting people aside from these type of visual memory techniques.
[31:13.240 --> 31:20.200]  Step number one, whenever you're introduced to someone, make it a point to immediately repeat the name in some way.
[31:20.420 --> 31:25.240]  So, if you're introduced to someone named Jack, just simply say, I'm pleased to meet you, Jack.
[31:25.400 --> 31:26.420]  It's great to meet you, Jack.
[31:27.260 --> 31:36.320]  Something like that will go a long way towards helping you remember the name because it's forcing you to put more focus on the name that will help prevent it from simply going in one ear and out the other ear.
[31:37.240 --> 31:44.740]  Next thing, early on in your interaction with a person, make it a point to ask them a question using their name.
[31:44.900 --> 31:46.580]  So, Jack, what brings you to the conference?
[31:46.840 --> 31:49.680]  Jack, have you ever been to the HOPE conference before?
[31:49.680 --> 31:51.020]  Jack, how do you know Chester?
[31:51.180 --> 31:51.720]  Something like that.
[31:51.900 --> 31:57.260]  Any question utilizing their name, again, the idea is to put more focus, prevent it from going in one ear, out the other ear.
[31:58.260 --> 32:07.540]  Third step, take just a few seconds to think of any association between the person's name and anything at all that you already know.
[32:08.160 --> 32:10.700]  And when I say anything, I do mean anything.
[32:11.020 --> 32:13.520]  So, Jack might make you think of Jack in the Box.
[32:14.340 --> 32:18.440]  Jack might make you think of the game Jacks, those Jacks that you throw on the floor.
[32:18.440 --> 32:18.600]  Right?
[32:19.320 --> 32:21.860]  Anything that you can associate with the name.
[32:21.980 --> 32:25.760]  Maybe you know someone else named Jack, you have a friend or family member named Jack.
[32:26.000 --> 32:28.500]  Maybe you think of Jack from Lost.
[32:28.980 --> 32:34.140]  Anything like that, any type of association like that will help you to remember the name.
[32:34.480 --> 32:42.120]  Last step, when you leave the meeting, leave the conference, leave the party, whatever, make it a point to say goodbye to the person using their name.
[32:42.260 --> 32:42.680]  Bye, Jack.
[32:42.840 --> 32:44.220]  I hope to see you again sometime, Jack.
[32:44.940 --> 32:51.340]  Anything like that, if you do that, it will go a long way towards helping you remember the person's name the next time you see them.
[32:51.980 --> 32:56.260]  And also, if at that point you don't remember the name, I recommend that you go ahead and ask the name again.
[32:56.540 --> 32:57.640]  They won't be offended.
[32:57.820 --> 33:04.800]  In fact, most people will appreciate the fact that you're taking, you're making the effort to remember their name the next time you see them.
[33:05.060 --> 33:05.260]  Okay?
[33:05.780 --> 33:14.680]  Now, if you combine all of those practical steps with the visual memory improvement technique that I'm going to give you now, it becomes almost difficult to forget people's names.
[33:15.040 --> 33:21.200]  The visual technique is to pick out something unique about the person.
[33:21.540 --> 33:21.640]  Okay?
[33:22.020 --> 33:25.240]  Use your imagination to exaggerate that thing, whatever it may be.
[33:25.320 --> 33:26.700]  It may be a facial feature.
[33:27.140 --> 33:31.460]  Then you come up with an image or series of images that will remind you of the name.
[33:31.900 --> 33:40.900]  And you take that image or series of images, and you use your creativity and imagination to link it to that special feature or that outstanding feature.
[33:40.900 --> 33:46.180]  I'll give you an example that I gave on CNN that they seem to think was pretty humorous.
[33:46.440 --> 33:55.640]  Uh, if you meet someone named John, and John, you think he has rather big ears, you might imagine those ears as being gigantic ears flapping on the side of his head.
[33:55.920 --> 34:00.460]  And since the name's John, you might imagine that in each ear, there's a toilet bowl flushing.
[34:01.180 --> 34:02.640]  As in going to the John, right?
[34:02.700 --> 34:03.860]  Toilet bowl isn't going to the John.
[34:04.420 --> 34:10.570]  So then when you see the person again, you see the big ears, and that imagery will come back out at you of the toilet bowl flushing.
[34:10.840 --> 34:14.280]  It will remind you that the name is John.
[34:14.700 --> 34:19.240]  It sounds kind of silly, but I promise you it's a very powerful technique.
[34:19.240 --> 34:23.780]  It will really dramatically improve your ability to remember people's names.
[34:24.020 --> 34:32.420]  It's similar to the body list technique, where we stored information at locations on our body, but now we're storing it on the other person's body.
[34:33.180 --> 34:40.130]  Another example, if you meet someone named Jane, and you think she has rather beautiful hair, you might imagine that her hair is made of chains.
[34:40.860 --> 34:40.960]  Okay?
[34:41.280 --> 34:44.040]  Then the next time you see her, you notice her really beautiful hair again.
[34:44.500 --> 34:45.980]  The imagery of it being made of chains.
[34:46.150 --> 34:47.840]  Maybe the chains are clanking against each other.
[34:48.480 --> 34:50.590]  Chain will remind you of Jane.
[34:51.360 --> 34:52.860]  That is another example.
[34:53.900 --> 35:03.050]  Granted, this does take a bit of practice, but if you practice, you can become very good, and be able to learn a person's name in 10 seconds or less.
[35:03.050 --> 35:03.860]  I've done this.
[35:04.300 --> 35:13.050]  I spoke at a conference for the California Federation of Interpreters, and as people walked into my seminar, I shook their hand, met them.
[35:13.280 --> 35:18.070]  There's about 200 people in the audience, and I was able to name everybody in the room.
[35:19.920 --> 35:23.630]  The technique is very powerful and effective.
[35:23.630 --> 35:34.720]  I am going to go into the question and answer session now, but before I do that, I would like to take some volunteers from the audience to help me pass out these evaluation forms.
[35:35.720 --> 35:37.360]  I want you to evaluate me.
[35:37.440 --> 35:41.280]  I really appreciate your input on the presentation.
[35:50.810 --> 35:58.950]  And before we start the question and answer session, people often ask me if I provide additional training.
[35:58.950 --> 36:01.110]  Do I have a course that will help you to improve your memory?
[36:01.310 --> 36:03.470]  I do, so I'm going to quickly talk about that.
[36:03.550 --> 36:07.270]  I have a home study course that can help you to improve your memory.
[36:07.970 --> 36:11.730]  The course is six hours worth of interactive instruction.
[36:11.730 --> 36:16.450]  It's very similar to this presentation, fun and educational exercises.
[36:17.670 --> 36:20.250]  The first session is memory fundamentals.
[36:21.410 --> 36:27.990]  During that session, I teach you a wide variety of memory improvement techniques that can help improve your memory in general.
[36:28.270 --> 36:42.830]  I teach a number memory session, which teaches you how to remember any type of information that contains numbers, phone numbers, passwords, facts that contain figures, all sorts of information that contains numbers.
[36:43.110 --> 36:45.230]  The third session is names and faces.
[36:45.410 --> 36:50.710]  I teach you a wide variety of techniques to help you remember names and faces better.
[36:50.890 --> 36:54.930]  There are additional techniques, additional variations on the ones that I covered today.
[36:55.810 --> 37:00.090]  That course actually stimulates introducing you to 40 plus people.
[37:00.370 --> 37:07.910]  You'll see a slideshow on my website, and you'll see the person and their name, Jack, John, Alice, and so forth.
[37:08.070 --> 37:11.450]  So you can really build up this memory skill.
[37:11.730 --> 37:19.650]  The last session covers building up a large vocabulary in a foreign language quickly and easily using these types of memory techniques.
[37:19.970 --> 37:24.070]  It covers giving speeches and presentations for memory without looking at any notes.
[37:24.290 --> 37:31.230]  And it teaches how to easily master material for college course exams and certification exams.
[37:31.610 --> 37:32.250]  All right.
[37:32.850 --> 37:35.350]  Quickly, I want to give you some more information about numbers.
[37:36.290 --> 37:47.850]  How I did the number memory demonstration is I came up with an image or series of images to remind me of each number, and I linked it to locations from my environment instead of locations from my body.
[37:48.030 --> 37:49.710]  That's something that I teach you in the course.
[37:49.830 --> 38:09.690]  I teach you a system that you can use to take any number sequence and create an image, and then you use locations from your environment, say this table, then the stereo box, and then the screen, the chair, and then you think of those locations in order and recall the images there,
[38:09.810 --> 38:11.750]  and you can come up with the number sequence.
[38:13.670 --> 38:18.250]  On the order form, you will see prices for my home study course.
[38:18.390 --> 38:26.110]  There's also one-day workshop that I teach in San Francisco that corresponds to the same sessions in the home study course, but it's live.
[38:26.350 --> 38:27.950]  One-day instruction for me.
[38:28.230 --> 38:30.490]  The workshop's held on Saturdays in San Francisco.
[38:31.610 --> 38:41.870]  If anyone is interested in anything that I offer today, I'm going to give you a special offer for the home study course rather than a regular price of $175.
[38:42.830 --> 38:43.830]  Cross that out.
[38:44.050 --> 38:45.750]  Today, you can order it for only $100.
[38:46.590 --> 38:51.630]  If you're interested in San Francisco workshop, cross out that price and I'll let you register for only $200.
[38:54.050 --> 38:59.170]  And for the workshop, your registration will count towards any future workshop date that I have.
[38:59.730 --> 39:07.550]  So if you register today, you'll be on a list that I maintain and you'll be updated as dates are added and you can come to any future workshop date.
[39:07.850 --> 39:12.090]  At this point, I'll take questions on anything that I've talked about today.
[39:12.850 --> 39:17.210]  Hi, could you just take maybe three steps to the right and do those numbers again?
[39:17.870 --> 39:19.870]  Backwards would be really impressive, but...
[39:19.870 --> 39:21.830]  Okay, you want me to go through the number sequence again?
[39:21.870 --> 39:29.450]  Yeah, just I'm trying to determine, you know, I mean, anybody can memorize... well, I mean, I probably couldn't, but a lot of people can memorize things very short-term.
[39:29.790 --> 39:30.270]  Okay, sure.
[39:30.270 --> 39:33.990]  And I'm kind of figuring out, do you stick those in short-term or could I ask you next week for those numbers?
[39:34.210 --> 39:34.410]  Or...
[39:34.410 --> 39:39.950]  So with one review, it's unique to the individual how long it will last.
[39:40.110 --> 39:44.950]  But using these techniques, it will stick a lot longer than the traditional methods of memorizing things.
[39:44.970 --> 39:52.190]  If I were to have memorized this just by rote, how people usually do it, writing it, I probably forgot it, but I should still be able to repeat it forwards and backwards at this point.
[39:52.910 --> 39:56.230]  And I'll go ahead and do that, but let me finish the answer.
[39:56.370 --> 39:59.930]  Because we're making very efficient use of our brains with these techniques, okay?
[40:00.730 --> 40:01.550]  That is the key.
[40:01.650 --> 40:14.450]  I've spent the last 10 years of my life studying the most powerful and effective techniques for memorizing very specific types of information so that I could perform at extraordinary levels and win the USA National Memory Championship.
[40:14.650 --> 40:18.070]  I actually represented the United States in the World Memory Championship.
[40:18.350 --> 40:25.570]  So you can be... you can rest assured that the techniques that I'm teaching you are the best techniques out there.
[40:25.730 --> 40:26.890]  So let me repeat it really quick.
[40:27.370 --> 40:34.110]  It was 958-611-720-838.
[40:37.170 --> 40:38.410]  Hold on, hold on.
[40:43.350 --> 40:44.110]  253084.
[40:45.430 --> 40:46.990]  And then it was...
[40:53.020 --> 40:53.660]  Hold on.
[40:54.360 --> 40:56.040]  I know the last three, 809.
[41:11.820 --> 41:12.420]  Hold on.
[41:13.140 --> 41:13.840]  Should I hint?
[41:14.220 --> 41:14.500]  Hint.
[41:21.430 --> 41:21.830]  Hint.
[41:21.830 --> 41:25.130]  Or maybe that's a hand hint and you associate it and I'm totally messing you up.
[41:26.370 --> 41:27.250]  Hold on, hold on.
[41:28.750 --> 41:29.530]  Oh, I got it.
[41:29.710 --> 41:31.370]  It's 557, sorry.
[41:31.770 --> 41:33.270]  557-809.
[41:33.550 --> 41:33.890]  Great.
[41:34.170 --> 41:34.570]  Backwards.
[41:35.530 --> 41:35.930]  Backwards.
[41:36.030 --> 41:37.870]  I feel bad that I messed that up, so let me go backwards.
[41:38.630 --> 41:44.950]  So backwards it should be 908-755, right?
[41:45.410 --> 42:09.310]  And then 480-352-838-027-116-859.
[42:09.310 --> 42:10.310]  Terrific.
[42:10.540 --> 42:10.960]  Thank you.
[42:11.350 --> 42:11.760]  Thank you.
[42:14.100 --> 42:14.700]  Yes.
[42:15.600 --> 42:23.080]  So all these techniques that you've shown are really cool if you have in mind already that you have something that you want to commit to memory.
[42:23.480 --> 42:39.700]  However, if you find yourself in the position of trying to recall something that you didn't previously use to associate with something using one of these techniques, is there a method for delving back into memory that should be there but is harder to access?
[42:41.350 --> 42:48.060]  You know, I specialize in teaching you the proper way to encode the information in the first place so that it's easier to retrieve it.
[42:48.120 --> 42:53.640]  If you didn't encode it properly in the first place, so you learned it just by rote memorization techniques, it's going to be harder.
[42:54.000 --> 42:57.120]  I mean, I can get... I'm not an expert in what you've described.
[42:57.140 --> 42:59.370]  I'm an expert in encoding it properly.
[42:59.810 --> 43:06.180]  I can give you some recommendations, which is I try to... you become very relaxed, all right?
[43:06.600 --> 43:10.430]  And I try to think of everything I can around that piece of information.
[43:11.460 --> 43:19.140]  Often, if you can think of as much as possible surrounding that event or that piece of information, it'll trigger that particular memory that you're looking for.
[43:19.310 --> 43:20.780]  So that's a recommendation I could give you.
[43:20.960 --> 43:24.580]  Again, I'm really an expert in encoding it properly in the first place.
[43:24.830 --> 43:25.700]  Okay, thanks.
[43:25.910 --> 43:26.390]  Yep, problem.
[43:26.560 --> 43:28.280]  I'll probably get you to pass-like regressions.
[43:31.200 --> 43:40.370]  So I guess my question would be, what was your initial motivation for going into memory work, which I wouldn't think a contest would have been your first initial impulse.
[43:40.980 --> 43:43.420]  So I became interested in memory techniques.
[43:43.560 --> 43:47.800]  I saw a segment on the USA National Memory Championship on ABC's 2020.
[43:48.140 --> 43:50.000]  It just seemed really interesting to me.
[43:50.600 --> 43:58.580]  You know, but when I looked into what the top scorers in the country were scoring, I realized that there's no way I would be able to do the things that they were doing.
[43:58.740 --> 44:02.540]  So that's when I started studying a wide variety of memory improvement techniques.
[44:02.600 --> 44:08.540]  I started practicing, and I came up with what worked best for me for each particular event.
[44:08.540 --> 44:15.760]  And then I trained with those, and I ended up doing pretty well, so...
[44:15.760 --> 44:18.000]  Nice to see TV didn't actually dull your mind.
[44:20.400 --> 44:21.200]  Is this one on?
[44:21.360 --> 44:21.920]  Yes, it is.
[44:22.200 --> 44:22.340]  Okay.
[44:22.880 --> 44:23.860]  So I had a question.
[44:24.000 --> 44:24.240]  Uh-huh.
[44:25.640 --> 44:34.980]  As a, you know, a group of technologically inclined people, we're used to working with an amount of storage space and computers, for example, that is finite.
[44:35.300 --> 44:35.540]  Uh-huh.
[44:35.640 --> 44:39.620]  Is there any idea about how much information the brain can hold?
[44:40.560 --> 44:43.600]  Um, it's supposedly limitless.
[44:43.780 --> 44:44.000]  Limitless.
[44:44.000 --> 44:45.700]  The amount of information that we can store.
[44:45.700 --> 44:47.660]  It's really, you know, a matter...
[44:47.660 --> 44:57.160]  If you organize things properly in your mind, right, and you store these things away in specific locations in your mind, you can recall crazy amounts of things.
[44:57.300 --> 45:02.920]  I mean, in the World Memory Championship, I perfectly memorized a 1,000-digit sequence in only one hour.
[45:03.080 --> 45:06.080]  I memorized 10 separate decks of playing cards in an hour.
[45:06.460 --> 45:09.420]  On May 1st of this year, I did a memory demonstration.
[45:10.000 --> 45:26.080]  Uh, it was on NBC News at one point where, uh, you know, people called out any random year between 1875 and 2009, and I immediately told them the name of the winning horse, the winning jockey, and the time that it took them to win the race, down to a hundredth of a second for the Kentucky Derby.
[45:26.540 --> 45:35.800]  Um, so, I mean, this is, this is, that's just another example of the types of things you can do when you've mastered these techniques and you're, you're filing things away properly in your mind.
[45:36.080 --> 45:36.860]  All right, cool, thank you.
[45:37.080 --> 45:37.180]  Yep.
[45:38.560 --> 45:39.800]  Hey, thanks for the talk.
[45:40.180 --> 45:43.420]  Um, do you know if it's possible to develop a photographic memory?
[45:43.420 --> 45:45.900]  So, I've read extensively on this.
[45:46.000 --> 45:48.920]  Supposedly, there's no such thing as a photographic memory.
[45:49.200 --> 45:52.940]  At least not in the way that we think of it as we, as it's portrayed in the movies.
[45:53.400 --> 45:57.240]  Um, they've done many studies to prove that there isn't a photographic memory.
[45:57.360 --> 46:02.800]  They will take people, they'll have them come in, uh, people that have extraordinary memory ability, right?
[46:03.060 --> 46:04.580]  Say for numbers, for instance.
[46:05.260 --> 46:08.780]  Uh, and they will have, they'll, they'll show that person a grid of numbers.
[46:09.340 --> 46:11.640]  And they will say, go ahead and memorize this.
[46:11.720 --> 46:14.480]  Recall the grid from top to bottom, left to right.
[46:14.620 --> 46:16.100]  And they record that time, right?
[46:16.480 --> 46:21.060]  Then they say to the person, okay, now recall that number sequence diagonally.
[46:21.720 --> 46:22.280]  All right?
[46:22.460 --> 46:25.240]  And they record the time and it's significantly longer.
[46:26.140 --> 46:34.040]  So, if this were actually a photographic image that they were looking at in their mind, the recall time should be approximately the same.
[46:34.500 --> 46:44.500]  So, what that proves is the person is actually, they have extraordinary memory, they're actually recording it in their mind in some way that's meaningful to them, but it's not photographic image.
[46:44.620 --> 46:51.400]  Another study, they've taken people with extraordinary memory ability and they will splatter some dots onto a page.
[46:51.640 --> 46:53.780]  There's no meaning at all to it, right?
[46:54.560 --> 46:59.920]  Um, and they will, they'll take the page away and say, okay, perfectly reproduce the splattering dots.
[47:00.180 --> 47:01.740]  No one's ever been able to do that.
[47:02.300 --> 47:05.480]  So, it's not a photographic image that they're looking at.
[47:05.580 --> 47:10.260]  Another thing, chess players have amazing memory for the places on the board, right?
[47:10.300 --> 47:17.580]  When they give chess players a board that has some sort of meaning in chess and they take it away and ask them to reproduce it, they can do it.
[47:17.700 --> 47:25.360]  When they give them another board that has no meaning, that would have no meaning, make no sense in a chess game, they can't put the pieces back in the right place.
[47:25.580 --> 47:26.620]  So, thank you.
[47:26.800 --> 47:26.900]  Yeah.
[47:29.280 --> 47:42.620]  Um, I was wondering about, um, how this process scales when you're dealing with different kinds of information or even just different scales of information.
[47:42.620 --> 47:50.340]  For example, would you use the same techniques if you were going to study physics for four years and wanted to remember all of it?
[47:51.260 --> 47:52.600]  Um, yes.
[47:52.880 --> 47:58.820]  So, I teach in the home study course and in my workshop, one of the things I cover, one of the things I cover is college course material.
[47:59.340 --> 48:02.600]  Um, and I cover some complex type concepts.
[48:02.820 --> 48:12.300]  One thing I teach specifically in the course is how to memorize that convection is the transfer of heat from an area of higher temperature to an area of lower temperature.
[48:12.680 --> 48:17.580]  It's always basically coming up with an image or series of images that remind you of what you want to remember.
[48:17.760 --> 48:22.360]  In this case, I, I will always remember that fact because I see in my mind an image of a convention.
[48:22.680 --> 48:24.780]  The convention reminds me of convection, right?
[48:25.100 --> 48:26.100]  So, I see convention.
[48:26.480 --> 48:28.680]  It's, it consists of two levels, right?
[48:28.720 --> 48:33.300]  There's people up here on the higher level, people up here on the lower area, two areas, right?
[48:33.640 --> 48:37.620]  And at each area, I see a thermometer to remind me of temperature, right?
[48:37.920 --> 48:42.420]  And then a fire breaks out at the top level and people are screaming when the fire breaks out.
[48:42.540 --> 48:49.840]  That reminds me of heat and the fire transfers from the In a higher area, and the people at the bottom start getting burned, and they're running around.
[48:50.220 --> 48:53.240]  So that image, it's a crazy, funny image.
[48:53.360 --> 48:57.480]  I have it stored away in a journey, which is another technique that I teach in the course.
[48:57.840 --> 49:04.780]  So I see that there, and it reminds me that convection is the transfer of heat from an area of higher temperature to an area of lower temperature.
[49:05.320 --> 49:10.880]  So even complicated, complex concepts can be memorized using these types of techniques.
[49:12.600 --> 49:13.600]  Hopefully that ends.
[49:15.820 --> 49:31.960]  I wanted to ask, if and when you find yourself making a mistake, say you blank on a series of numbers, or you're straining to catch the connection to the next, what is it that goes through your head?
[49:32.140 --> 49:36.160]  Or what is it that you do to mitigate that problem in the future?
[49:37.240 --> 49:40.380]  Or what is the binding point where you get stuck?
[49:40.380 --> 49:46.800]  So again, you know, really just trying to relax yourself goes a long way.
[49:47.020 --> 49:48.800]  And it's about the initial encoding.
[49:49.680 --> 49:56.160]  So if you're reviewing it and you're finding that you're forgetting it again, really get additional senses involved.
[49:56.400 --> 49:59.280]  If you do that, it becomes very easy to remember.
[50:00.680 --> 50:05.500]  Yeah, I was just wondering if there's any difference in what language to use to remember stuff.
[50:05.500 --> 50:09.500]  I mean, my mother tongue is not English, but I was perfectly able to recall the words, for instance.
[50:09.720 --> 50:12.180]  So is there any difference in using my mother tongue or English?
[50:13.000 --> 50:16.280]  As long as you can picture whatever it is.
[50:16.400 --> 50:21.260]  You know, if you can create an image in your mind and see that image, then these techniques will work for you.
[50:21.260 --> 50:23.800]  But still the English word would be tied to it and not the journal.
[50:23.800 --> 50:26.040]  So I'm not asking you to see the words, right?
[50:26.260 --> 50:26.520]  Okay.
[50:26.520 --> 50:27.840]  I'm asking you to see an image.
[50:27.940 --> 50:28.420]  Okay, makes sense.
[50:28.420 --> 50:35.440]  So if you're, you know, somebody said to you monkey in whatever language, as long as you're seeing the image.
[50:35.740 --> 50:35.900]  Okay?
[50:36.800 --> 50:37.360]  Yeah.
[50:37.780 --> 50:38.340]  Okay.
[50:38.500 --> 50:43.000]  So you did have a little trouble at the end there remembering.
[50:43.240 --> 50:43.320]  Mm-hmm.
[50:43.320 --> 50:49.540]  So could you possibly take us through your slight journey to remember that particular sequence?
[50:49.540 --> 50:52.240]  Because you were chunking in three-digit pieces.
[50:52.560 --> 50:53.640]  Yeah, so this is a...
[50:53.640 --> 50:56.140]  So you have got some kind of technique to get three digits.
[50:56.140 --> 50:58.360]  Yeah, so I'll go through it very, very quickly.
[50:58.820 --> 51:01.900]  A lot of it's not going to make sense to you at this point because you don't know the system.
[51:01.980 --> 51:08.860]  So I teach a system that allows you to take any number sequence and create an image from that sequence.
[51:09.280 --> 51:16.640]  And because I've competed in the World Memory Championship, I have an image in my mind associated with every possible three-digit sequence.
[51:16.960 --> 51:17.900]  So for every...
[51:17.900 --> 51:20.320]  So there's a thousand images that I have stored in my mind.
[51:20.720 --> 51:25.160]  So whenever I see a three-digit sequence, automatically this image comes to my mind.
[51:25.160 --> 51:28.540]  So 958 is this person I know from high school named Belva.
[51:29.240 --> 51:32.720]  661 is this girl who, in my mind, is very jaded.
[51:33.840 --> 51:35.280]  That's what 66...
[51:35.280 --> 51:36.760]  Or 611, sorry.
[51:36.860 --> 51:37.300]  611.
[51:37.680 --> 51:38.800]  611 is jaded.
[51:39.500 --> 51:43.420]  And then 720 is this guy I know from my tennis club named Cons.
[51:44.160 --> 51:46.500]  And then 838 is earmuffs.
[51:47.540 --> 51:52.980]  But it's, you know, whenever I see those sequences, those images come to my mind.
[51:53.020 --> 51:54.100]  So it comes with training.
[51:54.320 --> 51:56.780]  It's very easy for anyone to do, but it's going to take a little training.
[51:56.960 --> 51:59.760]  Most people, you'll start out with 00 through 99.
[52:00.240 --> 52:02.140]  You'll come up with 100 images.
[52:02.700 --> 52:05.960]  And that's the first thing that I teach you in the home study course.
[52:05.960 --> 52:06.220]  Yeah.
[52:06.420 --> 52:07.640]  So what's 557?
[52:08.140 --> 52:09.200]  It's a lilac.
[52:14.000 --> 52:23.280]  I was wondering in case you had tried any supplements or drugs to boost memory, such as vasopressin or acetylcholine boosters, and your thoughts on those.
[52:24.460 --> 52:24.960]  Okay.
[52:25.300 --> 52:28.660]  So, you know, we are very, very serious in these memory competitions.
[52:29.100 --> 52:36.180]  So, you know, I do try to take things that have been shown to improve your memory.
[52:36.480 --> 52:38.060]  I mean, I'll tell you what I take.
[52:38.380 --> 52:44.820]  Starting six weeks prior to competition, well, every day I take a multivitamin because, you know, the idea is healthy body, healthy mind.
[52:45.100 --> 52:50.060]  But closer to competition, I will start taking B vitamin complex to improve concentration.
[52:50.060 --> 52:56.880]  I'll also take fish oil because your brain is composed of omega-3 fatty acids.
[52:57.080 --> 52:58.800]  It's very important to proper brain function.
[52:59.120 --> 53:02.520]  I don't eat too much fish or seafood, so I really need to take that.
[53:02.700 --> 53:08.880]  I also take ginkgo biloba, which has been shown to increase the flow of blood to the brain.
[53:09.500 --> 53:11.280]  So those are some things that I take.
[53:11.440 --> 53:22.220]  I do know some people take choline tablets, which choline is a precursor to acetylcholine, which is important to memory and learning in the brain.
[53:22.360 --> 53:23.380]  I don't personally take that.
[53:23.560 --> 53:24.680]  But anyway, that's my answer.
[53:26.480 --> 53:27.240]  Awesome talk.
[53:27.400 --> 53:28.600]  I really enjoyed this.
[53:28.740 --> 53:28.980]  Thanks.
[53:29.300 --> 53:36.540]  I can barely remember my own phone number because I've offloaded almost everything onto a PDA or, like, a text file or whatever.
[53:36.760 --> 53:42.680]  So I'm curious, one, like, what your thought about technology and just, like, being lazy and let the muscles atrophy?
[53:43.040 --> 53:43.260]  Uh-huh.
[53:43.400 --> 53:44.020]  How do you think about that?
[53:44.140 --> 53:47.540]  But two, I could see maybe learning how to index these things.
[53:47.720 --> 53:50.380]  Like, maybe I could use your techniques to, like, actually find the data.
[53:50.600 --> 53:50.880]  Uh-huh.
[53:50.900 --> 53:54.620]  But I think right now I'm, like, way too out of shape to remember more than, you know, I remember.
[53:54.840 --> 53:55.700]  So you brought up a good point.
[53:55.840 --> 54:06.220]  I often talk about that point is, you know, we all used to have the ability to remember so many phone numbers of our friends and family members, right?
[54:06.680 --> 54:11.680]  But now with the cell phone, if you're asked to remember one number, you start freaking out.
[54:11.740 --> 54:12.100]  Oh, no, no.
[54:12.200 --> 54:13.100]  I got to write it down, right?
[54:13.600 --> 54:16.940]  And that's because you're so used to entering things into the phone.
[54:17.080 --> 54:19.280]  But this proves...
[54:19.280 --> 54:20.380]  I have one minute left.
[54:20.580 --> 54:23.560]  This proves the use it or lose it principle, though, all right?
[54:23.600 --> 54:26.760]  If you use your memory, it will get better.
[54:26.780 --> 54:28.980]  If you don't use it, it will decay.
[54:29.320 --> 54:32.600]  One last thing about the class, home study course workshop.
[54:33.860 --> 54:34.820]  Actually, forget that.
[54:35.060 --> 54:36.580]  Just give me the form either way.
[54:36.880 --> 54:37.700]  Bring it up here.
[54:37.840 --> 54:38.600]  Set it on the table.
[54:39.020 --> 54:41.500]  Or if you don't have a chance to do that, I will be in the back.
[54:41.600 --> 54:42.220]  Give me the forms.
[54:42.480 --> 54:47.840]  Even if you don't want to order anything, I want at least the evaluation of the talk.
[54:48.040 --> 54:48.100]  Yeah.
[54:48.300 --> 54:54.800]  I just wanted to point out that marine phytoplankton is another thing that you can take to improve your mind and body, all that sort of stuff.
[54:54.900 --> 54:55.320]  What was it?
[54:55.580 --> 54:56.840]  Marine phytoplankton.
[54:56.960 --> 54:58.000]  It comes in a little bottle.
[54:58.140 --> 54:58.380]  Oh, okay.
[54:58.980 --> 55:01.000]  It's good to take, and it's better than anything else that you've ever done.
[55:01.180 --> 55:01.480]  Great.
[55:01.600 --> 55:02.400]  I'll look for it.
[55:02.480 --> 55:09.660]  It's full of ATP, which is cell food, and it kicks off growth factors in your brain.
[55:09.860 --> 55:10.160]  Cool.
[55:10.160 --> 55:10.860]  So it's really good stuff.
[55:11.040 --> 55:11.440]  Thank you.
[55:12.560 --> 55:13.120]  I'm sorry?
[55:15.300 --> 55:22.440]  I had a quick question about people who have certain senses that they don't work.
[55:22.440 --> 55:25.280]  So this person who's blind, because visualization is so important.
[55:25.420 --> 55:35.640]  Have you ever studied or have you tried to work with people who have some, you know, hearing disability, speech disability, visualization disability, and how that affects their memory with these techniques?
[55:36.480 --> 55:36.800]  Yeah.
[55:37.120 --> 55:38.820]  So, you know, with a blind, it depends...
[55:38.820 --> 55:39.980]  We only have buttons.
[55:40.160 --> 55:40.340]  Okay.
[55:41.100 --> 55:43.420]  You know, again, if they can picture it...
[55:43.420 --> 55:45.380]  Step to the back and have discussion in the back.
[55:45.540 --> 55:46.040]  That would be fine, too.
[55:46.180 --> 55:46.480]  Oh, okay.
[55:46.560 --> 55:47.120]  Thank you so much.
[55:47.300 --> 55:47.840]  Yeah, no problem.
[55:57.160 --> 55:57.940]  Thank you very much.
[55:58.040 --> 55:58.180]  Thank you.
[56:06.950 --> 56:08.590]  Smartphone ownage is up next in this room.