SDS PODCAST EPISODE 153 WITH ANTHONY METIVIER

Transcription

1 SDS PODCAST EPISODE 153 WITH ANTHONY METIVIER Show Notes: 1

2 This is episode number 153 with best selling memory improvement author, Anthony Metivier. Welcome to the Super Data Science podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, data science coach and lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today and now let's make the complex simple. Do you have trouble remembering names, do you want to learn a new language but don't know how to start, or would you just like to improve your memory in general? Well then, Anthony Metivier is your person. Welcome, everybody, back to the Super Data Science podcast. I hope you enjoyed my little teasing info, infomercial type of start there. Today we've got a very exciting guest, Anthony Metivier, on the show. Crazy story how we met. I think we actually talk about it on the podcast. In short, I bumped into him in Brisbane completely randomly. Brisbane, Australia, even though he's from Canada, he lived in Germany for many years, and then all of a sudden I bump into him in Brisbane at a café, which I usually never, every go into anyway. And the funny thing is, how I knew him is because I follow some of his courses on YouToMe. He's got some courses on memory and branding yourself and getting your name out there and things like that, so he's quite a successful instructor in the YouToMe space. And all of a sudden I run into him in Brisbane so I thought it was meant to be and invited him to record a podcast session, so we actually got together and had this wonderful chat and here our focus was on memory. Show Notes: 2

3 On how to come up with ways to, or he was sharing ways, he already knows, of course, on how to improve memory and I was just like gobbling up all these new ideas and techniques and you will learn a couple of them here as well. For instance, I always problems remember names and after this podcast, I've got to tell you, this was a couple weeks ago, after this podcast, I've been to several social events and I've every single time used his techniques, thank you so much, Anthony, if you're listening to this. That whole technique of putting an association with the person's name on their shoulder and then every time you look at their face you see that association and it's so easy to remember their name, really helped me out. And of course it's not just limited to that. Memory is very important in what we do in data science analytics just in general in everyday to day life, especially, it's also very important. And so any kind of memory improvements that you can get your hands on, I think you should always take, and that's why this podcast, I think, is going to be valuable for absolutely for everybody. It's a must listen. And so, yeah, that's what we're focusing on. Very exciting chat, lots of tips and techniques. Let's dive straight into it. Without further adieu I bring to you Anthony Metivier, perhaps my favorite best selling memory improvement author. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Super Data Science podcast. Today on the show I've got a very exciting guest, Anthony Metivier, who is a best selling Show Notes: 3

4 memory improvement author. Anthony, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. And today we're sitting in Anthony's studio here in Brisbane. It was so funny how we met, right? It's a crazy story. It is pretty crazy just being at a café and someone says, "Hey, are you Anthony Metivier?" Yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact I am. That's so great. I've taken Anthony's courses on YouToMe, some of them, and I've also been following around some of his work on his website, which is MagneticMemoryMethod.com, right? Yeah. And I've seen some of his other talks. And it's just so funny as I come back to Brisbane at the end of last year, at the end of 2017, just staying at my brother's place in a specific suburb of Brisbane and then I'm in this coffee place, which I never go into. They had some live band playing or something. Then as I'm walking out, I see you sitting there, like, "Whoa, what is that?" And you're not from Australia, right? You lived in Germany forever. Yeah. And then I just see you there. I'm like, "Hold on. That person looks familiar." So I check and it is you and then I go say hi and now we're here. How crazy is that? Show Notes: 4

5 Well, it's one of those wonderful crazinesses that really is only possible in the 21st century. Although a hundred years ago, people did bump in to each other from time to time thanks to what was going on with media in around 1914 and so forth. The modernists always bumped in to each other in Paris and so forth. Interesting. Okay, so the topic of today's podcast is memory. Memory and focus and I think it's a very important thing because for data scientists, people in the analytics profession, people working with data, it's highly important to be able to control your focus, but also to use your memory to get the most out of your day, get the most out of your work and bring the most results. So, tell us a bit about memory. It's not just a... A lot of the time people think of memory as something that we have. But there's whole techniques, whole methods of training your memory, of using it, of optimizing it, making it efficient. There's actually competitions in memory. There are titles like Grand Master of Memory and things like that. Can you tell us a little bit about this world to get us started? Sure. It is exactly that, a world, it's a universe. If you think about the Marvel universe, there are super heroes inside of us and then there's just everyday people who can be vigilantes or whatever, they don't have to have special brains or anything like that to get great results. And there's a lot of myths around it, a lot of misunderstandings. And at the end of the day there's also the difference between the science of memory, which is a lot of terminology and concepts and neurophysics and the things that are neurophysiology and so forth. Then there's the history Show Notes: 5

6 of memory, there's the craft of memory, there's the art of memory. It all boils down to, what is it that you want to memorize and if you want to use memory techniques, are you interested in what I would call the craft and the art and the science of actually getting those results through the practice of memory techniques, because it is a practice. It's kind of, I think, relatable to a martial art and in my case, how I teach a particular kind of martial art, which is Systema, the Russian martial art, or maybe Judo, in terms of receiving energy, or information, as an energy and then directing it where you want it to go and having it stay there, having that information understand that you're in control in terms of being able to recall it. So, the memory champions are a great illustrator of the athleticism element of this. They're just dealing with pure raw information that has been selected to create different levels of challenge and they use the same technique that you and I could use with variations, but they are typically demonstrating that you can memorize a lot of information volume for very short periods of time. But what most people want, and I assume the people in your area want, is actually to be able to memorize information so it lasts. So, the techniques are more or less the same except for you use them very differently in order to create long-term retention, increase the volume of information, and in some senses, work on the speed. But the speed is always relative to what is the outcome in terms of knowledge, wisdom, better decision making, and that all important focus. Show Notes: 6

7 Gotcha. Is that a good sort of overview? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then kind of like top that off. Could you give us some examples of those challenges that you just mentioned? What's a arbitrary challenge that somebody who can master memory can take on? Right. So, the disciplines break down into things like vocabulary, numbers. And there's a difference too. There's numbers you've heard recited out loud, and then numbers you've seen on a piece of paper. There are abstract shapes and images. There's also things like poetry, which is essentially verbatim text. It depends on the competition. So, they'll have different disciplines relative to what they're doing. There's also discipline of speed as such with playing cards, and playing cards, I think, is the be-all and the end-all because it brings abstraction together, like what is seven of clubs, with numbers, with also what you, I guess, would call, spacial positioning, in terms of massive amounts of data that have multiple levels of data, and then the actual retention of volume. So, it's kind of the be-all and end-all is, how fast can you memorize 52 cards and that's where it all culminates. Although, abstract images is also pretty high demand because there's much less to grip on to. And by grip on to what I mean is, the key tool of memory techniques is association. Associating on thing to another through multiple means through what I call the magnetic modes, there's seven in total, and these are the tools that all people who use memory techniques use and they need to find their own sort of strategy inside of Show Notes: 7

8 their learning preferences, the hierarchy of preferences that they have, and each person can figure that out. That's where we get into that kind of martial arts thing, is like, "You're in the dojo and you need to feel your own body with the body of information that you encounter and learn how to move both in unison in order to memorize that information. That's very cool. I've heard of the Memory Grand Master Challenge. Is it true that they have to memorize three stacks, three decks, of cards, shuffled, and just memorize the order in which the cards came? I'm not sure what the current requirements are, but they change over time and certainly that definitely doesn't sound contemporary because people have exceeded that many times over now. Wow. So, it's probably more than that. It's quite funny if you look at the history of the World Memory Championships, like when you think about Dominic O'Brien and how many times that he won it and so forth, and he himself has made comments to this effect, they just were doing so little compared to now. And so it's kind of got that sport effect where you think, "Holy cow, who's ever going to break this record?" But the fact that the record has been set almost guarantees that someone's going to break it and they're actually looking for the technology to flash cards faster than the hands can move because it's not... The limit isn't the speed of memorization, the limit is how fast the memorizer can move the cards. Show Notes: 8

9 So, what all the qualifications are for Grand Master of Memory, I'm not entirely sure. I'm actually deeply uninterested in all that stuff because I'm interested in the people who have everyday learning needs and I find that people get really frustrated and discouraged by all that stuff, maybe not in every field, but when you think about it, I totally endorse memorizing cards, it's a great memory exercise, but most people, they're like, "Yeah, okay. But what the hell does that have to do with me getting a raise at my job because I want to be better, I want to be smarter, I want to demonstrate more capability," and so forth. So, a lot of people hear, and I'm not critical of the competitions, I admire then and I'm so glad they exist, but on an everyday level it's like, how do you relate to what they're doing especially when so many of the competitors, many are, but many aren't really demonstrating the best possible self that you can become because you have those skills. So, it's like weight lifters. Okay, I can dead-lift a thousand pounds, but I've got a lot of fat covering my muscle and I'm going to drop dead from all the bizarre chemicals that I'm taking. There's not a one to one correspondence between accomplishment as a human and being able to lift a thousand pounds. Going to just put it that way. Okay. That's a fair point. So, you're kind of more focused on the practical applications of these methods. That's right. That's really cool. And so, can you give us, what would you say is the most common practical application of memory on a day to day life? Show Notes: 9

10 That is really up to the individual person, but most people who really experience a boost the quickest are language learners who are struggling with vocabulary and phrase retention. They, if they use these techniques, will notice a difference within hours, really, because it's that simple to learn. Also, people who struggle with numbers. For example, we have a student who I just recorded a podcast for my own show, named Jesse [Vialogos 00:13:44] and he got a raise. This is like one of those classic examples. That's awesome. He's working in a shop with automotive parts and so forth, and just his demonstration of knowledge of the auto parts and being able to just bang, bang, bang, "Oh, that's number whatever," shaving off so much time in his job because he knows, I guess they are called SKU numbers, S-K-U numbers or something like this, and he just- So, he didn't have to look them up anymore? No. He can memorize them instantly. And this is a practical application of boost and it's just numbers that most people will forget. We always are told we can memorize seven numbers give or take or whatever, that's nonsense. You can only memorize the numbers that you've attended to. If someone tells you a seven digit number, there's no guarantee that because the mind can juggle that, you're ever going to remember it, so it could be two numbers and you'll forget them. There's no free lunch here in terms of remembering numbers, except for there is something that's close to a magic trick, it's close to real magic, and that is what Show Notes: 10

11 Jesse, for example, has done and it has made a deep and lasting impact in his life. And then you can take that number ability and apply it to many, many other things because the tools that you develop to memorize the numbers, they then apply to language learning, they apply to poetry, they apply to everything under the sun that you could possibly memorize. So it's a skill that's widely applicable. That's so cool. Can you tell us the magic trick that he applied? Yes. It starts with something called the Major Method. The Major Method is a means of associating sounds with numbers. So, basically people use it different ways, but there's sort of trend towards a particular way. And so zero is usually associated with an S or a soft C or a Zed. One is T or D. Two is N. Three is M. Four is R. Five is L. Six is a little bit more complicated because you can use C-H sound like a ch, ja as in jar, I guess the G version of that as in Jerry. Some people will use other things than that. That tends to be my range. Seven is a K sound. Eight is F or V and nine is B or P. Now, what does that all lead to? Once you've got that down, or something like that, then you take two numbers and you create words out of them by inserting a vowel in between the consonants. There are arguments about how exactly those consonants came to be evolved. I know, for example, Russians tend to make different choices than what I just displayed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've actually heard of that method. Yeah. Because Russian language sounds different, right? So they would use different... Show Notes: 11

12 In any case, though, it's partly arbitrary, but some people have said no, no it's actually not that arbitrary because of the plosives in English or whatever, but this particular pattern that I just announced doesn't come from the English tradition, it seems to have come from a French/Russian tradition. But, whatever. The history is interesting and not necessarily can help you to know it. But just to give you an example, when you know that, then 00 all the way up to 99 is a series of two digit numbers to which you can assign a word association. So, 00 for me is the psychologist Thomas Szasz. Why? Because zero stands for S or Z and that is always there. So, when I see 00, I instantly think "Thomas Szasz." And I've seen pictures of him. Ideally I would go and look at some video of him if it exists, which I think I have actually. This is one of the odd things about memory is you're like, "Did I or didn't I?" It doesn't matter, it works, it's there, right? 01 is a different thing. That's now, zero is S and one can be D or T, so I have "sad", but not any abstract sense of sad, because that causes too much cognitive demand in use. Instead I have the tragedy mask, but not just any tragedy mask, it's the tragedy mask on the face of William Shatner who played Oedipus Rex in a very old production. So, my point here is that it's got to be specific. It's got to be something you've seen with your own eyes. Concrete, you can really, really imagine in your mind. Now you want to remember 0001, so Thomas Szasz has a fight with William Shatner wearing the tragedy mask. Show Notes: 12

13 Then all the way up to 99 and then any digits that you see, it doesn't matter if it's a four digit number or a 700 digit number, you now have tools for making little stories that you can put in a memory palace or even not use a memory palace, depending on your abilities. You don't have the same cognitive demands, you just tell stories and you see those stories backwards, forwards, whatever. That's really cool. You can have each station in a memory palace, numbered, so that those guys that are already standing there, now you want to memorize some foreign language vocabulary, you've got 10 words to do, well what's Thomas Szasz going to do today? Or whatever, the Big Bop for 99. Big Bopper or whatever, the guy. It's just amazing what this does for you. And the more concrete and specific and visible to yourself. The other thing you can do is give them all a tool so they have something in their hands. Some people do this, some people don't, but it depends on how flexible you want to be, but if each person has a tool, then it's not arbitrary fist fights all the time, but it's Thomas Szasz is specifically using a saw, or whatever. So, you go from there. Okay, very cool. So, if I need to memorize a birthday, like, I don't know, 04/07, fourth of July, for example. Then I would come up with a story for 04 is something, 07 is something else. For me, this is the philosopher Sartre, and Oliver Sacks, who has a sack and Sartre has the, there used to be a thing called the SAR virus, so he's like Show Notes: 13

14 coughing and Oliver Sacks is trying to capture it in a sack. Okay, that's it and enough that you kind of like reverse engineer it once you need to. You'll be like, "What was that date?" Now, I have to actually do this. In an interview setting, maybe I will or I won't, but I might put it over your head or something like that and you'd be like, "What was that date?" And I think, "Oh, wasn't it April 7th or something like that?" And then you'd be like, "No, actually it was the seventh month I meant." So, mistakes can come. That's why it's kind of cool to have a symbol for every year of the month. So, April is easy. Every month you mean. Yeah, yeah. So, April, you could have an Easter bunny or an egg or whatever. You could also have a symbol for every day, or you could just use these characters for every day. You've got lots of options. In some senses what you get is a little bit of decision anxiety, but each person, as they use these techniques they develop their own mnemonic style and then they're just focused to get back to that theme, zeroed in, they have a tool, they have a strategy. Ideally they have multiple strategies because there's a lot that memory techniques offer and they can just zoom in on what works and remember stuff. Gotcha. Okay, so that's very interesting. While in data science we work with a lot of numbers all the time, we don't really need to memorize them, there are just tons of information going in and out and so on. What I Show Notes: 14

15 would say we kind of do need to keep in memory and understand that ad hoc is, for example, the techniques. Like in machine learning, there's lot of degrees like regression, decision trees, classification, clustering, and like in every method there's up to seven different techniques or there's probably like, I don't know, a hundred techniques, and you need to know which one to use when. So, that's not as straight forward as memorizing numbers. Do you know any techniques for that or would you say that even learning the techniques simple as the ones for numbers would help improve your memory in other areas as well? Yeah. This is exactly where there's a bit of the student's involvement in crafting their own program, but if you... Was it regression that you said? Yeah. So, I don't know what regression means. If I need to know that, then what I'm going to do is, first of all, I'm going to remember that it's the word regression and then I'm going to have some sort of definition. And if there are numbers involved, then I'm going to want to memorize those numbers. What I'm doing when I do that, whether I use memory techniques or not, is I'm building up memory reserve. Now, let's say it's like chess or something and there's sort of like a classical decision that's usually made, or whatever. Then I might want to memorize that to help me have a memory reserve of the typical decisions that are made to guide next decisions. So, I think that no matter what you're doing, you're developing reserve, but you Show Notes: 15

16 also need to do that not only through hard memorization of data and terminology and numbers and facts and decision parameters and so on, but you also need to have memory come up from actual application and then you can memorize outcomes as well. Possible outcomes, actual outcomes, and really develop more reserve based on owning it in your memory. Well, what is memory reserve? I'm not really following. So, memory reserve. So, you know you have a mother tongue? Mm-hmm (affirmative). Your memory reserve of that mother tongue is very, very deep through years of use. That doesn't mean you're never in danger of losing it because there is linguistic deskilling, it's called. You may have experienced it having lived outside of your country. I did in Germany before I moved to Australia and it was only when I moved to Australia that I realized how much of my mother tongue I had lost. But you're originally from Canada, right? Right. Right. Yeah, okay. So, the only time I spoke English was really on the podcast with interviews and so forth. So, I was just speaking German all the time and what ended up happening is that my reserve of English, my accumulated dexterity in there, in that language, was falling apart. I can go and listen to podcast episodes Show Notes: 16

17 during those years and I'm searching for words that would just be normal because the reserve is being depleted through lack of use. So reserve is the amount of, it's not RAM, but it's accessible material in any given moment. And so you get it through practice of a particular topic. When you're learning English or I'm learning Chinese now. I'm very keen that you have, you develop credit sort of in a reserve bank. The more you attend to it, the more you actually use it, you're cementing in that reserve and the more you're feeding it new vocabulary and new phrases, you're feeding that reserve and you're building it up over time and you will have a better ability to draw a credit from that bank in a way that actually doesn't take away from it because you're getting compound interest, so to speak, over use and time and you'll find that you have great felicity and ease and dexterity as you go into that, which you won't have if you don't. So memory reserve is a really important topic and we know in the science of bilingualism that there is solid evidence that people who speak a second language and continue to draw upon that language, they have less incidences of dementia and Alzheimer's and it's directly tied to the health benefits of actually using what's in your mind drawing upon that reserve. Depletion of that reserve, there's not necessarily evidence that, "Oh, no. Now you're going to get dementia," and so forth, but it does seem that the people who are using second languages or not learning second languages have higher incidences. I have a podcast coming out with a scientist who actually knows this stuff soon and she was talking about using Show Notes: 17

18 apps to help people with memory and those apps, they're not really showing the evidence that they're helping people recover their memory at all, it's actually the coaching that comes with the apps, but it just more strengthens the evidence for using language with people as helping exercise that reserve, grow it, maintain it and see improvements in conditions like that or evading them altogether. Wow. Really very interesting. Okay, and let's talk about a bit of a different approach. Like I often have a problem memorizing names, so I go to a party and people tell me their name, especially if there's a group of five people standing there and you introduce yourself to everybody. They just have to memorize one name each, my name, and I have to memorize five instantly and I hear it, I understand it, and then like three seconds later it's gone. Same thing, not everybody parties, I don't party a lot, I go out like once a year, but more importantly like at work. You get introduced to a client or you get introduced to a colleague and it's a bit embarrassing if you forget their name like literally five minutes later and you need to talk to them and you try to use other words like, "Hey, how you doing," so not to say their name. But I find people really appreciate when you do remember their name. I had an example just recently where there's this one person I used to work with back in [inaudible 00:27:18] and we bump into each other in Brisbane like once every one and half years randomly and I was very surprised that he actually remembered my name. Show Notes: 18

19 By the way, Steven, if you're listening to this, hi. And he remembered my name and it was really nice because my name is not that easy to remember, but he did and so do you have any suggestions or techniques on how people can better memorize names? Yeah. Well, the first thing is to learn everything that you can about memory techniques and association. Those multiple layers and modes that I talked about, which very briefly, there's seven. So, there is the visual mode, the auditory mode, the kinesthetic mode, there's the olfactory and the gustatory mode, and there's the conceptual mode and then there's the spacial mode. Wow. So, the more of those you combine together, the more you're going to be able to remember anything and that includes names. Now you might be thinking, "Okay, someone gave me a name, in three seconds how am I supposed to do all that stuff?" Well, it's called practice, but that's the number one thing that prevents people from every achieving these skills is because they don't practice. They understand it, they get it, but they don't do. So, how do you get yourself doing? Well, you play a game. Go on Wikipedia, for example, and you know there's the random button? Just keep clicking that til you get 10 random names that you're not familiar with and then think of associations. So, you see a John. Well, who else do you know that's named John? So, you might think abstractly, John the Baptist. Is that good? Well, it's okay, but you probably never met John the Baptist, but I have a friend named John who's from New Zealand, so I might use him. Show Notes: 19

20 And then I might be like, well, what can John be doing in a kinesthetic way? Punching, kicking, kissing, the more absurd and strange. I like to use kissing a lot because it's really bizarre, especially for my mind, it might not be for other people's minds, but not standard kissing either, but like big cartoon kissing with a big "mwah" sound, which is auditory. And getting all that in and actually pretending you can see it and so forth and I usually place these images on their shoulder, so it might be a big kiss on their ear or something like that. Shoulder of the person that you- Of the person I'm memorizing. And I might not do it all, all those modes, at the same time. By the way, putting this image of my friend John on another person named John, is using spacial memory by having this mini John that I know- On the shoulder of that person. Or I might use the top of the head. Like I meet a Lars, instantly Lars Ulrich has a drum set on their head and he's just ripping out Whiplash, or whatever, from Metallica in case you don't know that reference. But it's basically associating one Lars with another and then I'll repeat that in my mind and move on to the next person. This happens to me, incidentally, a lot when I go to social meetings or business master minds or whatever and people are introducing themselves and I see someone named Andre, Andre the Giant is instantly there giving him a big bear hug from behind or whatever. Any names. Andy, then I'll think of Andy Diamond, the magician or the mentalist, so on. Show Notes: 20

21 Let's do one. Rick. Rick, so I'm thinking of, well a couple of Ricks come to mind, but Rick was a friend of mine in high school, he always had spiked hair, he played Axel F on the organ, so now Rick is going to be doing whatever. Okay. Susan. Susan. So, there was someone, I can't think of her last name at the moment, but she had the Sunday Night Sex Show in Canada. So, I think her name was Susan anyway. But you know, like I've got this image of her now. I get it. Mary. Mary. Well, Mary is obviously in the Pieta statue with Jesus, the baby Jesus. But if I was like, Rick, Susan, Mary, I'm starting to see these things here and I'm going to work on them. If it was in a party, I'm going to work on them and I'm going to revisit them in my mind as I'm meeting people and it's surprising that you can actually do this mentally while you're talking to people. I know. I was just thinking, is it exhausting? You're at a party, but you're doing all this work and you're tired by the end of it just from the mental activity. I find that it creates energy. Really? So, even if I were to fail and you were to say at the end of the interview, "Okay, so who were those names?" And I'm like, "Rick, Susan, Mary," or whatever, even if I were to fail right now, the challenge itself is so Show Notes: 21

22 exciting to me and I'm just thinking, excuse me, Rick with his Axel Foley, Susan, Sunday Night Sex Show, Mary, Jesus [crosstalk 00:31:48]. To me, this is the funnest game to play in the world. This is so cool. I can feel the energy go up. The other thing too, and this is what I love about memory, is that it's so perfect science. You either remember it or you don't. And I do make mistakes sometimes, but I just am open to the learning experience and then I think, "Well, what went wrong? What could I have done better there?" Never worry about it. Plus, back to the memory champion things. A lot of people, they get really discouraged by that, but what they don't know is that all the memory champions, they're point based, or most of them. Most of the competitions, totally point based. And most of those guys lose a lot of points in one category, if not more than one. So, they're winning by having excelled in one or two. Yeah. Okay, wow. Very interesting. I'm definitely going to try that next time when I go to some event or even at work and just remember. And so when you see that person, does just that visual image of seeing them, does that trigger that other associated person of sitting on their head or on their shoulder, is that how you actually remember their name when you talk to them like an hour later? Yeah. Well, in a perfect world, you actually don't need it, because you just doing it does it. Oh, okay. Show Notes: 22

23 It's like a martial art. Case by case basis. Just play with it and see what happens. One mistake that I made at one point was with a guy named Pascal and the reason I made the mistake is because I tried to think about an abstract idea of God. I didn't think at the moment to think of the philosopher, Pascal. Is that because of, what's it called, Pascal's wager? Exactly. So, I thought of the concept, which is one of the modes of memory, then I was thinking of God, the Sistine Chapel, it was just too weird so I didn't get it. But I came back to it and I eventually found it. I found my way back and I got it. It was way too long. So, what I did out of that is I just went out and I looked up a picture of Pascal the philosopher, it's like a woodcut, not perfect, not going to meet Pascal anytime soon, but it just adds to my memory reserve. Oh, there we go. Now my memory reserve is stronger and just being open and willing to make a mistake and in that case it was like a near miss. But the basic thing is is that the more you practice this, the better you're going to get and the more energy it creates and the more excited you are and then you give yourself little challenges and so forth and it's just fun. It's healthy for your brain. Keeps you rocking. Yeah, and it just reminded me of a game called Monikers. It's an association game where somebody picks up a card and tries to explain the name of a person or something else, not using those words by saying not even what they do because everybody Show Notes: 23

24 knows William Shatner was. I played this game two days ago with some friends in Melbourne and the pick up a... I don't know who William Shatner was, but you can explain by William, you talk about Shakespeare and you get the William and then the Shatner like some other word and so on. And now I feel like you just going life playing a game all the time using these memory techniques. Exactly. I personally find it to be the most rewarding game in the world partly because everything that you have is so much more valuable all of a sudden. The value of information increases and all information becomes a tool of association for potential use in the game. That is so cool. And when you mentioned, you remember when you said, I learned about Pascal, and all of a sudden my memory bank increased, so I can use that for other things. Makes sense there. The other thing I wanted to talk about is memory palaces. We already briefly touched on it. I watched Jonathan Levi, who you've got a YouToMe course with, Branding You. By the way, amazing course. And he talks about memory palaces on TEDTalk and I actually did study a bit about memory palaces when I was back in Russia and I built a memory palace for myself back when I was like, I don't know, like 17 or something. I still use it to this day. So, whenever I go shopping, if it's not like a long shopping list, I'll do a long shopping list, if it's like five or seven items, I just put them into my memory palace and I remember them and I check them off. Show Notes: 24

25 And I think that this concept for our professional data scientists will be useful in the sense that sometimes we need to memorize steps. Steps like in a method like you do logistic regression so you need to understand this step one, this step two, this step three, this step four, or you need to understand steps in a process of a client's business in order to remember how does information travel, where can there be backlogs, where can there be bottlenecks and things like that. So, memory palaces I think are a very powerful technique and I would for you to give us a brief overview and explain how we can use them and how we can create them. Right. Right. Well, thanks for asking and thanks for mentioning Jonathan's TEDTalk, because that memory palace you see up on the screen is essentially sourced out of his brain, but from my teaching. Yeah, you mentioned that you guys built it together or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a great moment to see it up there and it's a great moment period. So, for anybody who's interested in it, that's a great TEDTalk and an important one. In any case, the memory palace, first of all it's a term that not everybody likes, but it really is not memory palace, it's not mind palace, it's not Roman room, it's not journey, it's not Lokee or Loki, it's a location based mnemonic. All right? So when we talk about Rick or we talk about Susan or we talk about Mary and I created those friends, those are mnemonics. Mnemonic means anything that is a device that you use to help you remember something Show Notes: 25

26 and so the memory palace is a kind of mnemonic that uses location and space, as we said, is one of the magnetic modes. And I believe for most people it is the strongest because we get space for free. Our brains seem hard wired to just remember locations, particularly buildings, on autopilot, with no work. I mean, when you think about it, did you have to do any hard work to remember where your kitchen was? No. When you got in your new apartment? No. It's free. Yeah. Right? And you know where your bathroom is and where your bedroom is. It just happens on autopilot. Could I just add to that? Sorry to interrupt. I just read in a, what's it called? Was it Robert Kiyosaki? No, no, sorry not Robert. The guy I'm thinking of, there's a great very famous book about memory and how the brain works, The Power of the Mind by, I forgot the name of the author, speaking of memory. But basically there's a case study of a person who loses their ability to retain information and has memory that lasts like two minutes and you know those stories. But at the same time, one time he got lost, like he went out of the house, wandered out of the house, and he got lost and then he found his way back. Speaking of space it means that space retention is kept somewhere else. It's like it's a subconscious thing that, as you say, we Show Notes: 26

27 get it absolutely free and it's very powerful. Sorry to interrupt. Well, just to follow on that, I believe the quote is, [foreign language 00:39:34], which was from Thales who is considered to be the first philosopher and the first scientist. What he said there is, "Space is ultimate or supreme because it contains all things." Oh, interesting. Now, we've talked about meditation before and so forth and that also relates there in terms of creating better memory and focus, but space is the ultimate thing and you get it free and people navigate and the cats navigating their way back over entire cities like it's just imprinted somehow in the mind and there's a lot of interesting science about it. In any case, and we've known this since the beginning of human thought and that's why I mentioned Thales. It's ancient, this understanding of how important space is to cognition. So, all of this la-de-da terminology stuff is important. Location is a mnemonic, that's basically what we're getting at. Now, the memory palace, I like that term because it's what St. Augustine essentially pointed us to in terms of the palatial sense of what the brain can contain in terms of space when it relies upon buildings. And so the easiest way to create a memory palace for most people, but not all, is their home and to do it strategically there are a number of guidelines and principles that I've discovered over the years that make it not just much easier to use, but more likely to be used in the way that gets information into long-term Show Notes: 27

28 memory. Because a lot of people have a fantasy that just using the memory palace gets it into long-term memory, but that's not the case. The case is is that you use the memory palace to get the information into long-term memory through what I call recall rehearsal. So, let's just break it down. We have this particular area right here in my room, which the listeners can't hear, but it's a corner, it's one corner. And that's where Rick and Susan and Mary are living right now for when you ask me later what their names are. I already forgot their names. But, I use corners a lot. I think of them as eternal magnetic stations. They're not going to change anytime unless this building gets destroyed. Even if this building gets destroyed, provided that I live, I'm going to remember that that room had a corner. It's just nothing to argue about, nothing to forget, because rooms have corners. So we're using common sense with space. Now, there's another corner. In fact, there's four corners in this room, okay? There's also four walls. So, let's call that station one, station two, station three, station four, and so on. Well, there's a ceiling and there's a floor. 10 stations. Right. And you can impose that on any room under the sun. Right? That's not a magic bullet. Don't get too carried away with it because you can end up crossing your own path, you can lead yourself into dead ends. All of those things create memory palace scarcity. They create all kinds of cognitive load if you don't create the Show Notes: 28

29 journey better than that. So, generally I like the seashell. I would never start a memory palace in this room unless I'm using this as a contained space, because I don't want to lead myself into a dead end or cross my path too much. I'd actually start on the balcony because that lets me in a more or less seashell pattern, maybe it will reverse itself somewhere, but it'll let me use this entire apartment leading out to that exit without trapping myself in a dead end. And so these principles really help open the mind to potential, make it free, open. Just break it down to the basics, the corners. Often I don't use the walls, just the corners, so you can go faster. And then what you do, let's say there were maybe a hundred stations in this apartment, you've given me a hundred names, then what I would want to do to get them into long term memory the quickest, is I would want to go from that journey from beginning to end, then from the end to the beginning, then I'd want to start in the middle and go to the beginning, I'd want to start in the middle and go to the end, and then I'd want to skip the stations. So, I'd go one, three, five, seven, nine and then backwards. Maybe 10 is a better example than 100, but you'd do it the same way for any number and the reason why you do this is because you're using then the power of spacial positioning. We know that we need to space repetition in order to remember anything. You can relegate it to an app that doesn't care about you, it doesn't know you, it can't really tell whether you remembered it or not. Most people lie to their apps on space repetition software. Show Notes: 29

30 You can tell yourself the truth and go through your own mind using the memory palace for space repetition purposes and if you go forward to the end, end to the beginning, middle to both ends, and you skip those stations, going on the odd stations forward and the even stations back or vice versa, you will have that information in long-term memory so fast it will make you spin your head because that's exactly how memory works. So, basically you put them in the stations... To summarize, or what I find is that, you pick some corners, a path in your apartment with the certain corners that you're going to use as stations, you put the components that you need to memorize, or names or whatever it is, in those stations and that's a very good start. But then to keep it in long-term memory, you need to go through it several times. Kind of layer it in. Go backwards, go sideways, from the center go to the sides, odd numbers, even numbers and that will help you actually memorize who's sitting in which corner. Yeah. Several times as such won't do it and there's a reason why. And this is what a lot of people do. Let's just not use the word 100, let's use the word 10. So, if you have 10 stations, what a lot of people will do is they'll consistently and persistently start their journey of recall at station one. That creates what's called the primacy effect. Let's say they get to station... And then they are always going to the end, and they end at station 10 in the review. That's called the recency effect. You'll remember those a lot better than the Show Notes: 30

31 middle stations because of the forgetting curve. So by doing it in the way that I'm suggesting, you give primacy and recency to every single station and the magnetic imagery that you've created there, which would in this case be Rick, Susan, and Mary. And by the way, I'm doing this right now just to make sure I don't forget, but that's the point and that's what you do. And so when I'm learning Chinese, that's what I'm doing in my head all day. It's fun, doesn't cost anything. You've just got to remember to do it and then by the end of the day, I'm saying new stuff to my wife that I wasn't saying that morning, straight out of my head. That's so cool. Ogden says 850. You want to... I said a hundred and I often go to the advanced level, but if you can just do this with five pieces of information or ten and get really good at it, then just five or ten pieces of information per day or even per week over a year is going to absolutely transform you into a person of double, triple, quadruple knowledge just by virtue of a simple process like this. Yeah and if I'm not mistaken, even in the English language, there's like 200 words that we use most frequently, or there's a limited number of words, so. Oh, there we go, so. Show Notes: 31

32 That is probably the bare minimum for anyone learning a language who wants to pick up conversational abilities. Now, everybody has a number. I like Ogden's number more or less, but the problem is, is the number changes from day to day what exactly is in that 850. But in a very quick period of time you can pick up enough dexterity to basically have a conversation and the kinds of conversation you might need and you just build over time. Okay, gotcha. Okay, so you remember those three names? Yeah. Well, I think I do. What are they? Well, I remember Rick and remember Susan and I remember Mary. Okay. Let's add some more so that at the end of the podcast... Okay, ready? Yep. George. Yeah. David. Adam. Let me just say, George of the Jungle and I'm thinking of Curious George. You said David? David. And then Adam. Then Adam. Show Notes: 32

33 So, David and Goliath and Adam... Adam and Eve. Okay. Okay. So that's- Well, how many you- Four more. Four more, okay. Rachel. Right. Monica. Well, now you're making it a little bit easy here. Yeah, okay. But yeah, let's go with that. I was trying to remember them myself. Okay, Rachel, Monica, let's say, let's do something exotic like Ivan. Ivan, okay. Ivan and the last one would be Richard. Richard. Okay. I already forgot half of them. You're putting me on the spot here, but I think it was George, David, Adam, Rachel, Monica, Ivan, and Richard. So, now you've given me a huge thing to play with here while we're talking, but basically all I did, just to explain to people, is I went to the next corner. I could even see you facing the other side of the room right now. Show Notes: 33

34 Yeah. There's a spacial orientation and again, not every person under the sun is going to have this need to use space as I do, but I find the majority of students do need that and just to me it's the ultimate strength. And the reason why is, okay, what was happening? All I have to do is ask my mind, "What did I see there?" And as I'm thinking, I'm thinking what are the weakest elements here? Really Ivan and Richard are the ones, you said something challenging, which my unconscious mind might say, "Oh, that is challenging," so now I've got to think like Ivan the Terrible and then my dad has a cousin named Ivan and so forth. Richard isn't that difficult because Ricky, or sorry- Rick. Rick is already there. Oh, Rick and Richard. Okay. Right, right. So I thought about my friend Ricky first for Rick and so now it's like, see that can be a confusing thing, but maybe not. But in any case, now I'm thinking it was George, David, Adam, was that the order? Yeah, I think that was the order and so forth. And then Rachel and Monica, and then I'm just thinking the cast of Friends. What else? I probably shouldn't have stopped you because you would have just given me free stuff because it's the cast of Friends, right? And now Ivan the Terrible is starting to ax away at Monica and Rachel and George of the Jungle is stomping more on David, who is instead of the Goliath, now Adam is this giant Goliath guy. So, I'm just going to play with that stuff in my head and maybe I get it and maybe I don't. Maybe I make a mistake or Show Notes: 34

35 whatever and now because Richard and Rick and it's like oh, maybe that'll... it won't but. I don't think so. I can predict it. Usually when I do this from stage, which I'll memorize the room and the names, I'll always say, "Would you all be impressed if I could recall 70% of your names?" The reason I do that is not only because it's going to get a big "ah" at the end when I hit 100%, but I do it also just because wouldn't that be a more realistic number to shoot for when you're starting out to practice? Even that is better than 10%, which for me is currently the average that I get. I always want to demonstrate to people that the only person you have to impress or to compete with is yourself and the application of this skill to bettering your life. So, if you're listening to this and you're like, "Names aren't that important to me," then what is? What would you, at the end of today, be so rewarded for in terms of whatever's important to you, better family, relationship, more money at work, less stress because of exams that you have coming up. What would that thing be? Using the memory techniques to serve that and leave the rest for another day. Now, everything will exercise your memory and everything will add to your ability with these arts or these skills or this science and so forth, but focus on the things that make a huge difference as quickly as possible. That's amazing. I love that example that indeed for everybody it'll be their own thing, but you cannot argue the fact the we all use memory. We all use it and Show Notes: 35