Brains-Maxxing Series - Part 5 - Memorization Magic

Welcome to the 10th edition of The Elevated Mindset!

Today we will be continuing on the Brains-Maxxing series with Part 5 - Memorization Magic.

Where I'll teach you 3 techniques that the best memory athletes use to train & win world memory championships 💪

I'm not kidding, it's a real thing. Check it out here.

Estimated Reading Time = 4 minutes

Memory Test 🧠

Hold up, before we start, lets try a quick memory challenge.

Take 15 seconds to memorize this list in order (no cheating okay?😂👀)

Ready? Go!

• Harry Potter

• Shrek

• Scooby-Doo

• Spider-Man

• Minions

• SpongeBob SquarePants

• Optimus Prime

Now look away & see if you can actually recite them in that order.

If you got them all, that's awesome! This article probably isn't for you.

Now for the rest of us, I want to talk about some of my favorite memory hacks I learned from memory athletes.

Lets dive in! 🏊

Build Memory Palaces 🏰

If I had you think of Shrek, how many of you had the letters S-H-R-E-K flash into your head?

Most likely no one.

You most likely thought of an image of a Shrek.

Jokes aside... 😂

Our brain tends to hold mental snapshots as memories rather than words.

Joshua Foer is a world-class memory athlete.

In his Ted Talk, Feats of memory anyone can do, Joshua talks about the Memory Palace technique.

Here's how it works:

1. Choose a familiar place - Such as your home

2. Create vivid mental images for each piece of information.

3. Associate each image with a location in your chosen place - Associate each item with a different room in your house.

4. Mentally "walk through" the place, recalling the images and information as you go.

Chunking - Breaking It Up

There are two ways you can "chunk" information up to manageable pieces.

The first way is breaking down long streams of info into smaller chunks.

It makes it easier to master each chunk individually & then put it all together.

An example of this is memorizing the digits of PI.

Remember in high school, where there was this huge competition on PI day to memorize the most digits?

I watched students recite over 300 digits of PI.

Pretty impressive!

But it begs the question...

How'd they do it?

Well they can't possibly memorize the entire chain of PI values all at once.

Instead they break it down into chunks 3 & 4 digits & remember each chunk separately.

Try it yourself!

3.14 [159] [2653] [589] [7932] [384] [6264] [3383]

The second way to chunk is combining a bunch of smaller parts into a larger part.

A good example of this is when you're trying to memorize your grocery list:

Instead of memorizing these 7 individual items, you can instead group them by dairy, produce, dry fruit, etc..

4 Chunk Rule

According to Barbara Oakley, author of Learning How To Learn, our short-term working memory remembers things best in four or less chunks.

Four chunks is pretty easy to memorize right?

So every additional chunk of information you want to add will be remembered more effectively if you chunk it with one of the existing 4.

Thalmann M. Souza, in the Learning, Memory, & Cognition, explains why we want to chunk information due it it 'reducing cognitive load'

This helps us bypass the limited energy of our working memory.

Okay so now you understand why these techniques are effective, lets put them to action!

Putting It Together

Okay so now I want you to vividly imagine what I am about to say.

You have a wizards hat on your head

Your ears are extruding from your head

Your nose has turned into a snout

You have on a red stretchy suit

Your skin has turned yellow

You have squeaky clean black shoes

Your right arm has turned into a biconical one

Are these quality ringing a bell?

I just forced you to memorize every character on that list from the beginning of the article.

We just chunked each description with a body part, so I'm sure you can now repeat every character in order through the association of your own body & that of the character.

I swear I didn't do any wizardly magic spells, just plain science 😉

Payal's Pick Of The Week

TL;DR

How to memorize like a pro:

• Visualization - Memorize through association

• Chunking - Breaking it up into smaller chunks

• 4 units at a time, then combine

That's a wrap! Thanks for reading! 

Want to read more? Check out my past editions here!

Till next time! 👋

-Payal