In this day and age, technology has become an integral part of our society. Smart phones changed our lives by how we store and consume information. We rely on these advanced technological devices to store important information such as birthdays, phone numbers, addresses, passwords, notes and other important items. Externalizing our memories with this level of reliability and easy instant access, why would anyone want to laboriously spend the time remembering simple things?

After reading this book called “Moonwalking with Einstein” by Joshua Foer, I was entertained, captivated and inspired on trying out the techniques described in the book. After doing some thorough research, I began to slowly go through the training process and it was a strange journey.

History of memory

The history of memory begins with the famous Greek orator Simonides of Ceos. According to ancient texts, Simonides was known as the person who invented the Greek alphabet and excelled at writing poetry with colorful imagery which most people admired about. Using his talents he devised a technique called the method of loci, in other words, a memory palace. This technique utilizes your imagination, creativity and visualization to enhance the vividness of what you want to remember. Sounds confusing?

Lets go through an example of how you would use the method of loci technique. Lets decide on remembering 3 things that you’ll need to pick up from the grocery store. Milk, eggs, and ice cream.

1. Pick a location that you frequently visit and know it’s surroundings such as your home, office, or coffee shop. Imagine and visualize yourself being there. The spot you have in your mind will be the starting point. Keep that in mind.

2. Pick 3 rememberable spots in the area but make sure you can imagine yourself walking through it in sequence. For example, imagine your mom wearing a yellow big bird t-shirt doing jumping jacks and drinking milk at the front main entrance.

3. Now walk through the front entrance, what is the next rememberable spot? For example, it’s a stairwell in my house and I see my dad wearing a ripped tank top performing push ups on top of carton of eggs.

4. Moving on to the next memorable spot. It will be my living room. I imagine my oldest sister dancing on top of the coffee table while eating ice cream with an ice cream scoop.

5. Now take a deep breathe and imagine yourself being at the starting point in step 1. Can you see the images vividly as though it’s alive? If you tried, you should be seeing something or at least feel like you had a better recall capability.

What all memory techniques have in common is underlining idea that is called elaborative encoding. Elaborative encoding enhances retrieval by associating a person (mom), action (jumping jacks) and object (milk).

Scientific evidence

Why does this mnemonic technique work? I couldn’t find any concrete studies on what exactly our brains are doing biologically and why. I can only suspect our brains like to remember things that are out of the ordinary in a spatial environment which creates a story in your mind. It’s like how you can recall a favourite movie scene because it captivated your attention and felt like you were there with the actors. Lastly, humans are built for pattern recognition so seeing things in an orderly manner in chunks and trying to link relationships using imagery between them could further enhance our recall.

Repetitive Retrieval Practice

Although, there are scientific studies that show repetitive retrieval practice has a greater effect on retrieving memories than elaborative encoding. As I found out during my extensive memory training, elaborative encoding is a process to make it easier to remember things but deciding on whether you want to keep it as long or short term requires a whole another set of processes.

First, lets take a look at the forgetting curve.

As you can see, the forgetting curve is steep at first but becomes less as days go by with practice. To optimize this process, you’ll need to incorporate a learning technique called spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is a technique that incorporates a flash card system with increase or decrease intervals of time between right or wrong answer. This technique will find out knowledge gaps of information isn’t sticking to memory which then keeps repeating until you finally memorize it. It’s quite fun to use during long commutes and I wish I had known about this when I was in school.

Real life improvements

Now armed with all this newfound knowledge, how did it improve my life? Well, it took some time and dedication to extensively see if these techniques work for myself and I’m surprised to say it did and even more.

I set a goal for myself to compete in the 2014 Canadian Memory Championships so I spent the next 11 months training to do so. To keep my motivation and spirits high, I joined the local memory club to improve my technique and help other newcomers as well. My enthusiasm took to new heights as the memory club coordinator offered to perform public speaking engagements for other local communities in the city. I never thought I would accept such a gig but I’m glad I accepted. It gave me new personal confidence in public speaking to an audience in the hundred about my tales and screw ups. I never felt so vulnerable but I was glad that people got a kick out of my curious adventure about my memory training endeavour.

The first couple of months training sessions was fun and challenging. It was a personal test of patience, focus, and fortitude. Trying to imagine the object in your minds eye vividly is quite the challenge. It’s like working out a muscle that you haven’t activated in a very long time. Flexing your brain in such ways that either makes you frustrated or tears of joy.

When I first started to train for remembering a deck of cards, my finishing times was hovering around 15 minutes. By the end of the first week, it was down to 10 minutes. By end of the month, I was hovering at the 5 minute mark. Clearly I can see the benefit of using this technique.

As months passed by training obsessively, it became such a routine that it became a grind. Another hurdle that I couldn’t quite overcome as I had other life obligations came along. By the time I reached about 8 months, I reached my best personal time of 1:20 with perfect recall. It’s not anywhere near the world record of 22 seconds but I’m fine with this result. I figured out what 20% of mnemonic techniques created 80% of the results.

Championship Day

On the day of the Canadian Memory Championships, I’m amazed that I came this far along because I have never thought I would stick around for this long and dive deep into the world of competitive memory. There were two competitions that all participants required to participate, speed cards and random words. Both of which I trained for but my primary focus was speed cards, I wanted to break my personal record where it mattered. Well, let me be honest about this. I was pretty sure that couldn’t have made 1st or 2nd place because there were serious USA memory competitors that joined. More specifically, the 3rd place winner of 2014 USA memory championships. Very cool and got to chat with him about his techniques and bigger goals afterward.

Before the competition started, I did all the training routines that suppose to boost memory. Get enough good sleep, meditated in the morning, light cardio at the gym, and finally a double espresso. Yes, I’m quite diligent and meticulous. But if it’s one thing I didn’t account for was training in an environment that I wasn’t comfortable in. I always trained in my bedroom. This took me off course as I didn’t manage to recall the deck of cards, twice! Disappointing but at least I managed to get enough points for this competition. Next up, random words competition. I didn’t train very much but to say the least, I beat my personal record of 75 words in 2 minutes. Not too shabby.

While the judges were tallying up the points, I thought to myself that there is no way to even capture 3rd place because of my double screw up with speed cards. When they announced the winners, I was surprised that I came in 3rd place in Canadian Memory Championship! I was quite humbled from the whole experience and the people I met throughout the journey.

There were a lot of surprises and breakthroughs from this experiment but if it’s one great lesson I learned is finishing what you started. All too often, I would start something and not finishing because of distractions and not being laser focused. Being mindful and kind to yourself is a very important step of finishing anything. You are the own worst critic and you can’t keep beating up yourself for little things. Mistakes do happen and we learn from them. It’s okay to feel vulnerable, I’m only human and not a robot.