Mastering Memory 75 Memory Hacks For Success in School, Work & Life

Introduction “I’m so bad at remembering.” DO YOU OFTEN find yourself walking into rooms and forgetting why you’re there? Do you misplace your phone, glasses, or other important items? Do you forget what your friends and family tell you? Do you have difficulty remembering facts and figures? If so, you aren’t alone; I can relate. I have never had an exceptional memory; I have always had trouble remembering names and numbers. As I got older, my ability to remember things has gotten worse—until one day I had enough. “Can an ordinary guy actually improve his memory?” I wondered. I decided to find out. I researched, read, and experimented with everything from meditation and exercise to taking vitamins and getting more sleep. Some strategies worked; others didn’t. But overall the result was that my memory improved! Surprisingly, learning memory strategies was fun. It wasn’t like the drudgery of schoolwork and rote memorization that I’d expected. I found tools and techniques that were not only easy but enjoyable to use. Being able to remember more information was so enjoyable that I started to dabble in memory competitions. Yes, there are people in the world who have made memorizing a competitive sport—and I became one of them! As in any sport or endeavor, the more I practiced, the better I got. Eventually I was competing at the international level. At one event I broke the record for the United States that year. The following year, I broke my own record. I could perfectly recall a list of numbers spoken at the rate of one per second for over two minutes. I could also memorize the order of a deck of shuffled playing cards in less than 60 seconds, the order of 1,200 binary digits in 30 minutes, 11.5 decks of playing cards in an hour, 117 names and faces in 15 minutes, and more. Of course, my day-to-day memory improved as well. I remembered more of what my wife said, I did better at work, and I could even remember the names of people I met. My memory was better and my life was, too. What I found more interesting than my success at these competitions was that almost everyone else I met at these events had a similar story to mine: They were concerned about their poor memories, decided to improve their minds, and . . . it worked! They were able to train themselves to remember more.