Training Genius: The Learning Secrets of

Polyglots and Savants

In the tiny country of Iceland, a man is being interviewed. He speaks slowly; Icelandic is not his
native language. But, the broadcast continues smoothly and the speaker appears to be fluent.

On the surface, there is nothing extraordinary here. Mastering a new language is difficult, but
people do it all the time. However this is no ordinary person, and this is no ordinary feat.
The man is Daniel Tammet, and until one week prior to his nationally broadcasted interview,
he didnt speak a word of Icelandic.
The Mind of a Savant

Languages arent Tammets only talent. He has also memorized pi to over 24,000 digits and
can compute with five-figure numbers in his head. He claims to be able to do this by holding
a unique visual image for each number.
At first glance, abilities like Tammetsrapid fluency, prodigious memory, visual imagery to
feel ideas intuitivelyseem forever out of reach for normal human beings.
But perhaps Tammets abilities can also serve as a guide. Even if Tammet may have some
genetic quirks that enhance his abilities, Ive seen that the methods he uses to learn are not
completely off-limits to mere mortals.
Take Benny Lewis, who until his twenties considered himself bad at languages. But he
recently completed a similar feat, being interviewed publicly, in Dutch after just two months
of practice.
Or consider Joshua Foer, journalist turned mnemoticist, who was able to win the US memory
championships after only a year of training. Winning such a title requires memorizing entire
decks of cards, poems, and names under intensive time pressure.
Natural gifts might be sufficient to explain Tammets story. But it cant explain the savantby-training examples of Lewis or Foer. Buried beneath all the mysticism surrounding
brilliance there might be a strategy for learning faster. Could genius be trained?
Debunking Talent

K. Anders Ericsson is the worlds expert on expertise. His research has debunked centuriesold assumptions about how people become exceptionally good at certain skills.
Before Ericsson, the accepted assumption was that all ability was innate. People had capped
potentials, and once that potential was reached, there wasnt much you could do. Geniuses
were born, not made.

Ericssons research had a fairly groundbreaking conclusion: practice, not potential, defined
our level of ability. Studying everyone from athletes to typists, he found that a persons
potential could commonly be surpassed, with focused effort and practice.
Ericssons ideas about practice may apply to learning itself. Examples like Lewis and Foer
certainly suggest that, if you could find the right method, you could train yourself to learn
faster.
Studying everyone from athletes to typists, Ericsson found that a persons potential could commonly
be surpassed, with focused effort and practice.
How Smart People Think

If you understand something in only one way, then you dont really understand it at all. The
secret of what anything means to us depends on how weve connected it to all other things we
know. AI researcher Marvin Minsky
What are the methods that smart people use to learn faster? Across a variety of learning
theories and mnemonic tricks, one broad generalization stands out: Smart people learn
through connections.
Even Tammets alien abilities appear to make sense through this idea. By connecting abstract
numbers to concrete visual images, hes making them easier to imagine and work with.
Foer achieved his memory championship title after practicing an obscure, but ancient,
mnemonic technique that connects facts to familiar places in memory. Lewis attributes some
of his rapid vocabulary acquisition to a similar method by creating a visual connection
bridging the foreign word and its definition.
Compare learning through connections to its opposite: rote memorization. Rote memorization
involves learning merely by repeated exposure. Even if it can work, it rarely produces the
speed or brilliance we associate with extraordinary mental abilities.
Learning through connections, where you create metaphors and visual associations to
everything you want to learn and understand, is a vastly more powerful way to learn.
Many of us learn by rote, simply because nobody ever taught us a better method. Its difficult
to imagine a professional basketball player who was never instructed in how to dribble or
shoot. Yet most people are never taught how to learn; instead, we are expected to just pick it
up as we play.
Across a variety of learning theories and mnemonic tricks, one broad generalization stands out:
Smart people learn through connections.
How to Learn by Connections

The general trend that seems to bridge examples as distantly related as Tammet, Lewis, and
Foer is that they learn through connections, not through rote. But how do you actually do
that?

One way is to create metaphors. A metaphor is a connection between two ideas that arent
actually related. Describing differential calculus in terms of the speedometer and odometer on
a car is an example.
Good metaphors and analogies aid in understanding because it forces you to really examine
the idea. You cant draw out similarities without understanding how a concept works.
Metaphors also aid in memory because they make the ideas more vivid. Vivid imagery also
appears to be an almost universally used tactic of brilliant thinkers.
Another way is to create visual associations. Memory works better storing pictures and places
than facts and figures. By translating those abstract details into vivid mental pictures, youre
leveraging your brains strengths.
A good example of this is a technique Benny Lewis uses to remember vocabulary words.
First he comes up with a picture for the definition of the word. Then he comes up with a
picture for the foreign language word, by trying to pin it on what it sounds like. Finally, he
blends the two up in a bizarre example to sear it into memory. The French word gare (train
station) becomes GARfield running to the TRAIN STATION for a lasagna-eating contest.
It sounds frivolous at first, but I put it to the test. I ran a personal experiment, learning 50 new
vocabulary words in French every day. One week I used normal rote memorization as a
control and the other I used Bennys method. For the same time investment, my recall went
from 30% to just below 80%.
Could Genius Be Learned?

These examples are interesting, but a handful of anecdotes do not equate to hard
data. Science still has a lot to understand in the way humans learn, particularly in what
separates fantastic abilities like Tammets from our own.
In the meantime, however, Im willing to venture that the talents possessed, even by geniuses,
are not wholly innate. If alternative methods, such as metaphor or visual association underpin
these talents, then perhaps some of genius can be learned as well.

9 Tactics for Rapid Learning (That Most People Have Never Heard Of)

Whenever the subject of why some people learn faster comes up, I get a whole host of
common answers:
1. Some people are just naturally smart. (Often implying you cant improve)
2. Everyone is smart in their own way. (Nonsense, research indicates different
intelligences often correlate)
3. IQ is all in the genes. (Except IQ changes with age and IQ tests can be studied for, like any
other test)

There may be some truth to these claims. But, I dont believe that means that average learners
are doomed to mediocrity. Ive met and heard of many people who went from middle to
spectacular students after changing their learning habits and finding motivation.
Considering the upcoming launch of my rapid learning program, I wanted to share my
favorite tactics to learn faster, retain information better or just enjoy the process of learning
more:
#1 Pegging (or How Mental Magicians can Perfectly Recall Hundreds of Numbers)
One of my favorite learning tactics, that is rarely mentioned, is pegging. This is a great tool
for remembering numbers, provided you practice it.
The systems Ive seen typically work with a special cheat sheet. This is a list of the digits 0-9
which each correspond to the sound of a consonant. All you need to do is memorize the
corresponding consonant and digit match (e.g. 0 = t, 1 = s, 2 = k, 3 = r, etc.)
From there, you can translate any series of numbers into a series of letters. Now all you need
to do is make groups of letters into nouns by adding vowels between the consonants. So 201
becomes, k-t-s, which can become kites, for example.
Then, once you have your string of nouns, you just need to create a story that combines each
of the nouns in a sequence. To translate them back you only need to remember the story and
decompose the objects back into their original digits.
#2 Metaphor (Juliet is the sun or is she a chemical formula?)
Heres a quick way to separate the rapid learners from the average learners. Ask them to give
you an analogy for whatever they are learning. The rapid learners probably have already
thought of at least one analogy, application or metaphor. Slower learners usually are baffled
by the question.
Linking ideas allows you to retain them longer and understand them better. Shakespeare isnt
the only one who should be making connections between ideas.
#3 Total Immersion (Or How a Guy Can Become Fluent in 8 Languages)

Benny Lewis became fluent in eight languages in under a decade. More, his current goal is to
become fluent in a new language in under 3 months. When I asked him how he achieved this
his answer was straightforward: I stop speaking English. I do everything in the language I
want to learn.
When youre totally immersed in a subject (or language), even if youre lost, youll learn far
faster than everyone who just dabbles.
#4 Visceralization (What does a derivative look like?)
When we were kids, we played with crayons and drew pictures of fantastic things that never
existed outside our imagination. What happened?
Now most of us feel embarrassed if we try to imagine anything exciting or creative with what
we learn. This is, I believe, a key reason many people struggle scholastically. They try to
memorize exactly the way they were taught, instead of visualizing the material in an
inventive way.
When I recently had to write a test on international labor law, a key topic was the
International Labor Organization. Rather than memorize facts, I drew a picture of a creature
which had three heads for each of the sections of the ILO, one with 4 mouths for each of the
different delegates. In all, I managed to incorporate a page of notes into one picture.
Learning only needs to be boring because you make it that way.
#5 Linking (Or How to Remember a Grocery List Without the Paper)
Like pegging, linking is another trick mental magicians use. The idea here is that you form a
chain, linking each item in a sequence to the next item. You form these links by imagining
bizarre and surreal pictures which combine the two elements.
For a simple list like Milk -> Honey -> Apples, you would need to form a link between milk
and honey, which you could imagine a giant cow that had bees which came from its udders
instead of milk. For the honey and apples, you could imagine an giant apple beehive
swarming with tiny apple seeds.
Like pegging this technique can go far beyond the scope of this article. Ive used it
successfully to remember lists of abstract principles that need to be memorized in a sequence
for tests.
#6 The 5-Year Old Method (Try explaining quantum physics to a first grader)
Most rapid learners know how to simplify an explanation. Obviously, actually explaining
your masters thesis to a first grader might be impossible. But the goal is to reduce the
complexity, by explaining, breaking down and using analogies, so that someone far below
your current academic level could understand it.
If you can teach an idea, you can learn that idea.
#7 Ambiance Catalysts (Or How Drinking a Pint Can Improve Your Studying)

Cal Newport, wrote about the importance of context when studying. If you lock yourself
away in a library to get work done, no wonder youre going to hate it. If the ambiance is
appealing, it can push you to get working.
He suggests even going to a quiet bar with your reading material and ordering a beer.Hows
that for a more inviting study setting?
#8 Diagrams (Who said doodling in class was wrong?)
It turns out doodlers perform better in mental retention tests than non-doodlers. I would add
even that if the drawings you create in a class are related to the course material, you would
probably learn even better.
#9 Speed Reading (Or How to Read 70 Books in a Year)
Speed reading is less about speed and more about control. Just as racecar driving is more
about controlling speed for tight turns, rather than just hitting the accelerator.
If you want to speed read, the basics are:
1. Use your finger as a pointer to underline the text as you read it. This reduces the impact of
saccades and distractions in slowing your reading time.
2. Practice reading books faster than you can comprehend, by moving your finger faster. This
practice skimming helps you improve your comprehension at higher reading rates.
3. Stop subvocalizing. Practice reading faster than you can say the words aloud in your head.
Subvocalization can help at slower speeds, but if you require it to read, your top speed will
be reduced.

How To Remember Everything You Read

Using Mental Pictures
Once you understand how learning occurs
through pictures and associations you will
know how to remember everything you
read using mental pictures .
The information you input into your brain using mental pictures and associations, can be
easily retrieved using the same formula. This is called access! Access is better known as
memory and you will use this when you learn how to remember everything you read.
Neuroscientists say that our brain works best using mental pictures with association. When
you want to learn how to remember everything you read do this as an experiment: Imagine
what you were wearing two days ago.

Your brain did one or two things to help you remember and the same will
happen if you use pictures and associations to learn how to remember
everything you read.
First, you may have accessed a picture of yourself immediately and easily remembered what
you were wearing. Or, if you needed to think for a moment, several things may have popped
into your mind that you associated with what you were wearing. These would help you recall
the exact kind of clothing you had on.
You might have remembered where you were and that triggered your memory. Perhaps you
thought of what you were doing whether you had any special reason to wear a certain kind of
clothing.
Maybe you remembered how you felt wearing the clothing. These are clues to your brain to
use mental images and other learning styles as you learn how to remember everything you
read.
All of these things are known as associations. One thing reminded you of another. They were
paired up in your brain with something else and voila you remembered when you made the
connection or association with the pictures and are part of how to remember everything
you read.
These mental pictures and associations are what helps you learn how to remember everything
you read and you will need to turn the words into mental movies as you read. This is what
excellent readers and speed readers do.

The ancient Greeks and Romans often had elaborate memory contests to impress their fellow
men with their feats. You can benefit from their system to teach yourself how to remember
everything you read using mental pictures.
Over 2,000 years ago they used several systems, all based on associations and pictures, which
are validated by brain research today in order to learn how to remember everything you read
using mental pictures.
Since our teaching and testing system relies so heavily on what students can recall, teaching
memory techniques and a system of how to remember everything you read rewards everyone
with better memories and higher self-esteem.
You are actually putting yourself in an empowered state for learning and for learning how
to remember everything you read.
Therefore, if you are trying to learn how to remember everything you read, you can boost
your success by giving yourself reliable, long term strategies.

Here is the first strategy to learn how to remember everything you read using mental pictures.

It is an excerpt from the book, Instant

Learning for Amazing Grades.
This strategy is about how to remember things in order and you can use it not only for
understanding how to remember everything you read using mental pictures, words in a
certain order, but to remember things like a grocery list or other things you have to do in a
day in a particular order. you can also use it to understand how to remember everything you
read.
Memory Pegs
Look around the room you are in and see if there is a picture hanging on the wall. If so, you
can think of a memory peg like the hook in your brain that you will hang what you want to
remember on.

This system is reported on and adapted from Colin Roses book Accelerated Learning and
Tony Buzans, Use Both Sides of Your Brain.

1Bun.Mercury
2ShoeVenus
3TreeEarth
4DoorMars
5HiveJupiter
6Sticks..Saturn
7HeavenUranus
8Gate.Neptune
9Sign..Pluto
1. To recall the planets in order, memorize the pegs. The pegs are next to the numbers.
(Remember you now know that memorize simply means to use pictures and associations
like all memory experts do. Youre connecting up those neurons and dendrites in your brain
and you have a specific strategy for how to remember everything you read with the
associations and things they remind you of.
2. What do you notice about the pegs and the numbers across from them? They rhyme with
the numbers they are next to.
3. Then, sit in your success position and begin to say the numbers and pegs aloud. 1 Bun, 2
Shoe, 3 Tree, 4 Door, 5 Hive, 6 Sticks, 7 Heaven, 8 Gate, 9 Sign. Repeat the process much
louder and again in a whisper as you learn how to remember everything you read.
4. Then close your eyes, hold your head up high, and you say the numbers and the rhyming
pegs. You are indeed using a system about how to remember everything you read.
5. Then think of what a bun reminds you of. Be sure you look up into your visual memory
position where you remember pictures and get a clear image of the bun. You are easily
learning how to remember everything you read.
To verify, ask yourself things like whether the bun has sesame seeds on it? Or, did you think
of another kind of bun, like a hot dog bun, a cinnamon sticky bun, or even the buns we sit on,
etc.

Whatever it is, create colorful images of the bun and look upward into your visual memory
position with the pictures you created. These pictures you create are used to teach yourself
how to remember everything you read.
6. Finally, either on a paper or in their visual memory screen position, connect both the
mercury and the bun together in a single humorous, colorful image. Its usually best to draw
your image in the beginning. Maybe you drew a hamburger bun with a thermometer sticking
out of itbut whatever it was, you developed a system to for how to remember everything
you read.
Great - now you're well on your way to learn how to remember everything you read.
Reinforce the memory by placing this image up on a visual memory screen, something
like an inner blackboard as you learn how to remember everything you read.
7. Next, close their eyes, and you ask what is planet 1? You will think of 1, the rhyming peg
bun and see the mercury connected to the bun. You will quickly know that planet 1 is
mercury, by recalling the phrase 1 Bun Mercury.
Then repeat the process with the other numbers, pegs and associated images. Its best to
review by holding your pictures in your visual memory position, one at a time.
As you draw or place your images in your visual memory location, play some of the Mozart
music recommended in Chapter 13 or in the resource section to anchor the learning with
another modality. This is another way to learn how to remember everything you read.
After reviewing to see that you know the planets in order, give yourself a written test so you
can see if you now know how to remember everything you read.
Have fun with this and remind yourself that they now have a strategy to rely on your magic
memory screen. (Youll be creating a nice brain link so that when you hear the word test
you will smile knowing that you now have a strategy to remember things on written tests as
well as know how to remember everything you read).
I often use this strategy in my teacher education courses and teachers get to experience first
hand how powerful it is when teaching them how to remember everything they read using
mental pictures.
Before we begin the exercise, I run around the room asking teachers to tell me, What is
planet 6, what is planet 2, what is planet 8, etc. I give them very little time to answer and
when they dont know, I assure them that the peg memory strategy above will allow them to
know the answers very rapidly for the test.
The teachers are amazed at their success. Each one feels certain and can say to the other, Hey,
you know how to remember everything you read as well as how to remember things in order.

How Can I Best Absorb Information While

Reading?
I like to read nonfiction books on various topics that I'm interested in, but I find that
the information doesn't really stick.
For example, I read a biography of Thomas Jefferson about a year ago and I can't
really remember anything about it, except that he was born in 1743. When I see/listen to
authors that are role models to me, like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, they are
able to routinely cite from books. I've even seen Hitchens quote a book, giving the page
number as well, from memory.
I want to be able to store information like these people but, if possible, without reading
a book more than once. What method(s) can I undertake to ensure I get the most
possible information from a book when I read it?
3-Step Program (Answered by TRdH)

Memory is built on three components:

1. Impression
2. Association
3. Repetition
A single one of these components can be enough to memorize anything. However, weaving
the three components together is the most secure way to remember anything, once and for all.
Let me illustrate each component:
Impression

When you are very impressed by something (an idea, a picture, a sound, a face, a text, a
situation), the probability that you will remember it is much higher. For example, if as a child
you were left alone lost in a mall for a while, you might remember the whole situation very
accurately. Same with your book: if you are very impressed by something Thomas Jefferson
did in his life, the chance you will remember this aspect becomes higher. The good thing is
that you can increase the strength of this impression yourself while reading.
For example, you can stop reading one second and picture the situation in your mind,
exaggerating some features of the situation in order to enhance the impression of your mental
image, by adding violence, greatness, or anything to shock yourself. You can even add
yourself in your mental picture, imagining Thomas Jefferson thanking you for your help or
kicking your butt or anything memorable. This will make the impression stronger.
Also, you may enhance the impression of a text by reading it out loudeven very loud if
your neighbors are okay with it. Some people are more sensitive to impressions coming from
sounds (voice) than from the view (written text).

Association

If you can link something you read to anything you already know, the probability of
remembering it becomes even strongersometimes incredibly strong. For example, if
Thomas Jefferson was born on the same day as you, you would find it very easy to remember
this because you linked the data you read to something you already know for sure and will
not forget. It is like tying something new (the data you read, Jefferson's birthday) to a tree (a
piece of data you know, your own birthday). That is why the more you know about a topic,
the easier it is to learn more and more.
If you are very knowledgeable on a topic (like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris on
literature), it becomes very easy to make strong linksyou have many ropes and many trees.
So learn more about the basics and about the context of a book and you will remember more.
Repetition

If you read a book 10 times you will remember more. Same for anything, a recipe, a route
between two locations, the lyrics of a song, phone numbers, etc. The more you repeat, the
more you remember. When reading a book, if you do not want to read it several times, you
can highlight a few parts that you want to remember, and re-read only those parts several
times. You will remember these segments much better. And you will see that they will also
help you remember the rest of the book.
Impress yourself with powerful mental images, make associations with what you already
know (and make sure you learn the basics to start), and repeat this exercise several times.
Work to become better at remembering and you will become better at remembering
everything you want.

Learn to Remember Everything: The

Memory Palace Technique
In this post I'll teach you how to have perfect recall of lists of items. Length is not much of an issue, it
can be your shopping list if 10 items or it can be a list with 50, 100 or even 1000. And in a
forthcoming post I'll show you how you how to apply this technique to learning new languages.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
The technique we'll be learning is called the memory palace, and is also known as the method of loci
(for the latin word locus meaning place) and also the mind palace. A very useful tool in everyone's
toolbox!

The memory palace

The memory palace technique began in the 5th century B.C., when Simonides of Ceos, poet, was
attending an unfortunate banquet in Thessalia. While he was away to talk with a courier who asked
for him outside, the hall's ceiling crumbled, killing everyone. There was no way to recognise the
corpses... Until Simonides realised that it was no problem to recall who was where, without having
done any effort.
Think about it: It is not hard to remember who sits beside the host, where your friends sit, who is
beside them and so on. This dawned upon Simonides, and he is credited as the "inventor" of the
memory palace technique. Widely spread through antiquity, there was not a lot of written accounts
on it: it appears in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herrenium and Cicero's De Oratore. It is not that
strange that there were no written accounts, it is like writing a book about how to put your trousers
on. Everybody knows how to do it.
The memory palace is well suited to how our brains have evolved. Back in our nomadic days we
needed to know how to get somewhere (the lake, the plain) and remember what was there (fresh
water, hunting). By taking advantage of this fact we can build an array of impressive memorisation
techniques, to ordered or unordered lists.
Remembering lists may sound lame, who wants to memorise a list...? But lists are just an ordered
array of knowledge! What you study for a history exam is a list of ordered dates accompanied by
facts and causes (sub-lists). When you learn a new recipe, it is a list. A telephone number is a list of
numbers. A poem is a list of phrases.

Your first memory palace: building and filling

Let's start by creating our first memory palace. It does not need to be a palace, in fact, it should not.
Just think of your home, and as a sample I'll assume is really small: from the door you get to a small
hall, connected to a living room which leads to a kitchen, a WC and a bedroom with a balcony. This is
a sample, to memorise correctly you have to visualise your home or any other place you may know

very well. You can of course use this mental image of an imaginary house, but memorising may be
harder, be warned.
Now consider the following shopping list: lettuce, bacon, onion rings, SD card and oranges. We want
to memorise it. I picked a short list to make the post shorter and make it fit in our small imaginary
home: try your hand with a longer list if you don't believe we can do it with longer lists.
To remember the list, we have to place each item somewhere in our mind palace. This of course can
mean one item per room or several items per room, each one in a special spot in the room. The
simplest method is to put each item in its own room, when you are confident enough, create
additional trapping space in each room. Thus, our small 5-room house could be easily a 5, 10 or 15
places memory palace.
To place an item, we have to visualise it in the room, and to make sure we remember it it has to be
an extremely odd image. It has to leave a clear impression and to do so, it has to be surprising,
bizarre or sexual, among other options. If the image is dull, remembering it is close to impossible.
Begin with the list. When we enter the front door, we are greeted by Kermit the frog, only that this
special Kermit is made of lettuce, like a talking lettuce. Can you see it? Feel the freshness of
Lettucit's leaves? In the living room a stampede of pigs followed by Kevin Bacon with a fork should
be bizarre and clear enough! In the kitchen, Scarlett Johansson plays hoola-hop with an onion ring.
You enter the bedroom, and to your surprise, the bed is a gigantic SD card: you can hide the bed by
pressing it in to be read. Finally, you open the balcony to find that the sun is now a big, luminous
orange. It starts to drip juice over the desert in front of your window!
You should put all these images in a place you know like the palm of your hand: your home, the
house you grew up, your office. This is very important.
You may not believe it works at all, but you will be surprised. I wrote the first part of this post in the
afternoon, and now more than 3 hours later I still can see clearly all the images. Of course this is a
short list... But it would not matter: you could remember a list 5 times as long as easily as with this
one.

Finding an array of memory palaces

To remember a lot of things you need to have a lot of places to put all these memories. You will
need to find your own array of memory places. The first time I considered this problem, I thought
about creating imaginary palaces, linked somehow by corridors. The problem? Artificial palaces get
blurry very quickly, and you tend to forget them. It is far, far better to use real places, or at least
places you can revisit in real life, like pictures from a book, levels in a computer game or buildings
you can visit.
Then I started to think about houses and places I could use... And I found that there are plenty. I still
remember school mates houses from 16 years ago, hotels I've been, buildings I have visited. I am
sure you will find a huge array of places you can use. To begin with the technique, use very known
places, like your house or office and as you get more confident with the technique, start using older

places.
You can read more about this in Building Your Memory Palace Collection.

Final words
You have to get the knack of the method. Get some degree of experience in converting everyday
objects (like lettuce) into long-lasting impressions (like Kermit the lettuce-head). This only comes
with practice, like walking around your images of memory palaces. Practice, practice, practice!

By the way, can you recall the shopping list above?

Did you enjoy this post? If so, please take 2 minutes to sign up to mostlymaths.net newsletter. If you
don't have time right now, share this post with your friends with the share buttons below. Thanks!
Why aren't you following me in twitter here too?
In case you want to read more:

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Joshua Foer)
How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week: 52 Proven Ways to Enhance Your
Memory Skills (Dominic O'Brian)
Quantum Memory Power: Learn to Improve Your Memory with the World Memory
Champion! (Dominic O'Brian)
Maximize Your Memory (Jonathan Hancock)

I have written a another related post called Remembering Facts: Using Mental Associative Chains,
and also expanded the method to find memory palaces in Building Your Memory Palace Collection.

How to retain 90% of everything you learn

Imagine if you had a bucket of water. And every time you attempted to fill the bucket, 90%
of the water would leak out instantly. Every time, all youd retain was a measly 10%. How
many times would you keep filling the bucket?
The answer is simple: just once.
The first time you noticed the leak, youd take action
Youd either fix the bucket or youd get another bucket, wouldnt you?
Yet thats not at all the way we learn.
Almost all of us waste 90% of our time, resources and learning time, because we dont
understand a simple concept called the Learning Pyramid. The Learning Pyramid was
developed way back in the 1960s by the NTL Institute in Bethel, Maine. And if you look at
the pyramid youll see something really weird.
That weird thing is that youre wasting time. Youre wasting resources. Youre just doing
everything you can to prevent learning. And heres why.
To summarize the numbers (which sometimes get cited differently) learners retain
approximately:
90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.
50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.
30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.
20% of what they learn from audio-visual.
10% of what they learn when theyve learned from reading.
5% of what they learn when theyve learned from lecture.
So why do you retain 90% when you teach someone else or when you implement it
immediately?
Theres a good reason why. When you implement or teach, you instantly make mistakes. Try
it for yourself. (In this article for instance, after Id read the information, I cited the loss rate
as 95% instead of 90% to begin with. I had to go back and correct myself. Then I found three
more errors, which I had to fix. These were factual errors that required copy and paste, but I
still made the errors).
So as soon as you run into difficulty and start to make mistakes, you have to learn how to
correct the mistake. This forces your brain to concentrate.
But surely your brain is concentrating in a lecture or while reading
Sure it is, but its not making any mistakes. What your brain hears or sees is simply an
abstract concept. And no matter how clearly the steps are outlined, there is no way youre
going to retain the information. There are two reasons why.

Reason 1: Your brain gets stuck at the first obstacle.

Reason 2: Your brain needs to make the mistake first hand.
Reason 1: Your brain gets stuck at the first obstacle.
Yes it does. And the only way to understand this concept is to pick up a book, watch a video,
or listen to audio. Any book, any video, any audio. And youll find youve missed out at least
two or three concepts in just the first few minutes. Its hard to believe at first, but as you keep
reading the same chapter over and over, youll find youre finding more and more that youve
missed.
This is because the brain gets stuck at the first new concept/obstacle. It stops and tries to
apply the concept but struggles to do so. But you continue to read the book, watch the video
or listen to the speaker. The brain got stuck at the first point, but more points keep coming.
And of course, without complete information, you have incomplete information.
Incomplete information can easily be fixed by making the mistake first hand.
Reason 2: Your brain needs to make the mistake first hand
No matter how good the explanation, you will not get it right the first time. You must make
the mistake. And this is because your interpretation varies from the writer/speaker. You think
youve heard or read what youve heard/read. But the reality is different. Youve only
interpreted what theyve said, and more often than not, the interpretation is not quite correct.
You can only find out how much off the mark you are by trying to implement or teach the
concept.
So how do you avoid losing 90% of what youve learned?
Well, do what I do. I learn something. I write it down in a mindmap. I talk to my wife or
clients about the concept. I write an article about it. I do an audio. And so it goes. A simple
concept is never just learned. It needs to be discussed, talked, written, felt etc. (I wrote this
article, ten minutes after reading these statistics online).
The next time you pick up a book or watch a video, remember this .
Listening or reading something is just listening or reading.
Its not real learning.
Real learning comes from making mistakes.
And mistakes come from implementation.
And thats how you retain 90% of everything you learn.
Which is why most of the people you meet are always going around in circles.
They refuse to make mistakes. So they dont learn.
Theyd rather read a book instead. Or watch a video. Or listen to an audio.
Their bucket is leaking 90% of the time.
But they dont care.
The question is: Do you?

Next Step: Before I purchased the Brain Audit, I thought this is just crazy, Ive got so
much marketing material that I still havent implemented.

But right from Seans first story and metaphor, I could see this was different. I was hooked.
The Brain Audit challenged virtually every principle of marketing Id grown up with. Like
selling benefit or never starting with a negative or problem.
And its this refreshing, innovative approach that makes the Brain Audit a must buy for
anyone who is really serious about challenging the status quo and taking their business to
new heights.
Already weve applied the principles to one of our workshops and the response has been
fantastic. The Brain Audit and our ongoing association with Sean has been one of the best
business decisions weve every made.

Meta-study identifies the top five

techniques to make learning stick
What are the most effective learning techniques the ones that cause learning to stick?
Decades of cognitive psychological and educational research consistently point to five
techniques, according to a recent meta-analysis.
The review looked at the evidence for teaching techniques going back for more than 100
years, zeroing in on 10 widely studied techniques.
The researchers gave the highest marks to two techniques that have proven especially
effective across a wide range of tasks and educational contexts.
Another three were also found to be useful, though the evidence was more limited.
Here are the winners. Youve heard us mention each of them before:
1. Spacing
Most trainers know that one-shot training events, such as a conference or class, dont work.
Most of what was learned is forgotten within a month.
But add in reinforcement events over the following days, weeks and months, and people are
much more likely to retain what they learned.
The researchers concluded that the Spacing Effect is the number-one technique for making
learning stick.

Yet it still gets short shrift in the real world of training, for reasons of time, money and
logistics. Busy organizations want people back on the job quickly and view training as a
distraction.
If youre getting pushback on the need for follow-up, these findings give you new
ammunition. Without follow-up, training investments are largely wasted.
2. Testing
Close behind the Spacing Effect is the Testing Effect. Testing is more than just a way to
assess learning. Its part of the learning. It forces learners to retrieve information from the
brain.
Spacing and testing go hand in hand. Researchers have learned that intermediate quizzing
multiple short quizzes as opposed to a final exam are much better at improving
performance.
Testing formats matter too. Multiple choice works; its easy to design and easy to administer.
Fill-in-the-blank and essay questions may work better, because learners have to come up with
the answer instead of simply recognizing it.
Even if they fail to get the right answer, research has shown, struggling improves memory
over the long term.
Remember, too, that testing can occur during a session. Researchers have doubled learning
performance by regularly stopping and requiring learners to answer a question, then
discussing the answers before moving on.
3. Interleaving
Weve all struggled to learn something, only to set it aside and come back later, when the
subject yields up some of its mysteries.
Thats the idea behind the Interleaving Effect. Learning is like exercise; you need to mix it
up. Thats one reason intensive all-day training seminars often yield poor results.
You can interleave simply by spacing lessons on different topics within each other, similar to
class schedules in high school. For example, you might introduce one topic on Monday, a
different one on Tuesday, and then come back to the first topic on Wednesday.
4. Self-explanation
Weve all had this moment: You stop trying to figure out what the trainer is telling you, and
try to solve the problem for yourself. Its a slight shift in the mind the moment where you
start to own the learning yourself. That seems to be a moment we remember.
Cognitive psychologists have found you can help trigger this moment by stopping
periodically and asking learners:
What material is new to you in what we just covered?
What steps did you take to figure this out?
(Insist that they actually answer; dont just toss the question out there.)

5. Elaborative interrogation
Weve also had this moment: Weve been following directions, and we suddenly see the big
picture. At that moment, learning no longer depends on remembering the right answer. The
right answer is the one that makes sense.
Researchers have found that why questions help trigger this effect. If youre teaching a new
sales technique, for example, ask, Why do you think this technique works?
Less effective
Here are five techniques that the researchers found to be less effective. They may work
sometimes, but their usefulness is limited or theyre hard to implement: summarization,
highlighting, mnemonics, mental imagery (e.g., imagining a queen to remember someones
name is Elizabeth) and rereading.

3 Simple Techniques to Guide Your Learners Attention

August 26th, 2008

44
comments

Think of learning and instructional design from the perspective of playing the I Spy
game. You say, I spy with my little eyea red box. And then you wait forever while the
other game players look for the red box. Maybe they find it; maybe they dont. In either
case, youre at the whim of the ones looking for the box because you dont control how they
go about looking for it and whether or not they even find it.
Instructional design is like starting with, I spy a red box over there in the corner under the
picture of the sailboat. With this type of guidance, youve gotten the person to look in just
the right spot. It doesnt make playing I Spy fun, but it makes teaching a lot easier because
youre less dependent on them learning through a more informal process (which has its own
benefits but can be more time-consuming).
Ultimately, how you structure and present your content impacts how people learn and gain
their understanding. There are a number of approaches that you can take when presenting
your course content. For this post, I explain three simple techniques and follow it up with a
quick demo.
Show them the big picture and let them see everything in context.

You can present all of the information at one time. This can help the learners see the overall
context and make connections. It also gives the learners the freedom to explore the screen
content and puts them in a position of discovery.
One of the challenges can be that the learner might see the information, but might not
really be making the right connections. In essence, its like saying, I spy something
important. And then hoping that the learner knows what it is.

One way to address this is to guide them to look for specific information on the screen. For
example, instead of telling them the information, ask questions that provoke thinking.
What benefits do you see in this approach?

Point out those parts of the screen that are important.

This builds off of the first technique. You still give the learners all of the information up
front. However, by pointing things out on the screen, youre able to draw their attention to
those things that are more important than others.
Its the difference between, I spy some important information, and This information is
important. By directing their attention, you can give them the big picture and still focus on
things more specific. This can be done with simple annotations or animations.

Only show them the information as you get to it.

Dont distract your learners with information they dont need. Instead, use progressive builds
to reveal the information on the screen. Basically, youre breaking the information into
manageable chunks and then giving it to the learners a little at a time.This can be an effective
technique if youre trying to teach something new or complex.
Going back to the I Spy game, its like saying, I spy a red box, but its in the top left
corner of the screen. That immediately tells people where to look and they arent distracted
by things outside that area.
The drawback to this technique is that it can be slow for those who are quick learners or
already understand the content. Thus, they have to wait for you to get to a place where they
actually learn something new.

Consider how the user navigates the course. If I add animations on the screen, I like to
free up the navigation so that the learners can go back and forth. This gives them the power
to review the information. Sometimes the narration can be too slow, or we set automatic
animations timed at what we think is an average reading speed. We do this to
accommodate the average learner, but from my experience, it really accommodates no
one. In fact, youll get complaints of too fast or too slow anyway. Why not just give the
learners the ability to navigate at their pace?
One of my favorite player features is the scrub bar. Not all course players have
them. However, when its available, I like to drag it back and forth to review the animations
or parts of the screen without having to go through the entire screen from the beginning. One
of my biggest pet peeves is a screen with 5 minutes of information and no way to jump to the
middle if I want to refer back to some information on that screen. The scrub bar lets me
quickly jump to a specific point of information.
Watch the demo.

I put together a quick tutorial to show you how the simple techniques work. Click the link
below to watch it.

Click here to view the demo.

These three techniques are generally neutral with no one being better or worse than the
others. How you use them just depends on your subject matter and the learners
expertise. You also need to consider your learning objectives and how youll help the learner
meet them.
What simple techniques would you use to present information to your learners? Leave an
answer in the comments section.
- See more at: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/3-simple-techniques-to-guide-yourlearners-attention/#sthash.zDgUvVSz.dpuf

How To Remember Literally Everything

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things," the Roman philosopher and statesman,
Cicero once wrote. And though it was important at the time of Da Oratore, his dialogue on
cultivating the power of remembrance, the art of memory is possibly more relevant than ever.
Constant digital distractions and multitasking can have a negative effect on working memory.
Collectively, our memories do seem to be getting fuzzier: A recent poll found that Gen Y-ers
between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely than the 55-plus set to forget what day it is (15
percent vs. seven percent) and where they put their keys (14 percent vs. eight percent). They
also forget to bring their lunch (nine percent) or even to take a shower (six percent) more
frequently than seniors.
Poor memory can strike at any age, and it could hinder your work and personal life. We all
remember using mnemonic devices in school (Did "Never Eat Shredded Wheat" get you
through third grade geography?), but memory tricks can be more than just study aids. As
adults, there are a number of simple and practical tools to help you remember people's names
and stop forgetting where you parked your car or left your keys.
Try these eight hacks to super-power your memory.
Visualize it.
Need to memorize a list of terms or names? You'll have a better chance of being able to recall
them if the words are associated with an image -- particularly if you consider yourself a
visual learner (which 65 percent of the population is estimated to be). For example, if you
have to remember a meeting at 4:30 p.m., try remembering your favorite quartet (The
Beatles?) and a 30th birthday cake. It may sound silly, but you'll be grateful when you're right
on time.
Try a brain game.
Brain-stimulating games like sudoku and crosswords can be useful. And there's also
Lumosity, a set of exercises for computer or phone that were created by a team of
neuroscientists and improve the memory of 97 percent of users in only 10 hours of playing.
Studies have yet to determine precisely how these games boost memory, but there's good
reason to believe that they are effective: A new study in people over age 60 found that
playing a video game meant to train the brain boosted the subjects' ability to multitask.
"My guess is that playing them activates synapses in the whole brain, including the memory
areas," Marcel Danesi, author of Extreme Brain Workout, told Fox News.

Use the Cicero method.

Also known as the Method

of Loci or the "memory
palace," Cicero's tool for
remembering information,
outlined in De Oratore, uses
the power of support images
(in this case, physical
locations) and memorized
spatial relationships to recall
information. As
psychologists John O'Keefe
and Lynn Nadel explain in
The Hippocampus as a
Cognitive Map:
In this technique the subject
memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any
geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to
remember a set of items the subject literally 'walks' through these loci and commits an item to
each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus.
Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the
desired items.
Try this technique by "walking" through the rooms of your house or apartment in your mind's
eye, and attaching information to each room -- then, recall the information be going back
through each room.
Try the Baker-baker method.
In a psychological experiment known as the Baker-baker paradox, subjects were put into two
groups and shown a picture of a man. One group was told that the man's last name was
Baker, while the other group was told that the man was a baker. When later shown the image
and asked to recall the associated word, those who were told the man's occupation were much
more likely to recall the word. The explanation is simple: Although the two words and photos
were exactly the same, when we think of a baker, other images and something of a story
come to mind (aprons, kitchen, fresh bread).
One Fast Company contributor says that applying the paradox -- using the story of Lance
Armstrong to remember complex and detailed information about chemotherapy -- helped get
him through med school. So when trying to remember details, try to create a "hook" by
connecting the information to a person or story -- the strong association will ensure that you
remember the information more clearly.
Take a nap.
Here's a good excuse to put work on hold for an hour this afternoon: Taking a longer nap can
boost learning and memory. NASA sleep researchers have found napping to significantly

benefit the working memory, and a 2008 study used fMRI scans to determine that brain
activity in nappers is higher all day long than those who didn't rest.
Label people -- literally.
Franklin Roosevelt was known to have a memory that would put most of us to shame -- he
could remember the name of someone he met just once, months ago, seemingly without
difficulty. His secret? Roosevelt was able to remember the names of everyone on his staff
(and everyone he met) by visualizing their names written across their foreheads after being
introduced to them. This technique is even more effective when the name is imagined being
written in your favorite color marker, CNN claims.
Eat your Omega-3s.
Omega-3 fatty acids -- which can be found in foods like salmon, tuna, oysters, pumpkin
seeds, brussel sprouts, walnuts and more, or taken in supplement form -- are among the most
beneficial nutrients for your brain. A 2012 University of Pittsburgh study found consumption
of omega-3s to heighten working memory in healthy young adults. Eating foods high in this
healthy fat may also lower your risk of developing Alzheimer's, according to a 2012
Columbia University study.

Pay attention.
Perhaps the best (and arguably most difficult) memory hack of all is simply paying attention
to the task, conversation or experience at hand. Distraction makes our memories weaker, and
consequently we are more prone to forget things.
Forgetting... is a sign of how busy we are, Zaldy S. Tan, director of the Memory Disorders
Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told Reader's Digest. When were not
paying good attention, the memories we form arent very robust, and we have a problem
retrieving the information later.
Have trouble quieting your racing thoughts? Become more mindful by practicing just 10
minutes a day of meditation. A recent University of California study found meditation to
improve memory capacity and reduce mind-wandering among students studying for the GRE.
And in 2012, MIT researchers identified a neural circuit that helps to create long-lasting
memories -- the circuit was found to work most effectively when, you guessed it, the brain is
paying attention to what it's looking at.