Show Notes

• Memory challenge #1
• How Simon started competing in tournaments
• Is memory skill genetic or learned?
• High IQ or hard work?
• Format of memory tournaments
• Memory challenge #2
• Success traits of the best memory athletes
• The joy of memorization
• Loci and other memorization techniques
• Memory challenge #3

Connect With Simon Reinhard

✩ Website: https://www.schoolofmemory.com/
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trainyourbrainhard
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonreinhard79

Summary

Simon Reinhard is a two-time World Champion memory athlete. He holds multiple world records and Guinness World Records, and has won over 30 tournaments around the world – more than anybody else in his sport. Simon shares techniques we can all use to improve our memory, and demonstrates his unique ability with three amazing memory challenges!

Full Transcript

Brian

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Simon Reinhold is one of the most successful memory athletes ever. For those of you who aren’t familiar with memory sports – and I certainly wasn’t before learning and getting to know Simon – memory athletes remember huge amounts of information. Simon is a two time world champion, holds multiple world records and Guinness World Records and has won over 30 tournaments around the world, which is more than anybody else in his sport. At one point, Simon held seven world records at one time, one of which was memorizing a deck of 52 cards in 21.9 seconds. Simon was also featured in the print edition of the 2014 and 2015 Guinness Book of World Records for a number of feats, including memorizing a deck of cards faster than anybody else and memorizing 300 random words in just 15 minutes. After winning the recent African European Open, Simon has clinched the world number one ranking. Simon has created several memory courses and he coaches a diverse set of clients, including CEOs, chess grandmasters, a physics professor and entrepreneurs on how to improve their memory. He is also one of the founders of the International Association of Memory, also known as IAM. It is truly an honor to have Simon on the show. He’s joining us today from Munich, Germany. I hope we’ll all have better memories by the time we’re done here today. Welcome, Simon, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Simon

Thank you very much, Brian, and it’s an absolute honor and pleasure for me to be here.

Brian

Well, it’s a pleasure to have you. Simon, as I was preparing for the show, I thought it would be great if we could not only discuss your background and memory skills, but actually have you demonstrate for our audience how amazing your memory is. And what better way to do that than to present a few disciplines that you compete in during your tournaments. Now, I realize I’m putting you on the spot, and in total transparency, I did mention this only a couple minutes ago before we started the show. So I realize that we haven’t talked a lot about doing this but is something we can weave into our show today.

Simon

I would be absolutely happy to to do this.

Brian

It’ll be so much fun. Let’s just kick it off. I have three different small memory challenges, and we’ll start off with numbers. Simon, I generated – I actually did this yesterday in preparation for the show today – I generated, using a random number generator, 24 single digits between one and nine. And when I show you the list – and you haven’t seen these numbers before, right – (Simon: I don’t [sic] see any of those.) When I show you the list – just so you know before I hold it up – they’re grouped in six groups of four digits. Now I’m guessing this will be fairly easy for you. I’ll show you the the numbers and I’ll give you plenty of time to memorize them. Then we’ll see how you do. Sound good?

Simon

Sounds really good. Looking forward to it.

Brian

This is going to be especially interesting. We have our podcast and that’s audio, and we also have folks listening to the show on youtube.com/BrianBartes. For those of you who are watching the show, you’ll get to see the numbers too and feel free to play along to test your memory skills. Okay, are you ready, Simon?

Simon

Yes, I’m ready.

Brian

All right, here are the numbers.

Brian Kruger

For those of you playing/listening at home, the numbers are 1832 7161 3773 1505 5832 7212.

Brian

Okay, so you’ve seen the numbers and now I’ve taken them away. In post production on the YouTube show we’ll hold the numbers up while you’re reciting them. But I’m curious, Simon, does it help to be able to immediately recite them back? Or are the numbers so locked into your memory that we could talk for a minute and you’d still remember them?

Simon

It definitely helps to recite the numbers because based on the techniques, I’ve made some images from the numbers and put them on six locations, and it’s always good to check whether you have them and whether it has worked.

Brian

Okay, so let’s see how you do on this first warm-up challenge. Go ahead and share the numbers whenever you’re ready.

Simon

Sure. Okay, we’ll start, it’s 1832 7161 3773 1505 5832 7212.

Brian

My goodness, that’s amazing. You got every one, right. I can’t even believe it. I don’t know how our viewers did on YouTube but that was incredibly impressive, you got everything correct. Boy, what a great way to start the show. Thanks so much for doing it, that was cool. Simon, when did you first realize that you have a gift for memorization and what caused you to nurture that gift and eventually to start competing in tournaments?

Simon

I think that there is not a person in the world who is completely happy with how their memory is when they’re learning things. I just noticed from an early age that I had a bit of a knack for memorizing names. Sometimes when I was watching TV with my parents, and I was small, I knew the name of a person on TV, and they could have also known it because that’s that person, but apart from from that, maybe a bit of memory for effects. I first got into this whole memory techniques thing and into a deeper expertise when in 2005, I noticed that there is something called memory sports and memory tournaments. How I got in contact was via the website of the German nonprofit organization which organizes the German competitions there and their training software. I know [sic] nothing about memory techniques and about the method of loci where you put information in locations and so on. They described the whole thing and I found it almost suspicious because I had never heard of this. I thought okay, what is this, special techniques to memorize information and locations, if that really worked I should have heard of it. I was a bit stubborn and I thought, okay, this software worked with levels, so for level one you had to memorize something that is really manageable, like five digits in five minutes. For levels 2-10, then it got more and more above the threshold of someone who should be able to do this without techniques. I really liked it for words. For words, I could accept this basic technique I had read on the page, it was like, okay, you connect a list of words by creating a story. So like, the ape jumps into the tree, then he eats the pinata, and throws the peanut shell to the ground, and so on and so on. I tried to do this and I tried to do stories with 30 elements and 35. With 40 elements, level seven, I hit a roadblock. Forty, I couldn’t do in a story within five minutes, it’s a problem, such a long story. If you have one weak link, then you cannot get all of the words correctly, because you also had to recall it in sequence. So a bit hesitantly, I started to try those locations with a thought, okay, well, let’s give it a try. I’m a rather competitive person so I wanted to get to level 7, 8, 9, 10. Ten was the highest. And it worked, it was absolutely interesting. I’ve never done it before and at my second try with like 20 locations and two words per location, I manage those 40. Then I noticed, okay, this whole thing has really as much potential as they are stating on the page. I used it for the other sequence too, for numbers; you convert digits into images and everything else. Shortly afterwards I went to my first memory tournament.

Brian

That’s fascinating and it’s incredibly impressive. I think for most of us, we don’t appreciate the power of our brain, our human ability to memorize things. I know, as time goes on, we’re learning so much more about the power of the human brain. With the work you’ve done you must be at least somewhat familiar with research on cognition and brain function. Is superior memory, that skill, is that genetic or could we all do what you’ve done and become memory athletes if we wanted to?

Simon

I have never met a person in my life and in the courses that I’m giving, who could not memorize more by using the method of loci. I have never met a person for whom the method doesn’t work; everybody was able to learn it quickly. It’s a method that has been used since antiquity. It was a staple part of oratory schools in ancient Rome and Greece and every politician and person of power and who wanted to speak openly had to learn it and profited from it. So it’s something that has been proven to work since hundreds and thousands of years. So nobody has to worry that you need to be some kind of special person or some kind of special talent for that. I think everybody can take part in memory tournaments. And if you want to get better and better, of course, training is also a factor.

Brian

Have you found – you’ve obviously gotten to know your fellow competitors, other memory experts, and again, in your travels and competitions and tournaments – have you found that those who succeed at the highest level have high IQs? Or they seem to be super smart people? Or do they come from all walks of life and they’ve just really committed time and effort and energy to improving their memory and they’ve ended up doing it at a very high level?

Simon

I think what I found among all who are successful and who are really getting great results is a huge enthusiasm for the sport and a real joy to compete, the real joy to memorize and recall things, and also a real joy in creating associations between things. Because that’s, I think, the most important skill; you visualize the information, be that words or numbers or cards or whatever then you connect it with your storing space, with your location. This specific connection is the most important part and this works best if you like to associate things and create some small connections and just do some kind of logical creative work. I guess that’s what unites all of them.

Brian

So maybe that’s a personality trait rather than high IQ or high level of intelligence, although it seems like the memory skill even that you demonstrated earlier with just 24 numbers was very impressive, and to me indicates a higher level of intelligence or IQ.

Simon

I think that intelligence is also a hard to pin down subject because I guess everybody thinks something different about it, starting with the question of whether it can be measured by one single number. I know that, since a long time, a good memory has been associated with high intelligence, which I think is not necessarily true because I can easily imagine someone who has a great associative capability and is able to notice things and just has fun. The point of intelligence, whether the data is there or not, doesn’t really get into the whole equation. I’m stressing this point so much because what I really want to avoid is some kind of impression by people that these memory tournaments are just for people who they deem more intelligent than themselves. This is not true, everyone can go there and everyone can can have fun. I think my life would certainly be less exciting and less enriched by so many wonderful experiences had I not discovered this sport.

Brian

That makes sense. Simon, we’re all familiar with sports competitions. You mentioned memory tournaments, we know sports competitions in even lesser known tournaments for activities like chess and poker, but I have to confess I had no appreciation for memory sports before learning about you. Tell us about the tournaments you participate in, what the format is, and maybe a little bit about the range of disciplines that are part of your memory competitions.

Simon

Sure, I think you can understand the sport best as knowing that there are two main formats. One format is a format where everybody competes for themselves. It is very much like a mind sport decathlon, like in track and field. That format, which was the oldest one, you have ten different disciplines, and those ten different disciplines comprise one competition done over two or three days. In each of the disciplines, which can be summarized in cards, words, spoken numbers, binary, names and similar things, you have often a short discipline and a long discipline, like five minute numbers and 15 minute numbers, you have always as a last discipline, memorizing one pack of cards, 52 cards. And in each discipline, you have a so-called standard, which is a score that gives 1000 points. It is usually done in a linear way so half of that score gets 500 points, which is also an idea taken directly from the track and field decathlon. The winner of such a tournament at the end is the one with the highest total score. Those standards are also adjusted to avoid a standard that is a bit outdated and suddenly people are getting better; people are always getting better. So when three people break, it’s getting adjusted, I guess it’s also similar. The other format, which I myself have to say is extremely exciting, is where two people compete against each other. It’s a format that is purely digital, because only in a digital setting you get with two laptops in the same room albeit online, you can [see] this, it’s a page called memoryleague.com. There the times you have are much shorter, while in the ten event tournament, you have memorization times from five minutes to one hour. At the Memory League it is more like you have one minute, one minute to memorize 80 digits as fast as possible, 50 words and 30 images, like photos of things or people. The sets work like tennis so a set goes to four instead of six at tennis, and you need to have a two point lead. It’s usually best of three sets in the important tournaments. So even if you lose your cards match against your opponent because they go faster, you can still win the whole set. I feel this is exciting and this also very exciting to watch. It’s always live streamed on Twitch with the big tournaments and has quite a community around the whole thing.

Brian

That’s exactly what I was going to say, that sounds so exciting to watch. I’ve attended tennis tournaments and I like tennis but I’ve also attended chess tournaments. When you’re watching a chess game it’s okay, there are exciting moments but what you’re describing sounds fascinating. Again, just amazing to see right before your very eyes that kind of memorization and the strategy in the competition and just the sheer ability of someone to memorize something as you’re describing in a short period of time and then recite it back, to me, is just amazing. Simon, one of the world records you held – and I mentioned this in your introduction – was memorizing a deck of 52 cards and you did it in 21.9 seconds, which is astounding to me. But this leads us into another challenge that I brought today. Would it be okay if I presented a second memory challenge, one with playing cards? (Simon: Sure, sure.) Okay, thank you. Simon, for this test, I’ve laid out 15 playing cards in random order. I just took a deck of cards pulled out 15, lined them up. I’ll show you a picture; there are three rows, with each row containing five playing cards. Okay, now, this should be a piece of cake for you, given that you’ve memorized a whole deck of cards in 21.9 seconds, but I’ll give you 30 seconds to memorize them. Then tell us what the cards were in the order presented. Sound good? (Simon: Yeah, sure.) Again, for those who are watching on youtube.com/BrianBartes you’ll get to see the cards too. While Simon is memorizing the cards, you can play along but also click the like button and then click subscribe because then you’ll get notified as soon as new shows are released. Okay, Simon, are you ready? (Simon: Yes.) Okay, so here are the cards.

Brian Kruger

For those of you listening at home the cards are: the four of spades, the king of diamonds, the six of hearts, six of spades, three of hearts, two of hearts, five of Spades, jack of diamonds, nine of spades, ace of clubs, five of diamonds, four of clubs, three of diamonds, seven of clubs, eight of hearts.

Brian

Whenever you’re ready – I won’t talk and risk maybe you forgetting a card or two – whenever you’re ready, please share the list of cards in the order presented.

Simon

Just going over them in my head quickly. That should be no problem. Okay, it starts with the four of spades, and the king of diamonds, the six of hearts, the six of spades, the three of hearts, the two of hearts, five of spades, the jack of diamonds, nine of spades, the ace of clubs, the five of diamonds, the four of clubs, the three of diamonds, the seven of clubs and the eight of hearts.

Brian

That’s amazing. How did you do that Simon? That was just with 15 cards, I can’t imagine memorizing an entire deck of cards. Wow, that’s awesome. That’s so cool. Thank you for doing that.

Simon

Thank you, thank you. It’s all based on the same principle, everything is based on that you have a way to convert the information that you have into an image, which is of course simple if it were just, let’s say, a bit more straightforward, if you have words in front of you, or if you’re memorizing photographs of things, because then you basically have the image immediately in your mind. For things like numbers or things like cards, you need to have a kind of a translation code, you need to have some way to convert, for example, digits into letters and then you can form words from that, as if the digits were some kind of foreign alphabet, that you could read with letters in your own language, it is exactly the same. That’s also what I’m doing for the cards so the values are always a letter, usually a consonant, and the suits are a vowel. So that’s why I always combine two together so you can imagine that each card therefore becomes like a syllable. Like, the seven of hearts would be an L for the seven – looks like a turned-around seven – and the heart would be for the A, that’s what I always translate into. And let’s say if it’s followed by the two of diamonds, you would have two is an N and diamonds would be an E. Then it would spell out the the English word for LANE and I would maybe think of a lane stretching through my location. That’s how I connect with things.

Brian

That sounds confusing to me. But I’m sure when you do it over time and practice and practice and practice that you get the hang of that. What’s amazing to me is that process that you described; I think it took you longer to describe the process than it did for you to memorize those 15 playing cards, which is just remarkable. Simon, what separates the very best memory athletes – so a world champion like you, for example – from other competitors who maybe don’t achieve that level of memory expertise?

Simon

I think that’s definitely, even though it always sounds a bit…that’s unusual if you say this [but] there is definitely a bit of talent involved, but not all around. What time has shown definitely is that different athletes have different talents for different disciplines. There are those more talented at memorizing names and those really talented memorizing digits, cards, and so on. I think that’s one starting point. But I think it’s also that you keep up your interest, that you always want to improve yourself. I think that is definitely something that I have learned from the sport, that it can be beneficial that you always try to improve yourself, always try to get the next best improvement of your own personal bests. And I think almost the most important part is a joy to compete, a joy to measure yourself against others, not to have a negative mindset – oh god, what happens if I lose – because ultimately, losing doesn’t really matter. I mean, it’s nice to have a culture of winning where only wins are counted but you’re also putting too much pressure on yourself and on others if you say that only winning counts. You can never fully control what happens in a competition. It’s like where you have to rely on yourself, where you have to simply think I did my best. I improved myself, I optimized myself as much as possible for the event of the competition. Then it’s still, in the end, there is always 5-10% which are out of your control and you have to accept it. You have to let go in a way and just see what happens in the end. If it happens that you know all of the information then it’s great. But if it happens that you have forgotten one or two locations, and it’s incomplete, then that’s how it is. You could just optimize all of the gears and levers before the whole thing started but once the whole machine is running, you are in a way in the hands of fate and I think accepting that. It’s also liberating, because you don’t have pressure during the competition, you just see what happens. If your opponent does better, then you’re happy for him and you have enjoyed the memory fight.

Brian

That’s great insight. One of the things that you mentioned was joy and it’s the second time that you’ve mentioned it. That’s interesting to me, because I think when most of us think about memorization, maybe in church or in school we’ve had to memorize things, memorize Bible verses, we’ve had to memorize a variety of things for tests, and the word that gets attached to that, I think for most people, is probably not joy. But clearly you do enjoy it. I can see where memory experts really…where you’re jazzed by that. I know we all have interests and things that excite us, for you, obviously, memorization is part of that. So I can see where that really plays a big part. There’s still effort, there’s still hard work, there’s still training, and I’m going to ask you about that, but just enjoying what you’re doing. I think there’s a big lesson in that.

Simon

I think that’s a great point. I also want to stress that I completely understand that people have not the best… that memory doesn’t have the best reputation or that memorizing things is not the best reputation. Because what you’re doing when you’re memorizing things without using memory techniques is that you’re basically repeating it so often that it stays in your brain, you’re basically etching it into your brain and that’s never a pleasant process. It’s also quite an unnatural process. Are you reading something for the 20th time? It already gets boring after the fourth time and then you still have to read it. The more the information that you’re reading that is only like a list of things with not much understanding to connecting everything, the more tiresome it gets. So I completely understand that people do not like that, because it’s also something that is a pain. That is something that takes away the joy of learning for many people in school and later; that is absolutely clear. I also don’t have joy in that, I don’t enjoy reading things 20 times. That shows that the things that we are doing in competition are completely different. They are…it’s more like you listen to interesting stories that pop up in front of you, it’s a very visual process. So it’s maybe…maybe now’s the right time to – as briefly as possible – talk a bit about the method of loci in case someone doesn’t know it. Let’s just imagine you wandering down away from your home to the home of a friend or to a nice place in your city. You have a specific point of marks along the way, like the bus stop or the shop where you like to buy your groceries and everything. These are very clearly defined stops, let’s say five or ten. Let’s just imagine that you connect an image of something to each of those locations, like at the grocery store maybe you’ll see an old lady exiting it and at the bus stop you see a bus, but it’s maybe weird because it’s going slower than usual and it’s extremely crowded. So you see this every day in your daily life experience, you see such things and your brain automatically connects them with those locations. That is what your brain does and that’s in a way how your brain uses the method of loci every day without you even realizing it. You can easily check this when you think of a specific location that you know well, like maybe the hotel where you went for your last vacation and you think of a specific place there, and the chance is extremely high that a specific memory that was part of your life is popping up, that you get the specific meal or how the weather was on one day or a specific conversation. It’s the same for each location; for your old classroom, for the place…maybe the room where you’re working in. Usually the last thing that you have experienced there pops up first in your mind. And if it’s a place where you are often then usually memories are overlapping each other and the ones further down are not as clear but the ones most recent – like me talking now to you, once the interview is over, I would have a very strong connection between the table I’m sitting at in our interview, when I think of the table, I was talking to Brian, and we had this last conversation. Now comes the interesting part. That is what everyone knows, your life experience is being saved in those locations. But then, around 2000 years ago, one really clever person had the idea can I use this, because these locations are memorizing information almost automatically. What about this information that I want to memorize about the grain prices? Or about the number of soldiers or about the roads that go along my ancient city? And then they thought, okay, what about I choose my own locations and I tried to put an image of each thing there, not because I’ve experienced it, but because I want to memorize it. It showed that it worked. That’s the basis of what we are doing; we are seeing, we are walking along locations and paths and seeing interesting things. They can be anywhere in the world. We are putting images there all of the time, because digits become images, cards become images so we are telling interesting stories to ourselves and we repeat them without etching them in our mind. We are relying on the power of those locations. Once the recall comes that allows us basically to memorize hundreds of digits and hundreds of words, it’s an extremely creative and pleasurable experience. That’s where the word joy comes from that I had mentioned.

Brian

I appreciate you sharing that. Loci is obviously a very popular memorization technique. It’s actually the only one that I remember. I studied…years ago, I think I heard somebody speak about memorization, I don’t remember but I think I heard somebody speak about memory and maybe read a book and that was one of the techniques. Can you make that more…I understand conceptually, and I think our listeners and viewers do too, can you explain maybe a simple concrete application for loci?

Simon

Sure. Let’s think that a person wants to hold a presentation in front of others and it’s a presentation that takes maybe five minutes, still quite a long text, certainly more than you can usually hold comfortably in your brain. What are people doing normally, they are repeating the slides and they’re repeating the whole thing. It still leads to a feeling of almost dread that what you have crammed into your mind just a minute before you start, you’re just happy once you have said it, because then you can’t forget it anymore. You’re so focused on not forgetting things so it’s hard to keep eye contact and it’s hard to be relaxed. I think everybody knows this. It is one part where the method of loci can be extremely helpful. Just imagine that for each two to three sentences, you can replace them by a single word, by a single trigger. You put this on your first location, your second, your third. A presentation of five minutes can be summarized in that way, by a list of nodes, by a list of single words that are like someone whispering into your ear and helping you. Usually for five minutes, 10 to 15 locations are completely enough. Then you’re standing there and you know the subject matter, you know it enough that the prompt of the first word – let’s say the first word is tree – it gets you perfectly well to talking about, I want to talk about the development of the rain forest in Brazil. And then maybe you talk for a minute or so and then your next location tells you maybe a small building with two important people in front of it, maybe you think of government, so the next thing I want to talk about is how the government of Brazil has treated the rain forest in a positive or a negative way and how that has changed, and so on and so on. You’re basically behaving like a stage actor, always someone whispering in your head, but it’s not someone real, it’s the information from your locations. And this information, if you have connected it properly and if you’ve repeated that, it is much more stable than anything you can have in your short term memory, you simply know which image is on the next location and that makes you completely relaxed. You can only focus on the first one, you can forget the following nine locations. If you’re just in the first one, you see the image for tree there and you’re just talking, you just go to the second location, you only see the small government building and you’re talking about that, you don’t have to keep everything in your mind, because the locations do all that work for you. You just go from one place to the other. And of course, it’s in a way, not a difference between using this for a presentation…I also used this, for example, for a TEDx talk that I had a few years ago in Munich, where it was like 18 minutes of talking, and I had like seventy locations for it [to go] smoothly. But it’s not just for that, you can use the same thing, of course, if you’re learning something, because the contents of a book and the chapters after you’ve read them, and you have understood them fully, can also be structured, according to one word per passage or two; exactly the same can be done. So there are, in a way, countless real life applications, even for something like learning languages and learning grammar. Because it’s always about you have information and the information is too much for you to learn without etching them into your brain, which you don’t want to do because that always shows a limitation of your short term memory and if that happens, it’s hard to get it into your long term memory. Once you get to that stage and you know the techniques, okay, that’s maybe a bit too much for me so now I use a few locations and that’s helped me since [sic] many years.

Brian

That’s terrific. And without getting into the science behind how our brain works, we just know that our brain is able to more easily memorize images, for example, or the loci example you gave…we’re all familiar with a certain space. I’ve heard it described as the house and certain rooms. We all know our house and we know rooms and if we’re putting ideas or images into rooms then when we hear or when we see the building with the two government officials in front of it, then that helps us to recall the whole story behind that, everything that we’re going to talk about. That’s terrific. Obviously, we can learn about loci, there’s lots of information out there about that particular technique. Simon, could you share at least one other technique that our listeners and viewers can use? What we like to do on LifeExcellence is learn how our guests are achieving at a very high level in their chosen profession, and then glean one or two or three techniques and strategies that we can apply to our lives, whatever we’re doing. So if you could share even one other technique that would help us with memorization, that would be very appreciated.

Simon

Sure, I think with memorization, you always have different layers of techniques. Of course, we have already talked about the method of loci. But another technique that you can also use is simply – if it’s just a few elements that you want to memorize quickly – is just connect them into a short story. If you have three or four elements, then you can just create some kind of interaction between the things. Maybe you want to memorize a bottle and a book and then maybe a couch; you place the bottle – in your small story – on the book and you imagine yourself carrying both and laying them onto the couch and the couch, may be next to a bookshelf. Then you have those four things. You have a sequence in your mind, you can do this with so many things, just a bit like in school when we had this task of you get three words and you create a story from that. I think in a more general matter, it’s always important to create some kind of interest for the thing that you want to memorize, that you are trying to find some kind of fascinating aspect of the information you want to learn before you are engaging more deeply with it. Because if you don’t do that, then you can quickly get into this routine of reading it again. And you don’t even want to get deeper, you’re also missing many of the interconnections, many of the deeper meanings that is connected to the next thing. Of course, it’s a point you can’t miss, it’s understanding. I think it’s always a big misunderstanding that memorizing things with the help of memory techniques means that you are not trying to understand the information you want to memorize. I always tell the people in their course, first try to understand what you want to memorize as deeply as possible. Read it, try to understand it. Make as many connections with information you already know as you can. Then you read it again and then you’re ready to put this information, in a very abbreviated form, on your locations because then you have something that you can be reminded of. I think that in a way summarizes what everybody can can use and can use quickly.

Brian

It really is like a muscle, isn’t it? I mean, if we think about physical exercise and fitness, in order to increase the size of our muscle, we need to do something repeatedly over and over again and practice it. It sounds to me hearing you talk, memorization is the same way, that if you’re practicing techniques and strategies, and trying to…one of the thoughts that I had earlier is really making a game of it, we enjoy playing games, and so if you can turn it into a game, rather than having to study or having to prepare for a speech, or all those things that we have to do, if we can make it fun and joyful and turn it into a game, and use some of the techniques that you’re talking about, then we really can significantly improve our ability to recall information, not arbitrarily but for some useful purpose, like delivering a talk or preparing for a test.

Simon

I think you’re absolutely right. I think that sums it up excellently. The real motivation that comes from using those techniques is a feeling that someone extremely rarely has if they are not using them. Because you’re getting full control over the information, the information is not slipping away anymore, it’s not as elusive and there is no chance that it’s getting forgotten if you have put it properly on one of your memory locations, or if you have made your connecting story properly. That feeling brings with it not only a feeling of – and I say the word for the fourth time, I think – joy because you will finally get things in such control that you can focus on other things like on talking and on engaging with the people you are talking to or associating freely while you’re writing your exam because you know the facts and maybe you can answer one of the difficult questions easier. But it also brings with itself a feeling of a very profound calmness. Because you suddenly notice that this fear that everybody has of forgetting things, and of being disrupted just for a single second and then suddenly everything is gone. There’s fear of blackouts and this fear of standing there and not knowing what you have learned just a minute ago – this is gone. This is such a liberating experience, not only for speeches, but also for the important moments in your life, like job interviews, like the most important exam in your life or when you are in other situations where you need to get facts on the table, where you need to talk openly, where you can’t look at your notes, where people need to experience who you are. But they also want to hear what you have to say, for that it’s such an invaluable tool. I think that is where it has most enriched my own life.

Brian

That totally makes sense. You mentioned the word liberating, I was thinking empowering and it’s really both. So it’s liberating, in that you’re free from that burden that we often think of memorization as, but it can also be really empowering when, like you said, you have that part down so that you can focus on other things. If you’re giving a talk, you can make eye contact with people and you can smile and you’re liberated from the burden of having to remember what it was that you were going to talk about. But it’s also an empowering feeling because it changes the whole dynamic of giving that talk and allows you to really enjoy and be in the moment rather than sort of frantically trying to make sure that you recall everything that you need to say.

Simon

And interestingly, it even beats by a mile a feeling of having notes with you. I mean, people often – even moderators on TV – they are having their notes and they are reading it sometimes on quiz shows, of course in the news, they are having their teleprompters and so on. Even that doesn’t feel that empowering, because you always have an outside source of information that you’re reading from. You first need to digest this information again and you also need to hope that this is enough to get you to all the things you want to talk about. But if you have, let’s say, transformed this information into your own symbolic images and you have put them on your own locations, everything has already been internalized so you don’t need to look at an outside source, at a note, at the teleprompter, at someone holding up a sign. It’s all within you and that’s even better.

Brian

That’s well said. Simon, I believe you broke the world record in 2015 by memorizing 49 random words in one minute. Can we do one more memory challenge to demonstrate your word memory skill? (Simon: Sure.) Okay, and I promise this will be the last one. For this test I used a random word generator online and created 20 words. I’ll give you the words, I’ll show them to you. Our YouTube viewers will get to see the words too. The words are lined up, there are five rows of four words. I’ll give you 30 seconds or however long you need to memorize them and we’ll see and recite the words in the order presented. Sound good? (Simon: Okay, great.) Here are the words.

Brian Kruger

For those of you listening at home the words are: rugby, hypnotize, housewife, rage, register, executive, leader, survival, provision, fairy, dressing, utter, exceed, decrease, loot, man, slant, priority, money, sword.

Brian

You’ve seen the words and I’ve taken the list away. It’s incredible to think that you’re going to remember these but go ahead whenever you’re ready, recite the word list in the order presented, please.

Simon

Rugby, hypnotize, housewife, rage, register, executive, leader, survival, provision, fairy, dressing, utter, exceed, decrease, loot, man, slant, priority, money and sword.

Brian

Absolutely incredible. And for our audience, in case you didn’t know it already, English is not Simon’s first language so it’s even more remarkable. Some of these words, I’m not even sure I know what they mean but that was fantastic and absolutely incredible. Simon, I mentioned earlier, and we talked a little bit, you’ve mentioned it a couple times, you have a memory course and also that you – and I mentioned this in your introduction – that you teach memorization techniques to folks in all walks of life. Where can our listeners and viewers go to learn more about you?

Simon

I have a website that’s called SchoolofMemory.com, where all of those courses are summarized. The courses are basically for every walk of life, as you said. I have, for example, courses for people learning for the law exam, for the medical exam, people preparing for university admission tests, people who want to memorize specific things in their jobs, like holding presentations, getting better in general at meetings, where you need to juggle arguments and counter arguments for people presenting in court. I have also classes for learning languages better with the help of memory techniques; just imagine learning vocabulary on locations, learning grammar and everything. I have a separate section, interestingly, for chess, because during the pandemic chess has grown worldwide. Suddenly people came to me and asked whether they can also memorize chess information with the help of memory techniques and since I am an avid chess player, I devised a course in that regard and people like it very much. That sums it up what you can see there. You can also contact me there via the page. I’m really happy that people are interested in those [sic] courses. Apart from taking part in tournaments and talking about memory techniques, teaching is also one of my great passions. I really love to see people entering this whole world of memory techniques and seeing what they can do better with it and how much they can memorize.

Brian

I appreciate you sharing that information and I really appreciate your willingness to help others to improve their memory through your techniques and the course that you offer. Of course we’ll include your website and also social media contact information in the show notes. Simon, I have one last question, our show is called LifeExcellence, as you know, and I wonder, you have an excellent memory and you are a world champion memory expert so obviously you’ve achieved excellence at a very high level. What does excellence mean to you?

Simon

I think excellence, at its core, means that you try to get the most out of your own abilities. I think that’s the most satisfying way to understand excellence. I think that’s much more fulfilling than by measuring excellence only by way of outward success. Because, as I said earlier, that’s also something that’s often not under your own control but it’s under your own control to work on yourself, to try to improve and better yourself and through that way maybe – it’s different for everyone – find a way to a happier life.

Brian

That’s very well said, Simon, thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s been great getting to know you, learning about you, learning memory techniques. And also, thanks so much for your willingness to demonstrate that through the memory challenges that we had. I’m still absolutely amazed by all three of those challenges and you nailed it one hundred percent each time. It’s great to have you and I will definitely remember this unique and amazing show. Thanks, Simon.

Simon

Thank you very much for having me here. It was a great pleasure and a great joy being here. Thank you for all those interesting questions and much further success with your show. It’s really great.

Brian

I appreciate that. Thanks. Thanks so much for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with memory expert Simon Reinhold on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.