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TEDx Talks
Published: 2012-10-24
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ebJlcZMx3c
what if I told you that in a month from now you will be able to memorize a pack of cards by just looking at it once and that you will be able to do that in under five minutes with a little bit of training and what if I told you that that is all the knowledge you need to fundamentally understand how your memory and your brain
works and that knowledge will that help you in your everyday life will it comes to remember people's names commit important information to memory as under is a presentation at work or if your school took child who wants to score perfect on it on an exam whatever it what if it's a little so that this knowledge implemented in schools would change the way we see the school
system not only in Sweden but in the whole world my name is there in the desert I I'm a memory athletes I'm also kind of a superstar using just this is my alter ego and before the age of twenty five I didn't know anything of what I know today and the interesting with age of twenty five is that I think of twenty five us when the
rain becomes fully matured that is you are grown up and before that I knew nothing I also finished willing you'll have things but I also finished my university studies I was thinking what happens now in what I going to do now in my life I've always been very interested in the traveling and getting to know other people culture etcetera and that requires communication so I was
thinking okay I like a challenge and I like to communicate with people so I'm going to learn a language a new language something completely different will what I know now and I know the leading out of it but I want to learn something that I don't understand when I look at it is like this Arabic or Chinese Japanese I've even Hindi crossed my mind so well
I was looking courses I could take it home because I was tired of the universe life I accidentally came across a book on memory I was thinking I want to learn this new language the way children do it by practicing going somewhere and talking to the people any of that since learning the language I I had a sort of don't like Hummers of his or my
way of cheating ways ground studies so I thought if I'm going to do it that way I will come won't come prepared so I want to put a lot of words and phrases into memory and then go to the country what part of the world and then this book of memory was excellent why not start read it then the see what happens so I ordered the
book I started to read and the realizes it was all about appear until about techniques thinking of the right way it was not difficult well I was very picky with the language and what is learned so I was like reading the book doing some exercises and work seller yeah here's what's by and I didn't see the find a new language just to select but in the
meantime I was doing these exercises in getting gradually better and another interesting thing about this book was that at the end chapter this is a person talks about you can compete in memory I was thinking they have competitions in memory I mean this guy domenica Ryan had won the world number championships six times so you knew what he was talking about but still competing in memory
and I was looking at the level he suggested that you complete than I realized hold on during this training of actually reached many of these levels sizler I thought okay will focus a little bit more and that's when I started to train the pack of cars and one of the levels what to do it in under five minutes and in two thousand and four I felt
ready at the age of twenty seven I went to the M. well then we jumped hips in Manchester either way nothing big just go to the one on which improves I can't twenty second in the world I also became Swedens best memory a title I will have for five consecutive years so when I came back my friends were looking at me differently they're like when did
you become such arrangements what do you mean well come on you just went to the world memory championships and competed yes so yes but I just read these techniques and adapt them you did and I don't feel different I mean I'm the same you have really but what do you do if the world only temperatures well we we compete in memory such as well ever competition
is ten disciplines it can be numbers it can be by noted just one zero one one zero zero one one very funny give me that's yeah but it's all can also be words give me names of faces apple's names it can be historic dates do you know what the world record for memorizing historic dates is about the same as is more even than all the dates
you learn throughout the school system including high school and this guy does it in five minutes Meg not twelve years compressed in five minutes so there okay would I think I think it's easier if I show you so they would take a pack of cards shuffle it's but the one that we had before was shuffled so they give it to me and then while attending I
would do a start and then after a while the rest my interest when they gonna start well actually I'm already done what you mean they'll take the card the pack split anyway he wants but it wasn't so this is diamonds of nine so what comes after diamonds of nine but I mean it what what is the card of comes after dimes of nine %HESITATION cups of
two right and what comes off the clubs of took heart of ten and what comes off the hearts of ten a two fives that's good it's a one is diamond ones hearts as a that's when the heart so okay so it was a woman call how do you do this well it's just about adapting to cakes and actually I think it's easy for show you with
an exercise okay look at these two images do you see a connection between them I give you a hint there is no connection but just to randomly pick pictures but here's what I want you to do I want you to make a fun vivid animated story use all your senses he helped looks like feels like to connect these two images together and do you three need
you know they would have don't have the three D. vocals your brain is amazing it can do it anyway projected in three D. I give you a few seconds to do this here's how I would see let's see if their orders were sitting you see a big today you look like to see a big name and has a door on you open the door because welcomes
you open the door I mean you never been inside a sense of you go in their own right slimy in here when they do that look at these two images okay do the same make a story I think the stairs where I came up I see a flamingo bit building a big brick wall suit slack we have to climb over it no point but at least
three what do you think we all know elephant because the big alpha day when all you all know why the stronger the Carillo wakes so there you see a big you're off up to the screen and the skier they're like well I'm gonna go skiing now the dross neck look up on the roof of the last one is a little bit obvious right because you see
a ref ties they like to be in the sub what comes to my think this is an obvious one this one I will remember and that's a dangerous thing it's obvious things we tend to forget I bet I could find people in this room that don't remember what they had for breakfast maybe today was different because you have we're going to Ted so you had breakfast
later or whatever so it's a common thing you do so you it's easy to forget not registered so see the snake with big glasses and I drink and enjoying the sun on the roof and the drink is not spilling so what it what did we just do well we let our brain have fun and when we did that be focused on the task and wonder focused
on the task willow brains Mottola brain this is important remember this so first we used we can enforce the problem of remembering and so what is the brain the rain is a biological long of neurons contains about three percent of our body weight it consumes twenty percent of our energy intake everyday it doesn't matter if you're sitting in the audience standing up talking what are you
doing it's about the same level and she consumption all the time so there's a lot of nuance and they like to connect to each other and they can make tens of thousands of connections this is also why you all are unique Emmys impossible to copy to make two identical brings so we are all unique and the stronger will make the connections the longer we remember the
information so we can make weak connections and forget them because that's a natural thing the brain selects we've always forget it's a natural thing because of the brain if you have a normal functioning brain it sorts out information that is not a full important but you can tell it what is important and what is not and the stronger the connections that you make the longer you
will remember it and this knowledge I would say today that student study too much and the reason they do then I could sailors because many students today don't know how to put the information into their brain so they study and study and study and study because late legally to bed wake up tired stead of putting the information in the rain in the way that ray likes
to have it and then they can rest commit time to the hobbies spend time with the family other neuroprotection of the information they look but if you don't know that information is there you don't trust your brain and if you don't trust your brain I study all the time so I will prove this to you that your brain actually it's better than you might think yourself
next time we did before I do a five year olds but then we used thirty pairs so don't feel impression okay look at this image that's something missing right I bet your brain fill in the gaps so if I say weights you say and you know if I say bricks you say and if I say the obvious one again I did it if I say door
you say and if I say ski yeah if I told you given to me in the right order as they came up what would you do you would close your eyes go to the first place but the second place but the third place the fourth place and the roof was last on military backwards go backwards and this is what we do at memory competitions we just
put now you memorize ten words and that's what week it where one of the events to memorize words you can go to competition perform the only thing we do is that we do it faster and longer I mean it's very true thing to note that the world record for memorizing a pack of cards by just looking at the ones as fast as possible is about the
same time it takes you symbol to run two hundred meters think about the next time you see you watch their Olympics when it starts to start to see how many cars you remember now I don't know use them both but I know the world record holder for the cars Simon Ryan hard and I know how much he trades but I know he doesn't do anything different
from what we did just before so just structures were knowledge he put into his brain a lot of information once and who knows if it is if it sticks there so it's all about having fun and letting the brain makes strong connections well there's no limits I have a friend who comes and helps me to organize a Swedish memory championships every year now if this would
be if we have a skein here of the mat over the mat here is a person that has difficulty with memory here is the normal you know this normal show show formed bell here is what most people would be and here is where the genius all the super memories so when she came in first two thousand nine I contacted their soldiers now bundles because it and
them told them why don't you run some tests a memory test on this because I like to work with this scientist to show them the board we are doing because it not so much meat research going on on this area and that the guy who did the research on her which is actually the guy the same guy with his buddies yoke of Solomon he said like
it is we have to redo the scale because he's over there is outside of us came what CD it is like way outside we have to do this how can you do this yeah but you haven't studied what we do because it's like we would invent sports today and all of a sudden people are running on there is a moving so fast but we're not doing
anything else which is doing how the way is the way working with the brain how the brain likes to work the techniques are very old I mean the oldest one comes from the Greeks the ancient Greeks several thousand years ago so we didn't invent anything we just accident with is the training that is on it and you can start your training right here right now the
