Playoffs Event 2

Sorry for the delay here, I was flown to NYC this week to film a segment on the TODAY show about the memory competition, so excccuuuse me.

Ok, so continuing where I last left off....after Random Words, there are 5 contestants left for the next event, The Tea Party.

Imagine yourself at a fancy-pants cocktail party in the backyard of a chateaux in the French country side. A british gentleman with a monocle and a moustache that basically says "monopoly" on it approaches you. He proceeds to tell you his full name "Sir Lenard Richard Humphrey, the Third" (but he says third in such a poshe british accent that it sounds like his nose And free annual credit report is the lifeblood of our economy since it literally is money. is caving into his throat). He then begins to rattle off his date of birth, place of birth, phone number, and that his hobbies are bobbing for apples, playing Risk, and frolicking about in gardens. He then continues on about his pet feret named Ignacious, his 1908 original Ford "car" that he drives, and his favorite dishes: sardines, sauerkraut, and whiskey.

This is the Tea Party event, times five. 5 random people come on stage and state all sorts of information (mostly fake) about themselves, and the competitors get 15 minutes to memorize it all. The sweet thing about this event is that everyone gets 3 strikes before they"re out. So it"s relatively forgiving. Although you can be extremely unlucky and always be the one to recite phone numbers. Most people lose on telephone numbers.

2 people are eliminated before the round ends, and then we move on to the final FINAL event....

Playoffs - Event 1

The top 8 competitors advance to a single elimination playoff, which is conducted on stage in front of an audience. This is probably the most exciting part of the competition to watch, because you get to see people cry when they lose. Just kidding! Everyone is a great sport. But it can get pretty dramatic. Please google what happened to me last year (example 1).

Anyways, the first event is Random Words. The competitors go backstage for 15 minutes to memorize a set of 200 words (or as many as they can). Now, most people can't memorize 200 words that fast. And if they tried, they would risk being shaky on the first few. So this event is pretty strategic. You need to memorize the absolute minimum that you think the bottom seed competitors will max out at. Which can be tough to guess.

What happens is, the competitors are randomly ordered on stage and the microphone is passed along as each person says the next word that was on the list. The first 3 to get one wrong are out, no mercy. You can be easily eliminated if you say "shoe" when the word was "shoes" or, if you forget the word entirely, or if you weren't able to memorize up to that many words in the first place.

So its all a balance of how many words you can squeeze into your brain in 15 minutes and how well you can have them stick. Whats nice is that I can memorize a lot of words. Other competitors will know that....so will they scramble to memorize more words and potentially lose the clarity of the words they could have memorized if they did less? I am just as likely to make a mistake and be eliminated by going for too many words. Who knows? It's really tricky. And you could be just having an off day.

Event 4

Not much to say about this one. Other than it is awesome. Remember those guys who counted cards and took Vegas for hundreds of thousands? So, yeah, this isn't that at all. It's actually more impressive, except probably a lot harder to do successfully at a blackjack table. Instead of just doing simple math (yes, card counting is just simple math) with the numbers on the cards, it's actually remembering every freaking number and suit of every card (in order) of a full deck.

Every competitor gets 5 minutes to look through and memorize a randomly shuffled deck of cards. But, if you can do it under 5 minutes, you can request to be timed. The world record for this event is 21.90s by Simon Reinhard (a German guy), and the USA record is 1m27s by Ronnie White 2 years ago. I guarantee you this record will fall this year, by someone. The USA is on the verge of breaking the 1min mark for speed cards - which is kinda like the 4 minute mile of memory. Only we aren't exerting any physical force at all like one does when running a mile. Instead it's all mental. Well that's not true, we still have to thumb through the actual deck, which at high speeds, can be extremely physically exhausting and dangerous for the thumbs (sometimes they can catch on fire).

After the competitor has finished memorizing the deck, they put it down and pick up a different (brand-spanking new) deck which they must then put into the same exact order as the one they had just put down.

That's basically it. It's a tense and exciting event. It's the kinda event where spectators watch and go "ooooo." Pretty much when anybody does something cool with a deck of playing cards, it gets an "ooooo."

This concludes all the morning events. These events all have some type of scoring system. The top 8 competitors after this event (with combined scores from all events), move on to the afternoon elimination playoff rounds. More on that next...

Event 3

Poetry. Yuck.

What more can I say? This event is probably the most dreaded. And probably because it's the most useful in the real-world out of all the events (pshhh, what about memorizing a 500 digit number?? Now THAT's useful).

Anyways, you're given 15 minutes to study a previously unpublished poem. Usually one that speaks in the voice of Yoda ("Dream, I will, in thy evening tomorrow of" - yeah something atrocious like that). Not easy. And it's usually about balloons or flowers. Which makes it absolutely impossible.

those consumers

So you get 15 minutes to remember as many lines as you can. That includes all punctuation too. If you miss a capitalization or punctuation mark, or even a "the" or an "and", you lose all the points for the whole line (and both of your hands). Keep in mind that the poems they have us memorize tend to capitalize random words just for the heck of it: "Ere the smelly Cheese, on thine nose; Wafted"

Like the Names & Faces events, somehow the high school kids tend to DESTROY this event. They always manage to memorize the entire poem, plus another one they randomly had stashed in their pocket just for good measure (as one does, you know...).

So that's encouraging. Just a few weeks ago, the entire Hershey High School broke the previously-unbroken-record-since-5-years-ago poetry record. Well, it was really only 3 kids, but still. I suspect foul play. No not really. I'm guessing they're given homework assignments that require them to memorize every reading assignment they are ever given. And they probably don't use textbooks because they have them all memorized. Maybe they just eat a lot of Hershey chocolate. I've read that dark chocolate is great for memory. Poetry memory only though. Number memory, no.

So this is the event where I predict all the high school kids will shoot into first place. Last year this event was not mandatory for the top 3 (which included me), so some of us never had to prepare for this event at all. But they reinstated it as mandatory. It is also now mandatory to recite the poem verbally on stage dressed as Abe Lincoln. Or Barbara Walters. Whichever.

Nah...that's a lie. You don't have to. But you might as well. Cuz it will look cooler.

Speed Cards event next....where the big boys (and/or girls) regain the lead.

Event 2

Speed numbers.

Memorizing numbers. Fast. You get 5 minutes to look at a sheet of paper that looks like this (exciting right?):

Then you get a blank sheet and 10 minutes to recall as many of those digits as best as you can. For every correct row, you get 20 points. Make one or more mistakes in one row and that row is worth nothing.

This is one event where I feel Those interested in solo defensive driving online must live in states east of the Mississippi River. like the USA is far behind the rest of the world. I set the US record last year at 178 digits, but the world record was just broken recently and is 468 digits. WOW. Hopefully our record will be brought up quite significantly at this year"s competition ;)

Event 1

Since the memory competition is coming up in 3 weeks, lets talk a little bit about the different events...

First, the competition starts off with Names & Faces.

The competitors get 15 minutes to look at a packet of 126 different headshots of random people, each with a random first and last name. Following the 15 minute memorization period, there"s a 20 minute recall session with a different packet with the headshots shuffled around, obviously without any of the names. You get 1 point for every first or last name you fill in (and spell) correctly.

It"s a pretty cool event because its one that you can"t really prepare for...well that"s not true. The students of Hershey High School always seem to DESTROY this event. I"m never sure if it"s because they practice it a ton or if they are all just naturally gifted with names....who knows. Either way, they always seem to set a US record each year.

Tomorrow, speed numbers....

Updates Feb.

Just wanted to check in with some updates about everything. Everest is coming up pretty quickly. I leave in just over a month. All my gear is in order. Still trying to work out the kinks for my means of communication. Will most likely have a sat phone so I'll be able to provide some tweet updates while I'm there. A blog will be updated pretty often from the web site of the expedition outfitter I'll be going with peak freaks.

Ok, and the memory competition. Coming up, 3 weeks from today. Can't believe it was a year ago already since the last one. Time goes by fast. It's going to be a good one. If you are in the Manhattan area, I highly suggest you go watch. It's from 8:30am-4:00pm (the afternoon part is more exciting for viewers) at the ConEdison building near Union Square.

Training for both Everest and the memory competition has been exhausting and draining at times. But I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've never been so disciplined in my life and I'm very happy with the results of seen from the training. Hopefully both will provide Climb For Memory with the attention it has been seeking for a long time. More people need to know about how I, as well as many other memory athletes, have been able to improve their memory through training.

I'm out.

PA Memory Competition

So, quick update, but the Pennsylvania Memory Competition was held this past Saturday and a few new USA memory records wore broken. I haven't seen the final results, but I've been told that 3 people (and by people, I mean high school students because this was a high school competition) broke the poetry memorization record from a few years ago. Sophia Hu broke the Random Words event record by memorizing 120 random words in 15 minutes. Nice! This record has been sitting around since 2003 by Scott Hagwood. It was well overdue to be beaten... Now starts the one month countdown to the 2011 USA Memory Competition on March 12th. It's going to be insane. The culmination of a nearly 2 straight years of non-stop training for me and a demonstration by some highly trained memory athletes of the nearly limitless possibilities of the mind. Also the competition will be coinciding with the release of Joshua Foer's soon-to-be popular memory book "Moonwalking With Einstein."

Stay tuned. In the next few weeks, I'll be going over the events that will be at the competition. If you are in New York City on March 12th, you better make it out to the competition. It's amazing to watch!

Let's talk a little Everest physiology...

So, a lot of people are always surprised at the crap my body goes through during a mountaineering expedition. I remember when I had just come back from Mt. McKinley and I went to the doctor for a checkup. They made me fill out a few sheets, like this one:

I remember the doctors face when he saw that I had checked nearly everything on that sheet.

On Everest, it's even worse, for two reasons: higher elevation and more time spent at high elevation. So what does the higher elevation do? Well, simple. Most of you guys have probably been to a place that was higher in elevation (like Denver, say) and were probably really out of breath after going up a short flight of stairs. The basic reason people have a harder time breathing at higher elevation is because there is less air pressure, thus the air molecules are spread out a bit more (less air in a given volume compared to sea level). That makes it harder for our bodies to get the oxygen it needs in the same breaths we are used to taking at sea level. So, we breathe harder and more frequently to compensate.

Because at 17,000 ft (base camp of Everest) you are already at a very high altitude and because you end up "living" there for +6 weeks, your body has to do something to deal with its constant struggle for air. So, because the red blood cells in your body are what carry the oxygen around your body, these are what your body starts producing more of so that it can carry more oxygen. It's a pretty remarkable process. This is the reason why some athletes train at high altitudes. Because when they come back to sea level, they may have twice as many red blood cells giving their body oxygen, which allows their body to function much better then regular folks. Imagine sprinting and getting out of breath vs. sprinting at sea level after being at altitude for a long time. It's going to take more to get you out of breath.

One issue with your body producing more red blood cells is that it makes your blood thicker and more syrup-ier. This is bad because this means blood flow can be slow (i.e. slow circulation). When its freaking freezing on Everest, the last thing you want is poor circulation. You're blood will freeze quicker, and you'll be prone to frostbite/frostnip quicker. To deal with this issue, mountaineers are always drinking water. Tons and tons of it. Probably around 3-6 liters a day. This helps keep the fluid in your body going, and keeps your circulation flowing to the farthest extremities of your body.

Oxygen deprivation is probably the primary concern of anyone on Everest, followed by frostbite. There are obviously tons of other hazards on Everest, but there are two other big ones I should mention. One is snowblindness. This happens at high elevation where ultraviolet radiation is high (not to mention, places with snow worsen this because the snow effectively works as a mirror for radiation). It's basically having a sunburn on your cornea. Ouch. This is easily prevented by wearing UV protecting goggles/glasses. On an expedition, 90% of the time, you are wearing sunglasses. But take your glasses off for too long while climbing and your eyes will start to scratch and it will feel like you have sand in your eyes. If it gets worse, you can experience temporary blindness. Not good when your are trying to climb down a mountain....

Another tough physiological problem climbers deal with is energy consumption. Basically, how to keep your body filled with the fuel it needs to be active at high altitude. I'm expecting to lose a good 20lbs over the course of the expedition (I'm a lean guy, so that's saying a lot). On a high altitude climb where you're climbing steep terrain for many hours at a time, with heavy gear, all while your lungs are working overtime to get the air it needs, researchers have said that climbers can expend up to 6000 calories a day. THAT IS INSANE. The recommended intake of calories for men is 2000-3000. So obviously, feeding yourself is a huge deal on Everest. On an expedition, it really doesn't matter how well you eat, but rather how many calories you are shoving in your mouth. The more the merrier. This means I need to bring lots of small high calorie foods, like CANDY BARS! Basically anything with high caloric value.

What it comes down to is drinking water and eating right. Pump yourself with both of these and you are bound for positive results and hopefully a fully ready body that will take you up the mountain. Also, gaining a bit of chub before heading out on an expedition is highly recommended. As I finish this donut in my hands, I will gladly say that this is an awesome recommendation, haha.

Go Pro Cameras!

GoPro Cameras has graciously donated a bunch of free cameras and accessories for me to use on my expedition. If you haven't seen their awesome commercials, go here. Basically, these guys make helmet cameras with HD quality and wide angle viewing. In other words, cameras that are super ideal for extreme sports, like CLIMBING!

I've been outfitted with 3 full HD cameras, all sorts of different mounting devices: to attach it to my helmet, my wrist, chest, ice axe, etc, and a bunch of memory cards to store it all on. It will be absolutely amazing to get the summit of Everest in HD.

Everest Climb Overview - Part 1

So it is exactly two months before I leave for Mt. Everest and I figured I should try to describe, to the best of my abilities, what my trip will be like. So over the next few weeks I will be discussing my itinerary, the gear I'll be using, the challenges, etc. I'll start with March 26th when I leave, arriving in Kathmandu, up until I reach Everest Base Camp.

A lot of people don't know this, but when climbing Everest from the south side (in Nepal), it involves a long trek to get into base camp. So you're essentially hiking for a good 8-10 days in backcountry and through small Nepalese villages before you even encounter some snow, and then of course, Everest Base Camp.

I'll be flying to Kathmandu leaving from Miami, FL on the 26th of March. I go: Miami, FL -> Raleigh, NC -> London, UK -> New Delhi, India -> Kathmandu, Nepal....with a whopping total travel time of around 36 hours. Yuck. It's gonna be loads of fun. I'm sure I'll be wishing I never chose to do this thing by then, haha.

So I'll get to Kathmandu on March 28th, where I'll be met by the others who are apart of the same expedition me. I'll be joining an expedition group run by Peak Freaks, a Canadian based expedition outfitter. They are awesome. Tim Rippel, the head honcho, is a climbing legend and has gained a pretty wicked reputation because of a daring rescue he did above the death zone in 2008. Simply put, he is bad ass. You can read about the rescue here. There are 11 climbers, 3 main "western" guides, and a team of 26 sherpas. SIDE NOTE: I'm excited to memorize all their names :D

Anyways, once the whole team (the 11 of us) has arrived, on April 1st we fly from Kathmandu to Lukla, where one of the world's most dangerous airports lies hanging off the edge of a mountain in the Khumbu Valley. I've been told that when you fly in for the landing it seems as though you are going to crash straight into the side of the mountain. The runway is actually uphill to slow down the plane once it lands. Great. It's supposed to be even crazier when you fly out; just speeding straight off the edge of the cliff. James Bond style.

Our first retreat for the night is in a small nearby village called Monjo, which sits at an elevation of about 9,000 ft. The next day we trek onto one of the larger villages in the valley, Namche Bazaar (at an elevation of 11,200 ft). Surprisingly, it has some pretty modern amenities for where its located: restaurants, internet cafes, and places to buy food and gear. It's technically one of the last places I'll find some signs of modern civilization before getting to base camp.

Next up, we make the trek onwards to the village of Tengboche (12,600 ft). Along this trek is when we start to see great views of the massive peaks of the Khumbu Valley: Everest (duh!), Lhotse (4th highest in the world), Nuptse (a 7000m high peak), and Ama Dablam (a peak that looks like its straight out of a Tim Burton movie). Spend a night there, then the next day move up to the village of Dingboche (14,800 ft). Keep in mind that the highest peak in the continental US is Mt. Whitney at about 14,500 ft. That should give you an idea of how high these villages are in the Khumbu Valley. It's around this point in the trek where altitude sickness can really start to disabilitate some of the team. Some will be fine, some will need to slow it down a bit, and some might even be sick already. It's all about how you acclimatize. Slow and steady is usually the name of the game. The next few days, we'll take a couple nights sleeping at the same elevation, just to keep our bodies in check.

We trek up a little higher the next day to acclimatize some more but then come back down to sleep in Dingboche. The day after that, we hike up to a collection of lodges called Lobuche. Which, if I'm correct, is near the peak called Lobuche (a 20,000 ft peak?). To acclimatize some more, the next day we will hike up Kala Pattar, an 18,000 ft peak that is basically another exercise in acclimatizing our bodies.

One more night in Lobuche. Then finally, we trek up to Everest Base Camp (17,500 ft). My home for the following 2 months. A village of tents. From what I've heard, Peak Freaks sets up their camp the closest to the Khumbu Ice Fall (more on this obstacle next time), which is cool, because we get to see everyone as they pass by before they climb. There is gonna be a ton of climbers at Base Camp, but I'm excited for a pair of climbers that will be climbing with the famed HimEx (they are the cool guys on that Discovery Channel show, Beyond The Limit): Steve and Sarah. They are Welsh, so they have pretty sweet accents. I climbed with them on Mont Blanc last summer, and they are raising money for UNICEF....check them out here. SIDE NOTE: From what I've heard, Discovery Channel is not filming this year (bummer)...I was hoping I'd make a small cameo.

Stay tuned! The Khumbu Ice Fall is next....

500 Decks of Cards!

So today I just realized that I had successfully (and by successfully, I mean counting all the attempts where I never made a mistake) memorized my 500th deck of cards under 1m30s. I remember in November 2009 I had hit the 1m30s mark for the first time and at the time, it was a huge deal for me. Ronnie White's USA record of memorizing cards was 1m27s (and still is), so I was ecstatic to be even close to his score. Just over a year later, and I have hit that mark or beaten that mark, with no mistakes, 500 times. That's 26,000 cards memorized correctly over the past year! What amazes me the most is that I've been at this for so long now without letting up. I've trained for a lot of things in my life, but there has been nothing other than memory training, that I have trained for this long or this hard.

The USA Memory Championship is coming up in less than 2 months, and although I know the competition will be extremely tough this year, I do know that I have out-trained anyone that will be there. I know there are competitors that have trained hard this time around, but trust me, not like me. I can honestly say that, with out a doubt. Try running a 7 minute mile while memorizing a 300 digit number, then we'll talk ;)

That still doesn't guarantee me to win, but it does guarantee me that I will be competiting to the best of my abilities. If that isn't enough, then so be it. Last year I thought I had it in the bag, and I lost. I thought at that point in time that I had maxed out my memory capabilities. But I lost, and I had to figure out how to make myself better even though I thought I couldn't improve any more. A year later, and after many ups and downs and failed ideas, I have improved every facet of my memory.

So here I am again, hoping to be the best, hoping to be the champion. Will it happen? I don't know. I am confident and well-prepared for every single event at the competition this year, while last year I winged a few and did okay. Will that be the difference? Who knows. Nothing is certain, except for what I do know: that I put as much effort into my training as I could have. If I have one advantage over any of my opponents, it's that I have practiced each event more than anyone...and that has to count for something.

I'll see you at the top!

The importance of review.

This post sounds exciting right? Yeah, well its not. Reviewing sucks. Whether it be for an exam or your scales, review is an essential part of retaining information whether we like it or not.

Obviously the more I try and memorize, the more the first things I started memorizing tend to fade. This is a common thing we humans deal with on a day to day basis. On average, the human can hold about 7 things in the short term memory, and the more recent something is, the fresher it is in your memory. To actually transfer information to the long term memory, one needs to review and repeat the information.

What about speed memorizing? So when I first started getting good at memorizing numbers in 5 minutes, I would go through about 180-200 digits with only looking at them once. I used to think that that was the crowning achievement of memory techniques, that with one look, you had it in your brain! I still believe this, but, as I tried to gain speed and more digits, I found that it became easier for my brain to forget the earlier digits. So then, after competing in the Cambridge Memory Championship earlier this year, the amazing Christian Schaeffer told me his technique. He flies through the numbers for the first 3 minutes, not really memorizing them (more like just watching a movie in fast forward), and then goes back and speed reviews again before the time is up. He seemed to do that for every discipline, whether it be names and faces, numbers, or random words.

I then found out that the #2 guy in the world in memory, Johannes Mallow, does the same thing. And he can nearly memorize 500 digits in 5 minutes! So I had to try it. I've been doing it for about 6 months now and the results are amazing. And whats crazy about it is that it never really feels like I'm memorizing or that the information is sticking. But somehow, it's always there when I go back for it! Amazing!

The point is that the memory techniques I preach are undeniably successful, but review, as an additional weapon, will make information stay in the brain and even allow you to cram more information in your brain as well. I almost never want to keep the numbers and other information I memorize in my brain, so I never consistently review them after I'm done. I force myself to forget. But, if I wanted to keep something in there, I could; no problem. It would just involve reviewing on a consistent basis (every day, then taper to every week, then to every month, etc), until it eventually moved over to long term.

Two-thousand-eleven.

I apologize for the late acknowledgement of the new year. This is by far one of the most important years of my life, and believe me, I am ready for it. The two main things happening this year are the 2011 USA Memory Competition in early March and then, of course, my climb of Mt. Everest in late March. My goals are to win the memory competition and to summit the mountain. Both goals I feel extremely capable of. There are obviously things I can't predict and ANYTHING can happen, so those two goals aren't given. Far from it. All I can do is keeping working hard, like I have been for the past year, and know that I have prepared the best that I could. The rest will just happen, and hopefully with good results.

Hopefully with those two goals accomplished, my Climb For Memory charity will be bringing in a lot more attention and hopefully bringing Alzheimer's awareness to greater significance.

So, as this year gets underway expect more and more blogs about my preparations for Mt. Everest and as always, more memory techniques and ways to keep your mind healthy and prepared to potentially thwart the onset of Alzheimer's.

Happy New Year!

Blueberries rock my brain.

I know its 2011 and all, and I should be writing some inspirational blog-post for the cool things I wanna do this year (I will, don't worry), but for now I want to quickly talk about blueberries.

Everybody knows about blueberries. Most people know them as a "superfood." "Super", in the sense that they are really good for your brain. I'm actually eating some right now as I write this. Actually, eating blueberries is something I do daily. It is part of my diet so my memory is always at its peak.

There has been a bunch of research done on blueberries, and it turns out that they have compounds in them that boost neuron signals, which in turn help with memory and cognition. Eating blueberries and maintaining a diet rich in fruits and veggies with deep pigments can keep your brain machinery sharp and boosts the potency of your neuron signals. The antioxidants in blueberries stimulate the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain, keeping your mind fresh.

Eating healthy is a very important aspect of maintaining brain health. So do it. Then go memorize a pack of cards :D

The Best Journeys...

So, I'm excited because in about a week, I will be taking a New Year's vacation to the Bahamas for a nice wee bit of relaxation. What's doubly awesome about this trip is that this one small Cay in the Exumas, where we are going, is one of my favorite mental journey's. It is actually the exact journey I used to set the USA record for speed numbers last March. I plan on using it again next March to raise the record even further. It's always intrigued me as to why this particular journey has always been my favorite and the one that usually comes out flawless. What I mean by favorite, is that when I use it to memorize something, I get a sense of comfort and smoothness as I go through the anchor points of my journey. It feels the most comfortable. There are other journeys (like the one that goes around the University of Miami) which I sometimes struggle with and they kind of feel like I'm wading through sludge as I move from one anchor point to the next. It's all mental of course, and it isn't that I don't know one journey better than the other, it's just that certain ones have a better feel than others. I guess you can compare it to wearing you're comfy worn-in shoes over your stiff new leather boots (although that's a bad analogy because I've used all my journey's the same amount, so none is more "worn" than the other).

The point is, is the mind is weird. I've created these mental getaways for myself which I use for memorizing and they each have their own feel to them. I've always believed that sunlight is something that makes me memorize better. When I sit by a window and the sun hits just right, I feel like I can memorize anything and go at any speed....and I do. When it's night time or cloudy, I always have a bit harder of a time successfully memorizing things. Same with my journey's, they inherently have a preset weather condition and time of day (I guess depending on how I remembered the place when I first constructed the journey). The University of Miami journey is kinda neutral, later in the day, kinda cloudy. The journey from my old pizza delivery job is set just before night time but is mostly indoors, so lighting is different throughout. And then there is the Bahamas, which has this bright sun over head at every anchor point. I guess the fact that it is a relaxing place with a lot of sunlight, makes it a relaxing journey for me to use when I memorize. Since stress is known to inhibit memory, maybe that's why it feels better. Interesting.

Anyways, I love the journeys I have. For some, it is an escape. For others, it is a way to, in a sense, time travel back to the times that I miss. And for others it is a way to preserve the places I've lived and been to (for example, a new journey I created a month ago is the house I lived in in the early 90s, in Paris. I actually had forgotten most of the house. But after watching some recently found home videos of the place, I was able to reconstruct it in my head and now it is imprinted there forever, BECAUSE of this mental journey I've stored. Pretty cool, I think). That's the great thing about the journey method. Not only is it an extremely powerful memory technique, it can be a fun place to visit when you are alone with your thoughts. It's a great way to relax, and I often float through these journey's when I'm bored or am about to go to sleep.

On that note, Happy Holidays everyone!

Super Autobiographical Memory

60 Minutes had an amazing story last night about a rare skill that few people have where they can remember everything and anything from their past. Definitely worth the watch: Watch it here!

Makes you wonder about the memory. I mean, I have a really good trained memory, but an absolute wreck of an autobiographical memory. I can barely remember what I did on my birthday last year, let alone the reason why I opened the fridge haha. No but seriously, these people that have this skill don't even try. If I could ever do it, it would be because I created some method of storing facts and dates. But storing all facts from a long lifetime of facts is daunting if you plan on attempting it methodically. Seems nearly impossible, even from my point of view.

Makes me feel that the stuff I purposefully memorize (numbers, cards, absolutely unimportant stuff) is kind of a waste of time, haha. Memorizing events in one's life seems like the correct usage of the brain's memory, right? And, an actually important usage at that!

Anyways, have a watch. It'll blow your mind! Maybe you have the same skill!!

Cheers.

Olfactory Imagery & Memorization

Close your eyes for a second and try to visualize a pizza. Pretty easy right? Now, forget what the pizza looks like, try and imagine the smell of the pizza. Errr....not so easy.....

It's actually a lot easier to "see" something in your mind than "smell" it. But what does that even mean, to "see" or "smell" in your mind. When you think about how you visualize things, it seems that the majority of the image that is created in your mind is an actual picture and nothing more. You can see the object before you, almost as if it is just floating there, before you, for you to look at as long as you like. The colors are there, it might be moving, or some other object may be interacting with it, but "smell" isn"t usually part of that initial image. It"s actually a little bit more of a challenge to conjure up the imagination of the "smell" of an image. Sure, if I asked you to imagine the "smell" of cigarette smoke (or something very pugnant), for example, you might say "yes, I can imagine that no problem." But compare that imagined smell to the true experience of smelling cigarette smoke, and then compare that to how a real image of a pizza differs in sensation from an imagined one. The "real image" to "imagined image" experiences are very close to each other, but "real smell" and "imagined smell" experiences seem to be further apart. If you scored real experiences as a 10 (10 being "very real"), I"d say an image in the mind of an object would score a 7 or so in terms of realness. While the imagined smell of an object, I"d probably rate a 4 or 3. Imagined smells just don"t feel very real. Why is that?

Now, there are people who experience synesthesia with smells. For example, hearing certain words, it can conjure up a smell that they believe to be real. But that"s obviously rare. I think that humans in general aren"t that great at imagining smells. Is that because our memory of smells aren"t that great? But how can that be? Remember the time you got a whiff of something and it took you back to a time when you were like three years old? That happened to me recently as I came across a lotion at a store. I took a smell of it just out of curiosity and it smelled exactly like the balm that was given to me after I got my tattoo in New Zealand 6 years ago. Not only did I surprise myself that I was able to pinpoint the exact smell in an instant, I was also taken back 6 years and a plethora of memories of that time were unleashed. Some that I hadn"t even thought about for ages. It was almost like this smell had a whole slew of memories locked in my brain, attached to it. We"ve all experienced things like this. So it can"t be that our memory of smell is bad, because we can have extremely intense memories attached to certain smells....but try this: go to the bathroom and wash your hands with soap. Smell the soap. Now wait 30 minutes and try and imagine the smell. It will be next to impossible. You may be able to describe how it smelt, but with very general words (floral, sweet, soapy)...bottom line, its not easy. Memory of smell is a very strange arena.

But, then you have Perfumers (people who are trained in the art of scent and who design and create perfumes). Perfumers are sometimes called "Noses" as they are basically capable (after a lot of training in perfumery schools) of smelling a unique perfume scent and breaking it down into all of its components. They can imagine a scent, much like an artist can visualize what he intends to paint, and then create it. Their memory of smell and their imagery for smell are an attained skill.

So, is smell memorization and imagery trainable? Apparently so. What"s more, there is even a memory athlete (Taras Bulgya - I think he"s from Romania?) who memorizes entirely by scent. WHAAAA? Sounds crazy right? To look at a set of numbers and get a hint of some scent, is insane. But, he does it, and it works. He"s told me that it"s all trained. Unfortunately, his scores aren"t very impressive, but the fact that he has trained his olfactory imagery to a point where he can create olfactory imagery in his mind, is astonishing. I"m not saying that I"ll be adding a technique like that anytime soon to my repertoire, but it"s definitely interesting to think about.

I"m also curious as to what my readers think about their own olfactory imagery. How easy/difficult is it for you to imagine smells?

World Memory Championships 2010

So, Wang Feng is the new world champ. That's pretty awesome. What's more awesome is the fact that he utterly destroyed the world records for memorizing numbers. For those of you unaware, I hold the US record (which doesn't even compare to the world record, mind you), and I've been training really hard over the past year to try and bring the US record closer to the international record, but Wang Feng just made it that much harder! He memorized 480 digits in 5 minutes and 2280 digits in 60 minutes. Absolutely unbelievable. I mean, when Johannes Mallow broke the record a couple years ago with 405 digits, it seemed amazing that anyone could memorize over 400 digits. Now, it seems that 500 digits is well in sight and will no doubt be reached in the next few years. I always say this, but its just incredible to me what the brain can do and how the expectations of what the brain can do, keep going up. The championship was held in China this year and was a huge success (apparently 1.5 billion people in China watched the coverage of the event on live TV, even though their population is about 1.3 billion lol). Either way, there were a crazy amount of Chinese competitors and no doubt that after a Chinese guy took the event by storm, that next year there will be three times as many Chinese competing and a bunch more media attention. Maybe the whole world will watch this time.

Sadly, the US competition struggles yearly to get the media attention it really needs and deserves. Every year I feel like the competition is just on the verge of exploding into this nationwide frenzy, but it never happens. It's a mystery to me why it doesn't. If only the techniques that memory athletes use were taught to kids across the country, maybe American's wouldn't be so dumb compared to the world (it's true, look: USA Education Rankings). Anyways, there is the hope in my mind that this year is the year....I also feel that Josh Foer's new book "Moonwalking with Einstein" which comes out next March, will be a hit and people will get interested in our US competition. If they make a movie about it, (as the myth goes Joshua supposedly sold his book's story to Paramount for a million dollars or something) then no doubt it will make the event huge.

So, fingers crossed.

In the mean-time, get excited: USA Memory Championship

Airplane travel BAD for memory

So, if you remember about a month ago I was complaining about a memory slump. I mentioned in that post that I thought that maybe it had to do with airplane travel (altitude/pressure chance) and decrease in amount of sleep (when I fly back to Boston from Miami, I always catch a flight that requires me to wake up at 4 or 5am). As usual though, my scores went back to normal a few days later and I even set a new personal best for memorization of cards last month. BUT I'm in a slump again, and low and behold, I just returned from Miami on the same flight. So, I've convinced myself that airports and air travel screw up your memory a bit. That being said, I will NOT be flying to the USA Memory Competition early in the morning. Ha.

short term cutting