Tune into the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) tomorrow night, March 6th at 9:30pm ET to watch "Beyond Belief." It"s an hour-long show about things/people that are beyond belief. This episode they are profiling people who memorize stuff, which includes me and the kids from Hershey High School. Should be good fun to watch, they had me do a ton of cool stuff for the piece, so check it out!
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March is here. Marching forth as usual.
I freaking love March. March is filled with two things that I love: memory competitions and the climbing season on Everest.
More than anything to me, March is Everest month. One of the most memorable experiences I ever put myself through was my 2011 Everest climb. It was just a year ago today that I started to pack up all my gear for the trip. March 14th I won the 2011 USA Memory Championships and 2 weeks later on March 26th, I was already on my way to Nepal. To me, that trip will always be embedded in March somehow.
What a roller-coaster ride that month was.
This year's March will be a little calmer. Just a memory competition and no Everest. Next year will be ALL Everest and no memory competition (Well, maybe. We'll see). Either way, the 2012 Everest season is about to begin. I wish I could be there again, but other commitments and just plain exhaustion (I'm still mentally exhausted from last years climb, believe it or not) have made me postpone the big return climb till next year. But preparations are already well under way.
Here are a few updates for me and Climb For Memory:
1. 2012 USA Memory Competition - Training hard as usual. Competition is on March 24th.
2. 2012 Climb For Memory Climb - My previous plans were to climb the Matterhorn/Eiger, but after some more thought, I realized it made more sense to do a better-for-Everest kind of prep climb. So, I'll be going to Peru's Cordillera Blanca in July to climb the mountain picture seen above (Alpamayo). It's often referred to as the most beautiful mountain in the world (or the mountain from the Paramount Pictures intro). More on this peak later.
3. Lookout for a gala/fundraiser in April in the local Miami area. Also looking into doing an Everest-themed crossfit workout event.
Also, on a side note, since I won't be on Everest this year, I'll be releasing some footage/video (finally!) I took last year in conjunction with the progression of the season, along side some blog posts describing what's going on over there.
1. I'm in the March 2012 National Geographic magazine. So make sure to look for it on bookshelves pretty much anywhere. You can also download the issue here for the iPad (it's got some extra interactive features - pretty darn cool).
2. I just want to give a congrats out to a friend of mine, Ed Cooke, for raising $1,000,000 for his memrise.com project. This website is going to be huge. Go there and prepare to amaze yourself. You can literally start learning Mandarin in just a few minutes. The website makes it laughably easy. Read the article here.
To my readers. 5.4 million people are currently living with Alzheimer's in the US.
It is the 6th leading cause of death in the US 1. Heart Disease 2. Cancer 3. Stroke 4. CLRD 5. Accidents 6. Alzheimer's Disease 7. Diabetes 8. Flu and Pneumonia 9. Nephritis 10. Septicemia It is the only one of these that cant be prevented, cured, or slowed.....yet.
There are 15 million caregivers taking care of people with Alzheimer's or Dementia.
$183 billion dollars are spent annually on the disease.
Deaths from Alzheimer's have increased since 2000 by 66% (all other major diseases have decreased).
Every 69 seconds a person develops Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's is an epidemic.
Please consider signing this Alzheimer's petition to urge the President to make Alzheimer's Disease one of our nation's priority.
If Alzheimer's has affected you or a loved one in any way, please consider signing the petition above. Even if Alzheimer's hasn't affected you in any way, it could potentially. Please help.
Thank you.
I had an idea.
To make this week (starting with yesterday) the most memorable week ever.
Not by doing things I wouldn't normally do and going out my way to make it memorable per say, but more so by actually trying to memorize it and make it something I can recall to the most minute of details, years from now.
People often ask me if I have an awesome memory of my life events. Do I remember where I was on any given date in the past, what I ate, what I wore, what the weather was like, etc. The answer is, um...hell no! My memory is pretty much horrendous when I'm not trying. Well, that's not totally true. My memory of my life events has its ups and downs. Some things I can remember with scary precise detail while other things I have no recollection of at all.
But what if I could remember exactly what happened on one particular date, no matter how old I got. Would that be something I could potentially train? How valuable would that skill be?
It saddened me this morning when I tried to think of all the past birthday's I'd had (mine is coming up tomorrow), because I could barely remember anything from them. A dinner here, a surprise there, but overall, not much detail at all. I feel like that is the norm for most people. We have so many things happening in our lives, so our brain just picks and chooses the most notable moments to keep fresh and retrievable in the mind. What's curious is when you don't remember something and someone says "Hey! Remember when blah blah blah" and you go "Oh wow, yes I forgot that!" You didn't really forget it, because when that person said it, you remembered it. If you had actually forgotten it you would have said that you didn't remember (which still happens sometimes anyways). But it's fascinating that we have easily remembered memories and memories that need a cue (a friend to tell you about it), because those memories that need a cue, are actually in your memory somewhere, hiding - you just don't know how to access it.
Anyways, I'm curious to see if in a year from now, I can remember EVERYTHING from my birthday week.
So I started yesterday.
Started what exactly? Not memorizing, actually.
Reviewing.
Long term memory is all about reviewing.
The memory skills I've developed over the years are designed to get information into your brain quicker. Another common question I get is "how are you with memorizing things long term?" The answer is, "The same." While my technique gets info into my brain faster, I usually try to forget what it is I've just memorized since it's useless information. But, if I wanted to keep it forever, all I would have to do is review it. At first, very frequently (twice a day, maybe), then slowly taper off (once a day for a week, twice a week, once a week, twice a month, once a month, once every so often). Reviewing things you've memorized is what makes it transition over to long term memory.
So what if after every day (for a week say, for experimental purposes) you sat down and relived (reviewed) the day in its entirety, in your mind, remembering the sensations, emotions, colors, foods, clothes, locations, people, that crossed your path. Then at the end of a week you reviewed each of those days again. Then continued a reviewing process that tapered off over time. Would you be able to ask me in 2013 what happened on Feb 4th, 2012 and would I be able to respond with detailed facts about the super bowl score, the weather, conversations I had, the number of slices of pizza I ate, how long my fingernails were?
I think yes.
Granted this is no way to remember every single thing in your life (you would spend SO much time reviewing it all!), but I think for the more important moments of your life that you would never want to forget, it might be a way to save them in all their glory.
I should probably memorize this entire blog post. That would be a good start.
Just got back from the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The premiere of my film "Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles At A Sword: The Journeys Of A Mental Athlete" (longest title ever) was on Friday, January 20th and apparently it went over really well (I was supposed to be there for it but I missed it because I was stuck on the tarmac at Chicago O"Hare for, no joke, 6 hours! So frustrating!).
Anyways, I was there for the rest of the weekend and was privy to online slots a few happy hour and red carpet events. People kept coming up to me saying how great they thought as part of this (see the free-credits-report.com Rating guide. the film was and how impressed they were with what I accomplished. Very cool! It was a pretty humbling experience. I never take a moment to step back and think of how far I"ve come ever since all this memory/climbing stuff started, so it was nice to take that all in for once.
We"ll see by Thursday if the film won Best Short Documentary. Can I just say that the highlight of my weekend was when actress Mary Sean Young came up to me and asked to take a photo with me. Little did she know that "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" is my all time favorite movie, so I freaked a bit.
Hey guys. 2012 is looking up to be awesome! I can already feel the excitement building up for the 2012 USA Memory Championships. I"m hoping there"ll be a good turn out this year, but I"m pretty sure there will be! People care about improving their memories, I know it. It"s just a matter of time before schools start begging us to plug this stuff into their curricula. Anyways, I submitted my application for the 2012 USA Memory Championships. You can do the same right here. Do it! The more the merrier. Cut off date is March 9th.
I"ve got a few media things coming up soon. I"ll be in the March issue of National Geographic, a couple shows here and there (which I"ll reveal once I"m allowed), and whatever comes with the competition PR this year (always something fun). Also, I"ll be in Park City this weekend for the SlamDance (no, not Sundance) Film Festival - the same festival where "Monster"s Ball", "Napoleon Dynamite", and "Momento" were discovered. My friend Jonathan Napolitano filmed a documentary about me, Ronnie White, and Brad Zupp (all Mental Athletes) as we trained for the 2011 USA Memory Competition. It"s quite awesomely named: "Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles At A Sword: The Journey"s Of A Mental Athlete". The world premiere is Friday night @ 7:30 just in case you"re in PC. Only 9 short documentaries were selected out of a pool of 5000 films and his was one of them! Very cool.
Check out the trailer:
"Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles at a Sword: The Journeys of a Mental Athlete" from Jonathan Napolitano on Vimeo.
Everest-wise, Alan Arnette put together this fabulous summary of the 2012 season coming up. Read it here. It"s everything you"ll ever want to know about all things Everest.
I wish I was out there climbing this year again - you have no idea how much I feel like I"m missing out... But 2013 is around the corner and giving it some distance from now allows for more hype to be created for the real cause at hand: raising awareness for Alzheimer"s disease.
I totally just bombarded you all with way too much stuff.
PS - Haven"t done a "how to memorize something" blog post recently, but there"s a good one in the works. Stay tuned.
Here we go. 2011 was freaking inCREDIBLE. But as always my goal is always to make each year even better. It was only 2 years ago today that I started planning my Everest trip from last year. And now I'll be doing the same for 2013. While I did express my goal of attempting a double summit, because of the difficulty of knowing for sure what the Chinese government will do with climbing permits and all that, I still have to keep my options open and consider doing a repeat of my last climb on the south side. If that happens though, I'll still go big. I would love to bag Lhotse (the 4th tallest mountain in the world and neighbor to Everest) as a double peak-bagging expedition. As for memory, the 2012 USA Memory Championships is closing in and I'm ready to defend my title. I even made this little video because I wanted to try and be as cool as Ben Pridmore (I failed):
Happy Holidays, folks! 2011 was an incredible year for me and Climb For Memory and 2012 will be even crazier. Enjoy the holidays with your family, these are the times that stick in our memories for years to come. So make sure they count! I will be out of the country until the first week of January, so Happy New Year as well! No more blog posts until 2012.
Cheers!
Holy cow....so about a month or two ago I set my personal best of memorizing a deck of cards in 33.80 seconds...since then, I've kinda been in a slump, getting in the higher 30, low 40 second range. That's just the nature of the beast, there are ups and downs. Anyways, I'm on the up again, the past week has been awesome with all 30 second range card times with absolutely no mistakes. It's so weird how sometimes it just "feels" easier to memorize cards, like I don't even have to try. I've hit 34 seconds twice this week, and I'm sure I'll hit 33 or even 32 very soon. Memory is strange. That is all.
A good friend of mine, Kuntal Joisher, recently was climbing in the Himalayas and brought along some Climb For Memory action with him.
. We at Climb For Memory, decided to take a few moments to sit down with him and learn more about his passion for climbing and why he decided to "climb" for "memory."
Tell me a bit about yourself.
My name is Kuntal A. Joisher, and I come from a land of billion sparks a.k.a India :-) Anyway, I'm 31, and I live in Mumbai, the financial capital of India. By profession, I'm a Computer Engineer (I've a Bachelors in Computer Engineering, and a Masters in Computer Science from USC, Los Angeles). I work as a General Manager for an IT multinational company based in Mumbai. When I'm not working, you'll mostly find me trekking, climbing, photographing or doing something fun and adventurous!
How did you find out about Climb For Memory? Since past few years I've been regularly following Everest Spring climbing seasons. I tend to follow pretty much all well known agencies (such as PeakFreaks, Alpine Ascents, Adventure Consultants, Mountain Madness, IMG etc) and how their climbers are doing on the mountain. I follow their blogs, dispatches, pictures, videos -- pretty much everything!! I came to know about Climb for Memory when I was going through 2011 pictures on Peak Freaks facebook page. Out of all pictures of that season, one picture that struck me the most was you with the Climb for Memory flag probably near the south summit. Those words "Climb for Memory" had me intrigued about your organization, and in no time I was going through your website and blog!!
What made you want to "climb" for "memory"? 2 things -- Climbing and Memory, both of which I'm very passionate about. Also I'd like to give some context about my situation. Few years ago, my dad was diagnosed with Dementia, at a relatively young age of 50. The doctors mentioned that he probably had Multi-infarct dementia. Over past few years my dad's condition has deteriorated quite bit, and it's to a point where he doesn't even remember or recognize me! It's been a very emotional journey over past few years to see him deteriorate day-by-day and get to this state, and it's very frustrating at the same time that I cannot do anything about it as Dementia as a disease does not have any cure. However, at the same time it's been quite a learning experience just in terms of knowing more about the disease itself, how to come to terms with it, how to deal with it -- basically how to plan your life around it -- so that you can give utmost love and care to your loved one. One of the things I'm very passionate about is to increase awareness about dementia, encourage lifestyle changes to delay the onset of the disease, support dementia cure research in any way possible etc. When I saw your organization Climb for Memory and it's mission, I was like A-ha! this is exactly what I've wanted to do for quite some time i.e. combine both my passions: Climbing and Dementia awareness!!! So basically Climb for Memory is something I would have eventually done independently, but when I saw that your organization already was there and doing great work, I thought why reinvent the wheel? It would be so awesome to work for your organization and pursue my passions. And so I got in touch with you, and since then I've been taking Climb for Memory flags on all of my treks/climbs.
Tell me about your most recent climb with Peak Freaks.
I've always been interested in climbing Mt. Everest. It's the top of the world!! It's my dream to stand on that summit some day. But before I get there, I need to strengthen my mountaineering skills, train hard physically and mentally, get adjusted to the expedition life, figure out how well I acclimatize etc. Peak Freaks have this amazing Everest Training expedition at Mt. Pumori, the idea of which is that you would learn all the necessary skills as part of the trip, and if you do well enough then you could probably start thinking seriously about climbing Mt. Everest as the next step. So I became part of this trip, and let me tell you - even though we didn't summit Mt. Pumori, I learnt quite a bit, both about mountaineering as well as myself. Now I know where I'm lacking, and I have a rough plan in mind as to how gradually over next few months I intend to address my weaknesses, as well as take my strengths to next level.
Whats next on your climbing list? Up next is Chadar Trek (Frozen river trek) in Feb 2012. Just to give you a bit of an idea about this expedition -- The word "Chadar" literally means blanket, basically a blanket of ice, and it is used to refer to the trek along and over the frozen Zanskar River in the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh in India. This trek is undertaken during a small window of 20 days during peak of winter season when the temperatures during the day are around -12C, and during the night go down to around -30C. Basically it's a spectacular, and at times challenging trek across the Zanskar river, with opportunities to savor ancient Buddhist monasteries and remotes villages nestled in the depths of deep gorges and valley's of Trans Zanskar ranges. So yup that's what I would be doing in February of 2012!!
The next one after this would be something big! The trips I'm contemplating at this moment are -- trying to get up to Camp 3 of Mt. Everest, Or climbing Mera Peak (highest trekking peak in Nepal), Or some unexplored high-passes or peaks in the Indian himalayas.
I've had a lot of people ask me about warning signs for Alzheimer's Disease. Here they are according to Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_10_signs_of_alzheimers.asp
Another common question I get is how exactly one dies from Alzheimer's Disease? Alzheimer's is a disease related to memory, so how can one die from it? Here is a great article about that:
http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_10_signs_of_alzheimers.asp
Alas, I"m not going to the World Memory Championships anymore. This is kind of a delayed announcement, because I"ve actually already announced it in a bunch of other places, but I figured it should be mentioned on my blog in some way or another. So yeah...not going.
Why? Well, it"s complicated. But basically a bunch of stuff went down with the Chinese sponsor - things were changed very last minute and prize money essentially vanished. So a lot of people have decided that they aren"t going anymore. No more Ben Pridmore (the 3 time World Memory Champion), no more Germans, and now no more Americans (me). I was really looking forward to doing the USA proud. I had practiced a LOT and was pretty sure I could finish top 10. Oh well. Next year...
I don"t know what"ll happen to the competition next atoledo.com year, but we will see. For now, I"m 100% focused on reclaiming my throne at the 2012 USA Memory Championships. I"ve seen and heard about a lot of people training real hard for this championship (mostly because of interest generated by Josh Foer"s book I"m assuming), but I can tell you that none of you have been training harder than me. Sorry. You may be better than me, but there"s no way you can train harder than me. Just saying. If any of you thought for a second that I was happy with my win this year and slacked off a bit, you"re dead wrong. Everything I could do last competition, I can now do better, faster, and more efficiently.
With that being said, I"m excited for any challenger who comes to the competition with the mind-set to beat me. I think it"s great for the sport. Anyways, gotta go run. Happy holidays.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm thankful for a lot of things in my life and I'm going to pay special attention to those things today (and then I'll focus on eating tons of food, Dolphins beating the Cowboys, then where I'm gonna get my Black Friday on...PS, isnt Black Friday supposed to start at like 3am? Not midnight? I'm confused....and scared. And excited). Hope you all have a great one! Many THANKS for reading my blog in the first place :)
There's this scene in The Matrix where Neo casually blurts out "woahhh.....déjà vu..." after seeing a black cat cross an entryway, and then a second later, sees the same exact cat cross the exact same entryway. That scene always annoyed me because that is NOT déjà vu. What annoyed me even more is just how casually he attributes that bizarre witnessing of cats to déjà vu. With déjà vu, you usually don't know where or why something is familiar, but in this scene Neo knows he's just seen the exact thing happen right in front of his nose twice in quick succession. Argh, it's so dumb.
Anyways, I don't know about you, but whenever I've had déjà vu, it's usually a very strange feeling. A feeling that makes me feel like I've seen it all before and know what's going to happen next (when I really don't). It's this kind of icky feeling that I can't seem to fully latch on to or describe (which makes the whole experience even stranger).
The reason I'm writing about it here is because I had a very bizarre experience on Mt. Everest this past spring. Once I reached Base Camp at 17,500 ft, I began experiencing déjà vu constantly. I'd say on average about 6-10 times per day. It became so chronic that it turned into something extremely frustrating and invasive, almost like hiccups that won't go away. 6-10 times per day is a lot for me. I typically only experience déjà vu once a month (if even that) in everyday life. But up there at altitude, it was happening non-stop, sometimes even happening back-to-back-to-back. So weird.
I've tried many-a-time to try and think why all of a sudden at altitude I was starting to experience it. I've climbed to high altitudes before and never had déjà vu even once. So what was different? Well, for one, at the time of the climb I was more obsessed with my memory training than I had ever been before and I was training my memory throughout the whole expedition. On past climbs I would either stop memory training completely or I hadn't really gotten into memory training all that obsessed-like yet.
So what does that suggest? That my memory training at altitude was activating some part of the brain that unleashed déjà vu after déjà vu? Yeah sorta, I guess.
Here's my bizarre theory. I've heard many explanations for déjà vu, but no one really seems to know for sure what it is or how it starts (it's pretty hard to conduct scientific studies on the phenomenon since no one knows how to induce it on demand). One explanation I've heard is that déjà vu is a mixing of the unconscious and conscious parts of the brain. Basically, a confusion about memories that occurred in an unconscious state (dreaming). Your conscious brain fires of these warnings that scream, "Hey, this is familiar!" when something that happened in a dream is in someway familiar. Most of what we dream isn't very memorable, but what if in real life, something slightly reminded you about that dream somewhere deep inside your subconscious. That would feel weird right? You would feel like something was familiar but you wouldn't know why or from where. That's exactly what déjà vu is.
Here's where it gets stranger. It's common amongst high altitude climbers to say that dreams at altitude are much more vivid and bizarre. This happens because it's more difficult to breathe at high altitude because of the lack of oxygen. Because your body is struggling to get the same amount of oxygen it's used to, sleep is often interrupted by fits of waking panic and suffocation or sleep apnea, which in turn makes climbers sleep lighter and dream wackier.
Now, because of this whole vivid dream thing, combined with my whole intense memory training, could it be possible that my brain was much more active in searching the unconscious for recognizable things in real life? Was my strengthened memory able to reach deeper into those wacky, memorable dreams and tag them onto moments in real life that bared any type of resemblance? I have no frigging clue, but it sounds cool. Either way, the fact remains that I was experiencing déjà vu many times a day and it wasn't normal. It was actually kinda scary at times. It was like I couldn't get rid of this feeling like I knew everything around me. The weirdness was amplified by the fact that I was somewhere I had never been before in my entire life (Mt. Everest). So I knew, on top of me knowing that this was all familiar, that this couldn't be familiar in any way at all.
Mind == BLOWN.
Anyways, just wanted to share that with you all...(On a side note, my chronic déjà vu disappeared once I returned to sea level, so it was most likely altitude induced).
For all you readers out there, I'd love to know how frequently you get déjà vu? And when you do, what it feels like to you? It's interesting to hear different peoples account of this because everyone describes it differently.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies ("I wish we could all live in the mountains...", lol).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hq5jZrFTbE#t=2m10s
So for any of you doubters of memory techniques and memory training out there, who think it's too crazy or hard, get this: my 65 year old aunt uses it all the time. She isn't training like crazy or anything, she just uses the basic principles whenever she needs it. Here is a recent example she told me about (it's awesome!) where she had to memorize a shopping list. She came up with an image for each item and then linked them into a quick story: 1. Toilet Cleaner refills (Winston Churchill - has initials WC like the bathroom) 2. Celery (Tom Seleck - his last name sounds almost like celery) 3. Mussles (Jean Claude Van Damme - he has big muscles) 4. Thyme - (Biding time - action of biding one's time) 5. cigarettes - (Eating fuming hot cigarettes - another action) 6. French fries - (Eating KFC - another action) 7. Cucumber (While playing the ukelele - another action. I guess ukelele reminds my aunt of a cucumber somehow?).
So she pictured Winston, Tom, and JCVD biding their time eating cigarettes and KFC while playing the ukelele. Something as simple (and outrageously silly) as that, got her 7 items on her grocery list. BA-ZING!!!
That's one of my favorite quotes. I'm pretty sure I tweeted it the morning of the 2011 USA Memory Competition. Sadly, it's from one of the worst "funny" movies out there (Not Another Teen Movie)....but it's a great quote nonetheless. Watch Mr. T (The Wise Janitor) say it in this clip (be warned, some rough bad language in there). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIl_4D-FUo4
Anyways, I've always attached to that motto, rather than the kind that should read: "Believe in yourself, and throw the ball." I honestly can't stand quotes that tell you to "believe in yourself". It's basically suggesting that you become aware of the situation you are in and realize that you have practiced millions of hours for this one very important moment and that there's a ton of pressure to win and that if you don't win you'll probably lose a lot of things that were at stake. Yeah....great right?
In moments where your practice is being tested, I believe that not thinking about anything is the best way to go. You have to just "throw yourself". "Believe in the ball" refers to believing in the skill you've attained, but leaving it out there almost as if it wasn't a part of you. The skill is there, so believe that it's there, working somewhere deep inside you, and just let it be whatever it is. Then "throw yourself"....meaning, just mindlessly go for it. Don't even think about what you're doing. It's when you over-think things that things can get ugly.
Think of Federer when he hits a few double faults....you know he's thinking about all the things that are usually automatic during his serve the next time he's serving. His serving is suddenly awkward to him because he has to think about it, which makes his results even worse. More serves go out, and it just builds on previous doubts. And then emotions set in, like so: 
When memorizing quickly, there's no time to think. It has been said that if you are pausing to think about the images you are memorizing, then you aren't memorizing well and will most likely forget the image. Seems counter-intuitive, that if you want to memorize something you shouldn't spend more time looking at it. But yes, the less you think about it and the more you just "see" the images and move on, the better it sticks. No joke.
Anyways, just a few words of quasi-wisdom for the day. Basically, stop thinking. It's bad for things you've practiced. On a side note, can I just express my hatred for the following type of quote as well? "Tomorrow you would have wished you started Today". Hate that. I prefer "Why do today, what you can do tomorrow". I'll explain that another time.
There are very few "cool" videos out there relating to memory. Usually the show, explanation, demonstration, etc. of memory is a re-hashed version of some previous one. For once someone has done it right. In what is one of the coolest videos I've seen in a long time, check out Ben Pridmore's thought process while memorizing a deck of cards....only soundtracked by DJ Shadow and acted it in one continuously shot nightmare-ish stage show: http://vimeo.com/31908447
Had to remove my last post that had to do with a TV show I"m not supposed to mention yet, for a TV network I"m not supposed to mention yet, with a host I"m not supposed to mention yet. I"ll probably be allowed to mention it near the end of the allyslot.net year though, so I"ll re-post that blog-post then. Sorry! If any of you guys read it, try and forget it! In other news (hopefully I"m allowed to mention this), I"ll be filming with for the Martha Stewart show in January and then with ABC Nightline as well. Also I"ll be in a two-page spread in the March 2012 Nat Geo magazine. I"m also doing a shoot for Playgirl. Just kidding. Stay tuned!
So it's official. For the next year I will be working side-by-side with this awesome tech company out in Utah, Fusion IO. Ever heard of the legendary Steve Wozniak? Yeah, he's their Chief Scientist (just to give you an idea of how awesome they are).
What do they do? They create memory software and hardware for computers that is the most efficient (and badass) out there on the market. They basically have the best memory in the world. At least for computers...
Why am I working with them? It only makes sense that the best memory for computers is paired up with the best memory for the brain (mine!). The methods they use to create such efficient memory devices is pretty similar to what I use as a mental athlete to memorize things. Our goals are one in the same, to make the best use of what is available out there in order to store data. They use the latest hardware and cutting edge software technology, while I use the most effective memory techniques. We live in a world that has information flying out at us at a mile a minute. To be able to properly memorize some of things is key to being an efficient and successful human being, but for the thousands of other things we need to store, we use computers. So why not use the best memory systems out there for that? We need to store those things fast and without any problems. That is what Fusion IO can do.
What will I be doing for/with them? Numerous things. Memory seminars and workshops, helping them promote their title of having the best memory, hyping the upcoming memory championships, etc. The sky is the limit.
How can I learn more about Fusion IO? Go to their website here: http://www.fusionio.com/ and follow them on twitter at @fusionio.
(Fusion IO is working with Nelson Dellis, not Climb For Memory....as of yet anyways. While Fusion IO is not affiliated with the charity Climb For Memory, Inc., they are 100% behind it)