Art of Memory in The Age

The AoM project, which aims to determine the impact of memory training on the academic outcomes of students, recently received some great coverage in The Age by journalist Sherryn Groch. I’m extremely proud of our work so far and am excited to watch the program develop this year. I have reproduced the story in full below, although the original story can be found here: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/mnemonics-added-memory-may-power-classroom-success-20160208-gmo945.html

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Mnemonics: added memory may power classroom success

Sherryn Groch
Published: February 14, 2016 – 6:00PM

Upwey High students Aviv Dolan, centre, and Rory-Clay Edwards have improved their memories and academic performance with mnemonic techniques taught to them by their teacher Dan Mayes. Photo: Supplied

It’s 35 degrees outside but high in an RMIT University tower in Swanston Street the air is chilled to just 19 – brain temperature. Around the room, nine people sit bent over their desks. Most wear noise-cancelling headphones. No one speaks. This is the second day of the 2015 Australian Memory Championships and it’s crunch time.

In one final lightning round, the top memorisers in the country are going head to head for the tournament title – including students Rory-Clay Edwards and Aviv Dolan of Upwey High School.

They’re nervous, both newcomers to the world of memory sports, but already the pair have broken three national records between them.

A few desks away sits their teacher, Dan Mayes, another first-time competitor and head of Upwey High’s “Memory Club”. By the day’s end, he will have placed third overall in Australia – after memorising the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than three minutes.

While Mayes and his students are quick to assure they are not blessed with extraordinary abilities – no photographic memories, genius IQs or superpowers to report – they do share a secret. It was the same secret known by Aristotle in Ancient Greece and by Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages: a 2500-year-old system known as mnemonics, or the art of memory, which encodes information into the memory using visual imagery.

Today, it has survived almost exclusively as the sport of “memory athletes” but, thanks to Mayes, both Edwards and Dolan are among the first people to learn mnemonics in an Australian classroom. And now, with a world-first trial of the techniques being carried out in schools this year by tournament host and former silver medallist Daniel Kilov, they won’t be the last.

For Kilov, it began in August with teachers’ boot camp – the memory athlete was flown to Darwin to train nine handpicked educators at the invitation of occupational therapist Greg Wills.

After more than 30 years working in Australian classrooms, it had been the sight of a little girl racing off to her principal’s office in excitement that convinced Wills it was time for a revolution in education. The girl had fetal alcohol syndrome yet, using Kilov’s techniques, she had just memorised 10 words for the first time.

“She was so delighted,” Wills says. “This was a student who would forget spelling words the day after she learnt them, who was always in trouble, and three weeks later she still remembered them.”

In consultation with Kilov, Wills is co-ordinating four research projects in mnemonics across four schools in the Northern Territory.

Kilov says science shows the best learning methods are “visual, colourful and diverse”, yet students are taught with repetitive, black-and-white note-taking.

And this disconnect marred Kilov’s own path through school.  Ten years ago, the 27-year-old PhD candidate could barely remember to bring his books to class.

But, in 2011, Australian memory champion Tansel Ali took Kilov under his wing for intensive mnemonic training. Within six weeks, Kilov was competing by his side at the Australian Memory Championships.

Having funded his own successful schools program in 2014, the School Mind Games, Ali shares Kilov’s passion for “disrupting” traditional education models.

“Rote learning is brute force,” Ali says. “It’s moving information from your short-term memory to your long-term memory by repeating it over and over. But the short-term memory isn’t designed for loads of information; it’s designed so we know where we parked the car.”

By contrast, he says, mnemonics play to the brain’s strengths. Hard-to-remember information such as numbers and names can be converted into visual or spatial memories – things the brain loves to learn – by making up stories and images to go along with them.

“It’s fun,” says Monash University student Sophie Tversky. She’s just finished explaining how she remembered the name of a particular criminal case by imagining a giant chicken schnitzel holding a knife in her kitchen.

“The case was called Snatzel, which sounded like schnitzel to me,” Tversky says. “These days, I’m always giggling at my notes.”

Two years ago, Tversky trained for a month under Kilov and last year she saw her hard work pay off – sitting a gruelling open-book law exam closed book.

“My friends were giving me weird looks because I’d left my notes under the table but I could see all the material clearly.”

While Kilov and Ali are adamant anyone can learn mnemonic techniques – from law students to children with intellectual disabilities – Professor John Sutton, the world expert on the philosophy of memory at Macquarie University, is not convinced.

“I think the current challenges about memory in the classroom are not quite the ones those techniques would solve,” Sutton says. “My hunch is that they’re not as easy and workable for everybody.”

At Upwey High, Mayes, a former psychology teacher, is still regularly contacted by former students benefiting from their early memory training. But he agrees that mastering the techniques is often up to the individual.

“I teach mnemonics every week to about 20 kids,” Mayes says. “The difference with Rory and Aviv is that these guys took the system and adapted it to themselves.”

Now in year 10, Edwards and Dolan spent two semesters in “Memory Club” last year, intensifying their training before the November championship.

“We didn’t expect to break any records,” Dolan says. “Now, my dad’s telling everyone about it and I’m even teaching my big brother stuff.”

“I think I have a better memory just in general from practising it,” Edwards says.

At Munich University in Germany, memory champion and neuroscientist Dr Boris Konrad is one of the few people in the world to have put his techniques through rigorous empirical testing. He recently compared levels of improvement in memory training between those of high intelligence and those of average intelligence.

“While we did find that memory athletes all on average have high IQs, both groups improved at the same rate,” Konrad says. “So it really shows that anyone can learn it.”

Early feedback from Kilov’s Art of Memory Schools program is equally encouraging. One teacher at a Darwin primary school reported remarkable improvement in two students with “extreme emotional problems”, writing: “It’s a bit like therapy for them and also they’re learning.” Another two students moved up two reading levels after just one month.

Still, Wills knows better than anyone how hard it can be to get teachers “on board with new ideas”.

“It’s the first time this has been done so the education system is going to be wary,” he says. “We’re starting small, testing its value, and the students are loving it. If we can show they’re also learning long term, then I’m sure these techniques will be picked up.”

Kilov is also optimistic. “It’s hard to overhaul a system that’s been around since the industrial revolution,” he says. “But if you give these techniques to students, you’ll empower them to transform the stuff they’re learning into something memorable for them, without having to overhaul anything at all.”

Over in Germany, Konrad is now studying the effectiveness of mnemonic learning aids on university students. His results should line up with those from the Northern Territory program – where student post-testing is due back by the end of first term this year.

“Revolutions have a tendency to come out of nowhere, don’t they?” Kilov says. “In Darwin, we’ve got a small group of dedicated teachers who are hopefully going to be a catalyst for something bigger, a kind of groundswell.”

But, according to Sutton, the biggest spark in the mix might just be Kilov himself.

“One of the advantages of getting that knowledge out into the education system is seeing the enthusiasm someone like Daniel has,” Sutton says. “I think those children are going to benefit very much from it.”

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/mnemonics-added-memory-may-power-classroom-success-20160208-gmo945.html

An Anthropologist’s Peek into the World of Memory Athletes

Happy New Year, fellow mnemonists. I wish you all a memorable year.

I’m thrilled to be able to share this article with you. This is the first article of 2016 for DanielKilov.com AND my post by a guest author. This piece was written by my friend and research collaborator, Emily Colonna, on her experiences as an ethnographer at the 2015 Australian Memory Championships.

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By Emily Colonna

“Neurons at the ready!”

The athletes seated around the lecture room flipped over their competition papers and stared intently at them. The jovial atmosphere in which they had interacted before the competition had dissipated. Each competitor sat, poised in concentrated tension. Some with their fingertips to their temples, others with arms folded on the desk in front of them. Only the quiet rustle of competition papers disrupted the silence, although, some competitors went further to ensure it by wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

I, too, had to work to preserve the silence. Otherwise, this would be the first and last time the Australian Memory Championships would allow an anthropologist to sit in on an event. It was important that I preserve observation rights. The Championships was the perfect place to begin my academic exploration of the world of competitive memory.

The competitors at the championships were not born with super-memories. They had all trained, using a set of mnemonic techniques, to improve their memory. These techniques, known as the ‘art of memory,’ were not invented by memory athletes. In fact, they have a history of over two thousand years. Since ancient Greece, people have made use of the ‘art of memory’ to improve their memories. In each historical period, different arenas applied the art, with different goals. Ancient Greeks made use of the art in oration, to assist in the memorisation of speeches. Centuries later, early Christian monks used the memory techniques as tools of meditation and reflection. During the Renaissance, the mnemonic techniques inspired art and architecture. In each period, the application of the art reflected the values of the time.

So in our modern world, why is the current usage of the ‘art of memory’ in competition? What does it say of our culture and values that the ‘art of memory’ finds expression in competition? To explore this question, I arrived in Melbourne on the 7th and 8th of November to conduct observation and interviews with the competitors of the Australian Memory Championships.

The Australian Championships have been running since 2001. The competitive memorisers – often referred to as ‘mental athletes’ in the sports-lingo of the competition – go head-to-head in a decathlon of memory. The Ten Memory Disciplines are:

• Names and Faces
• Binary Numbers
• Random Numbers
• Abstract Images
• Speed Numbers
• Historic/Future Dates
• Random Cards
• Random Words
• Spoken Numbers
• Speed Cards

In each event, athletes have a period to memorise as much as possible of the given category. There is a short break and then a period of recall.

“Stop Memorisation”

After five minutes, memorisation time ended for the first event: Names and Faces. The competitors turned their competition papers face down and the arbiters collected them. Most athletes kept their eyes trained down. Some covered their faces with their hands, as if to hold the names and faces in their heads by physical force.

“Begin recall”

Again there was a flurry of page-flipping as the competitors opened the recall papers. The room was much less still during recall. Competitors looked around the room, tapped their fingers on the desk, shook their heads, and pulled faces. The scratching sounds of pencils on paper reverberated around the room.

Looking down at my copy of the competition papers, I baulked at the names. In earlier years, national competitions only used national names. However, with increasing emphasis on equality and with an eye to training for the World Championships, competitors now had to memorise names from all around the world. I wondered, how does one go about remembering names like Oona Bosse, Eshita Vidosic and Rakanja Ghayaza?

“Pens down”

Recall time was over. The competition papers were swiftly couriered to the Arbiter’s Room for marking.  As soon as the papers left the room, each athlete relaxed and sound bubbled up to the surface again. Competitors turned to each other and shared their struggles and triumphs. Many looked to Tansel Ali, the reigning champion, to see how he felt he went.

It was amazing to witness the competitors shift so completely between relaxed comradery and silent, isolating focus. It was like they were flipping a switch. Over the two days of the competition I saw this happen 10 times, once for each event.

The Arbiter’s room seemed an alternate universe, the flip side of the coin to the competition room. During events the arbiters joked, relaxed, and chatted. Sometimes it was reminiscent of a TAB.  Arbiters discussed the favourites, past wins, rankings, and performances. Once the competition papers arrived the noise dropped. Arbiter’s took their seats and followed the detailed set of rules for marking. They awarded points for each first or last name spelled correctly, and penalties for the repetition of names, then; they tallied the scores and entered them into the database. Results were printed and blu-tacked to the wall of the competition room. Competitors gathered around to see where their efforts placed them in the race for the title of Australian Memory Champion.

By the end of the second day, the athletes were exhausted. One man joked that he thinks these competitions make him less smart! Tired as they were, a buzz of excitement went through the room as came time to announce the final results.

Competitors clapped enthusiastically for their fellow competitors and their achievements as the scores were announced in ascending order. As it got down to the top 3, the room was tense again- would the reigning champ take out the title again? Or would international competitor Luis Angel trump him?

In third place came Daniel Mayes- high school teacher and first time competitor with a score of 1917. Only 119 points ahead, in second place, was visiting memory expert Luis Angel, from the USA. In first place Tansel Ali successfully defended his title, achieved 2198 points.

Notable also, were the records broken. The junior athletes broke a record each. Aviv Dolan broke the national Names and Faces record at 14 points. Rory-Clay Edwards broke the Random Words national record at 25 words.

With all the official proceedings finished, competitors made the final switch into relaxed comradery. Over the weekend, I had witnessed an impressive display of determination, focus and skill; yet it was the community which the competition built which was most striking to me.

The Championships had brought together people from all across the country, most of who had never met before. Veterans of the memory world, published authors, teachers, high-school students, a bank teller, and a competitive Rubik’s cuber gathered for one weekend to test their mental metal. These athletes shared not only a hobby or a set of skills. They shared a commitment to training hard, a desire to set and achieve personal goals, and a passion for improving their memory. It was these goals that made the day a win not only for Tansel, but for each competitor.

Full Results Available http://world-memory-statistics.com/competition.php?id=auomc2015

From the Archives: Daniel Kilov on Channel TEN’s The Project

Attentive readers of this blog will probably be aware that the Australian Memory Championships took place in Melbourne a week-and-a-half ago and may be wondering whether I was going to post about it here. Fear not. You will soon be able to read a full write-up of the event. In the meanwhile, you might be interested to see just how far things have come for me in the past few years. Enjoy!

From the Archives: Daniel Kilov and Tansel Ali on ABC’s HUNGRY BEAST

Many of you enjoyed my interview with Tansel Ali, the 3x Australian Memory Champion and human phone book. Did you know that Tansel and I have been good friends for many years? In fact, it was Tansel who first taught me memory techniques. Below is a clip from back when I’d only just started training with Tansel. Enjoy!

Tansel Ali: Memory champion and human phone book

This article was originally printed in Issue 417 (May/June) of the Australian Mensa magazine, TableAus.

Tansel Ali is Australia’s most successful memory athlete. He is three-time Australian memory champion and holds a handful of Australian records. He is also the author of The Yellow Elephant and is famous for having memorised 2 Yellow Pages phone books in only 24 days. His work has been featured on a variety of media including the award-winning ABC TV documentary ‘Redesign My Brain’ with Todd Sampson. Tansel is also a dear friend and coach – It was he who first taught me the techniques I used in the 2011 Australian Memory Championships. I caught up with him recently at the Creativity and Innovation Conference in Melbourne and scheduled an interview. Fortunately, we remembered.

Daniel Kilov: Aside from being the 3x Australian Memory Champion, you are probably best known for memorizing the entire Sydney Yellow Pages in only three weeks. How did this opportunity come about? How did you learn such a huge volume in such a short time?

Tansel Ali: A PR company contacted me wanting me to memorise the Yellow Pages as marketing for their display advertising. Initially I thought it was a crazy idea, however after some basic calculations I decided I could be up for the challenge. Once I accepted to do the memory feat I was informed that I only had 24 days to memorise everything. After 24 days I was flown to Sydney and tested at a large convention as well as several live TV and radio interviews. In order to learn such a huge volume in the time that I had, I had to develop a thorough plan and analysis of the feat. This included finding out how many ads to memorise, which techniques to use, duration of memorisation, the number of times for review, recall period, as well as the type of sacrifices I had to make like taking time off work, finding quiet memorisation spots, and so on. Once the plan was developed then I had to make sure I executed it accordingly.

Daniel Kilov: The title of your first book on memory, The Yellow Elephant is definitely evocative of the Yellow Pages. Is there a link there?

Tansel Ali: The yellow represents the yellow from the Yellow Pages and elephant symbolising memory. It is also the term I used to form my own memory concept, which is to take abstract data and encode it into meaningful information. By naming something that is visual, it helps the person remember the book title, rather than a bunch of words that may not make sense. It is very much like an icon. As they say, a picture is a thousand words.

Daniel Kilov: You’ve been involved in competitive memory sports for over ten years now. What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the sport?

Tansel Ali: There are many more people around the world that are involved in memory sports today, and it is much more competitive. When I first started, the world championships used to have 20 odd competitors. Last year saw 169 compete in China. Records have been consistently broken and it is a lot tougher to crack the top 20 than ever before. The interest has definitely grown over the years and it will only be a matter of time until we have full-time memory athletes vying for prestigious titles and huge prize money. Not only are we seeing a growth in memory competitors, but also memory coaches training the next lot of superstars. I still find it very interesting what the human mind can do and believe we still haven’t reached anywhere near our capability in memory competitions.

Daniel Kilov: What’s been the most memorable experience of either the Australian or World Memory Championships for you?

Tansel Ali: I’ve been fortunate to have competed in a number of Australian and World memory championships since 2002. The first ever memory championship will stand in my mind the most. My friend Metin and I were so excited about our new discovery and we would train until 4am at his place, often not really remembering much and mucking around most of the time. Come competition time, we ended up breaking a number of memory records together and coming second and third in Australia. My first world memory championships were in Malaysia in 2003. Training once again with Metin we both ventured into Kuala Lumpur for the first time and had an unbelievable experience. We met our memory heroes and hung out until very late with the world’s best memorisers. I went for the experience, however found myself in 13^th position overall having broken 5 Australian memory records for a total of 6.

Daniel Kilov: You’ve recently begun exploring all kinds of new uses for memory techniques outside of the competition room. What are the most surprising and successful uses you’ve found for your memory techniques?

Tansel Ali: Memory techniques are extremely versatile. The more you delve into it, the more you learn from it, the more you can play with it to suit your lifestyle. Initially my interest was using memory for enhancing learning. Speed reading, which is also in the class of memory techniques, was a revelation for me as I was never a big reader and it gave me the confidence and ability to read like I’ve never been able to before. As I read more, I discovered that memorisation is a type of narrative visualisation. You make up stories with your imagination. The same can be used for meditation. Hence, memorisation can be used as a meditative tool. I’ve used it to manage extreme pain and things like stress. If you can visualise well and have a great imagination, then I believe you can untap amazing potential in yourself, and others as well. Getting your own visualisation out externally into the real world can also be called a ‘vision’. If you are good at memory, then you will have the ability to understand how to communicate better with others and relay your vision. Hence, memory is a great leadership skill to have.

Daniel Kilov: In line with your call for memory techniques to be put to practical uses you’ve recently masterminded and run the first School Mind Games event. Could you tell us a little about what this event involved? What are your plans for this event?

Tansel Ali: Usually when seminars and training are run in schools, it’s great on the day. However as time passes, usually the next day, students and teachers have forgotten the skills and generally go back to their usual ways of learning. I wanted to create something that engaged the students’ new skills throughout the year. I wanted students to not just learn memory skills, but apply them regularly so that it became strong studying habits. Along with the help of a young leader Raquel Woods, we spent almost a year planning and preparing our event. We trained three schools in memory, speed reading and Mind Mapping skills. By the end of the year, these students came together in the school mind games event and competed in the three skills they were taught. The first was to speed read a 200-page book, which they all did collectively in 15 minutes. They then created a large Mind Map on a wall of the whole book and presented that back with great detail. And finally, memorise your 11 minute TEDxManly talk almost word-for-word. It was an incredible display by everyday students. The event proved that grades do not matter and that anyone can utilise the skills and perform exceptionally. There are plans to make it even bigger this year with more schools competing. I’m looking forward to it.

From the archives: Power of the mind shines through with Daniel Kilov

Note: This article was written by Robert Kennard and was first printed in the Daily Telegraph on December 07, 2012 here. We’ve come a long way since then. We are only 14 days into 2015 and this blog has already had more views than it did in all of 2011.

MARSFIELD’S master of memory, Daniel Kilov, has broken his own record of remembering a sequence of abstract images.

Battling the minds of memory gurus from Australia, the Philippines, Japan and Hong Kong, the 24-year- old from Macquarie University memorised the sequence of 115 abstract images, topping the record of 99 he set last year.

Mr Kilov also was placed second overall at the Australian Memory Championships, which includes 10 events, from memorising shuffled decks of cards to dates, names and faces, the Northern District Times reports.

Although under pressure in his first four events after some serious errors, Mr Kilov said he focused his mind to snatch the runner-up position.

“It all came down to the last event and was very exciting and dramatic,” he said. “I am already ready to jump back in the ring and aim for the title next year.”

Convenor of the Australian Memory Championship Jennifer Goddard said that memory training is not just for mental athletes but for all Australians.

“Just as it is for our memory athletes, it’s important for everyday Aussies to ensure they have the right mix of lifestyle factors to help support brain and memory health,” she said.

The Australian Memory Championship is an event designed to showcase brain power, provide a creative outlet for memory-based activity, and offer a competitive environment for those wanting to put their memory skills to the test.

The Secrets of Memory Athletes

This article was originally posted at the HAPPY + WELL blog here.

In just over a week from now, over a hundred men and women from more than 30 different countries will converge on Hainan, China, for three days of intense competition. As much as any athlete, these competitors embody the Olympic motto of Citius, Altius, Fortius. Faster, Higher, Stronger. This, however, is a competition of a very different sort. These athletes will be competing in the World Memory Championships.

Competitors at the World Memory Championships can perform incredible feats of mental gymnastics. For instance, the world record for memorising a shuffled deck of cards is a mere 21.9 seconds. The world record for binary digits is 1080 binary digits memorised, without a single error, in five minutes. These achievements are, of course, astonishing but they are not the most remarkable thing about these mental athletes. Rather, what is most remarkable about the participants in the World Memory Championship is that there is actually nothing particularly special about them at all! By this, I mean that memory athletes are not savants and were not born with super powers. Rather, they all know and use a small set of ancient mnemonic techniques, known collectively as the Art of Memory. With a little bit of practice, anyone can learn to think and remember like a memory athlete.

In this post, the first of a three part series, I’m going to uncover the secrets of these mnemonic wizards. In part two, I’ll demonstrate how their methods and techniques could revolutionise our classrooms and in part three, I’ll explain how these ancient techniques could catalyse innovation and success in a corporate and business setting.

The memory championships were established in 1991 by Tony Buzan (also known as the creator of ‘mind-maps’ and a presenter at Mind & Its Potential 2011) as a way of promoting the techniques of the Art of Memory. The techniques themselves, however, predate the sport of competitive memorising by more than 2000 years. The techniques used by modern memory athletes originated over 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece. These techniques were almost universally practiced by the thinkers of the ancient world who believed that mnemonic training was essential to the cultivation of one’s memory, focus and creativity.

So how then, do these techniques work? Although memory athletes employ a wide range of different strategies in competition, they all involve the same three steps. The first step is to be mindfully aware of whatever it is that you are trying to learn; the second step is to create a visual, mental image of whatever you are trying to remember; the third step is to organise it in a way that makes it easy to recall later.

Without cheating, try answering the following question: on the one dollar coin, which way does the queen’s head face? How did you go? If you got it right, were you sure, or did you have to guess? Even though hundreds of coins pass right under our noses (and through our fingers) each month, and have done for many years, because we have never really made ourselves aware of the direction the queen is facing, most of us do not know. You cannot remember something you never knew in the first place, so the first step to remembering is being mindfully aware. And for the record, she faces to the right. As Sherlock Holmes, who in the stories was gifted with a phenomenal memory, put it, most of the time, “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”

The next two steps, those of visual encoding and organisation, go hand in hand. We all have naturally fantastic memories for certain tasks; no one, for instance, after being given the ‘grand’ tour of a friend’s house then has to sit down with a blueprint to learn the layout by rote. A few minutes of wandering around and we can mentally navigate the house without any difficulty. Our brains are primed for this kind of learning. Thus, the key to memorising is to encode information with which we normally struggle into a more ‘brain friendly’ form.  An easy way to do this is to visualise a story involving the things you want to remember. The more energetic and vivid the mental images are, the more effectively they will stick.

All of us could stand to improve our memories; whether we are looking to pick up a new language in months instead of years (like Bruce Balmer, a competitor from the first world memory championships who learnt 2000 foreign words in 18 hours); to cram for an exam (I would memorise weeks’ worth of notes in the hours preceding my undergraduate exams); or just to remember a shopping list. The techniques of the memory athletes offer us a way to do exactly that.

Daniel Kilov, a presenter at Mind & Its Potential 2013, is a Memory Athlete. He was the silver medallist at the 2011 and 2012 Australian Memory Championships and holds a national record for memorising abstract images. Daniel is also currently completing a PhD in philosophy at ANU and working as a memory coach and consultant.

ABC Radio Interview

ABC Radio Interview

Follow the link above to hear my interview with the ABC.

From the ABC website:

Daniel Kilov had a hopeless memory as a school kid. Nowadays, he’s a mental athlete and can lay claim to having the second-best memory in Australia (behind his own mentor, Tansel Ali). Daniel shared a handful of simple techniques with Louise Maher on 666 Drive, which can mould any scatter-brain into a memory and learning machine.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/08/30/3579374.htm

It’s all in your mind…

This article was originally printed in Issue 396 (Nov/Dec 2011) of the Australian Mensa magazine, TableAus.

I waited for the other athletes to take up their positions around the competition area. Months of preparation had led me to this moment.  I’d been told that training is nothing like the real thing, that you always do worse in competition and that you can only prepare so much. Already, I felt that maybe they had a point.

I took up a spot beside one of the other competitors. He was sharply dressed and had flown in from Hong Kong to compete – a real professional. My stomach flipped and I turned my focus to my breathing in order to calm the butterflies in my belly. The chief arbiter ran through the rules but I barely heard her, focusing my mind on the task ahead.

‘Ok Dan.’ I urged myself, ‘This is what we’ve been training for. Its GO time.’

“Neurons at the ready…” the arbiter called out. “Go!”

I heard the clicking of stopwatches and for a moment, I froze.

‘Oh no.’ I screamed at myself. ‘Go go go!’

That helped.

I dashed past my mailbox and through my front door, dropping to a roll to avoid a sumo wrestler’s swan dive into a giant dish of noodles. I continued down the hall and grabbed hold of the bannister, using it to slingshot my run up the stairs. I dodged the Pineapple juggling panda-bear on the landing and paused for a moment at the top of the stairs to let a steam engine make its way down my hall and curve on its tracks into my bedroom. Turning the corner I headed down the hall, taking note of the gecko swimming in a tub of custard in my bathroom

Anybody watching me however, would only have seen me sitting quietly at a desk, shuffling through a deck of cards. This was the Australian Memory Championships, where Australia’s best memorizers meet to compete in a battle of the mind. Events involve memorizing, among other things, strings of random digits, decks of shuffled cards, names and faces and lists of random words.

In my mind I was running through a madhouse which represents one of the great secrets of memory athletes and allowed me to memorize the order of my deck of cards in just under five minutes. I was employing a technique known to mnemonists as ‘the method of loci’.

This technique originated in the fifth century B.C. and was invented by a famous Greek poet, Simonides of Ceos. The poet was invited to recite a poem in honor of his host, a nobleman of Thessaly. During the recital, Simonides sang praise to twin gods Castor and Pollux, which displeased his patron. When the performance was complete, the nobleman told Simonides that he would only pay him half of the agreed fee, and that he would have to get the balance of the payment from the two gods he had mentioned.

A short time later, Simonides was told that two horsemen were waiting for him outside. Simonides hurried out, as horsemen are the symbol of Castor and Pollux and the poet knew an omen when he saw one.

Just as he got outside, the banquet hall collapsed, crushing everyone within. The bodies were severely disfigured and very few could be identified for proper burial, until Simonides realized that by closing his eyes and visualizing himself traveling around the hall, he could recall the exact location where every guest had been seated.

From this experience, Simonides realized that if he wanted to remember something, he simply had to visualize himself walking through a well-known location and form creative associations between the item in question and a memorable feature of that locus. Recalling the items is achieved by simply walking back through the locus at a later date and noting what was there.

This technique is remarkably effective and can only really be appreciated through experience. Simply visualize a journey through your house, and as you come to each room, place one of the following items there in your mind:

Shoe Cat Skull Tree Moon Beehive Guitar Hourglass Kettle

Once you are satisfied that your visual images are strong enough (Hint: use crazy and colorful images), cover the list and see if you can recall the items – backwards! If you can memorize 9 items in this manner, you can memorize nine hundred, provided you take a long enough mental journey.

Memorizing a deck of cards with this method involves assigning an image to each card and then placing those images along one’s mental journey.

Today, this technique is used by memory athletes all over the world to memorize information at exceptionally high speeds. I myself used this technique to memorize two hundred digits in fifteen minutes at the Australian memory championships where I managed to secure second place behind my coach and reigning Australian champion, Tansel Ali. I also broke the Australian record for the abstract images event and am the official holder of that record, after memorizing the order of 99 abstract shapes.

When I first learned about memory sports I had no intention of becoming an athlete. I was, however, interested in improving my memory for study and sought out Tansel, who once memorized the entire Sydney Yellow Pages in only 24 days. He agreed to help me train my memory, but suggested that my goal of improving my memory would be well served if I agreed to train towards competing in the Australian memory championships later in the year. Competition after all, offers great incentive to improve. Who is likely to be better in his chosen domain? A man who enjoys going for a jog ‘round the park each morning, or an Olympic athlete, training to be the best in the world? I believe Tansel was right, but I now also believe that we are all mental athletes; in a competitive world, we all need to be able to remember more, learn faster and be more creative and focused. In this sense, the techniques used by memory athletes are of great use to us all.

Australian Open Memory Championship 2011 Results

This weekend past I participated in the Australian Open Memory Championships. I managed to secure second place behind my coach and reigning Australian champion, Tansel Ali, and third place in the open division.

I broke the Australian record for the abstract images event and am the official holder of that record, after memorizing the order of 99 abstract shapes.

I was also very pleased with my results in the numbers events, memorizing 200 digits in 15 minutes, and 99 digits in speed numbers (five minutes).

Most importantly, I learnt a lot and made some new friends! It was an extremely satisfying first competition.

Daniel.Kilov@gmail.com