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In 2005, journalist Joshua Foer attended the US Memory Championships and became interested in memory. Over the next year, he interviewed mnemonists (master memorizers), researchers, and scientists; researched the history of memory; and trained with a grand master of memory, learning enough mnemonic techniques to win the US Memory Championships the following year.

Moonwalking with Einstein (the title is a mnemonic) is a record of everything Josh learned during his year of exploring memory. Most notably, he learned that a good memory isn’t an inherent talent—anyone can improve their memory if they employ the right techniques.

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Writing and book-making improved over the centuries. The parchment codex (a bound book) replaced scrolls and punctuation evolved. A notable book on the memory arts was written sometime between 86-82 BC, the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Mnemonists still refer to this book today.

The game-changer for the utility of books as external memory aids was the index. In the 13th century AD, the first index-like structure appeared, the concordance of the Bible. A concordance is a list of words and phrases with a locator that tells you where in a work they appear. Using a concordance, for the first time, you could find a specific piece of information without already knowing the organization of the work.

Around 1440, the printing press appeared. Now, books were easier to make and reproduce, and they became affordable. Interestingly, memory techniques experienced a renaissance even though they were less necessary than ever. Giulio Camillo tried to build a “Theater of Memory,” a building that would house every piece of knowledge in the universe, and Giordano Bruno built a device that would let him turn a word into an image (it worked a bit like a cipher wheel).

From the nineteenth century on, however, memory became less important to the general public. Memory techniques are no longer taught in school, and a good memory is impressive, but more of a party trick than a virtue. These days, most of us rely on external memories such as calendars and phones to remember things for us.

Memory and Education

In the 5th century BC, the memory arts were part of a classical education. Today, rote memorization is seen as unnecessary and even bad for the mind. What happened?

Initially, schools based the educational system on the military, which was all about rote memorization. Educators used to think memorization was good for the brain because regardless of what students were memorizing, they were training their minds.

Over the years, however, there were many critics of the rote memorization approach and progressional education reform changed the system. School became more about experiences and focused on teaching skills such as logic and creativity rather than straight facts.

There are critics of this new approach too. 66% of American 17-year-olds don’t know when the civil war took place and can’t even guess within 50 years. Tony Buzan, a well-known mnemonist, has tried to get memory techniques back into the classroom. (He’s been less successful at this than he has at selling self-help books.)

As we learned above, memory is related to intelligence and expertise—the more associations we already have in our brains, the more new information has to stick to. As a result, it is easier to educate ourselves when we have an initial network of facts to connect new information to. Some educators believe that rote memorization should still be part of the curriculum.

Memory Techniques

The goal of memory techniques is to transform information into a format the brain is naturally good at understanding—meaningful images and places. To do this, you’ll use the method of loci, which is the foundation for the memory techniques that follow.

The method of loci involves placing images of whatever you need to remember inside a “memory palace,” which is a memory of a real place you know very well, such as your childhood home. For example, if your shopping list contains blueberries, crackers, cereal, and beer and you wanted to memorize this shopping list, you might mentally place the blueberries in the mailbox at the end of your driveway, the crackers on the front lawn, the cereal in front of the front door, and the beer on the entranceway mat. When you need to remember the list, you simply mentally tour your memory palace and look for the objects you left in significant locations.

Some things you need to remember might not lend themselves well to imagery. There are some more structured techniques for remembering cards, numbers, and words below, but in general, you can transform abstract things to remember into images using creativity. You’ll remember images best if you can harness the brain’s natural strengths and interests. Try to make images:

  • Novel. If you’ve seen something before, you’re less likely to remember a specific instance of it.
    • For example, if you need to remember to charge your phone, imagine your phone and charger having a silly conversation.
  • Lewd or funny. The brain is naturally interested in both of these things.
    • For example, if you need to remember to go to the bank, imagine a bunch of nude bank robbers.
  • Multisensory. The more cues you can create for a memory, the easier it will be to recall it.
    • For example, if you need to remember to pick up horseradish, imagine the smell, taste, and texture of it as well as the visual image.
  • Personal. You’ll remember things better if they relate to what’s already in your head because they have a web to fit into.
    • For example, if you’re interested in military history, use tanks and planes in your images.

In addition to the method of loci, there are five additional memory techniques. You can combine any of them with the method of loci—once you’ve used the technique to transform information into an image or more memorable form, you can store it in your memory palace.

Punning

To use punning, change an abstract word into a concrete word by using rhymes or puns. You can also employ alliteration or repetition. For example, if you need to remember the title of the book The Joy of Cooking, you might picture a boy who’s good-looking.

Punning can also be used to memorize word-for-word. For example, mental athletes assign images to words like “and” and “the” and then picture a string of images to remember the exact words. One German mnemonist remembers the word “and” by picturing a circle because the German word for round, “rund,” rhymes with “and.”

Baker/baker Paradox

The Baker/baker paradox is a phenomenon you can manipulate to help yourself remember names. If you’re shown a picture of a person and told her last name is Baker, you won’t remember “baker” as well as if you’re told she is a baker. This is because “Baker,” as a name, is an abstract concept without much to associate with it. As a profession, however, “baker” is associated with things like flour, the smell of cookies, the heat of an oven, and so on.

To remember people’s names, create an image that combines what they look like with a visual of something that will cue a memory of their name. For example, the name Joshua Foer could be remembered by imaging Joshua (he looks like this) joshing you so hard you break into four pieces.

“Method Acting”

This is a method of memorizing word-for-word that’s similar to method acting. To use this method, break sections of a text into small chunks and assign them emotions rather than images.

Chunking

Your working memory can only hold five to nine pieces of information at once, so if you need to remember something like a 16-digit credit card number, it’s a tall order. Chunking is a method of breaking and combining individual things into meaningful groups so that you have fewer things to remember.

For example, if you had to remember the letters ONCEUPONATIME, that’s 13 individual letters, more than your working memory can handle. However, if you group those letters into four words, ONCE UPON A TIME, then you only have to remember four things instead of 13.

The Major System

The major system is a method of converting numbers into sounds, then into words, then into images. You can use it to memorize any string of numbers, such as your SSN or phone numbers. Here’s how it works:

  1. Memorize the digit-to-letter conversions:
    • 0=S
    • 1=T/D
    • 2=N
    • 3=M
    • 4=R
    • 5=L
    • 6=Sh/Ch
    • 7=K/G
    • 8=F/V
    • 9=P/B
  2. Convert your number into letters. For example, the number 43 would be RM.
  3. Add vowels to the letters to make a word. For example, RM could become “rim.”
  4. Create an image associated with the word. For example, you could picture the edge of a cup for “rim.”
  5. Place the image in your memory palace.

The Person-Action-Object (PAO) System

The person-action-object system is a method for remembering the order of numbers or cards. This method is used primarily by mental athletes who have to memorize hundreds of digits—if you’re just memorizing everyday numbers such as phone numbers, the major system will likely serve your purposes.

Here’s how the PAO works for numbers:

  1. Come up with 100 sentences that involve a different person acting on a different object.
  2. Assign each sentence to each two-digit number between 00 and 99.
    • Example #1: 45 is Albert Einstein brushing his hair
    • Example #2: 78 is Michael Jackson moonwalking a stage.
    • Example #3: 89 is Mr. Dressup opening the tickle trunk.
  3. When presented with a number to memorize, break it into six-digit chunks.
    • For example, 457889894578 becomes 457889 and 894578.
  4. Combine the person from the first two digits with the action from the second two digits with the object from the last digits and create a new image.
    • Example #1: 457889 is Einstein moonwalking on the tickle trunk.
    • Example #2: 894578 is Mr. Dressup brushing a stage.
  5. Place the images in your memory palace.

Here’s how it works for cards:

  1. Create 52 person-action-object sentences.
  2. Attach one to each card.
  3. When presented with a deck of cards to memorize, break it into groups of three cards.
  4. Combine the person of the first card with the action of the second card and the object of the third. Do the same for each group of three cards.
  5. Place the resulting images in your memory palace.

Competitive mnemonists are always refining this method and some have even gone beyond creating images for two-digit numbers or single cards, instead coming up with images for every three-digit number or two-card combination.

The 2006 US Memory Championships

After a year of working with Ed Cooke and learning about memory, Josh competed in the US Memory Championships. The qualifying events include memorizing:

  • As many names of people featured in headshots as possible in fifteen minutes (up to 198 names)
  • As many random digits as possible in five minutes (up to 1,000 digits)
  • The order of a deck of cards as fast as possible (at the time, the US record was 1 minute, 56 seconds)
  • As many lines of a poem as possible in 15 minutes (up to 50 lines)

Josh did very well in speed cards—he used an advanced version of the PAO system that allowed him to beat the US record and advance to the finals.

The finals were three elimination-style events that included memorizing a list of random words, facts about strangers, and the order of two decks of cards. Josh got lucky in the facts-about-strangers event—he didn’t get asked about anything he’d forgotten—and advanced to the final event, which was memorizing the order of two decks of cards. At this point, only he and the defending US champion were left. Josh’s strength was cards, which were his opponent’s weakness, and Josh won.

As the US champion, Josh went on to compete in the World Memory Championships, which are much more competitive than the US event, and he finished 13th. After reflecting on the past year, he decided not to continue with the sport and to keep using external memory aids like notes and a Dictaphone. The memory techniques absolutely work—Josh had personally used them to memorize a deck of cards in less than two minutes—but he found external memory aids more helpful. Ultimately, the most poignant thing Josh learned about memory is that it makes us who we are—every new thing we encounter is influenced by the web of associations already in our brains.

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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction

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  • Part 1 covers the science and history of memory—what memory is, how it works, how it relates to other mental faculties, and how it’s treated in the educational system.
  • Part 2 covers the memory techniques that Josh learned in order to compete as a mental athlete. Some of these techniques have everyday applications.
  • Part 3 covers some notable characters in the memory community and profiles savants such as Kim Peek (“Rain Man”) and Daniel Tammet (featured in the film Brainman).
  • Part 4 describes Josh’s experience training to become a mental athlete and competing in the 2006 US Memory Championship.
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PDF Summary Part 1: The Science of Memory | Chapter 1: What Is Memory?

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  • Medial temporal lobe. This contains the hippocampus and is involved with long-term memory.
  • Basil ganglia. This is involved in learning habits.
  • Cerebellum. This is involved in learning motor skills.
  • Frontal and parietal cortices. These are involved with recalling long-term memories.

When we use our brains, they physically change—we can form new neurons and rearrange connections. This is known as neuroplasticity. For example, neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire studied the brains of London cabbies-in-training. She found that their right posterior hippocampi (responsible for spatial navigation) were 7% larger than the average person’s because they spent so much time memorizing the layout of the city.

Types of Memory

There are several different classifications and types of memory, some related to specific parts of the brain.

Declarative vs. Nondeclarative Memories

There are two different types of individual memories:

  • Declarative. Declarative memories are conscious memories—things you know you know, such as what your name is. The hippocampus is involved in forming these types of memories. They’re further divided into two...
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PDF Summary Chapter 2: Memory and Other Mental Faculties

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The less experienced officers let the man walk into the school because they didn’t have the context to interpret the man’s actions.

Example #2: Chess

Historically, chess has been a test of intellect—you have to be smart to plan moves many turns in advance and predict your opponent’s behavior. However, when Russian scientists tested chess players’ perception and cognition in the 1920s, the chess players didn’t do any better than the average person.

Adriaan de Groot also looked at chess players in the 1940s. De Groot set up boards in a way that there was an objectively correct but not clearly visible move. He gave the boards to masters and asked them to think aloud. He learned, to his surprise, that chess masters don’t analyze the board or plan moves, they just instinctively see the ideal move right away, usually within five seconds.

Further studies of master chess players, such as where they focus their eyes on the board or what parts of the brain they use, revealed that they chunk the board. To make moves, masters recognized configurations that they’d seen before and knew the outcomes of. Researchers concluded that **the best indicator of skill at chess is...

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PDF Summary Chapter 3: Forgetting

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Childhood Memories

As adults, most of us can’t remember anything that happened before we were three or four, even though everything we encounter is novel at that age and we’re learning faster than we ever will again. There are likely a few reasons for this:

  • In the first few years of our lives, our brains are still developing. In particular, the neocortex (where we store memories) takes years to fully develop.
  • Our web of associations is small because we haven’t experienced much yet and we don’t have much language. New perceptions don’t have much to stick to.
  • We don’t start making permanent memories until we’re around age three or four.
  • Most of our early learning is nondeclarative.

We change so much as we grow that sometimes it's as if we’re two different people, but the thing that links the different versions of ourselves is memory.

Amnesia

“Amnesia” refers to memory loss. Because memories are stored in a different part of the brain from where they’re created, there are two different types of amnesia:

  • Anteretrograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories.
  • Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember old...
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PDF Summary Chapter 4: A History of Memory

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Writing first started to appear in 5th Century BC, but reading and writing still required heavy use of memory. Greek texts were written on scrolls that could be up to sixty feet long. The text was written in scripto continua, which means that there were no spaces, punctuation, or lowercase letters. When text broke across a line, there was no hyphen—it just ran on. It looked something like this: THISISREALLYREALLYHARDTOREADREADINGWASADIFFERENTBEASTINFIFTHCENTURYBC

As a result, the easiest way to parse scripto continua was to read it aloud, and to do that fluently, you had to have some idea in advance of what it said—you had to have previously read it and remembered it. (In fact, Scripto continua is a lot like speech. Speech doesn’t use spaces—when we’re talking, we don’t differentiate between words. This is why it’s hard for computers to recognize speech.)

Additionally, if you didn’t already know a text, you had to read a scroll from beginning to end to learn from it. There were no navigational aids such as chapter divisions or indexes. **You couldn’t find a particular piece of information in the middle without reading the whole thing unless you already knew...

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PDF Summary Chapter 5: Memory in the Educational System

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Memory techniques are sometimes criticized because they take information out of context. For example, one teacher helped his students remember the differences between Lenin and Stalin’s economic systems by telling them to picture a constipated Lenin on the toilet. (He was constipated because of his mixed economy.) Stalin shows up and asks what’s going on, and Lenin responds, “Bread, peace, and land.” The image is memorable, but it doesn’t result in an understanding of economics.

Eventually, progressive education reform changed the school system. Over the last century, educators:

  • Decided memorization is not only useless but actually bad for the brain
  • Changed their focus from teaching raw content to teaching thinking, creativity, and reasoning
  • Almost completely removed rote memorization from the curriculum
  • Made school more interesting and pleasant

There are critics of this approach, too:

  • E.D. Hirsh Jr. warns that students aren’t learning enough information to come out of high school with any cultural literacy. 66% of American seventeen-year-olds don’t know when the Civil War took place. Hirsch wants to reintroduce facts to the curriculum.
  • Tony...
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PDF Summary Part 2: The Arts of Memory | Chapter 6: The Basics of Memory Techniques

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*   For example, if the first thing on your to-do list is to buy garlic, put the garlic in your mailbox (or at the first thing you encounter when you approach your house). Imagine how it smells and tastes. Not only will a visual remind you of the garlic, but a smell or taste might also cue the memory.
  • Funny or lewd. The human brain evolved to find humor and sex interesting.
    • For example, if the second thing on your shopping list is orange juice, put a vat of orange juice in front of your front door and imagine Brad Pitt skinny-dipping in it.
  • Novel. When you have a lot of memories of something, such as cereal, your brain files the latest instance into “another memory of cereal.” The latest memory blends in with all the other times you’ve encountered cereal. You can make this memory of cereal distinct by making it very pretty or ugly, supernatural, or anthropomorphizing or animating it.
    • For example, if the third thing on your shopping list is cereal, imagine that your Rice Krispies are all spies communicating via the snap, crackle, and pop of Morse code. You’ve never before encountered cereal spies, so this memory won’t have to compete with any...
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PDF Summary Chapter 7: Memorizing Words

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The Methodical Method

The Ad Herennium recommends memorizing poetry word-for-word by repeating a line a couple of times and then trying to transform it into images. How do you transform a word like “and” into an image? There are a few options:

  • Create a visual dictionary. Assign images to abstract words, and then whenever you come across the word, you have an instant substitution.
  • Punning. It’s going to be easier to remember which images correspond to which words if you connect them somehow. One way to do this is punning, which is when you use a similar-sounding word in place of the actual word.
    • For example, Gunther, a German memorizer, visualizes the word “and” as a circle, because “and” rhymes with “rund,” which means round in German.
  • Memoria sillabarum. At its most extreme, you can assign images to syllables and then break words into syllables. Choose a concrete word that starts with the syllable as an image. This creates a sort of rebus puzzle.
    • For example, mathematician and theologian Thomas Bradwardine assigned the image of an abbot to the syllable “ab-” and a crossbowman (balistarius) to the syllable “ba-.” To...
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PDF Summary Chapter 8: Memorizing Numbers and Cards

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  • Come up with an image of a person acting on an object for every whole number between 00 and 99. You can use whatever images are memorable to you, though mnemonists suggest not including your family members if your actions are especially lewd, because you’ll have to picture the images.
    • Example #1: 45 is Tiger Woods putting a golf ball.
    • Example #2: 78 is Brittney Spears singing into a microphone.
    • Example #3: 89 is the queen of England scratching her armpit.
  • Chunk long numbers into six-digit groups.
    • For example, if you had to memorize a 12-digit number such as 457889897845, you’d break it into two groups, 457889 and 897845.
  • Combine the person from the first two digits with the action from the second two digits and the object from the last two digits.
    • For example, 457889 is Tiger Woods (45’s person) singing (78’s action) into an armpit (89’s object); 894578 is the queen of England putting a microphone. Instead of remembering the 12 digits, all you have to remember is the two images.
  • Place each image in your memory palace. The best mnemonists place multiple images in a single location.
    • For example,...
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PDF Summary Part 3: Notable Savants and Mnemonists | Chapter 9: Savants

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Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) allows some experimentation in this area. TMS uses magnetic fields to temporarily shut off parts of the brain. Neuroscientist Allan Snyder has used TMS to temporarily shut off people’s left brains, and while partly shut down, people exhibit some savant-like behavior such as estimating the number of dots on a screen or drawing pictures from memory with more accuracy than they normally can.

(Laurence) Kim Peek (“Rain Man”)

The inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man, Kim is a prodigious savant with an amazing memory. He claims to have read 9,000 books, spending only ten seconds per page, and can regurgitate all the information. (The author suspects this is hyperbole.) His caregiver says he never forgets anything.

When Kim was born, his head was a third larger than normal and had a blister. Kim didn’t learn to walk until he was four and until he was fourteen, he was on sedatives. Once he got off the sedatives, he became interested in books. Though he’s very well-read, he doesn’t seem to be able to use the information he reads about, only recall it. His IQ is 87 and his social skills are...

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PDF Summary Chapter 10: Mnemonists

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Buzan learned memory techniques and then worked as a substitute teacher and taught them to students. He came up with a particular method of note-taking called a Mind Map, which is a bit of an on-paper memory palace. A Mind Map involves drawing lines between main and subsidiary points and using lines, color, and images to connect things. Scientists at the University of London studied Mind Maps and found that they resulted in about a 10% increase in retention than mainstream note-taking techniques.

Buzan now makes his living selling books about memory. He’s been more successful selling books than he has getting his techniques into the curriculum.

Buzan started the World Memory Championship in 1991.

Ed Cooke

Ed Cooke is a British mental athlete and a grand master of memory. (To be a grand master, you have to be able to memorize 1,000 random digits in less than an hour, the order of ten shuffled decks of cards in less than an hour, and the order of one deck in less than two minutes.)

Ed was the author’s memory technique coach. He finished in eleventh at the 2005 World Memory Championship after flubbing the speed card event.

Ben Pridmore

Ben Pridmore competes...

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PDF Summary Part 4: Josh’s Story | Chapter 11: A Year of Learning About Memory

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The World Memory Championship takes place over three days, and there are ten events, including memorizing lists of words, numbers, decks of cards, dates, faces, and names. Some of the events have a time component—how much can competitors memorize in five minutes or an hour?

Everyone dreads the poem-memorizing event, in which you have to memorize—down to the punctuation and capitalization—as many lines of an unpublished poem as possible in fifteen minutes. Then, you have half an hour to write down what you’ve memorized. People had lobbied to get rid of this event, but historically, poetry was viewed as humanizing and creative, and the art of memorization started with poetry. Ted Hughes wrote the poem for the competition for many years, but Buzan took over after Hughes’s death.

The international competitors were much more serious than those at the US championship. The US competitors talked to each other before events, while the Europeans ignored each other or juggled to warm up their minds. The World Championship records were also far more impressive than the US ones. **Americans are like the Jamaican bobsled team of the memory community—friendly and cheerful, but lagging...

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