- Hey guys, in this video,
I wanna talk about what is it like
to memorize a massive memory project.
When I set the record for the fastest
to memorize a deck of cards in the United States.
I picked up the cards,
I looked through them in a minute and 27 seconds,
and then I reassembled a second deck to match that deck.
That's all done really fast and it's speed memory.
There's a different type though.
There's these huge memory projects.
What's it like to do one of those?
What about the project
where I memorized 7,000 words in sequence?
There's 2,400 members of the United States military
who died in the war in Afghanistan.
I memorized all 2,400, their rank, their first name
and their last name.
It's 7,000 words.
It takes me 11 hours
to write out all those words from memory.
I've memorized the United States constitution, 4,543 words.
It takes me six hours to write out that from memory.
But what's the thought process?
What is it like?
When I'm in the middle of these massive memory projects,
what's going on in my mind?
What's my attitude and what is the experience itself like?
Number one, nothing else can matter.
Nothing else can matter.
When you're in the middle
of a massive memory project like this,
it has to be your priority.
In 2012, when I started memorizing all the soldiers
who died in the war in Afghanistan, there's 2,400 of them.
Everywhere I went, you would see me with this black binder.
You would see me with this binder at baseball games,
whether they we're in Texas
or when I was on a business trip in Boston.
And I went to a Red Sox game.
I had the binder during the baseball game.
When I went on a business trip to Africa,
I took that binder with me
and I studied it when I was in Africa.
I studied it when I was on an airplane.
When I was on a train, everywhere I went in 2012.
If you saw me, I had the binder in my hand.
I live in Downtown Fort Worth.
And when I'd walk around Downtown Fort Worth,
people said, "Hey, Ron, what are you doing?"
And I'd just hold up the binder.
It went with me everywhere.
It was attached to me.
And that's how your mindset has to be.
When you're in the middle
of one of these massive memory projects,
it has to become your priority.
Next, this one's actually such an important point here.
When you're in the middle of a memory project like this,
and when you see the end result,
when you see me at the Afghanistan wall writing it out,
the constitution, writing it out,
people will often say, "Wow,
this is a tremendous display of memory.
What an incredible display of memory."
And I'll say to 'em, "Yeah, you're kinda right.
It is kind of a display of memory,
but it's not really the biggest thing
that it's a display of."
It's more a display of discipline.
You see, everybody can learn a memory system
and memorize 7,000 words pretty much anybody could do it,
but most people wouldn't do it
because of the discipline that it requires.
I remember in 2012, I taught a six-year old girl
how to memorize the presidents of the United States.
And there was 44 presidents at the time.
She was six years old and she could say them forward
and she could say them backwards.
And I was so impressed with her
because of how young she was.
And she got all 44 presidents.
So fast forward when I started memorizing the 2,400 people
that died in the war in Afghanistan from the United States.
Every time I got discouraged.
Every time I wanted to quit.
And believe me, I wanted to quit often.
Every time I wanted to quit,
I thought back to that six-year old little girl,
and I thought, "Man, she did 44 people."
This is just 50 times that.
It's a little bit more than 50 times that,
but this is just 50 times what she did.
I can do what she did.
I can just do it 50 times.
And it was a little bit more than that
because she was just remembering last names
and I'm memorizing first names and rank and last name.
But come on, she's six years old.
You have to be willing to sit there
and discipline yourself
and say, "Hey, I'm gonna work on this.
I'm gonna do this.
This is a great way to practice your discipline actually.
The next thing that I will happen
in the middle of a project like this is just,
at first maybe you have to force it a little bit.
You have to force the I'm gonna study today.
I'm gonna review today.
But somewhere in the process,
it starts becoming a habit and it starts consuming you.
And it's all you want to do.
I mean, it's not just, "Hey, I got to memorize today."
And there's still gonna be days like that.
But a lot of the days it consumes you
and you look forward to it.
I remember back in 2012
when I was memorizing the Afghanistan wall,
I would be laying in bed and I would be reviewing
and I would just be going through my brain.
And I remember one night specifically
I was going through the brain
and I was reviewing everybody, my locations in my mind.
And I got up to about 1,250 and I just fell asleep. (laughs)
I remember falling asleep instantly sleeping for eight hours
and opening my eyes (fingers snaps)
and then I picked up 1,251.
And it just consumed me.
The last thought on my mind
was the memory project as I reviewed.
The first thought in the morning was the project.
When I would be driving down the road
and I would see a license plate and it would say 689,
I would think, "Oh, what's 689 on the wall?"
It begins to consume you.
And you know what I learned also in this process
of doing big memory projects like this?
Is I kept it a secret.
I did this naturally and instinctively at the beginning.
In 2009, when I was training
for the USA Memory Championship,
I didn't keep it a secret on purpose.
I just don't normally talk about my job with people.
And I consider competing in memory tournaments my job.
If you're talking to a plumber,
do you really want the plumber
to tell you, "This is how you fix toilets."
It's his job.
So in that same sense,
I didn't talk about my job a lot,
which was competing in memory tournaments in 2009.
The week before the tournament,
I had been training for 90 days,
I'd hired a United States Navy SEAL to help me.
It had consumed me.
And I just realized, "Oh, I need to tell my mom
I'm going to New York."
So I said, "Hey mom, I just wanna let you know
I'm going to New York to compete in the memory tournament."
It had consumed me the 90, 100 days before the tournament.
Even more than that, the year before the tournament,
I was just all about it.
I had my attention so focused on the tournament,
I didn't even think across my mind to tell people.
And that ended up playing to my advantage
because I won in 2009 and 10,
and I set some records and I became the national champion.
If I had gone on Facebook
and said, "Hey, I'm training for the memory tournament.
I think I'm gonna go win."
Everybody would have congratulated me
before I competed saying, "You can do it, you go."
And in a sense you're getting some of the congratulations
before you complete the project.
So that's gonna lessen your desire to complete the project.
In 2011, I got a little bit cocky
and I told everybody
that I was memorizing all the victims of September 11th.
Well, it backfired on me.
I started telling everybody about it
and I started talking about it.
And then when that project didn't happen,
everybody kept asking me, "How is it going?
And I was so embarrassed.
I had to say, "Ugh, I didn't do it."
So when I memorized the constitution
and when I memorized everybody who died
in the war in Afghanistan,
I just kept it to myself.
And I think that's important a little bit.
Tell somebody that's a coach, tell a friend,
tell maybe your family,
if they can help you or your friends if you want,
but don't go around making big announcements.
"I'm working on this project.
I'm gonna memorize this."
Because you want the reward to be after it's done.
You don't need to get the reward prematurely.
Another thing that really became real to me
when I was memorizing the Afghanistan wall
is do it for yourself.
Don't do it for anybody else.
When I was memorizing that,
people would ask me, "Ron, what are you gonna do?"
I said, "I'm gonna write this on a wall when I get done."
And they're like, "Really?
Where are you gonna do it?"
I said, "I don't know."
They said, "What are you gonna write it on?"
I said, "Well, a wall, but I don't really know. (laughs)
I haven't built it yet."
And they're like, "Where?"
I said, "Well, if I have to get a field
and there's nobody in that field but me and the wall
and I write it out, that's good enough for me."
And I was doing it to honor the fallen,
but I wasn't doing it for the attention of others.
And I think that's really important.
Find something that is so interesting to you
that you do it for you.
And that's what I did.
I did it for me.
Now, when I eventually wrote it out,
the response was overwhelming.
And it kept me going.
Another thing that I didn't really think about
before I had started the project,
let's say that you can memorize 10 words a day,
and you can memorize more than that.
But let's just say you can do 10.
Well, if you could do 10 a day,
then how many words could you memorize in 20 days?
Ah, 200 easy.
20 times 10 is 200.
Yes, you can do 10 a day, then in 20 days,
you'll have to 200.
But you are not accounting for the review.
And that is such a big part of a massive memory project.
I would memorize maybe 40 or 50 names in a day.
And then the next day
before I memorize the next group of names,
I would review the first set of names.
And that's so crucial.
Well, guess what happens on the third day?
On the third day before you add
and you memorize another 50 names,
you've got to review 100 names.
The review process
is actually where you're gonna spend most of your time.
I would spend days
and sometimes an entire week just reviewing.
Imagine after I had memorized the constitution
and I'd memorized the first 3,000 words of the constitution.
Before I add the next 100 words,
I'm reviewing those 3,000 words.
So the review process is something
that you're not gonna account for,
because we don't think about it.
We think, "Well, if I can do 10 a day,
then in 20 days, I'll do 200."
True and not true.
You have to review.
And that's a big lesson that I learned.
Another thing that I really found
was memorizing in the mornings was so helpful to me
because that's when your brain is free.
You just woke up, your brain is fresh.
So I would try to get most
of my memory work done before 11:00 a.m.
'Cause if I tried to do my memory work in the evening,
my brain was exhausted from the day.
So I really found a time of day
that my brain was operating at the peak.
And that was in the morning for me.
You know another thing that I think you would find
in the middle of a big project like this
is that it's relaxing to you.
I mean, think about it.
At night, some people count sheep to fall asleep.
What if you could close your eyes
and just remember an entire chapter of the Bible
as you're falling asleep or an entire,
like I did the constitution.
There is something relaxing about it.
There's a little bit of meditation aspect to it.
I must say something else here.
Unless there's a deadline,
like you gotta have this memorized by May 19th.
Unless there's a deadline,
an important principle to remember
is it doesn't matter how slow you go
as long as you don't stop.
Let me say that again.
It doesn't matter how slow you go
as long as you do not stop.
And what that means
is some days you're gonna memorize more
than you do other days.
Some days your brain is gonna be working fast
and some days it's not.
But don't give up.
And that goes back to the aspect of discipline.
You have to be disciplined.
And I guess one of the last things
that I noticed was if I was just sitting at my desk
and memorizing, I would get distracted.
If I definitely laid down in bed,
that was never successful for me
'cause I would either get too comfortable and fall asleep,
or I just couldn't get comfortable laying down with a book
just at the right angle.
Where I found most of my success
was I used the mind palace method
where I use a map of a city to memorize often.
So I would just go walk that map of the city
and it really served two purposes.
I would lose weight, I would get in shape,
but I would also, it was just engaging my brain
and I would use the insides of stores and restaurants
and coffee shops and walking in there
and walking around those and just seeing all the action.
So actually just walking
through my mind palaces really, really, really helped me.
I'm proud of it.
I'm proud of the massive memory projects that I've done,
not just because of the scope of the information
that I memorized, but because of what they mean to me.
And that again goes back picking something
that's important to you.
So these are just some of the things
that I learned and kinda what it's like.
You feel, you get so consumed with it
that nothing else becomes important.
And you've gotta get to that point
where nothing else becomes important.
Sacrifice now for the results later.
And I would say to anybody studying for the bar exam
or a certification exam, or any type of test,
this is kinda the mindset that you have to have.
So I hope you liked this video.
I'm gonna do a lot more videos on this topic,
but I just kinda wanted give you a overview now.
If you liked this video give me a thumbs up.
Type below what a massive memory project
for you might look like.
If you could memorize anything at all,
what would it be?
Let me know in the comments.
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a course that teaches you how to improve your memory.
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Check that out and I'll see you on the next video.