Hello everyone, my name is Francis Blondin. I'm the winner of last year's
Canadian Memory Championship and maybe again this year. We'll see. I'm gonna
demonstrate the memorization of a deck of cards and the way I'm gonna do that
is I'm going to transform the cards into some things that are much easier to
memorize than just some abstract information like "six of spades."
Each card in my predetermined system that I've worked on is corresponding to some
kind of funny character, some kind of funny action, some kind of funny objects
that I'm gonna imagine in a space that I can visualize in my mind. In that case
it's gonna be my parents' house so depending on what cards I'm gonna
memorize maybe Stephen Harper is gonna dance naked
maybe Chewbacca is gonna skateboard and I'm going to imagine all those funny
stories on tables and roof and windows everywhere inside my parents' house and
I'm gonna visualize that in my mind and that's how I'm going to remember this
deck of cards. So let me shuffle it just to show that there's no cheating.
And I'm going to put on this those ridiculous sound blocking headphones and I'm going
to start in five, four, three, two, one.
Alright. Two minutes and 47 seconds. For me that's
a terrible time but I think I got it. There's one place where I'm not quite
sure but we'll see in a second. So this is the deck I memorized and this is the
deck that I put back in order and maybe someone can come and check if it's
correct or not
So yay, I got it! For my standard that was a terrible time probably because of
the camera and because I didn't want to mess up in front of you guys, but
that's still a decent time. Getting to three minutes, that
takes work and effort if you would want to be able to memorize a deck of card in
ten minutes that's really not that much effort you just got to do some research
about the subject and practice and your brain will get used to that kind of
exercise. It's really something that anyone can learn. I give workshops to
young people old people and I make them memorize names and random words and
numbers and everyone is surprised how easy it is and how fun it is.
It takes some effort but really there's nothing superhuman. My natural memory is
completely average and every so-called memory champion will tell you
more or less the same like "no I'm just an ordinary ordinary guy I've read some
books, I've practice that's how it is." Memorizing the deck of cards, it has no
practical use. It's just fun and it's a good brain training exercise but you can
use basically the same technique to remember like people's names, things
you need to study for, your appointments people's birthdays, phone numbers
credit card numbers — anything you want. It can be useful or it can be just for
personal development and enrichment. I highly encourage you to do some research,
maybe check my website maybe read an awesome book that's called Moonwalking
with Einstein. It's as fun to read as any other book and it's highly informative
Just do it. You can do it.
It's just a question of time, effort and energy