Nelson Dellis - Remember It!: The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget

FOR LEAH

(AND HER BIRTHDAY THATS SO EASY TO MEMORIZE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA

Maybe it is because I am a neurosurgeon that people are always asking me random questions about the brain. How much does it weigh? What does it feel like? Is it really gray? The question I get more than any other, though, is about memory. Most everyone, young and old, wants to improve their memory.

How we can optimize our memory is a difficult question to answer. My simple reply has always been: Try and pay more attention to those things you are truly trying to remember. While paying attention certainly works, I knew there had to be a better and more thoughtful strategy. That is why I was so excited to meet Nelson Dellis.

The first thing you notice about Nelson is his size. Im not sure what I expected of a memory champion, but a six-foot-six-inch mountain climber wasnt quite it. The second thing was his congeniality mixed with an obvious attentiveness. In an age where it is difficult to get people to look up from their screens, Nelson was fully engaged with me and his surroundings. I was about to better understand why.

We were on location at a beautiful old mansion, the Swan House in Atlanta, Georgia, and the subject of my show was, of course, memory. Before we got into the techniques to improve and enhance memory, I wanted to better understand what made Nelson, a four-time USA Memory champion and grandmaster of memory, tick.

Like many people who make changes to their physical or mental health, Nelson was greatly moved to do so by someone close to him. His grandmother suffered from Alzheimers and eventually passed away from the disease. This lit a fire deep inside him and inspired the tremendous efforts he has made to improve his own memory.

It is important to know that Nelson wasnt born with any super memory skills; because of his family history, he may even have an increased risk for diminishing memory. After all, there are more than five million people affected by Alzheimers disease living in the United States, with the number increasing every year.

There is no way to overstate the memory capabilities of Nelson Dellis. He has memorized 339 digits in five minutes and 217 names in fifteen minutes. I went to medical school and studied neuroscience, but I can barely remember the names of five people at a cocktail party. Nelson is a memory athlete and a remarkable teacher. It was time to see if any of it could rub off on me. We settled on learning ten U.S. presidents, specifically the twenty-fifth to thirty-fourth presidents (because hey, why not?). The Swan House, Nelson told me, was a fantastic location to create a memory palace. With its old-time charm, nooks and crannies, trinkety-trinkets, and the like, Nelson explained that one could really store a lot of information in a place like this. It is an ideal memory palace.

He walked me around the room, starting with me imagining opening the window door to our left and seeing Mount McKinley in the distance, with arctic, snowy air blasting into the room. As soon as I envisioned this, I knew I would never forget it. Not only could I see the mountain range, but I could feel the cold air on my skinwhich I can still feel as I write thisa constant reminder that William McKinley was the twenty-fifth president of the United States. Just to the left of that window door was a small bar with a large teddy bear standing there, sipping a drinkTeddy Roosevelt, of course. A large raft floating on a globe represented our twenty-seventh president, William Howard Taft; and a bright yellow tennis ball with the name Wilson on itfor Woodrow Wilsonsmashing through a grandfather clock in the back corner of the room.

It took just a few minutes for me to encode the ten presidents into images and place them around the memory palace. At the time, I thought there was no way these images would stick in my brain, but it has been a year since my tour of the memory palace, and I am now confident I will always remember them. Even Nelson would agree I was exhibiting a fantastic memory, and it only took several minutes of him training me to get there.

As you dive into this fun and zany book of memory techniques, keep in mind the early lesson that we too often forget: pay attention, fully and thoroughly. You will not only remember better, but you will also experience and enjoy life more. This book will make remarkable memory an ordinary part of your life, and you will not find a more engaging teacher than Nelson Dellis. I have been using the techniques in this book every day, and if you do the same you will never again forget to Remember It!

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Staff Neurosurgeon, Emory Clinic

Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN

Whenever I try to remember, I forget.

W INNIE THE P OOH

Remember the last time you walked out of a meeting, correctly recalling everyones names as you shake their hands goodbye? Remember the last time you went online to check that bank account you hardly ever use anymore, and you nailed the passworduppercases, numerals, and allon the first try? Remember the last time someone asked you, What are you doing next Tuesday? and you recited your entire schedule and to-do list for that day off the top of your head? If you dont remember, its probably because you didnt rememberand if you didnt remember, its probably because youre one of the billions of humans on this planet with an imperfect memory. Most of us have grown accustomed to the frustration of memory lapses, and the little things we do to get by in spite of them: calling everyone dude; using the same simple password on every website; snapping pics on your phone of parking garage signage and empty containers of food that you need to restock.

It seems that even when we want certain things to stick, they just slip away. Sometimes they stay in our brains for a little while, then disappear when we go a stretch without using them. Like most people, I managed to do well in school only when I studied extra hard, poring over French vocabulary words for hours, doing physics proofs over and over. But as soon as I put that knowledge to use on a test, Id forget it as quickly as Id crammed it into my brain. Memorization was tedious and boring, with no precise principles to speak of and certainly no reward in itselfonly the hope that the material would adhere to my brain for the rest of the semester.

But then there are some things you never forget, like one startling, gut-wrenching moment that changed everything. I was in France, visiting my grandparents. My grandmother had been diagnosed with Alzheimers a few years earlier. The last time Id seen her, shed had trouble remembering where shed left her cane, or whether shed set her tarts in the fridge or on the counter. This time, as she sat across from me at the table, she turned to my grandfather and asked him how I was doing, and whether I was planning to visit anytime sooncompletely unaware that I was right there with her. I was stunned by the depth of her lapse. Its hard to forget being forgotten by someone you love.

I started thinking about what was going on inside her mind, and inside mine. When I returned to Chicago, where I had recently moved, I couldnt find a job right away, so I looked for something else to occupy my time. A few months before the move I had taken up mountain climbing as a hobby, but if youre at all familiar with Chicago you know its not exactly surrounded by rugged highlands. So instead of climbing, I started looking for ascents of the mental kindlittle ways in which I could improve myself, not just by adding to my skill set but by actually boosting how my mind worked.