Transcription
Listen up about the linking technique, because this powerful learning tool has survived for thousands of years because it helps you build instant associations that stick in your memory. But linking is only good for certain kinds of information. And it can help you retain information in the short term and in the long term. And sometimes you can get long-term retention using linking without any repetition. But you usually want to have some repetition.
But what would be an example of using linking to be able to memorize something pretty much permanently without any repetition? Well, for example, as a memory educator, I give a lot of demonstrations in the community. And most recently, I was at a real estate course, and I memorized all the names of the people in that room. And I haven't done any rehearsal of those names since. And that was months ago. And I can still tell you their names. And I can tell you the names of my previous demonstration, and the previous demonstration, and the previous demonstration, and just many names of people that I meet. And I use the linking technique once with no repetition. And I still remember those people's names.
When it comes to language learning, that's a little bit different. And we can get into the details about why it's all different. But you really care about mastering linking for information that improves your life. Not necessarily the way that I use it, but I want to share some of those nuances because it's going to help you use the technique in simple ways, and intermediate ways, and elaborate ways. So yes, we're talking about everything from language learning to complicated mathematical formulas, anything really that you want to remember.
But the problem is that even simple versions of the linking technique can confuse people who are new to it. And this is not your fault. The confusion creeps in because different memory teachers use the term "linking" in several different ways. In fact, the sheer amount of definitions based on the emails that I've heard from thousands of people over the years, it's enough to melt your mind if you can't wrap your head around the basics.
So, never fear. In this episode of the Magnetic Merry Method podcast, I'm going to do my absolute best to remove all of the problems with the linking method and make it an absolute go-to solution for you. Because the reality is this: linking really can help you learn faster and remember more. You just need to apply this mnemonic device in the right ways and in the specific situations where it's useful, and then modify it in specific ways to get better results in other situations.
So, if you want to master linking for remembering more with greater and more thorough learning that you actually enjoy, make sure to stick around for this entire lesson because you can combine linking with other memory techniques for even stronger recall. And I'm going to share a way of thinking about one of the most powerful techniques in the world as a form of linking. And once you get that, you have the entire world at your fingertips, at least the information bits.
All right. So what is the linking method? Well, in the world of memory training, we use the word "link" because this technique creates a kind of chain between what you want to remember and something you already know. So you can think of it like a gold necklace. And let me try to give you an example of this from the recent course where I memorized everybody's names. One person's name was Ryan. So, I created a golden necklace between Ryan, myself, and something I already know. And so, there's another person I know named Ryan Dice. Now, this person's last name I never learned, but his first name was Ryan. So, I looped him together with Ryan, but also with the dice, like literally the image of dice. And so, these loops are linking together between my mind and what I already know, and this new person. And like a golden chain or a necklace, a circle is completed with a clasp. And that clasp is partly just paying attention, but then also thinking, "Okay, so Ryan and Ryan, but that other Ryan I know is Ryan Dice." So I can put a pair of dice over this guy's head. So I have a clasp. I have an additional layer of linking.
I'll give you another example. In that class, there was someone named Tracy. So, I thought of a country singer, and I think the country singer's name is Tracy Atkins or Atkin. I think it's Atkins. And this is interesting because it's a little bit of a weaker link because I'm not entirely sure, but there is a country singer of that name or something like that. So, I used it. But to complete the circle so that I'm pretty sure that when I name that person, I'm not going to get it wrong, I then added another Tracy that I know. And in this case, it's a Tracy I invented who is a character in the Memory Detective novel Vitamin X. It's not a real person, so it's a bit of a weaker link. But what ended up happening when I gave that demonstration is I almost miscalled that person's name, and I just simp— I did get it right, but I simply explained, "You know, I had a little bit of a problem with that name because I partly used another Tracy I wasn't entirely sure about, and I used a fictional Tracy, and I still got it right." Right. And she was like, "Yeah, yeah." And, you know, seeking that confirmation to soothe down my anxious ego.
But the real reality is, it's also a strategy if you're ever doing this demonstration stuff yourself: take the pressure off yourself, be willing to make mistakes, and, you know, kind of admit the mistake in advance. "Oh, I'm not entirely sure. Was it, was it, was it Tracy?" You know, and that sort of thing. And, and then explain. But the point is, is that one of the reasons why I do this double linking with a clasp is because I go real fast, and I just make associations as quickly as possible, or I assign these associations as quickly as possible. And sometimes they are weak, sometimes they are strong, sometimes they're somewhere in between. But the larger point is, is that they exist.
Okay. So in memory, each mental image or association is the link that helps you find your way back to the target information that is somehow chained to you through the link. And if you really want to go for gold with linking, you add a clasp, which is like a secondary link. And I think this is part of where the confusion about the technique comes in, and why some teachers talk about it in so many different ways, because I myself am talking about it in a little bit of a different way. And so people hear the chain method, the linking method, and they ask, "Well, is the linking method different than the chain method? What's going on?"
Well, the reason why we use the word "link" to create the mental image of a chain, as in the chain of associations, and why that can be confusing, is because everyone from Bruno Furst to Harry Lorayne, they start to use these words in different terms depending on what it is they're talking about memorizing. So, in one sense, there is no particular difference between linking and the chain method. The link helps create the chain. But whatever you do, however you think about it, is that you're mentally linking items to something you already know. And then if you're linking items in a list, well, then you're doing linking between links. And this is why a lot of memory trainings can confuse people, and they're like, "I don't know where to begin. I don't know where to start. I don't even know how to practice." And then the memory trainings will typically give you a list to practice with. And it'll be like, "Hero, drill, spacecraft, music." And yeah, okay, you practice with it, and you remember it, but it's just like really useless information. "Why am I practicing with this?"
But the point is, is that you create an image that reminds you of the first word in the chain, and then you link the next word to the first. And so I then come along and say, "Hey, but did you add a clasp?" And then it's like, "Ah, I'm super confused by all of this." And at the end of the day, what you want to do is just start to work with it somehow. So if you have this list and you have the word "hero" in it, and the next word is "drill," and then it's "spacecraft," and "music." Well, one simple way to deal with this is that you make an association of the hero and just have the hero using a drill on a spacecraft that is blasting out music. So now, which is the link, which is the chain, etc.? Well, it's really up to you. But this is what I think of as mnemonic compression. So really, the link is the hero and the drill doing the thing that is doing a thing. So the hero is drilling the spacecraft, which is blasting music. And you could call this the story method, but at the end of the day, where exactly you place that link or multiple links is going to need to come from you. And basically, the story can be quite weak if every word is its own link, and it's just this generic association. Which is one of the reasons why I'm quite critical of these kinds of exercises that are just meaningless words that you don't care about.
But if you want to make it more meaningful, don't memorize "hero, drill, spacecraft, music," but think of a specific superhero and think of a specific drill. So a stronger way to make a story that helps build the chain is to think about Superman. Now, that is not "hero," but Superman is a hero, and he's so closely associated with heroism that that link will probably work better than just the abstract idea of a hero. The drill could be the drill from the last time you had drilling at the dentist. And really, the drill could be linked to your dentist, and you just have to exaggerate that he has a drill in a battle with Superman over a spacecraft that's playing music. Then when it's "spacecraft," well, which spacecraft is it? And then if it's "music," which music is it? Right? And so this is where it gets much more adventurous and fun to build these chains, actions, and reactions, links that help trigger the next word because you're not using generic associations.
Think back to my examples. Ryan, not just any Ryan. I could have used Orion, the constellation in the sky, right? But no, I used Ryan Dice, another Ryan. And then I used the, uh, the very fact, accidentally, that "Dice" sounds like "dice" to make it more meaningful, to make it more concrete and specific. And many, many people successfully use this form of linking to crush the competition at memory competitions. And I know because I've spoken with dozens of them over the years. Their advantage tends to come down to the logical specificity of the associations in the way that I've just described, so that it just happens to them more than they have to put any work into it. Because Superman in a battle with the dentist drill, the despised dentist drill, that's super specific. It has depth, and it can make it very, very fast to memorize things, and you just have to practice.
Now, if you like these kinds of nuances and details that I guarantee are going to improve your use of techniques like the linking method, and you're new here and you haven't subscribed, please get subscribed to my YouTube channel, the podcast if you're listening on audio. And for the love of memory, hit that thumbs up. Why? Because my mission is to make learning better for everybody. Why? Because when everybody can learn better, the entire world gets better. The more you know, the more you can know. And that is the mission. And I appreciate you getting behind it. Because there's so much to say about memory techniques. It never ends. And the joy of seeing so many people improve their lives, it really fuels me and it makes me want to make more for you.
So, the pros and the cons of the link method are pretty simple to go through. But really, linking works best when you need to memorize simple lists or names at events. Now, we're going to complicate that statement a little bit, but just in my approach of using these techniques, it has some weaknesses, and we're going to fix those problems because they are fixable. But what are the problems? Well, for one thing, if you can't remember how the first part of your narrative chain started, or what the first association is, you might struggle to trigger the next part. That's not a "you" problem. That's a problem inherent in the technique. Lots of people describe this problem. I can have this problem sometimes using the linking method if there isn't some initial mnemonic to trigger off the chain because it is essentially a chain. Now, the clasp thing is part of the solution, but it's, it's just one of those things that you've got to be aware of, and you may have to come up with multiple solutions through experimentation. But that's a major problem, and we'll get into the solutions that I've come up with.
But another problem, and this may not happen to you, but it's possible that an individual link in your chain will just go missing. So, you'll be flying along recalling information with glee. You've never been so happy in your life, and then all of a sudden, boom! "What? I can't remember the ninth thing in this list?" or "I can't remember the fourth word in this foreign language sentence, right?" Well, that's a problem, and the solutions need to be worked out. And, you know, you may have different mileage based on how you approach it than I have. But some of the solutions are, first and foremost, to just realize it's a memory technique. It doesn't mean it's a magic bean and that it's just going to provide for you all the time just because you want it to. You can't be super demanding on technique. Technique is technique, and it works relative to one key solution. And that key solution is called deliberate practice.
And although most memory improvement guides do give you words to practice, as I have pointed out, I think that a lot of those words are pretty meaningless, and they don't teach you the deep nuances that we've talked about today. It's very rare in real life that we have to memorize random words. A rare case is when you go shopping and you need to get tomatoes, carrots, celery, and bread. Those are pretty random words, right? But in that case, if you want to practice and apply the nuances that we discussed earlier, well, doesn't it make sense to use linking to maybe memorize that list in a foreign language? Oh, yes, yes, yes. You can have carrots stabbing celery and bread until you're blue in the face. But I really encourage you to make it a more meaningful exercise because deliberate practice is only valuable when you're leaning into challenge, and the challenge has a payoff so that the dopamine spike gives you victory. So no more memorizing random words unless those words are meaningful.
And so if you want to practice with shopping lists, cool. But do it in a foreign language, or do it in an invented language. I don't know. Just make it more interesting and challenging, or practice with technical terms related to your profession so that tomorrow, when you go to your work, you get that dopamine spike. My work is memorizing things. Why do I memorize the names at a class where I'm the student? Well, because it gives me the opportunity to practice, but it also gives me the dopamine spike when later they say, "Okay, everybody, introduce yourself. What do you do?" And I say, "Well, I teach memory and I teach how to learn better." And they're like, "What does that mean?" And I said, "Well, your name is Ryan, and your name is Tracy, and your name is Kelly, and all this stuff." And I just go through the list of everybody. And the first thing that they say is, "How did you do that?" And one guy's immediately like, "Hey, can you teach us that?" And I said, "If the teacher makes time, I will teach you and I'll give you a little free lesson." And all that sort of stuff. And lo and behold, I gave the little free lesson. And so that gives me the dopamine spike, but you have to figure out the dopamine spike for you. So, I would say in your job, what's the thing that's most likely to get you a raise by the end of this quarter if you could start doing it tomorrow? Practice linking with that.
So, the pros are you could literally write your destiny. The cons are that a lot of the trainings encourage you to practice with meaningless information. So, I hope that I've convinced you to find some meaningful information to practice with.
Now, how to practice mnemonic linking? Well, that's the first part of the practice. To be deliberate in your practice is to make sure that you're memorizing information that's worth memorizing. And that means information that you can't just write down all the time, like new names that you meet. So, the shopping list thing in the foreign language, etc. There's that. Then there are things like, I don't know, medical definitions that you might have to tidy up in your life, uh, musical terms, uh, geographical facts that have always puzzled you that why you forget them, etc. That's a, that's kind of a thing that you just got to work out for yourself. But basically, to get really good at linking by practicing with useful information that will improve your life, you have to take the time to sit down and figure out what that is. And I suggest you think through categories. What are the categories of information? So there's emergency information, there's professional information, there's language learning information, etc. Once you have that list, sit in your mind or with a piece of paper and say, "What's the top priority? There's a hierarchy of importance here. What's the most important thing that's going to get me further ahead in life the fastest?" Then practice the basics on those things. Because the beauty is, memory techniques when you learn them, you can also use the learning of the memory techniques to learn information that improves your life immediately and take things to the next level today. Right? So that's what I would suggest you do.
Then once you have the basics down and you can memorize lists of information, then you can practice on moving from linear linking to spatial linking. And that's the memory palace advantage. Now, you might be going, "Oh, I've heard you talk about the memory palace before." And your mind shuts off. Please don't let that happen. If that's the case for you, now pay very, very close attention because as you've seen, the linking method can be powerful for chaining together lists of information, but it's linear. And if you can't remember the first part of the chain, or you drop one of the links, you're in trouble, and then it's frustrating, and it's not fun. Now, there's always going to be little problems here and there, and it's not a magic bean. So sometimes there are going to be these problems, but I have those problems much less than you would imagine because of the memory palace technique.
And why the memory palace fixes this problem is because it lets you revisit information in nonlinear formats to develop longer-form retention. In other words, to build the chain, you break it, sort of. Anyway, if you're not familiar with the memory palace, let me briefly mention that it's sometimes called the Method of Loci, sometimes called the Roman Room Method, it's sometimes called the Journey Method. I don't care what you call it. Call it departments with compartments. It provides your brain with the ultimate nonlinear linking system. And why is it nonlinear? Well, yes, you memorize information in order. But it's the ultimate linking strategy. And I want you to think back to the necklace example because we're going to expand it. Rather than having every link in the chain dependent on the previous link, a memory palace lets you place each link securely in its own display case, like the beautiful jewelry that each piece of information is. Each case is itself linked naturally by your familiarity with the locations you use to place them. And when you have a series of locations strung together in a chain, well, this is sometimes called the Journey Method, but it's really just the memory palace, and some person adding another term like I am guilty of today with the clasp term. But it's what it is. It's just the case that the memory palace is a chain built out of links. In any case, there's many, many more videos that I have on the memory palace technique where you can go into detail about it. And I suggest that you really, really go in-depth into my memory palace for studying training.
But in sum, you're using familiar locations as the foundational link. Memory palaces are location-based mnemonics, and they are a very specific kind of mnemonic. They are links, or as some of the older memory trainers like Bruno Furst used to call them, they are hooks. Well, what is a hook? A hook is a place where you link one item to another. Right? So, the terminology can get really frustrating, but I hope that I'm starting to clarify to you that it's not about the terminology. It's about how you use location-based mnemonics to place associations. And you place them on spots within the memory palace, or to add more complexity to the mix, cases, display cases that are like this chair is a display case for anything that I might want to memorize. This is a new studio for me. I haven't memorized anything here yet. Well, not in this room. I have memorized things in other parts of this, uh, new place that we live. But at the end of the day, it's a display case if you want to think about it that way. That might help you understand it better. But this display case is linked to another part of the memory palace because of the memory palace journey. Okay.
So now you can establish more links within the linking structure by adding stories, etc. But the point is, is that this approach, it helps with recall practice because you don't have to think back to how the story started or do anything elaborate to kick off the first link because you just simply think back to where your memory palace started. Where you placed the first link is where the memory palace journey begins. The memory palace helps you kick off the list of associations so that when you're doing that initial practice, you already have something that's already in your memory that you can follow. This chair is the first part of the memory palace. The desk over there is the next part. The window over there is the next, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's very, very simple. And I don't mean to dismiss it by saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, is that it's up to you to build this journey. And you can make big memory palaces, you can make small memory palaces. It's up to you. I would just ask you to optimize for spaced repetition.
And spaced repetition is a nonlinear form of review that helps you quickly make sure that each item that you've memorized enters long-term memory. So, it's hard to give examples of this that suit every situation, but I'll give you the example of the promise where you never have to use spaced repetition, or very rarely, and then how it works when you do need to use spaced repetition. The reason why I still remember all those names without repetition from previous events is because I already know almost all those names. I know the name Tracy because it's large in our culture. I know the name Ryan because I've had many friends named Ryan and I know people named Ryan in the world. So, it's a much stronger foundation and it doesn't need that repetition. However, there are certain phrases in Latin, which is "semper paratus," which tells you, you know, to busy yourself with the important stuff in life because so many people are wasting their lives by busying themselves with just nonsense, right? Well, that's a beautiful phrase, but I have to treat that differently. It's in a memory palace just the same as all those other people's names are in a memory palace, but this needs to be revisited forward and backward, from the middle to the beginning, from the middle to the end, and then skipping the station. That's the nonlinear review pattern that memory palaces enable. Why? Because word one is on station one, "nihil." Word two is on station two, "minus." And then when I want to practice it from the beginning, well, somewhere in the beginning is like "occupati." And then I can go "occupati, minus." And then after "occupati," to go from the beginning to the end is "quam," right? And those words I can just go forward and backward because of the links being so strong in memory because the memory palace is already in memory. It's just been established as a journey. So now I can go forward and backward and in many orders, which makes for true, proper nonlinear spaced repetition.
Now, because this is the Magnetic Merry Method world, and we love the nuance, we love the detail. Where does all this come from? Well, the earliest instance that I can find is in Aristotle, where he talks about entering your memory palaces in different orders in order to help you better recall the information. You can read that for yourself in "De Memoria." It is glorious. I'm so glad that I read that because it helped me so much to visit the information in different orders. Later in history, someone named Herman Ebbinghaus basically he scientifically validated it all by doing experiments that showed that it works. And the results of his experiments led to principles called the serial positioning effect, the forgetting curve, the primacy effect, and the recency effect. And these are the scientific reason why what I'm suggesting to you works so well. Again, it's not a magic bean, and you don't always have to use it because if the names are already familiar to you, you can remember names at events and remember them pretty much for a very, very long time without doing all of the serial repetition. But Latin phrases, I need to do it out of order, but I only need to do it a couple of times. I memorized that Latin phrase a long time ago now, and I haven't used it for a long time. I just recited it for you, and I didn't even think of the memory palace.
I lately, I took a break from some of my Sanskrit memorization stuff, you know, like they're just really long. Some of them have hundreds of words of Sanskrit. And cumulatively, I have over 2,000 words of Sanskrit. And I took a long break. And the other day I was like, "I wonder if I can still do it." And I was like, "Karturia." Anyway, six minutes later, I did the whole thing. And I was just like, mind-blown. Now, why could I do it? Because every single word in that mantra, I had done this form of spaced repetition. So I have multiple links with the clasp for each and every word. I know where those words are in the memory palaces, or at least I used to know. And when I was using the memory palace to help get it into long-term memory through this form of review that we're talking about today, I was able to years later recite it without skipping a word because it's so deep in long-term memory. And it's not deep in long-term memory because of repeating it over and over again. It's because the way that I got it into memory is because of this missing step that so many of the most popular books on memory completely miss. The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. She has no idea about this, and it frustrates me to no end. But that frustration is good because it inspires me to keep teaching you how to do this.
Okay. So, I've given you some applied examples so far, and please just start to practice this. It's your turn. Test this linking process for yourself. So, go to your bookshelf. This is, this is, and if you don't have a bookshelf, glance through your preferred e-reader and jot down a list of names that you continually forget, but would be helpful for you if you could remember them. And that might be a bit of a challenging exercise, but just go with it. Just say, "Yes, it would be useful for me to remember the names of some authors." Then create a quick memory palace. Let's say you use your kitchen, and on the counter, you create an association or you assign an association for the first name on that list of authors. Then you use the fridge door to stick an association in place for the second name, and then you place an association in the sink for the third name. You don't have to do it exactly this way because that might not make sense in your kitchen. But make sure that you just take a second to figure out what journey is going to make the most sense. Then place each name in each area with a linked association, and make it as distinctive as possible. The location is one link. The name is another link. And if you want to add another clasp to seal the deal, well then I'll leave it to you to think what that additional link might be.
Well, let me just, because we're in example land here. Imagine you have Lars. Lars is the name. L-A-R-S. And I would make it Metallica. If the link is in the kitchen, I'd have him, if it's on the counter, he's pounding the counter with drumsticks because he's a drummer. And if the name that follows him is Lucas, well, I would naturally think about Luke Skywalker carving his name into your fridge. But instead of using a lightsaber to make the link between Lars and Lucas stronger, he could take one of those drumsticks Lucas could and use that as the lightsaber to carve the name into the fridge. If the third name is Jerry, you could imagine Jerry Seinfeld dancing in your sink. And I'll leave it to you to think about how you could use that drumstick as a baton so that somehow Jerry is doing something with that drumstick in the sink. But that's another principle from the Magnetic Memory Method world. How do you get your figures to pass a baton? Well, now you've got a clue.
Then later, if you want to continue this exercise, get out a piece of paper and go, "What were those names that I placed in my kitchen?" Bring each station to mind and simply ask, "What did I imagine there? What did I link there? And how did I link them together?" And I suggest bringing it to mind and then writing it down to see your answers in your own handwriting, which is an additional link. It's a link between you and the action of producing the information, making the information visible in space. Because here's another thing about memory: when you produce things by hand in space, in notebooks, your brain now has another form of linking. It has a link to the event that you created. Think about that. You made memory a special event by doing something physical, by creating a mark in the world. This is magic. Each level of association and creation and transformation makes the journey with memory a link that links with links. And this is the great art of memory. It is logical to follow this to the nth degree because it reduces the cognitive load. And one of the reasons why all of this linked together, if you will, these actions in a chain, why it reduces cognitive load is because you're using multiple levels of processing, and you're making the world different, and it's interesting and fun. Is it an effort? Oh, yes. But kissing and eating chocolate also take effort. So, the world's smallest violin is never going to cry for you. At least not from me. So, I love the effort of it because later I remember things better.
The exception to the rule is I don't always write down the names when I'm at the events because I just don't have to. But sometimes I even do just to put a finer little level of detail on it to create another layer of linking. The key is just to simply develop your own way of doing this through missions. Picking a mission. And so if you don't yet have any confidence that you can do this, the first mission I suggest is that you actually create a mnemonic alphabet. And this will help you link each letter to a familiar figure. So all you have to do is think of the letter A and think, "Who is the most famous pop culture or familiar person in my life that I can link to the letter A?" I've heard all the objections. People say, "Oh, Anthony, you used to be a film studies professor. Of course you know lots of actors who have the name that starts with the letter A." And it's like, "Yeah, yeah, but I got to be a film professor because I finished my PhD, and that's because I learned these techniques." But I was actually struggling to name one person whose name started with the letter A because my memory was so bad. So where did I start? I started by putting a piece of paper in front of me and thinking, "Who is A?" And I believe my first figure was Alec Guinness. Then I went to B. And I think my first figure was either Brad Pitt or Barack Obama. That's how I got these skills. I sat down and I worked out a list. And it, it's not that I had an advantage because I was a film studies professor. No, I became a film studies professor because I got this sorted. So please don't get the wrong idea. It's not about gift. It's not about special circumstance. It's about a piece of paper, the pencil, and an alphabet. And if you think about it, the alphabet is the ultimate mnemonic chain. So to ensure that you always have mnemonic links ready for use, that is the mission.
Get out a piece of paper, write out the associations for each letter of the alphabet. Z for Zoro, Y for Yankovic, Weird Al, Z for Xenophon, Zentipia, Xerxes, W for Will Smith, etc. Then once you've completed the list, get them on cards, or just get the alphabet on cards. Ricky Gervais, for example, Ricky Martin, I don't know, my friend Rick from elementary school. And then you go to the next letter and you go, T, and you say, "Okay, so Tony Buzan, he was a great memory teacher himself." On and on. Four. And you can play all kinds of games. You can get a pair of dice. And you go, "Okay, so I roll a four. I have to come up with four figures for the letter E, right?" And you can even make it harder on yourself. It has to be four politicians who start with the letter E, or it has to be four scientists, or it has to be four entertainers, or whatever it is. Then you come to F, and you then say, "Oh, I rolled a three, so I better figure out three." And so on. And you just train yourself. You drill based on the creation of lists. It is so powerful. It's so fun. And what ultimately ends up happening is that you get real fast because then when you're learning a language and you come up with something, "Oh my god, Q, what am I going to do?" Well, you've got Quincy Jones immediately at your fingertips. You've got Q from James Bond. You've got Quentin Tarantino on and on. You've just trained your mind to link, link, link, link, linky link. So that is your mission if you really are struggling with this: to train to create an alphabet and then train with that alphabet.
Should I give you another level, another layer, another set of links? Well, you do the same exercise over and over again. Now, instead of figures, people, you do a list with objects. So, what's an object that starts with the letter Y, right? Hmm. That's actually a bit of a challenge. Can you figure it out? I'm not going to spoon-feed at all, but, you know, A. Well, A for apple, maybe. And Oh, okay. Since that he was on the podcast, what comes to mind as an object? Tyson Yapurpora, he's a great memory expert. He wrote "Sandalk." He uses the term "yarning" in that book. So the object could be yarn. And guess what? Yapurpora starts with Y as well. So that's another kind of list that you can make. What is it that the person is doing with yarn? Who is the person doing the thing with the yarn? Well, it can be that Tyson Yapurpora is yarning with yarn, or he's yelling at the yarn, or he's yaching with yarn. You know, maybe "yaching" is not a proper verb, but nonetheless, person, action, object. If it's B, Brad Pitt is bending a biscuit. Can biscuits bend? Well, in your imagination, they certainly can. Christian Bale is cutting a camera. Dracula is dropping a doll, etc.
Ideally, all of this is something you do quickly so that you're prepared because where preparation meets opportunity, there is no ceiling. Just try to avoid thinking of these things in abstract ways. So, don't just think of a weather vane. When I think of a weather vane, I think very specifically of W and weather vane and someone I know named Wayne. But the weather vane is the one that was used as a weapon in the movie Warlock. See the principle? You might say, "Yes, but I don't know these things." Well, just work at it and pay attention to the world. Watch Netflix with a pen and paper and write down the objects in your favorite series and the names of the actors and their characters in your favorite series. Zoro. You can think of Zoro very, very abstractly, but it makes much more sense and it will work better in your practice if it's Antonio Banderas and his performance of Zoro. And then, you know, if he's reading the book of Zephaniah, well, then that could be the object. Tech— technically, the Bible would be the object, but Zephaniah is in there. So, close enough, right? It's still a Z object. But he could be using a zipper as the object. Or he could be zipping up a Bible after reading the book of Zephaniah. These kinds of things, they're not particularly creative, but you're going to feel more creative when you just play around, knowing that you don't have to invent anything. Linking is not about inventing things. It's about finding associations between things that are already in your mind. And you can help yourself find them by doing these exercises.
And just to like make sure that it's very, very clear how super useful all this is, there's a word in German, "zerbrechlich." It means fragile. Zoro is at a movie theater in Berlin that I chose because of the relationship of that theater to Z. And the sound and the meaning of the word come together. The link is not just in the letter Z, but it's in all of the possible things that I can do with Zoro. Specifically knowing that I can imagine Antonio Banderas, which reduces the cognitive load because it's not me having to imagine some Zoro that doesn't exist. No, it's Antonio Banderas, and he's there doing the things that help me remember the word "fragile." And in case you're curious, he's sword fighting with his Zoro sword with a fragile vase, and it's Brecht, the German poet, Sarah Brash. Anyway, this— the applications are massive and huge. You just need to develop the system, and you need to just make it as multisensory as you can. And that's the next step. Make sure that your links are always multisensory.
Bringing in the multisensory aspect is not something you're necessarily going to learn overnight, and we're not going to get that deep into it now. But why is it so important? Well, Giordano Bruno, the great Renaissance memory master, in his memory training books, the great key was to make your links as multisensory as possible. And very briefly, the ones that I use the most are called C.A.V.E. C.O.G.S. Kinesesthetic, Auditory, Visual, Emotional, Conceptual, Olfactory, Gustatory, and Spatial. And I just run through those, and they're very, very, very powerful. I mentioned Tony Buzan earlier. He has a book called "The Memory Book," and in there he has his own model for teaching it. It's a little bit more complicated than what I use. In fact, he has a super complicated one called SEM 3. Bruno got this stuff from Peter of Ravenna. He got it from Jacobus Publicius. You can go down rabbit holes like never before. And if you really want to support my work, you can get my versions of the books by Peter of Ravenna and Jacobus Publicius. And thank you because many of you have, and I really, really appreciate it because those guys, they go deeper down the rabbit hole of linking than I have done today. And I know a lot about it because I read their books and translated them for you and created new exercises out of them, etc.
At the end of the day, it comes down to mindset. And I invite you to adopt the mindset of a memory master. If I've succeeded in convincing you about anything, I hope it's this: even a simple chain of associations can serve as a portal to the larger memory arts used by our ancestors for things as ambitious as memorizing entire books. You've also learned more about how advanced mental imagery can be placed in order to get long-term retention by revisiting the information out of order. This means that your memory is not limited at all. In fact, the only limits come down to strategy, attitude, and deliberate practice. That's why my message always involves the core suggestion that before you practice with a meaningless list of words, just take a moment to define why you're memorizing and what would be more beneficial to memorize, and then practice with the information that gets you closer to your goal. That way, you can improve your memory while learning in the ways that help you experience true substantial accomplishment every time you use mnemonic linking.
So what do you say? Are you up to the task of starting to put true, substantially nuanced linking to work? If you'd like to go deeper, then please visit magneticmemorymethod.com. Check out the masterclass. Check out some of my translations of these works that go even deeper than we've gone today into linking. I'm always easy to find at magneticmemorymethod.com. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and please stick around and watch on YouTube how to use the memory palace for studying next, and really go deep into that. If you're listening on the podcast, search on your favorite search engine for "memory palace for studying." This is far more than just some gimmick or memory trick or magic bean. This is a lifestyle. This is turning your mind into a martial art of memory. Thank you as always, and until we have a chance to speak again, keep yourself magnetic.