Transcription
In the late 1500s, the mental master Matteo Ricci entered China from Italy with what he thought was an unfair learning advantage, a counterintuitive vocabulary learning secret that he shared with the Chinese elites. He was also a massive proponent of learning words. And on top of the years that he spent crafting the techniques that he used, he also created a Portuguese Chinese dictionary, one that was the first to link Chinese characters to the Latin alphabet.
Now, if producing a dictionary doesn't prove that you're a fan of vocabulary, Ricci also published a book in 1605 called *Chi, something like that, the miracle of western words*. And it was all about improving cross-cultural communication by, you guessed it, memorizing lots and lots of vocabulary. So, if you want to know how to memorize vocabulary without struggle, Ricci's advantage is the key, even if how the Chinese elites responded to Ricci when he showed him his vocabulary memorization secret was a bit of a tragic comedy for the poor guy.
Now, I don't want to bury the lead here or have my transparency about this secret chase you away, but here's the thing. The advice and the techniques that Ricci shared back then, they were nothing. Everybody did it. They just walked in like ducks taking to water. But in our time where a lot of people their brains are fried by apps and devices and they can barely string two thoughts together without thinking about how they're going to respond to it on this or that platform. It takes a wee bit of time and effort to learn and practice what Ricci was talking about.
And the thing is too is that the approach is a bit counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive in our time, but it was also counterintuitive in his time. People would argue and say, "Well, that's an unnatural way to do things." And people like Ricci would say, "Yes, but not really, because what about the solutions that the mind comes up with? Is not natural. The mind is natural, isn't it?" In any case, it was counterintuitive then, it's counterintuitive now. But if you can suppress your monkey mind and reduce the chattering of doubt, this will help you memorize vocabulary on mass, mountains of it, because it's one of the most powerful learning techniques ever discovered.
But this is an interesting aspect here. Ricci's background as a contemplative, meditative, religious scholar probably helped him master the skill you're about to learn without overthinking it. Because people who spend a lot of time in contemplation are often more open to experimentation. So, if you find yourself doubting this, but you can find a willingness to experiment inside of yourself, you've got a handle on this. And I'm going to give you the step-by-step process so that you can learn words in any language and stop failing to communicate effectively because you finally know how, when, and why to use the perfect words. And maybe "perfect" is a little bit overblown, but this is about the best possible communication because you've developed your vocabulary.
And make no mistake, this isn't just about individual words. Individual words are important, but vocabulary is an important place to start because keep in mind that every sentence is nothing more than a list of vocabulary, and every paragraph is nothing more than a list of sentences that contain lists of vocabulary. The numbers that you might want to memorize, well, those are almost always expressible in words, and word and symbols are often expressible in words as well. So, let's just get right into this without an overview of how the skill works.
Does Dr. Anthony Metivier from the Magnetic Memory Method headquarters down under? And I'm inviting you now to dive in, and we'll start by discussing the importance of capturing the words. So, as I shared some months ago on this channel, Thomas Jefferson carried an ivory writing pad everywhere he went to capture data. He would literally pencil ideas and words onto an ivory slab that he carried on his belt and then copy them into what was called a commonplace book.
Now, you don't need ivory, and obviously that would be a bit unsavory in our day and age, but I do advise you to carry a physical notebook rather than use an app on your phone. Now, I know you might be tempted to use devices, but even Andrew Ng from OpenAI and the host of the OpenAI podcast told me that he still carries physical notebooks to work out ideas and capture things worth memorizing. And you might say, "Well, so what?" Well, if a guy literally building the future and acting as one of the captains of the most explosive technological industries of our times is still using a pen and paper, that's a clue for those of us who want to improve our vocabulary, not to mention our minds and our memory.
And one thing that Andrew says when he was on the podcast is that he'll use ChatGPT to test him. And that's a very good way because it's not going to create the digital amnesia that constantly reaching for an app tends to do for a lot of people. But this gives you a lot of, well, Lynn Kelly calls writing the ultimate encryption process, or your hands in a notebook, a device. The ultimate encryption device. So that encryption is very, very important, whether you're memorizing words directly from a dictionary or something like *Word Power Made Easy*, which is an excellent book. You're giving your brain processing power that digital typing or talking into a device just doesn't give. So this is very, very important. Use handwriting to help you accumulate more vocabulary. So that's the capture element of it.
Now, let's talk about snapping that vocabulary into your memory next. This is the core of how to memorize vocabulary rapidly. And this is where Ricci's secret starts coming into play. He knew that a word floating in the void disappears. But he also knew that techniques like the memory palace had to have a specific characteristic going on to make those words stick. But let's start with association first, then the idea of placing words in a location next, using what's called the memory palace technique. Hence the title of this book, *The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci*.
And what a memory palace idea he had! Now, to make these words stick through association, think of it like adding a handle. Now, this handle is a mnemonic association based on the spelling of a word or how it sounds. For example, let's say you learned that the word "fleek" in French means "cop," as in the police or a police person. To add a handle or a mnemonic association, you might imagine Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and he's dressed as a cop. And to get that "k" sound at the end of "fleek," you have him arresting, I don't know, the *Freak Out* album by the Mothers of Invention, like literally putting handcuffs through the hole of the record, that sort of thing. So, you know, "freak out" and "Flea," "fleek," and that's a handle that you've now placed on this word and its meaning.
And don't worry if my example is super obscure because you don't know Flea or the album *Freak Out*. Just follow the theory. Maybe you associate "fleek" with your favorite flea market, and then the market word has that "k" in there. Or you come up with some other association that reminds you of a "k" sound for the end and that "flea" sound at the beginning. It doesn't have to be perfect, and in time you'll get very, very good at this process of making handles that are memorable and attaching them to the target vocabulary.
And you know, if you like these kinds of ideas and this kind of instruction, and you enjoy speeding up the development of how fast you can learn vocabulary and anything else, and you're new here, get subscribed so you can get more exposure to these kinds of tips, including ideas about how to schedule inspiring examples from famous people and sometimes infamous people, and you know how to scale your study sessions across domains as an autodidact and a polymath, and do so without overwhelm. And for the love of memory, hit that thumbs up to help the robots remember that we humans still care about getting our reps in. That way, they'll keep reminding you so I can keep reminding you, creating the perfect circle.
All right. Now, you might be wondering what to do if the spelling of the word is weird or the word is very, very long. Make no mistake, it's easy to confuse words. And there are words like, I don't know, *expedendoram* that I've had to learn where I needed an association for each and every syllable. And you might be saying, "That sounds like a lot of work." Well, maybe in the beginning, it's a little bit counterintuitive and it seems a bit hard, but like I said, back in the day, people didn't worry about that. They were just like, "I want to learn, so that's what I'm going to do." And in our time, we are just so trained to find the slipperiest and fastest slope that we wind up going down slippery slopes that ruin our brains. So this is actually the solution is to take on the challenge.
And don't even get me started on some of the difficulties of the Sanskrit vocabulary that I've memorized. It is the point that the challenges are there. The challenges are to be desired. They're "desirable difficulties," which is a term Andrew Ng again used when he was on the podcast. "I noticed that I am lazy, and when I encounter any friction, I look for a solution to make that friction easier to get past it. But in learning, like working out, the friction is sometimes very important. And you have to sort of identify, I think, do I want to use a tool because it's going to make it easy for me to avoid the hard part that's actually going to help me learn, or do I want to use a tool because it can help me learn more and learn more often?"
We're doing this for better memory. You know, it's not some fantasy of perfection. Perfection is never going to come. And the challenge of overcoming perfection can actually make you a better person if you are stuck in perfectionism. So just work on getting your associations as clear as possible without trying to make them pure or getting in some kind of perfectionistic loop. As I often like to point out, perfectionists aren't even particularly perfect at their perfectionism. And so it's just a losing battle.
Now, this is a mission-critical tip for whenever you sit down to memorize vocabulary. When applying associations, do not make them boring. Don't make them generic, and work on that because we all almost all of us do it in the beginning. And that's because a lot of the memory training books don't teach us properly from the get-go. They really give some bland examples. But we don't have to start that way. We can make little mental vignettes or mental scenes and scenarios and stories and even concepts that are super sharp and specific, because if they aren't sharp and specific, then they're going to fade faster than milk sours when left outside on a hot day.
Right now, you've got to make your associations loud, exaggerated, utterly ridiculous. And Ricci pointed out, you want to locate them not just in one memory palace, but across multiple memory palaces. Now, if this term "memory palace" is new to you, I'll just give you a very quick example and show you about how this exaggeration, loudness, and craziness works. So, once upon a time, two and a half decades ago, I was memorizing German vocabulary on mass from this big yellow beast of a dictionary I'm holding in my hands now. And very quickly came the day that I found myself in the "B" section, and I had to memorize the word "Barik." It means area or region. And I hadn't even read Matteo Ricci yet, but I came up with a similar idea. And I'll tell you something interesting about the way that that can happen at the end of this video. It's a very important principle, and I hope you grab on to it and run with it.
But I was sitting there and I thought, I could have a memory palace for every letter of the alphabet and have those memory palaces linked alphabetically. So what I did with "Barik" is I took Bender from *Futurama*, which was quite a popular TV show at that time, and Steve Reich, the drummer or the percussionist. He's a composer, anyway. And I put them together: B-Reich. And then I placed this association in a location that compounds the "B" sound in "Barik" and in "Bender." And this connection is very, very powerful. It's something anybody can do. And the word starts with "B," so I used Berlin Tegel Airport, or Tegel Airport. And I was imagining an area that I was familiar with inside the airport. And there's where I had Bender and Steve Reich interacting.
Now, if I remember correctly, I actually even drew this out. It was Bender like pounding the drum of Steve Reich or whatever. And there was money flying all over the place in this insane action filled with all kinds of emotions about the money flooding this area. And so this interaction wasn't just some bland, boring thing. It was dynamic, rich, fun to think about, and that helped me remember the sound and the meaning of the word with multiple hooks. The place started with the letter that the word starts with. Bender starts with "B" like "Barik," and then Steve Reich has that in there. All you're doing is combinatory logic, it's called, and it involves alphabetical linking at multiple levels.
Now, the other thing here is that the location is also really important. So you don't want to invent locations, at least not in the beginning, and probably never, because it's adding additional cognitive load that you just don't need unless you really enjoy doing that and you find it effective. But I think a lot of us, we just don't have time for that kind of thing. We just want to memorize stuff really, really quickly. So using familiar locations just saves you a lot of time.
So now let's address the white elephant that many people bring into the room. They might think, "Okay, so those are some examples, but they mean nothing to me because I don't know Steve Reich and so forth." And on and on. But before you rush off to go to an AI to give you examples on mass like a dictionary has words on mass, just come back to the theory that I've shared with you. I've been teaching memory techniques, and a lot of it has been vocabulary learning specifically, for over 15 years, and been using these techniques a lot longer than that. And I can tell you that there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of mnemonic examples out there in the world. Literally, on this shelf, I have medical mnemonic books this thick. Industries sell mnemonic examples by the pound. And sure, they work for people some of the time, but on the main, if you want to master memorizing vocabulary, you have to devote yourself to the knowledge packed inside the theory so that you can actually apply it and start to learn to apply your own mnemonic examples to the words.
So, I hope you hear what I'm saying about the weakness of mnemonic examples. And if you need more help just diving straight into developing the skill, there are exercises in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass that cause you to develop these examples for yourself, and you could even come to one of my real-time live boot camps where we work on it together in groups to implement the theory instead of reaching for examples that, you know, even if you find the perfect example that's going to click for you, you're still not going to really have the practice of being in the driver's seat of using the techniques because you know how to basically build your own examples by completing these exercises.
All right, so you know the importance of capturing words that you want to memorize. You know about associating them with these very, very specific, not generic, associations, and you know about using familiar locations. The next essential step when it comes to memorizing vocabulary, any word, is that you need to test those associations to make sure they bring back the sound and the meaning of the target word. Now, that's really quite simple in one sense because all you have to do is think back to the location and then recall the associations that were placed in that location and the ways that you had them interact.
But what's a little bit more challenging, and it's a good challenge, is scheduling when you're going to test, right? And I personally do a lot of it in my mind in terms of reminding myself. I don't set timers, but I've been doing it for many, many years. And I found that when I did set timers, I just dismissed them because I'm just not ready at that time to do it. But over time, I just found myself naturally coming back to rehearse whatever it is I memorized. And you know, I've done some experiments recently getting ChatGPT and Gemini to send reminders. It's okay, but I still find that I dismiss them because it's better to manually remind myself and have that habit. And I think you're going to find that that is really, really powerful for you if you can build it.
But this brings us back to the role of the memory journal. I have this in my space all the time or in my back pocket. It reminds me to do the recall rehearsal and the testing that needs to happen. So typically what I do is, let's say I'm reading a book, I find words that I want to memorize, or I'm studying a language, and I just write the words that I want to memorize in the first half of the notebook. So they're up front here. And then when I want to test, I go to the back of the notebook and I do all my testing in the back half. And what that helps is it helps make sure that I don't do rote learning by accident because I'm not looking at the target information. I am hiding it from myself.
And it doesn't matter if during the testing phase there are mistakes made. That happens. Stretching and reaching for associations is going to feel like a stretch. And that's good. It means that your brain is starting to form memorable connections. And the failing is just an opportunity for you to say, "Oh, that's curious. Why did I get that wrong?" And I'll tell you some troubleshooting tips. But whatever you do, don't start telling yourself a negative story. Don't start repeating this dark mantra that, "Oh, it doesn't work for me," or something even more negative. Say something positive like, "I am becoming a memory master who solves all the problems with deep curiosity and new application because I analyze and then I take action." Right? Then you just use some analytical thinking to figure out what the problems were that caused you to struggle to remember the target word, and then you fix it.
So the first problem, and here's some troubleshooting, is that usually the associations are weak. You might feel that they're strong enough at the time, but even if you're an old pro at memory techniques, you can sometimes get lazy or overconfident and start taking shortcuts. I know because that happens to me sometimes, even decades later of this real intense practice that I've done. So, the fix is usually to go back and make sure that you've properly exaggerated the association and sometimes pop in a completely new association. And you know, when this problem happens to me, I usually don't have to replace my initial choices completely. But it is sometimes the case that it's not worth it to force weak associations to be better. But when you do replace them, well, you have the benefit of exploring a larger variety of options.
But generally, I like to do what I call compounding. So, for example, with that word I mentioned earlier, *expedendoram*, I originally had the vague and generic idea of "rum" for the final syllable along with this conceptual "door dorm." Right? Did I remember that ending when I was first testing? Of course not. So instead of calling myself bad names and all that, I went back and analyzed and I replaced that "door" and the "rum." And I thought for a few seconds, rotated this around in my mind, rotated with the alphabet, and suddenly it was there. Danny in *The Shining*, maybe you've seen it, where the words "red rum" appear on a door as Danny is going like, "red rum, red rum, red rum, red rum, exped," right? And so that just, bang, presto, solved the problem. A weak association of just a door and some abstract rum became incredibly magnetic by simply applying what memory masters like Matteo Ricci called in their books the "magic elixir of thinking."
And thinking is really, really important. Typically, you want to think about how you can just make what you started with more specific. So I still wound up having a door in there, but it was the door in the movie *The Shining*. Okay. So there's a knack to developing your systems so that you can do this, so that you can do this kind of rotational, combinatory thinking. And a simple exercise is to simply write out the alphabet and list one familiar figure for each letter of the alphabet, and then list a potential memory palace for the letter of the alphabet. So it'd be like, "Adam," the guy who sat beside me in band class, and then another friend, "Adam's house." "Brad," and then "Brad's house," or "Brad Pitt," I should say. And then my friend "Brad's house." My aunt Cassie for "C." On and on and on. Claire Danes, maybe, is the character I might use for "C" in this round. I have many times gone through this list, which is part of why I have a fairly strong mental dexterity to come up with lots of associations. But it's not because I just was that way. I trained myself to be that way. You can do it, too. And it's literally as simple as just getting out a piece of paper and starting to write out those associations. Don't underestimate that. Remember, people like Lynn Kelly, she's got the Order of Australia for her work in memory, so she must know what she's talking about.
Handwriting is the ultimate encryption device. Well, it's the ultimate "wake up your mind" device as well. So, just get out a piece of paper and start writing this stuff out by hand. You'll thank yourself for it because it'll increase your speed of association when you want to sit down and memorize vocabulary. Okay?
Now, I mentioned that when Ricci shared these secrets, and they are really powerful learning weapons, when he opened up and said, "Here's what I do," to the Chinese, he experienced what can only be described as a tragic comedy. Yes, he recited his Latin Chinese dictionary forward and backward with the help of his memory palaces. But when he was starting to tell the Chinese elites how he did it and get into all this memory palace stuff, he said to them, "You know, the more memory palaces you have, the better your skills will be. Just build lots and lots of memory palaces." The elites just kind of looked at him and laughed, and then they started reciting their own books from memory forward and backwards. It's not that he had come all that way for nothing. But Ricci had to learn that the memory techniques he used were not specific to Italian priests. They are universal throughout time and history. People have used them. Anyone can use them, any place, anytime.
Now, in fact, there was another Italian memory master named Giordano Bruno. And this comes back to something I was saying before about how you can arrive at things independently, like I did when I was working with that German dictionary in Berlin. Bruno says very, very clearly that anyone who thinks long and hard enough about the combinatorial nature of the alphabet and how they interact with words and meanings and locations will be able to discover these techniques on their own. Thinking is one of the best memory tools ever, and it works, and it's true that people have arrived at it independently in places everywhere around the world because it's just purely logical.
So if you'd like to learn more about the application of this special form of combinatorial logic not only for developing vocabulary but for learning languages other than your mother tongue, well, thank you very much for watching this tutorial on memorizing vocabulary and stick around for my detailed video tutorial on the memory palace technique specifically for language learning next. Thanks again, and until we have a chance to speak again, come visit me at magneticmemorymethod.com and keep yourself magnetic.