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  So please don’t feel that visualization is the be-all and end-all to imagination. Use whatever works: sound, taste, touch, movement, exaggeration, and so on. Imagination is a combination of all these things.

  INCREASING YOUR STORAGE CAPACITY

  At this point you may think it’s feasible to memorize a deck of cards, even in 5 minutes, but how do you memorize 40 decks in one go?

  When I initially practiced with cards a number of years ago, I found that the journey method was so powerful that if I used the same journey a second time, I got a sort of double image. If I tried to memorize another deck of cards, I still had the first series of cards in my head. So I thought, “I’m going to have to invent a second journey here,” because it was taking about 24 hours for some of these images to dissolve. Then I found that I needed a third route, and then a fourth, fifth, and sixth. What happened was when I got up to 6 decks, my storage capacity went from 52 to 312 stages. That meant I could memorize 312 shopping items, a list of 312 names, 312 pairs of numbers, and so on—312 of anything. It was a bit like disk space on a computer. To memorize 40 decks of cards, I had to prepare 40 separate journeys, each consisting of 52 stages. That’s when I got real storage space: it went up to 2,080 stages.

  With this amount of storage capacity, I can do a lot of the World Memory Championships, and I need this capacity, because these are some of the events: You have 2,000 digits to memorize in an hour. You have multiple decks of cards to memorize in an hour. You have names and faces, abstract images, and 300 random words. It goes on and on.

  Probably the most difficult one—and this is where you have to control your stress—is the spoken number test. You’re listening to a recording, and you hear a voice call out 400 digits at the rate of 1 digit every 2 seconds: 6, 8, 3, and so on.

  Even if you’re successful in memorizing 400 digits, if you get the second digit wrong, your score is 1. It’s sudden death.

  A NUMBERS TEST

  I’m not going to give you a 400-digit number, but I’m going to give you a 30-digit number to memorize, and it’s going to be at the rate of 1 digit every 2 seconds. The average recall for this test is about 7 or 8 digits, which indicates an average IQ. If you can go to more than 9 or 10, that indicates a high IQ. If you’re anywhere near 30, then your IQ is through the roof. So here’s an instant IQ raiser for you.

  The first step is preparing yourself. Before you start, get organized. How are you going to attempt this task? Are you going to look at doing 2 digits at a time, or are you going to use number shapes, or number rhymes to do 1 digit at a time? So you’re either going to have to have a 15-stage journey or a 30-stage journey.

  Again, you can either have someone else read out this number list, or you can record yourself saying them, at a rate of 1 for every 2 seconds, and play them back. Here they are: 7, 9, 2, 2, 6, 4, 0, 1, 7, 8, 4, 0, 0, 3, 5, 3, 9, 6, 0, 9, 1, 5, 4, 0, 3, 2, 6, 6, 6, 3.

  Keep thinking all the time. Write your answers down on a piece of paper, as we do at the World Memory Championships. When you’re finished, look at the numbers as printed above, and make a note of your score.

  How did you fare? What was your score? If you got 7 right, then that indicates an average IQ. If you got 10 to 15, that shows a high IQ; 16 to 25 right, then we’re talking genius level. If you got 26 to 30, you’re one in a million, and you should think about competing.

  Now comes the postmortem. If you made a mistake, why? After a while, you may notice that certain numbers or playing cards or even objects always seem to trip you up. You may also find that one or two stages of a journey somehow don’t seem to work either. This is where analyzing the result is so beneficial. Which symbols are causing you trouble? Maybe they’re not strong enough for you. Then replace them. Perhaps a feature of the journey is so uninteresting that it’s no wonder the images don’t stick to it; in which case, just rearrange the journey. Reroute it. It’s a type of delayed biofeedback.

  Another pointer: if you slow down on your progress, then you should try and get faster. You should try and make mistakes. I can remember one of the English competitors gave me a call once. She said, “I can never seem to get below 4 minutes for a deck of cards.”

  “How many mistakes are you making on 4 minutes?” I asked.

  “I never make a mistake.”

  “That’s your problem. You have to start making mistakes. You have to push it.”

  Every time I practice, I usually try to get down to about 30 seconds or below. I make sure I always make about 4 or 5 errors. Otherwise, if I’m having perfect recall every time, I’m not really pushing myself; I don’t know where my limits are.

  18

  Becoming a Mentathlete

  Competitors who take part in mind sports, whether it’s chess, memory, bridge, speed reading, and so on are now being referred to as mentathletes. With prize money and world titles at stake, these mentathletes are beginning to train, just like any other top athletes, from tennis, swimming, skiing to motor racing or football.

  Athletes of all kinds are increasingly turning their attention toward their brains. Top golfers now employ therapists, mentors, and mind gurus. My guru is the brain wave machine. Balance is the name of the game, and this latest technology helps you to achieve it. It involves wearing a pair of glasses with LEDs or light-emitting diodes, which pulsate at varying speeds.

  At the same time, you wear a set of headphones, which produce a beat in time with the lights, so the effect of this combination of light and sound trains the brain to tune in to the optimum frequencies for learning, concentration, memory, and relaxation whilst at the same time balancing the brain waves of both hemispheres.

  I believe that in the future not only will we see sportsmen and women utilizing this technology, but it will become a requirement in industry and education that’s available for everyone. Of course, you can help to balance your own brain anytime you want just by memorizing a shopping list.

  A DAY IN THE LIFE

  Now you know pretty much all there is to know about the strategies that we professional memory men and women employ to win competitions. Maybe you’re thinking that you should enter yourself, but these days the sport of memory is growing into a serious business. The winners of the national championships are guaranteed exposure on television and on magazines in their own countries, and they do radio interviews as well. Some of them even have agents.

  Such is the competition these days that I now have to prepare and train harder, not because my memory isn’t working so well, but because the competition is getting stronger. More countries are starting their own championships, so the best are sent to England to compete for the world title (which, I hasten to add, I intend to hang on to for quite some time).

  As part of my training, I also look to my body, usually a couple of months before. Here’s an idea of the training that I have to do. In 1991, all I had to do was take a week’s vacation to practice for the World Memory Championships, which I won. However, in 2000, I had to devote the preceding two months solely to training in order to give myself a chance of winning the title again.

  Such is the competition these days that I’m having to train for longer and harder. During that tough period of memory training, this is a typical day’s schedule.

  I wake up at 8:00, and the first thing I do is try and recall the previous night’s dreams. I do this just to get my visualization going. At 9:00, I do five minutes’ physical warm-up exercises. At five minutes past 9:00, I’ll go for a 4-mile cross-country run. Then, at 10:00, I’ll spend 10 minutes on a brain wave balancing machine. This is sophisticated optical and acoustical equipment, which helps to balance my brain.

  Half past 10:00, I’ll have a light breakfast, but I’ll also take a tablet of gingko biloba, which helps to improve the circulation. At 11:00, typically I’ll memorize a 1,000-digit number. At half past 11:00, I connect my brain up to an EEG at this time, and I perform about a one-hour biofeedback session.

  Half past 12:00, I’ll do another half-hour EEG testing, and at the same time, I practice visualization techniques and meditation as well. At 1:00, I’ll have a bit of lunch and relaxation. At 2:00, I might go out and play a bit of golf, either a full round or just a quick half round game.

  At 6:00, I’ll have a glass of fresh orange juice. No alcohol throughout the 2 months of training. At 7:00, a fast sprint of playing card memorization. In other words, I’ll go through a deck of cards as fast as I can. Half past 7:00, dinner; at 8:00, I’ll have about an hour’s brain training with a virtual reality computer game.

  At 9:00, I work with a specially designed computer program which knocks out random decimals, random words, binary digits, and many more things. At 10:00, I’ll relax, maybe watch a film, and then, around 1:00 in the morning, sweet dreams.

  A FINAL TEST

  Time for another test. This time I’m going to give you a list of 30 names. It’s not sudden death; I just want you to try to memorize as many as you can in sequence. Use all the mental tools available to you. Prepare another journey, or use one from an earlier session. You’ve probably developed two or three journeys by now. Remember, the more journeys you have, the more storage space you’ll develop.

  Again, you can either have someone read this list aloud to you, or you can record yourself reading it and play it back.

  Listen to each name, and let that name trigger somebody you know or somebody famous, and associate that person with the background of the journey that you have. Of course, you’ll need a journey with 30 stages.

  Here come those 30 names: Robert, Lucy, Caroline, Edward, Monica, Pamela, Jim, Sally, Rupert, Sam, Rosy, Judd, Sharon, Elvis, David, Madonna, Mike, Dominic, Rebecca, Allen, Jessie, Max, Sarah, Henry, Claudia, Peter, Jenny, Mary, Charles, Elizabeth.

  Keep thinking all the ti
me. Let the images wash over you.

  I did warn you these tests were going to be tough. I want you to make sure you have those names along your journey, so play through them again quickly, or have your friend read them to you. When you’ve finished, write down the names in order, and make a note of your score.

  I’m going to give you a list of 30 objects now, and I want you to connect those names to their corresponding objects.

  So, for example, when you go back to the first stage, you’ll be seeing Robert in your mind’s eye. I’m gong to feed you with blue socks. You have to imagine Robert putting on blue socks or doing something with the blue socks. Every time you hear a description, you have to connect that person with the object. Got the idea?

  Here goes: blue socks, magazine, microphone, hand grenade, cigar, tennis racket, snoring, fishing rod, hammer, basketball, telescope, dance, naked, hair dryer, hamburger, kissing, boxing gloves, piano, painting, hysterical, flying, drunk, lipstick, rude noise, card game, guitar, fur coat, anesthetic, golf club, and barbecue.

  Now here is the list of the person and the corresponding object, so you can determine your score.

  Robert, blue socks

  Rupert, hammer

  Lucy, magazine

  Sam, basketball

  Caroline, microphone

  Rosy, telescope

  Edward, hand grenade

  Judd, dance

  Monica, cigar

  Sharon, naked

  Pamela, tennis racket

  Elvis, hair dryer

  Jim, snoring

  David, hamburger

  Sally, fishing rod

  Madonna, kissing

  Mike, boxing gloves

  Henry, rude noise

  Dominic, piano

  Claudia, card game

  Rebecca, painting

  Peter, guitar

  Allen, hysterical

  Jenny, fur coat

  Jessie, flying

  Mary, anesthe

  Max, drunk

  Charles, golf club

  Sarah, lipstick

  Elizabeth, barbecue

  I’ll bet you had a lot of fun with that list.

  Calculate your score. If you got 5 to 10, that’s about average for this test. If you got 11 to 20, you’re way above average; 21 to 30, then you’re talking genius level. You have a vibrant imagination. If you scored really badly, don’t worry. Just keep practicing. You’ll get there.

  19

  Final Thoughts

  Congratulations on completing Quantum Memory Power! If just one aspect of your memory has been improved, whether it’s absorbing names or telephone numbers more easily or the ability to remember a simple shopping list, then studying this course has been more than worthwhile. Kick-starting your memory in one area will create a chain reaction of organized thought, with all the benefits that go with it.

  The path to developing quantum memory power lies before you. It’s not an exclusive path, with access granted only to those with a special gift for learning. It is, instead, available to anyone and everyone who has a brain, and that means you.

  You are well equipped with an incredible potential for absorbing knowledge. Let your imagination—the key to learning and memory—unleash that brain power and propel you along at ever-increasing speeds. Practice your newfound skills using those three inseparable tools: association, location, and imagination. Use number shapes, and in particular the Dominic system, to help you digest and demystify awkward items that you need to know: PIN numbers, telephone numbers, dates, statistics, foreign words, playing cards, names, and faces. They can all be processed swiftly and filed away neatly once you know how to convert them easily into colorful, meaningful, and memorable images.

  Of course, the more you practice, the sooner these skills will become second nature to you. The techniques, systems, and methods I’ve given you in this book have been developed from experience. They have served me very well, and I for one would be lost without them. They’re the result of a process of selection that has taken over 30 years of research to develop. They are yours now to take full advantage of. Apply them, and you will reap more than just the benefits of owning a reliable and efficient memory. You will require an insatiable appetite for learning. Maybe one of these days you’ll be challenging me for the title of World Memory Champion. Good luck!

 

 

  Dominic O'Brien, Quantum Memory Power

 

 

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