Transcript for:
Improving Memory and Learning Abilities

[Music] [Applause] raise your hand if you think you have a fantastic memory [Laughter] okay i can see a couple of hands raising so let me make it easy for you i'm going to ask you an easy question raise your hands if you think you have a bad memory ah a lot more hands going up right now and what about the rest of you did not raise the hands you forgot to raise your hand well here's the good news it really doesn't matter whether you think you have a good memory or not because it's a fact that you can train your brain to remember better to learn faster and to achieve mastery in anything you want in your life and i'd like to show you something really interesting here which actually demonstrates to you what you can do if you train your brain now i would request any five of you any five people can i have a volunteer to please come here and write something on the flip chart yeah we've got two volunteers right from here so one two three thank you for thank you okay i promise you you don't have to remember anything so that's a good thing yeah okay so we got one more person one more person come on just one more person i want one more person to come up yes sir please come okay anyone it's fun all right so we've got five so big enough applause for all of them here thank you very much for volunteering okay so um this is what's going to happen so i think you can start the nearest flip chart so all you need to do is uh i'll just open it for you so um uh all you need to do is to write a six one five write a six digit number on this flip chart write it a little big uh so everyone in the audience can see so one line a six digit number and after you've done this please pass the marker to the next person you write the six digits six digits six digits and sir is it okay if you stay back after you've written on the your digit because i need a little bit more help from you okay good okay perfect so so so i am going to go behind the flip chart so because i'm not going to look at these numbers for the next few minutes all good so far okay good so no you also need to write a six digits a random number all right so if everything went well you should be having a 30 digit number on the flip chart is that correct okay big one of the pros for everyone thank you very much and please have a seat have a seat except you uh can i know your name please angela so angela is here bigger plus for angelo because he's going to help you a little more thing okay now what's going to happen is i'm going to stand behind the flip chart and actually if you don't mind can you please call these numbers to me out loud one by one yes sir go ahead right right right right right right right right right uh sorry i think i just messed up a little thing here so after you said two zero what is the next number four eight okay next six okay go ahead right three right right zero right three right zero right right right three right one right right right right right right one right six right right right right right so thank you very much speaking of applause for angelo here perfect thank you all right so of course you're expecting me to do something which is true so what's going to happen is i'll try to recall these numbers from my memory and let's see how it goes the numbers are seven seven one seven okay i messed up let's start again so it's seven seven seven one two zero four eight six seven three two zero three zero seven seven three one nine eight two two five four uh okay wait it's eight two um after that should be it's nine five uh uh one six two five three four okay thank you okay so what's the time right now so what's the time right now 8 45 8 45 sometimes 8 45 is not the right time for me i miss one or two digits [Music] all right so what you've seen is a demonstration of what anyone can do now that's just a 30 digit number we'll come back whenever some of you are wondering you know how i memorize these numbers i'll come back and explain to you how i did it now one of my records is i memorized a number consisting of 1944 digits it looks something like that i memorized a deck of playing cards in less than two minutes i also memorized a deck of seven decks of playing cards in 60 minutes so for those of you who are thinking of taking me to the casino i'm available or you can talk about the negotiation later on and also i became a grandmaster of memory many years ago and also broke a guinness record in memorizing the longest sequence of colors now it is true that i broke a guinness record in memory it was also true that many years ago i used to hold a world record in forgetting it's not official if you ask my mom and dad they'll tell you i had a lousy memory in fact i still remember one of those days when my 15 years old i my mom asked me to buy something from the shop i got onto my bicycle went to the shop parked my bicycle went into the shop and as i was going into the shop i totally forgot i went there on a bicycle walked out of the shop and started walking back home and the most embarrassing thing was i realized i left my bicycle only the next day now for those of you wondering what happened to the bicycle well you guessed it i lost it so i had a lousy memory i went from a person with a lousy memory to breaking a guinness record and the good news is anyone can train their memory anyone can become a fast learner because today i'm going to show you my formula of how you can learn anything and master anything in a fun easy manner so i'm going to show you some pictures on the screen as and these are some famous people so who is this thank you who's that thank you very much and who's this and then who's this let's have a quick interaction here can you please find a partner the person sitting next to you by default becomes your partner groups of tools to trees is fine i'll give you 10 seconds and your exercise is very simple can you please turn your partner and tell him or her what is common among all these people your 10 seconds starts now go ahead okay thank you very much that's about 10 seconds time thank you very much can i have some answers please shout out loud what is common billionaires thank you what is that rich of course they're rich they're billionaires what else come on americans are they oh so next time i should change that thanks for pointing it next celebrities what else inspirational that's true now can i also say that all these people are masters at their game do you agree with that well their masters at their game so you know when i was a teenager growing up when i used to read or hear about successful people and their extraordinary achievements i always used to be fascinated by their stories i always used to wonder you know what is it that makes these people very very successful now i'm talking about way back 1990s and those days there was no internet and if you want to do research in 1990 what do you do you go to library that's exactly what i did i went to the library i fell in love with reading books and i used to read hours and hours and finally when i started reading a lot of these uh books i found out the secret of success like most of you say i mean they're all rich in billionaires but then most of the common things like you know they're passionate all these successful people they are passionate they have clear goals they are they have a good purpose they are hard working they are committed they are confident but one thing that many people miss out is they all have committed to lifelong learning you name any person who has achieved extraordinary levels of success i can tell you that that person has committed to lifelong learning they keep on learning new things on a regular basis like oliver wendell home said a long time ago a mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions and that is the reason i say that your learning ability decides your earning capacity and there's also the reason why if you learn faster you will stand out from everyone else if you learn faster you can go from underpaid to overpaid and if you learn faster you can have an unfair advantage over others so the question is how do you learn so it all starts with input now what i mean by input now most people they just focus way too much on input what i mean by input is they go to seminars they read books they watch videos they listen to podcasts they follow blogs it's input input input input and more input well there's nothing wrong with learning the problem is if you have too much of input with no output what happens is you have shallow learning that's not good what we want is not shallow learning for example how many of you had this experience where you know some of your friends come to you and say hey read this book and then you go yeah what do you learn from this book and then they go uh it's a good book it's a good book it's a very good book you know and then you go okay like i understand what he what he's saying but what's the take away from this book for you and say i tell you you must read this book well what's the point of learning something if you can't implement it and benefit from this that is pure intellectual entertainment nothing else we don't want shallow learning we want deep learning and how do you do that we do it it's very simple for true mass free you need to focus more on the output rather than the input you need to focus more on the output rather than the input so raise your hand if you've heard this thing before yeah thank you very much so use it this is so true with learning when you learn something if you don't use it if you don't output it you lose it so that's the reason why we should become more of an output person than input and here's my formula of how you can be a master at anything the first thing is of course learn which is what are you already doing now the interesting thing is when you are learning you must ensure that the quality of input is really really high you must be paying 100 attention but the problem is when people are learning these days what do they do they do multitasking because of what because of the devices that you're actually holding right now because of the phones that we have people do multitasking just imagine when you're reading a book when you're watching a video you have your phone nearby and while you're reading while you're learning while you're understanding and the phone message goes off there's a notification goes off what do you do of course you attend to it when you attend to it what happened what you just did you killed your momentum you messed up with the quality of input now here's the thing your quality of input determines the quality of retention how well and how long can you remember information it also affects the quality of recall that's the reason why my suggestion is if you are learning something at least for the time you're learning you should be doing not multitasking but the exact opposite of it which is single tasking do one thing at one time especially when it comes to learning stay away from distractions pay 100 attention and then you'll be well on your way to mastery that's the first thing the second thing is of course is reflect now many people are in the rush to learn new things which is good but the problem is you don't you also need to reflect what i mean by that after you learn something pause for a while and ask yourself hey what's the takeaway from this thing and how can i use this information in my life how can i use information in my work in my family when you pause when you reflect when you ask these questions that's how learning solidifies otherwise it's all just wasted and after reflect the next step is implement and this is where the magic happens and unfortunately many people miss out on this thing what they do is they go on learning new things they get excited and they feel good they feel inspired and they're going to learn something new you just messed up now the problem is if you get into the habit of just learning without implementation you know what you get you get illusion of competence you feel you've learned it you feel you're competent but it's not competence at all because you haven't implemented it so my suggestion is when you are learning something stop write down what are the few things i can take action on schedule it in the calendar and take some action because this is what my one of my mentors told me nishant a lousy action is better than no action do you agree with that thank you very much and of course the last step is share raise your hand if you heard this thing before the best way to learn something is to teach it thank you you all heard that and that is so true when you learn something just output it just share it with other people now if you don't know if you don't want to teach you could just share it you could just discuss it but what happens is when you share things with the people what you're doing is you're helping your brain to pay more attention and then you will be on your path to mastery so i have not seen anyone who became a master at something just by doing the input they all became masters by doing the input and more of the output so i have a question for you when you're learning something new how much time do you spend on learning and how much time do you spend on reflecting on implementing and on sharing and if you're not spending more time on input in output that's not a good thing now coming back to the numbers i memorized i'm just i know you're wondering how i memorize these numbers now for that i have a simple system it's called visualization and association now how many of you believe that the brain remembers pictures better yes that's the reason why we always say i've seen you somewhere sorry what's your name do you ever say hey i know your name what's your face doesn't happen because that's the way the human brain works so what i do is i have pre-assigned visuals for every two-digit number so as angelo was calling these numbers to me so what i did was i tried to uh you know convert those into the number visuals that i already have and i use association to link them up together now if you're wondering how do you do so fast that is where implementation comes when you practice when you implement it that's how you become a true master now in fact when i do these workshops people can do this at the end of one day or two days it's not that easy if you know the right technique now coming back to this thing oops i have a simple solution for you before i close and this is this if you're spending x amount of time on input my solution is at least spend 2x amount of time on output and when you do that you are well on your way to be a master at achieving anything you want now because i messed up a couple of digits i want to challenge myself i got inspired after monarch speech i'm going to challenge myself and turn out my fear and face my fear and what i'm going to do is just take one more minute i'll try to recall this number one more time after speaking for 20 minutes okay no if this doesn't go well just cut this out from the youtube okay that's good okay good so that's true so let me see if i can recall these numbers in the backward sequence challenging myself who knows four three five two six one five nine two eight nine one three seven seven zero not yet um three zero two three seven six eight 4 it's 0 2 1 7 7 7. [Music] [Applause] [Music] you