Kwik Brain: A Fast & Fun Way To Recall Information (Episode 8)

Welcome to Kwik Brain, bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik. Free your mind. Let's imagine if we could access 100% of our brain's capacity. I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it. I know kung fu. Show me. Welcome back, Kwik Brain. How can you easily memorize lists of words? We received this question in our private Facebook group at kwikbrain.com from a graduate student who has an immense amount of information, it sounds like, she needs to retain. Now, if you've seen me on stage quickly memorize a list of words, maybe 30, 40, 50, 100 random words that an audience gives me, I would repeat them back from memory forwards and then backwards. And I don't do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what's really possible Because the truth is you could do it too. You could do it regardless of your age, your background, your career, your personal history, your level of education, because there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's just a trained memory and an untrained memory. And we're going to train your memory today. We're starting with words because they're useful. In order to be able to remember lists, it's a great memory training exercise. And since many of the things you want to remember is made up of words, Think about it, a person's name, a speech, a toast, a script, languages, vocabulary. We're gonna start with words and I'm gonna get you to impress yourself by your ability to quickly recall a list of random words. And I'm hoping what you do with this is you go out there and impress others with your newfound skill, your new memory abilities. Now, speaking of lists, I wanna thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for reviewing my show. Put us consistently in the top of the most popular podcast lists. And so when we're talking about lists, my heart goes out to you. Thank you, because with you, we're able to activate more Kwik Brains to change the brains and change the world and fill in the gaps of an education system that hasn't quite got to the digital age. And that's what this is all about. So how do you go about remembering a list of words? Most people use rote repetition. I'm about to give you, for example, 10 words, random words, and I want you to do your best to be able to memorize this list. I don't want you to write it down. Do the best you can. There are only 10 words instead of the 30 or 40 or 100 I usually do on stage. But I want you to have this as a baseline because this is interactive. Remember, this is not just a podcast. This is a coaching session. This is where you and I talk about this topic of your genius and get it to come out the way you want it to be able to come out. Now, if you haven't listened to our previous sessions, sessions on memory improvement. I highly recommend that you review them also when you get a chance. Now, here are the 10 words. I'm just going to make them up right now. Do the best you can to memorize this list of 10 words as you're focusing on driving or doing whatever you need to do. Be careful if you're operating, obviously, heavy machinery. But this is an interactive coaching. That's why you're going to get the results. You're not just going to consume the information. Okay. Try to remember these words in order. Fire hydrant, balloon, batteries, barrel, board, diamond, Knight Rider, ox, toothpaste, sign. Okay, what I want you to do now is take out a piece of paper or take out your phone And to the best of your ability, I want you to see how many of the 10 words that you remember in order. Do that now. How many of the 10 do you remember? And you're thinking, Jim, stop talking, you're distracting me. And if I am, I'm doing it on purpose. So let's see how many you did, because really you want to learn under ideal conditions. There's distraction, right? When you're reading something, usually there's noises going on in the background. People are talking. You wanna train under the conditions that you wanna be able to perform in. So here are the 10 words. I'm gonna give them back to you and you can check to see how well you did. Fire hydrant, balloon, batteries, barrel, board, diamond, Knight Rider, ox, toothpaste, sign. So how do we do? So just write down the number of words that you got correct, ideally in the correct order. But how many of the ten did you remember? How would most people go about memorizing these words? They would do something called rote repetition, right? They would repeat themselves: fire hydrant, balloon, batteries, barrel, board, diamond, Knight Rider, ox, toothpaste, sign. And then your brain goes, okay, I didn't get any of that. Then they go: fire hydrant, balloon, batteries, barrel, board, diamond, Knight Rider, ox. Toothpaste sign. And would keep on going. Rote is kind of like— rote learning, repetition, is the most ineffective way to learn and memorize something. That's where hundreds of years ago when they started these schools, the teacher would say something like a fact, like whatever, fire hydrant, and then the students would repeat that fact, fire hydrant, back, and it would be a wheel. And the rote, like a Rotary Club, it's the symbol is a wheel. So the first half of the wheel is the teacher saying the word, and the second half of the wheel is the students repeating it. And they would go back and forth and back and forth, and after 50 times, then the students would quote unquote learn. And the challenge is, what happens? It takes time. That's the big challenge. Whenever you're doing something, we'll talk about this in a future episode, there's frequency and there's duration. But frequency takes time, doing it many times. Duration is studying it for a very long time. But if you use intensity, you're going to remember it better. So what does that mean? Now I want to turn the tables here. Now you are the Kwik Brain, the quick memory coach, and I want you to teach me the words that you actually got correct. Meaning this: let's say you didn't memorize all 10, but you probably didn't forget all 10 either. And I always tell people that genius leaves clues. Your memory leaves clues, that there's always a method behind the magic. When somebody does something magical, there's a method, including your own. The challenge is sometimes you're not consciously aware of what that method is. So let's go through the list, and the ones that you got correctly, tell me out loud which words did you remember and why do you think you remembered them? Okay, so some people will say Fire hydrant. They remember fire hydrant. Why do you think you remember fire hydrant? Because it was first. Good. What other words did you remember? You're like, Jim, I remember sign. Sign is one of the words. Why do you think you'd remember sign? Because it's the last one on the list. And so this is a phenomenon called primacy and recency. Primacy says that you tend to remember things in the beginning. Recency says that you tend to remember things towards the end or they're more recent. So for example, you get a list of 20 words. You'll remember sign Some of the words in the beginning, some at the end. Primacy, recency. Good. What other words did you remember? Some people say they remember some of the Bs, right? Balloon, batteries, barrel, board. Now why do you think you would remember some of them? Because there's some iteration there, right? There's a pattern there. There's a way of— it's organized around that letter. It's chunking, right? And so another quality, if you will, for quick recall is primacy, recency, and organization. Organization helps memory. If I give you a list of 20 words and I ask you how many you remember, but then the second time they say, okay, these are past presidents, these are colors, these are state capitals, these are fruits, and they're somehow organized, are you more likely to remember them? Of course, organization helps that. Very good. What other words did you remember on that list? Diamond. Okay, now why would some people remember diamond on that list? Because maybe there's some emotion there. Remember, when you add emotion to something, it becomes more memorable. So that's another quality of quick recall. These are the qualities of what helps you to remember things: primacy, recency, organization, emotion. What other words did you remember? Some people say, I remember Knight Rider. Why would you remember Knight Rider? And you're like, Jim, it was unique. It stands out. Very good. That's another quality of quick recall. In order to remember something, it helps for it to be outstanding or to stand out, for it to be different. So now what we're going to do is we're going to take all these qualities of what helps you to remember. And my hypothesis here is that the things that you remembered, you had some of these qualities there that helps you to remember them. But the things that you didn't remember, you didn't have those qualities. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a technique with you to help you memorize all 10 forwards and backwards. And here we go. I want you to take a deep breath, exhale, and just breathe normally. If it's safe to do so, close your eyes. If it's not, then do not. And what I want you to do is just imagine what I'm about to tell you. I want you to imagine you're in your neighborhood and you see a fire hydrant, and tied to the fire hydrant is a gigantic helium balloon. Huge helium balloon. I want you to say out loud what color is the balloon. Say it out loud now. Say it out loud. Good. The balloon is so large it tears the fire hydrant up in the air and the balloon's going up in the sky. And as you're looking at it up in the sky, all these batteries come and the batteries pop the balloon. Batteries fly out of nowhere and they pop the balloon. I want you to look at the batteries. Notice what brand of batteries. Say out loud what brand. Say it out loud. Good. And it could be AA batteries, D batteries, whatever kind of batteries. And you look where the batteries came from. They're coming from the ground in a gigantic Remember that barrel? See the barrel? See the size of the barrel? What's unique about the barrel is on the side of the barrel is a wooden board, a surfboard on the side of the barrel. And rolling down the board is a diamond. A diamond. But not a 1-carat diamond or a 2-carat diamond. It's like a 64-carat diamond rolling down the surfboard. And it falls off the edge and it lands right through the barrel. The sunroof of Knight Rider's car. Knight Rider. Do you remember Knight Rider? The car parks between 2 ox. Ox. Parks right between 2 ox. You get out. The ox have very bad breath, and you use toothpaste to what? To brush his teeth. Notice the brand of toothpaste to brush his teeth. Notice that now. What brand? Good. And after you're done with that, you take the toothpaste and you throw it Into a gigantic neon sign, and the sign says, Kwik Brain. That's your Kwik Brain sign, and it explodes. Now what I want you to do now, Kwik Brains, is I want you to mentally walk through starting from fire hydrant all the way to the sign. Do that now in your mind. Say it out loud. Start with fire hydrant. What's after fire hydrant? Balloon. After balloon is what? Batteries. After batteries is what? Barrel. After barrel is what? The surfboard. Good. After surfboard is what? Diamond. After diamond is what? Knight Rider. After Knight Rider is ox. After ox reminds you of toothpaste, and toothpaste reminds you of sign. Excellent. Now notice that— notice the ones that work for you and And I'm hoping you didn't get every single one because that's where you learn. We learn from our mistakes. There's no such thing as failure, just failure to learn, just getting that feedback. Now I want to see something really impressive. Let's say you're on stage now and I want you to give me that list backwards, starting with what? Sign. Before sign is what? Say it out loud. Toothpaste. Before toothpaste is Ox. And then before ox is what? Knight Rider. Good. Before Knight Rider is? Diamond. Before diamond is? The board. Surfboard. Before board is? Barrel. Good. Barrel. Before barrel is? Batteries. And the batteries are to? The balloon. And then the balloon is attached to what? Fire hydrant. So let's go back to high school. Because we all took the same classes, similar classes. I want you to think of a class. Where did you have a lot of technical information? What subject? Science. Good. Specifically in science, what— which area of science was there a lot of technical information, more difficult information, things you need to memorize? Someone says chemistry. Okay, what would you need to memorize in chemistry? The periodic table of elements. All right, I want you to picture that. And if I was to ask you, what are the elements on the periodic table? How many people are likely to remember that list? Probably not many, not unless you're a chemist, right? And that's what happened with our education because we learned it and then we just forgot it right away. So what we're going to do now is this. Do you remember the periodic table, the first elements? It's hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, Fluorine and neon. Let's stop at the first 10. So how would you go memorize that list? Most people would repetition. Your brain would get bored after 100 times, say, okay, I got it. It doesn't mean anything to me, but I got it. So how do you memorize it faster? Here's what we do. We turn everything into a picture. And remember when you used to play Pictionary as a kid and you'd have to draw what somebody is saying and you can't speak the words, but you'd have to do sounds like, you draw an ear and it sounds like. So even if you didn't know what the thing is, You couldn't draw it. You would say sounds like this. So let's go through it. Hydrogen. Hydrogen. What could you picture for hydrogen? Somebody says a hydrant. Okay, so you could picture a hydrant. Good. Picture the hydrant. Now you have to connect it to helium. When I say helium, what do you picture? Quick. Helium balloon. Good. And then what do you do with the chain link? You have one link in a chain called a fire hydrant. You have another link in a chain called a balloon. Very good. Now put them together using action and exaggeration. Maybe you have the fire hydrant tied to it, a big helium balloon, very special color, and it's so powerful it pulls it up into the air. Okay. The 3rd element of the periodic table is lithium. Lithium. What's lithium used for? Lithium is used for batteries. So now what you do is connect batteries with the last link, which is helium. So connect lithium to the balloons. So the batteries to the balloons. What could you see? Well, maybe the fire hydrant's going up in the air with the balloon and all these batteries come and what? Pop the balloon. Very good. Now, where do those batteries come from? So now you have to connect the batteries to something called a what? Beryllium, barrel-illium. What does that sound like? Barrel. Maybe the batteries came from the barrel, right? Because this is what your mind needs. It just needs a trigger, a reminder, something that sounds like, so that way you could remember what the true information is. 'Cause once you know the true information, The pictures just disappear. Finally, a board to remind you of what? Boron. Good, boron. And what's riding down that board? A diamond to remind you what element? Carbon. Now it could have been a car full of bonbons going down that board, right? A sound-alike. Whatever you choose is best. And it falls into who? Knight Rider's car. What does Knight Rider remind you of? What element? Knight. Nitrogen. Very good. And then it parks right between 2 what? Ox. What's the element? Oxygen. Very good. And then you brush the teeth of the ox with what? Toothpaste. With fluoride toothpaste to remind you of fluorine. And finally, you take the toothpaste and you spray it on the big what kind of sign? Neon sign. And that's the 10th element, neon. Congratulations, Kwik Brain, you did it. You memorized 10 words forwards and back. And join us each episode, and I promise you You have all of the elements you need to enjoy your Kwik Brain. Want to double your brain speed and memory power? If you'd like to learn rapidly and get ahead faster, I'd like to give you my brand new Kwik Brain Accelerator program. You will discover exactly what I teach my clients to learn, read, and remember anything in half the time. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. That's K-W-I-K brain.com, or simply text the word podcast to 916-822-7246 and we'll send you a direct link. That's 916-82-BRAIN. Growing up struggling with learning challenges from a childhood brain injury, it's been my life's mission to help you have your very best brain so you can win more every single day. Now, want more Kwik Brain? Here are four ways to fast-track your results and lock in what you just learned into your long-term memory. Remember fast, F A S T. The F stands for Facebook. You're not alone on this journey. I invite you to join our free private online group. There you can connect with me, your fellow brain lovers, links to resources, and even submit your questions for me to answer in future episodes. Go to quickbrain.com. That's K W I K. The A stands for apply. Act on what you learned today. Remember, knowledge is not power, it's potential power. It only becomes power when you use it, so use what you just learned. The S stands for subscribe. Don't miss the next episode and other free brain training. And finally, the T stands for teach. You want to learn faster now? The key is to lock it in right away by teaching it to someone else. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Here's a simple way to do that. Leave a review on iTunes. Leave a review with your biggest takeaway from this episode. You could also post and share this podcast on your social media. It helps us spread our mission of building better, brighter brains. And of course, tag us so our team can properly thank you. #KwikBrain, K-W-I-K Brain. Mine is @JimKwik. Kwik, K-W-I-K, on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So what does FAST stand for? Facebook, apply, subscribe, teach. I'll see you in our next episode of Kwik Brain. Until then, remember, you are faster and smarter than you think.