Memory Test: Improve Your Memory Now | Jim Kwik

Remember, memory is not something you have, it's something you do. There is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's just a trained memory and an untrained memory. Now for some fun. Let me give you a test. These will not be difficult words. They will also not be in random order, and instead of 20 words, I'm gonna give you just 10. So let's begin. Do the best you can to remember these words in order. No writing these down again. Here we go. Water bottle, balloon, Battery. Barrel. Board. Diamond. Knight Rider. Ox. Toothpaste. Sign. Okay, take a minute and write down as many of the words as you remember down below in the comments. Do the best you can. Write them down. Finish up. Okay, so now test yourself. Here's the list again: water bottle, balloon, battery, barrel, board, diamond, Knight Rider, ox, toothpaste, sign. How'd we do? So now let's say you are the memory expert and I am your student. We're gonna switch roles here. You're the memory coach, and you're gonna tell me why you remembered certain words. So which words did you tend to remember? Water bottle. Why do you think you would remember water bottle out of that list? Because it was what? Because it was first. And so first is a principle of recall. What we're gonna do here is we're gonna find out what words you remembered and why you remembered it. So you remembered water bottle because it was first, and in psychology they call that primacy. You tend to remember things in the beginning. If you get a list of words, you probably remember the words in the beginning because those are first. If you go to a party and meet 20 strangers, you're more likely to remember the people in the beginning of the party because you met them first. Okay, that's primacy. What other words did you tend to remember? Did you remember the 4 Bs? Balloon, battery, barrel, board. A lot of people remember that. Why do you think you would remember that? Because it's organized, right? That there's a pattern there. Do you tend to remember things that are organized? Of course. If I gave you a list of 20 words, I asked you to memorize the words, you probably remember 5, 6, 7 of them. But if I tell you, okay, they're gonna go in these 4 categories, their presidents, fruits, state capitals, and colors, you're more likely to remember it because it's organized. What other words on that list did you remember? And tell me why. Knight Rider, right? Knight Rider stood out. Why? Because it's unique. Now unique, or something being outstanding, that's a principle to memory. That's a principle of recall. We tend to remember things that are unique. What other words did you remember? The last word, right? What was the last word? Sign. Why? Because the opposite of primacy, it's recency. You tend to remember things that are more recent or things at the end. Same thing, if you get 20 words, you're more likely to remember the words at the end. If you go to a party, you're more likely to remember the people that you met towards the end of the party. So that's recency. By the way, something that could serve you right now, especially if you're studying. I don't know if back in school if you, if you really studied to remember or you crammed and you forgot. Remember, you didn't study for weeks and then all of a sudden you have an exam coming up and you pull an all-nighter and you study for 6, 7, 8, 10 hours straight and you can't wait to take the the test, because once you take the test, you don't want anyone to talk to you before that because you don't want any information to spill out. Once you take the test, what happens? It all disappears. Your memory is interesting. We're talking about primacy and recency. That means you tend to remember stuff in the beginning and stuff at the end. The stuff in the middle, you lose. If you study for 8 hours, you remember stuff in the beginning and end. You lose all that stuff in the middle. We encourage people to take breaks at least every 45 minutes to an hour because what does that create? Time. Because you have all of these extra hours, you create more beginnings and more ends. Do you see that? So that's primacy and that's recency. What other words on the list do you tend to remember? Some people remember diamond. Why do you think some people remember diamond? Because there's emotion attached to that. There's meaning to it, right? So some people, if you take information— that's a principle of recall. If you take information and attach it to emotion, that's the part of your brain— that part of your brain, by the way, your middle brain, is where you store long-term memories. That's also where you process a lot of emotions. So it's kind of interesting with your hippocampus and your amygdala. What other words do you tend to remember? Maybe toothpaste. Now, why would some people remember toothpaste? Because maybe it's familiar. Familiarity is a principle of recall, right? You tend to remember if you meet somebody and their name is the same name of someone that you know, or to a sister or to a brother, you tend to remember that name because it's familiar for you. So what we're doing right now is we're making a list of the principles to recall. These are things that you're telling me as my memory coach, you're my memory coach teaching me These, Jim, these are the things that I remembered and these are the reasons why. And the things that I forgot, I probably wasn't applying these principles. So what are some of the other principles of recall? Some of you might remember some of these words because you visualized them. Is that true? Some of these words you remember because you saw a picture of the barrel, you saw a picture of the balloon, you saw what color that balloon was. You pictured it, right? So that's a principle of recall. You probably remembered it if you associated 2 of the words together. Some of you might have taken 2 of these words and maybe clumped them together, and we tend to remember things that are associated with one another. So now you have all these wonderful principles of recall. I'm gonna show you how to take these principles that you taught me helped you to remember things and apply it towards this entire list. So now you're gonna learn this list again, but if you didn't get 10 out of 10 last time, I'm gonna teach you how to memorize all 10s forward and all 10 backwards. So what I want you to do, if it's safe, you're not operating heavy machinery or driving a car, is I want you to take a deep breath, exhale, relax, and close your eyes. And I want you to imagine something. I want— with your eyes closed, I I'm gonna take you through a story. I'm gonna apply the principles of recall that you told me helped you remember things to this story. I want you to imagine you're outside right now. It's a nice bright sunny day and you have a water bottle in your hand. Look at the water bottle. See it. Feel it. Imagine it's there. Even if you can't imagine it in front of you and you don't see it, imagine that you're imagining it. So you see it, the water bottle, it's there. Notice what brand it is. Say out loud what brand it is. Say it out loud. Good. And I want you to notice that tied around the water bottle is a gigantic helium balloon. Gigantic helium balloon. And it is so large that it actually takes the water bottle up into the air. And you look at the balloon and you notice what color it is. I want you— this is the active part— say out loud what color your balloon is right now. Say it out loud now with your eyes closed. Good. Now you're seeing the balloon carry the water bottle up in the sky and out from nowhere Hundreds and hundreds, a barrage of batteries come flying through the air and it pops the balloon. It pops the balloon. And you're like, where did those batteries come from? And you're looking at the batteries and you notice what brand the battery is. You notice if it's AA or AAA or D batteries and you notice the brand. Say out loud what the brand name is right now. Energizer. Duracell. It's like a whole branding question, right? And so those batteries, they pop the balloon and you wonder where the batteries came from. And you look and they're coming from this big gigantic wooden barrel. Gigantic wooden barrel. That's where all the batteries There's someone inside the barrel throwing out all these batteries. So it reminds you of a barrel. And out from the side of the barrel is this long surfboard. It's a board, surfboard, right on the side of the barrel. You notice what color the surfboard is? Notice the board. Look at the board. And rolling down the board, something interesting is rolling down the board. It's a gigantic diamond, but it's not like a 1-carat diamond or a 2-carat diamond. It's a 68-carat diamond rolling down the board like a baseball. And it's rolling down the board and it falls off of the board and it lands into— The water. Knight Rider's car. Remember Knight Rider? The car itself is called KITT, right? But the Knight Rider— remember Knight Rider? So KITT drives off and it parallel parks between 2 oxen. 2 oxen, right? There's an ox in front and an ox in back. And you notice when you're looking at the ox up in front, he has really bad breath. And so you go to brush his teeth using toothpaste. So look at the toothpaste all over the teeth. Toothpaste all over the ox's teeth. And now notice also what brand of toothpaste it is. Do that now. Say it out loud. Say it out loud now. Good. And when you're done with the toothpaste, you throw the toothpaste off in the distance and it hits a big neon sign and the sign says congratulations on it. There's a big explosion and fireworks. So what I want you to do now— this was a really quick rendition, but I want you to walk through the story in your mind with your eyes closed. Start in the beginning, right, with your water bottle that you're holding and go through and see if you could name in your mind the 10 different things going all the way from Water bottle to the balloon all the way to the sign. Do it now with your eyes closed. Fast forward, go a little faster in the story. And if you finish early, try going backwards. Do you know the 10 things? Okay, let's try doing it together, okay? What was the first thing? Water bottle. After water bottle was what? Balloon. After balloon was what? Say it out loud. This is the active part. Batteries. After batteries was what? Barrel. After barrel was what? Board. You had the surfboard. After board was what? Diamond. Good. After diamond was— what was after diamond? Knight Rider. After Knight Rider? Ox. After ox was what? Say it out loud. Toothpaste. And after toothpaste was what? Sign. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Now try doing it backwards. Let's do it backwards together. Can you do it backwards? Say it out loud. What do you start with? Sign. Before sign was what? Say it out loud. Toothpaste. Before toothpaste was? Ox. Before ox was? Knight Rider. Good. Before Knight Rider was? Diamond. Before diamond was? Board. Before board was? Barrel. Before barrel was what? Batteries. Before batteries was? Balloon. And right before balloon was what? Say it out loud. Water bottle. Congratulations. How'd we do? Now what I want to know is down below in the comments, Tell me what you started with on this list. What out of 10 did you remember in the first time? And then what did you remember after you applied the story method? Write it down below in the comments right now. Let's share our results with everybody else. How'd we do? Write it down below. And if you did better, you don't want to get perfect necessarily because here's the thing. If you didn't get it perfect at 10 out of 10, that's where you learn. And so if for some reason you didn't remember the ox, why didn't you remember it? Did you not make it vivid? Was it not outstanding for you? Did you not use emotion? Did you not associate this something else. Remember the principles recall. Those are the principles that are going to help you excel.