I wanted to end this book with a short note on why I think passing on my techniques for a perfect memory is so important, and why I want you to pass them on, too. When I was at school, nobody showed me how to learn. Like my peers, I was expected to absorb and process knowledge in the best way I could and then regurgitate it in exams to show what had stuck. Looking back, I think I would have performed an awful lot better if someone had given me a few basic tips on memorization.
Today, our children are taught completely differently from the way I was taught then. When I was at school, the emphasis was on learning by rote, and it was all about what we could memorize from a book and then write down in an exam. Now, children are expected to display what they’ve learned not just by examination, but through projects and hands-on assignments. They have to show that they truly understand what they’ve been taught.
However, despite these changes, a trained memory continues to provide an invaluable tool for improving understanding. In whatever way they learn, children build every day on the information they learned the day, week, month and year before.
Memory in school is as fundamental today as it has ever been if we want to create a future filled with bright, focused minds that aspire to achieve their full potential.
In 2008, I became involved in taking memory techniques into UK schools. The idea was not to teach memory tricks, but to show students how, by engaging in “games” that use their memory, they could improve their learning. We sent presenters into schools to deliver a two-hour presentation. The students spent the next few weeks practising what they’d been taught by the presentation and then took part in an in-school competition. The format worked: students, teachers and parents alike have all told us that the skills we teach have been easily transferable to actual study. They have seen students achieve academic success, experience improved self-esteem and discover greater motivation to learn and study. The enthusiasm was such that we set up the UK Schools Memory Championships, which now has more than 10,000 participants each year.
What students and their carers – and I – have come to appreciate is that memory training, using the techniques in this book, engages the whole of the brain and not just the functions involved in processing linear information. So, yes, the techniques would have helped me hugely in the days of learning by rote, but they continue to benefit students today because they give so much more than simply an ability to memorize a list of facts. When we use memory techniques, whether we are children or adults, we make links between disparate pieces of information using imaginative, colourful pictures. The techniques stimulate our minds and reveal how memory – and learning – works.
The only dissenting voice I’ve ever heard about the methods I’ve suggested to schools was from a teacher who asked me, “What’s the point in teaching memory? Learning is not about remembering. It’s about understanding.” I asked him for one example of anything that he’d understood that did not involve the function of memory. He didn’t give me an answer.
Although I don’t agree with that teacher, I do understand his unwillingness to be drawn in. What is the point in memorizing a 2,000-digit number or 20 shuffled decks of playing cards? But then, what’s the point in running around a 400-metre track as fast as you can when all you’re really doing is going round in circles? What, indeed, is the point in 11 fully grown men kicking a football from one end of a field to try to get it in a net at the other end, while another 11 fully grown men try to stop them? The point, whether it’s football, running, tennis, ice hockey, darts, memory or any game you care to mention, is that the process of getting there, of being successful, involves learning on many levels – learning how to be good at something, learning how to accept failure and push on until you succeed, learning to be proud in your achievements (and gracious in defeat), learning to feel good about yourself.
Field sports exercise your body; learning the order of 52 cards (useless as it might be in itself) exercises your brain. It offers you irrefutable evidence of the limitless capacity of your imagination. When children, or any of us, practise memory training, we unleash our creative thinking. When we begin to push the boundaries of what we thought was possible, and to reveal the true potential of our incredible brains, we experience a surge in self-confidence. When children, in particular, discover the power of their memory, they get to the heart of the learning process, and begin to understand that the job of absorbing knowledge can be fun, inspiring and rewarding – not just something that mum, dad and a bunch of teachers say you have to do. Also, with the mounting evidence that training your working memory increases fluid intelligence (the brain functions that allow us to think laterally to solve a problem, without necessarily conforming to predetermined patterns; see pp.190–92), you could say that the teaching of memory skills is a no-brainer.
A few years ago, I was invited to give a presentation to children from a number of under-performing schools. I spent three hours with these students, giving them memory demonstrations and getting them to perform a feat of memory themselves. That was the first time I’d taught a group of school children. On my way home, I wondered if it had been a worthwhile exercise. Had I managed to inspire the children, or had I just acted as an interesting diversion? Would the children slip back to their normal ways or had they learned a valuable lesson – a new skill they could nurture to make the job of learning achievable?
Five years later, I was helping to run the UK Open Memory Championships in London when a man tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Mr O’Brien, you won’t remember me, but a few years ago when I was a student, I attended your memory skills session.” He’d been in that very first group of students. He told me that I’d given him a copy of one of my books. It had taken him a while to settle down to read it, but when he did, everything that I’d taught him that day came back to him and suddenly made perfect sense.
He told me that he’d used the techniques to help him pass his exams and he now had a place at university. When I asked him what he was doing at the competition, he said with a degree of pride that he was a competitor. That year he came eighth and the following year he was the silver medallist, losing only to the World Champion, Ben Pridmore.
If ever I doubt the use of sharing my techniques, I think of this story as affirmation of the benefits of what I do. If it can make a difference to just one child in a class, then every minute spent teaching and sharing what I’ve learned has been worthwhile.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your journey with me. Writing this book has taken me through my own personal history with this game of memory, and I hope I’ve enabled you to see how training your amazing memory can not only bring perfect recall, but so much more besides. Have a look at my timeline on the opposite page to feel inspired. Who knows, perhaps we’ll meet at a memory championship in the future? I hope we do!
| Date | Memory feat |
| 1987 | Started memory training; First deck of cards memorized in 26 minutes |
| 1989 | World Record: 6 decks of cards |
| June 11, 1989 | World Record: 25 decks of cards |
| July 22, 1990 | World Record: 35 decks of cards |
| October 26, 1991 | World Memory Champion (1st time) |
| August 8, 1993 | World Memory Champion (2nd time) |
| November 26, 1993 | World Record: 40 decks of cards |
| 1994 | The Brain Trust’s “Brain of The Year” |
| March 25, 1994 | World Record: Speed Cards memorizing 1 deck in 43.59 seconds |
| 1995 | Awarded Grandmaster of Memory by HRH Prince Philip of Liechtenstein |
| April 21, 1995 | Won first World Matchplay Championships |
| August 6, 1995 | World Memory Championship (3rd time) |
| 1996 | World Record: Speed Cards memorizing 1 deck in 38.29 seconds |
| August 4, 1996 | World Memory Champion (4th time) |
| August 23, 1997 | World Memory Champion (5th time) |
| August 27, 1999 | World Memory Champion (6th time) |
| August 22, 2000 | World Memory Champion (7th time) |
| 2001 | World Record: Memorizing 2 decks of cards simultaneously |
| August 26, 2001 | World Memory Champion (8th time) |
| May 1, 2002 | World Record: 54 decks of cards |
| 2005 | Lifetime achievement award for promoting memory worldwide, awarded by the World Memory Championships International |
| 2008 | Co-founder and Chief Co-ordinator of the Schools Memory Championships |
| 2010 | General Manager of the World Memory Sports Council |