SDS 371: The Power of Memory For Productivity

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome to the SuperDataScience Podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, Data Science Coach and Lifestyle Entrepreneur. And each week we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today and now let’s make the complex simple. 

Kirill Eremenko: Hello everybody. And welcome back to the show. Super excited to have you back here on board. Today’s guest is a returning guest. For the second time we’re hosting Anthony Metivier. Anthony came on the podcast for the first time in episode 153, about two years ago. The episode went live in May, 2018. And since then this episode has been one of the most popular ones with over 14,000 downloads. Anthony shared some tips back then on how to memorize names, apart from all the other things that we talked about on the episode, and that has been with me for… For the whole two years since then I’ve been using that technique to memorize people’s names and it’s helped me in many, many different situations. And today Anthony is back to share more tips. Here’s what we’ll be talking about in this episode. 

Kirill Eremenko: First of all, Anthony has published a new book, The Victorious Mind, and we’ll be talking about that. Then we’ll be talking about how memory is linked to understanding, internalizing algorithms and experience or expertise for data scientist specifically, how to exercise with memory, how memory is linked to focus and focus is linked to getting rid of distractions. In this episode, we’ll be talking a lot about how memory and meditation are similar and what is the interlink between them. And finally, on this episode, we’ll actually go through the process of building a memory palace. Like in the previous episode in 153, we got the tip of how to memorize names. In this episode, by the end of this episode, by the end of the one to one and a half hours or however long it is, you will walk away with your own memory palace. It’ll be a very small one. It’ll allow you to memorize four items like on a shopping list or something like that, or to do items. Four items, but it will show you how to create your own memory palaces from locations you know. 

Kirill Eremenko: A very powerful technique. One that I’ve been using since I was somewhere around like 16 or 15 years old, and it’s served me very well. Well, in this episode, you’ll find out how to create your own memory palaces and the very least you’ll walk away a memory palace of four items already by the end of it. Very excited about that. So without further ado, let’s dive straight into it and I bring to you memory expert Anthony Metivier. 

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on the show. And today I’ve got a returning guest, welcome back, Anthony, how are you going? 

Anthony Metivier: Oh, I’m great. Thank you so much for welcoming me back on the show. I really appreciate that. 

Kirill Eremenko: Super pumped to have you back on the show. So Anthony, for those who don’t know Anthony Metivier, was on the show, episode 153, this was… Wait, when was this? This was May, 2018. Two years ago. Can you imagine? 

Anthony Metivier: I can, actually. Time goes fast, but it was a wonderful thing just to run into you on the street and to follow up with a recording. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. That’s really cool. So we’re both… For those also who don’t know, we’re both Udemy instructors and I actually took one of Anthony’s courses and like I think I told you, what benefited me the most… The course was great, but also I don’t think I finished the course, but what benefited me a lot was how you promoted the course and that inspired me and a lot of… In a way we communicated with students at the time. And then it happened that you are in Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Australia, out of all places in the world. Like I had no idea. I just saw you in a cafe. I was like, “Crazy.” You’re still there, right? 

Anthony Metivier: Oh yeah. I haven’t budged an inch. This is the most stable I’ve ever been. I’ve moved probably every year or every two years for all of my life. This is the first time I can think of where I’ve been in the same place for three years straight and now it’s more than three years. 

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. Insane. It’s an interesting thing, staying put in one place. I’ve been moving around quite a bit, but the past several months, because of this coronavirus situation, I’ve been in one place for… Yeah, for over a month now and it feels interesting. You don’t feel rushed. You don’t feel like you’re living out of a suitcase and then also life is very slows down quite a bit. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It’s interesting. There’s some research that some of the increase in things like dementia and Alzheimer’s is because people are moving around so much. Their neural networks aren’t building the same state of stability and robustness over time because they have to constantly relearn geography. It’s a theory, and I don’t know how the science will play out over time, but it is something that people have questioned to see if there’s an explanation for this increase, since airplane travel and all sorts of new nomadism, as people travel around. We know from early examples of nomadism, people would… Their grandparents would die and they would go on their tours, and then they would come back to the place where they buried their grandparents and they’d see the stones and they would have forgotten that was grandpa that they buried. And then they would think that it was a God or something like that built this structure, because they couldn’t remember. So part of being constantly on the move could potentially be part of why people are more forgetful. It’s not just blaming Instagram or other things on the internet. It can be our mobility. 

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. You’d think that it’d be the other way around. That the more you experience new things, the more neural pathways are created in your brain? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, potentially, and again, it’s just some research that I’ve read. I don’t know where it’s going to go. But the quality of creating new neural pathways comes from how stable they are. So if you’re constantly forcing your brain to develop new ones, but you’re not reinforcing them, that cabling in the wiring, which involves norepinephrine and myelin and dopamine and all these wonderful opioid receptors, that doesn’t necessarily last long if it isn’t reinforced. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Wow. Interesting. I often feel like I’m becoming forgetful about locations, like you said, so maybe yeah, there probably is truth to that. What else have you been up to apart from staying put? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, I recently did a TEDx down in Melbourne and that was really touch and go. I actually talked to the people. I was like, “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Because this was early February, or I did it in February 20th, but early February I asked them, “Are you going to be canceling it?” Because I was cautious. I was a little bit overly concerned maybe, but I went to the doctor and I said, “Is it moral? Is it ethical for me to get on a plane knowing that I could go to Melbourne and come back and infect 10 X people around me or whatever?” She just said, look, “If you’re going to get this, get it early and this big opportunity to go give a TEDx. So go and do it.” So I did. And that’s what I’ve been up to. Just the usual stuff on the Magnetic Memory Method podcast, and the YouTube channel, always working to improve what we do and working towards releasing a new book here, which I hope is going to help even more people. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Speaking of the book, it’s really cool. Very exciting. So when is it coming out? 

Anthony Metivier: The launch date is May 20th, and that is going to be Kindle and print and audio. So we’re really excited about that. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. But the good news is that it’s already available in audio, right? Even at the time of recording this podcast. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. That’s true. There’s been a bit of a mistake because I’m relearning how to launch books on Amazon. And I didn’t realize that when I a pre-order up, that that logical rule didn’t govern every medium. So as part of getting prepared, I uploaded all the files for the audio book, and they put it up and I said, “No, no, no, this is supposed to be governed by the prelaunch stuff.” And because of the stuff that’s going on, customer service and getting back to me has been incredibly slow and… Yeah, it’s there, but it’s not supposed to be there. By all means, if people want to grab it, that’s fine, because I haven’t heard back from them to get it taken down. 

Kirill Eremenko: But the good thing is… Which I’m very excited about. I got the chance to get a copy… Because I also couldn’t get the hard copy, purchase a hard copy, but I was able to purchase the Audible version and listened to it. I haven’t finished the whole book. It’s a big book. It’s like what, 11 hours or something like that. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It’s ambitious. You know, I had a couple of models in mind, so I thought, what would a Tim Ferriss book be like for memory? If The Four Hour Body was The Four Hour Memory or whatever, what would that look like? How would he approach this? And then I thought about Moonwalking with Einstein, which is a very famous book about memory by Joshua Foer. And then I thought about things like the Bhagavad Gita, or Bhagavad Gita, as you would pronounce it in Sanskrit. And how can we bring these three things together? What would that book look like? And that’s part of why it’s a big ambitious book that’s quite detailed and has a lot of ins and outs. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Awesome. So the plan for today’s podcast, for our listeners… This is what we’re going to do. First of all, is going to be minimal data science or AI and stuff like that. This is mostly about memory and how to improve your focus, memory, predictivity, calm, peace of mind, all of these important things that translate into fulfillment in your career. Because on this podcast we talk a lot about techniques and data science, careers and things like that. Well sometimes it’s good to take a break and talk about more fulfillment things and productivity and other things like that. Memory. So the plan for this podcast is… This is how I’d like to structure it. The book is big, and it’s quite a deep book. It’s a complex book and you’ll see here why from this podcast. So why I invited Anthony to the show is to talk about some key takeaways, some key things that we can really apply, because from your previous appearance, I was telling you before the podcast that you shared some techniques and I’ll explain which ones, but at least one technique that I’ve been using since then for a long time has been helping me out a lot. 

Kirill Eremenko: So the plan for today is let’s talk about some techniques and tips that you can give from the book already. And then if somebody wants to really dive deeper, then the book would be the approach to take there. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, absolutely. So what technique are you referring to? 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, so the technique I’m referring to is memorizing names. You told me this really cool way. I remember we were sitting in your house and in the studio, didn’t have the green screen yet, and you taught me this approach to memorize names, that when you meet somebody and if they’re, I don’t know, their name is Charlotte and you know a Charlotte in your life, you instantly find some something on their face or something about their appearance that stands out to you, and you attach the Charlotte that you know from your life to that feature that stands out. And that is permanent. That is not just the hat they’re wearing today because the hat, they can take it off the next day when you see them. 

Kirill Eremenko: And then next time you see them, you instantly see that, kind of augmented reality style, you see that attached Charlotte on them. So for instance, if I meet somebody called David, I have a friend, a really dear friend who’s David, and right away, for instance, this person has very bright blue eyes or something like that. Then I will take my David from my memory and put him in the eyes, as if he’s mining out gems out of there. So next time I see this person, I’m like, “Oh wow. Their eyes are so bright blue, something that stands out to me.” And then I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And then I’ll see, I’ll remember that I put my David mining gems out of their eyes, and that reminds me that their name is David, association like that. It’s a very powerful technique. So thank you. Over the past two years I’ve used it a countless number of times. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It’s really powerful. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Hey, everybody, hope you’re enjoying this amazing episode. This is a quick announcement and we’ll get right back to it. We are hiring at Super Data Science. With the recent pandemic and the coronavirus, we all know how a lot of people have lost their jobs and their source of income, so hopefully this will be a breath of fresh air for some people out there. We are a 100% remote team. We all work online. We’re continuing to grow and I just literally just published 10 new positions at SuperDataScience, which might be suitable to you. And even if they’re not suitable to you, check them out there at www.superdatascience.com/careers, check them out and send them to somebody you know who may have been displaced by this pandemic and all the lockdowns, who may have lost their job and source of income. You could change their life. We are creating opportunities for people to do their best work, to contribute, to create amazing products and create amazing experiences for people studying data science. 

Kirill Eremenko: So here are some of the positions that have just been released. VP of marketing, product designer, general manager, VP of sales, junior media creator, sales representative, B2B event sales representative, event marketer, B2B sales representative, and marketing strategist. And those are just some of the initial positions that we have available right now. More will come soon. So keep an eye out at www.superdatascience.com/careers. Maybe we’ll even post a data scientist position in the near future, but even if none of these are relevant to you specifically, if you know somebody who’s in marketing or in sales or who’s a great general manager, who’s great at creating amazing products in education and learning experiences, or who’s great at running events or somebody who is amazing at creating animated videos. If you know any of these people, any people with the right talents and skills, please send them this link, www.superdatascience.com/careers. This could change their life or career, especially in these difficult times. Thank you very much for your help and let’s get right back to it. 

Kirill Eremenko: So let’s get to this book. So what prompted you to write this book? For me I found a very vulnerable book. You share a lot of your story about your depression and how you had a lot of suicidal thoughts back in the time and how you were on the verge of ending your life and not wanting to continue, and how memory training, how memory techniques helped you get out of there. In addition to all these other things, you talk about Wim Hof and his method. You talk about the system of the Russian martial arts method. And there’s lots of interesting encounters on the path. Like I said, it’s almost like a biography, but you’re not holding back anything. You’re talking about all the dark parts of your story. Why did you choose to do that? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, again, it was sort of what would this book be like if it was Moonwalking with Einstein meets a Tim Ferriss style book and meets the Bhagavad Gita. For people who don’t know the Bhagavad Gita, it is literally a god on the battlefield talking to a soldier who’s reluctant to fight the battle. And one thing that we’re often reluctant to do is to confront our own story, and basically what happened at the same cafe you and I randomly met in Kelvin Grove, a guy named Ben Fishel was telling me about the ability to stop thinking. And I said, “No. No way, this can’t be possible.” And I said, “I’ve meditated for years. I finally gave up on this. How is it even possible?” You would always be even having thoughts about the absence of thought, if you had it. There must be some sort of symbolism in the field. And he said, “Well, yeah, maybe so, but there is something called persistent symbolic or some persistent non-symbolic experience or PNSE.” And I was like, “Oh, that just sounds insane.” If they have to symbolize it with an acronym, it must already be a false starter. 

Anthony Metivier: Anyway, we got into this whole thing about religion and stuff. And I said, “No, there’s no way I’m ever going to memorize scripture to help slow down my thoughts. And I’m not going to kowtow or bow or do yoga movements or any of this.” I was just rejecting it and quite strongly, like with the atheist ban hammer. And he says all of a sudden, “You’ve got to read Gary Weber.” And I was like, “Oh?” And I was just ready to shoot him down. Gary Weber, another guy who’s got some acronym or whatever. And he says, “Because he was an atheist too, and he required a scientific method to stop his thoughts. And then one day they just blew out like a candle and he says they never came back.” And I’m still like, “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” He said, “Yeah, but here’s the thing. He just memorized some Sanskrit. And that’s how it happened.” 

Anthony Metivier: And turns out that that’s actually not the way that it went, but that’s how I recorded it into my memory. But the thing is, Gary Weber teaches in these books, Happiness Beyond Thought, Evolving Beyond Thought, and Dancing Beyond Thought. But if you memorize some Sanskrit, you’re basically taking in some algorithms that will neutralize your existing mental thoughts. And it works actually. And it makes total sense, because it turns out the Sanskrit is all based on logical laws that we’ve come to know very well from other traditions, and if you have certain negative thoughts in your mind, which I have had for years crushing me all the time, you can just revert to the Sanskrit. 

Anthony Metivier: And long story short after memorizing over a hundred verses of Sanskrit, because I’m in for a penny, in for a pound, once I’m sold, I’m going to do it. So I memorized all this Sanskrit. And one day I was having a sea change on the internet. Google wasn’t doing things the way that I liked it and et cetera, and I was about to throw the computer across the room, and I just stopped myself. I went out for a walk. I went to a park in Kelvin Grove here in Brisbane, and I sat, and I said my little Sanskrit that I memorized and then all of a sudden all my thoughts disappeared. And I just was blown away. It was sheer bliss. And now I can kind of do it on demand. It doesn’t always work every time, but just by running through the Sanskrit, I can usually go into this total silent bliss and I really would call it the absence of thought. It’s extraordinarily wonderful too. 

Kirill Eremenko: It’s very interesting. I love it. That’s what a lot of people are trying to get through meditation. First of all, what is Sanskrit? And how is this not a religious thing? It sounds like a spell, like you’re saying a spell and… I’m always like a bit cautious of those things. I don’t want to get into voodoo stuff. So how is this not voodoo stuff? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, I didn’t want to get into it either. And I still have skepticism about the whole thing, but I’m glad that I put that aside, because it’s not religion. It actually comes from a tradition called Advaita Vedanta, which means in Sanskrit, which is a language that’s thousands of years old. It means not two. At the end of the Vedas, the pan-Asiatic texts, the culmination of that knowledge is not two, just one. So, Advaita Vedanta, Advaita means not two, and Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, the conclusion of the great pedantic or Veda text is that it’s not two, it’s just one. 

Anthony Metivier: Now, if you run the calculations and you know, this is not just isolated to ancient Indian philosophy, it reappears again in Giordano Bruno, for who we owe astronomy and the ideas of infinity that caught on so well to this day, and you can watch Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how important Bruno was. Bruno discovered mathematically that it is oneness and all separation and all variety, et cetera, is in a field of the same, right? And so on and so on. 

Anthony Metivier: So we know that this non-duality is perfectly logical. And it’s not only that, but if you really do contemporary philosophy, you’ll ultimately come to something called hard solipsism, which is versus soft solipsism. And it’s the brain and the bat theory eventually, right? And how do you confirm that there is actually anything out in the world? Well, you don’t get two, right? But what you can confirm is one screen right in front of you. The question is how can you realize that screen right in front of you so thoroughly and completely that you experience what Eckhart Tolle calls the power of now. And you actually just live in the now. 

Kirill Eremenko: By screen you mean what we see, right? Like the world around us. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. So for example, now this is a bit of a thought puzzle, but the idea that you see through your eyes, yes, you do. I’m not contesting that, I’m not saying that that’s not true. But what I’m saying is the very idea that you see through your eyes is appearing inside of you. And what is it that is you? Well, it’s just the screen. And when you move your head left and you move your head right, the screen just moves. And you have this sense that there’s a body, a brain behind you. But the very idea that there is a back of your head, is still appearing in you, as is everything else in the world appearing in you. So there is only really one thing, and that is whatever you are paying attention to in the moment. Memory scientists call it selective attention, right? So The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle totally. I love Eckhart Tolle. I always read this guy because he is pretty much secular. 

Kirill Eremenko: That’s a great book. I love The Power of Now, very difficult as well and for me. And some chapter, I love how it’s structured in chapters. I clearly remember for me, chapter eight was on relationships. And that was like a huge impact, that’s why I remember the number. And it’s a book that I think it was three years ago I read. Is the time to come back and reread again, very, very deep thoughts there. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. And it’s worth it, but he doesn’t, to my satisfaction or to my understanding he doesn’t really have a program. He doesn’t say, “What do you do to realize the now?” Gary Weber is different. Gary Weber looks at brain science. And he says, “Well, look, if you think about it, the whole notion of difference and the idea that you have an eye, actually, if we look at the brain scans appears to be produced by what’s called the default mode network, and it’s up in the front of your forehead. But there’s another part of the brain called the task positive network. And that area of the brain is what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called a flow, right? And we sometimes think of it as being in the zone. 

Anthony Metivier: So one of the propositions of running all the Sanskrit through your head is, could it help knock you into flow and keep you there? And it’s just a biological function. And part of that transformation for a lot of people seems to have been some memorization, so Eckhart Tolle, he will quote things that he’s memorized and I’ve observed this about him. And I just think, “I wonder if that deep absorption of some semantic text and its meanings, and it sounds somehow helps keep you in that task positive network, in flow or in the zone?” And then I look at recommendations from Gary Weber to memorize all this Sanskrit, which has semantic meaning. None of it is religious, it’s actually purely atheist. 

Anthony Metivier: The only thing that you can include from it is that there’s just one thing going on. There can’t be a God, because God would be me plus God, right? But that doesn’t make sense, because where does God appear? God appears in me, in my screen. So it all sort of … Maybe throwing too many ideas around here. But if you’re living in the zone, which we know is neurochemically possible, and the brain just has this sort of feature, then what is there except for you climbing up a mountain, totally in the zone, right? You’re just there, you’re present. What else is that, except for one thing for all extents and purposes? 

Kirill Eremenko: Very good. And that brings us really nicely to one of the main themes of your book. You talk about meditation in combination with memory training. That they come and hand in hand. That by meditating you can improve your memory, by improving your memory you can enhance your meditation abilities. Tell us a bit more about that. 

Anthony Metivier: Well, I think it is very, very important. We know from research that just four times a week of meditation will already improve your memory. 

Kirill Eremenko: Four times an hour, five hours, how long? 

Anthony Metivier: There are different studies and some people recommend 15 minutes. Some people do recommend a 45 minute session. I think the consistency is more important than the actual length and Tim Ferriss, when he talks about meditation, he has a really great set of tips, which is, “If you think you can memorize for 10 minutes, set your clock for eight minutes.” So, rather than- 

Kirill Eremenko: You mean meditate? If you can meditate? 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, meditate, sorry. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, if you think you can meditate for 10 minutes, then set your clock for eight. And that’s a really, really good tip, because I often … We often have planning fallacy. We think we can do things for longer than we can. And then I would just add to that when your alarm goes off, just sit for a little bit longer to train yourself progressively to sit for a bit longer. But I wouldn’t suggest people get caught up in the numbers game. Like, “Oh, I meditated for 45 minutes, and you only meditated for 10.” It’s the consistency and the frequency that really matters over time so that you can begin to experience a shift in your conscious perception. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. And how does that link to memory? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, my strong recommendation based on my experience and my observation of other people who have experienced this change from suffering from thought to being released from thought and even having what is described as no thought, which I rejected at first, but now really stand beside because I felt it. I think that we have all the evidence in the world that some meditation linked with memorization is what will help train you to be in the zone. Particularly if the material you memorize is designed to neutralize the presence of thought. 

Anthony Metivier: And that’s what’s really genius about what Gary Weber put together, what he has extracted from some of these ancient texts. Because he doesn’t just throw massive textbooks to memorize. He has cultivated particular what are called self-inquiry questions that help neutralize thought. So when you meditate and you start to learn what your consciousness is and you meditate on questions that cause you to reflect up on in a way that dissolves the nature of thought, then you begin to break it apart and it will “dissolve” or be neutralized. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. And so in that state, so when you have no thoughts you’re able to, is that like making space in your mind to memorize more things? Or is it about that you when you do memorize, you’re more focused on what you’re memorizing? 

Anthony Metivier: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think we need to make more space in our minds. I mean, one of the infinity puzzles is the hotel where, well, how would you, if every room was occupied, how would you make room for one more person? Well, you would just have each person move one room over. And now the first room is empty. And then if you actually get them to move just to all the even numbered rooms or whatever, then you’ve just doubled infinity, right? 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, yeah. 

Anthony Metivier: So I don’t think there’s a problem with space or room for memory or whatever. David Eagleman, who is a neuroscientist, says that we have a zettabyte in our brain. 

Kirill Eremenko: Oh, wow. 

Anthony Metivier: We’re not going to run out of space, memory space anytime soon. But what we’re doing by having no thought is we’re reducing suffering, the suffering that thought creates. Not only because we’re worried about something that happened in the past that’s never going to change, but we’re worrying about something in the future that is potentially not ever going to happen. And we’re torturing ourselves with it, or we’re having fantasies about an alternative present. And that present is not here. It can’t be here, because this is the present that we’re in. 

Anthony Metivier: So that’s not only psychological pain, but it’s also just robbing your attention from the things that you have to do right now to be a better father, to be a better programmer, to be a better data scientist, to be a better human being. Because you are present in the now, and you’re not being distracted by endless reams of thought. And then you just have more energy and you have more joy because it’s just lights on, nobody home. Let’s enjoy this present moment. And it’s just, it’s a beautiful thing. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Okay, understood. All right. So in your book you mention … Oh, actually before the podcast, you mentioned that it was funny how you said, “Why is memorizing healthy, right? Why is memorizing good?” And you said you have a person who’s memorized loads of Pi as in the number Pi. And I think you said 1,200 digits of the number Pi one of your students memorized. And you also mentioned that memorizing stuff can help improve productivity. How are those two linked? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, I don’t know just exactly how productive it is to memorize 1,200 digits of Pi. Marno Hermann is his name. He’s just a very young guy. He has, I think it’s still, he still has it, a South African memory record for 1,200 digits. He recites it very quickly in about 10 minutes. It sounds just wonderful to hear him blast it out. And you can imagine the productivity just from there, being able to focus that intensely on a performative act that’s generating from memory with a 100% accuracy. That’s a transferable skill. The focusing on anything. 

Anthony Metivier: There’s a fellow named Paul Deery, who’s another student of mine. He’s done a hundred digits and he’s a teacher. There’s a video of him on YouTube. You can watch him reciting this in front of all his fellow teachers. And they’re cheering him on. And I know from having talked with him that he’s just much better teacher, because he remembers this stuff. He doesn’t have to go into his textbooks all the time. He’s more present with the students and he’s more direct and knowledgeable with them, because he’s internalized it. Not humming and hawing and looking in textbooks. 

Anthony Metivier: Robert Ahdoot, who has Yay Math! He is in my training in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. He used this. He gave us an example of memorizing nine very complex formulas. And he just teaches now from memory instead of telling the students, “Well, I’ll have to look up exactly how that equation is structured. It’s just boom, on the board, ready to go. So, that saves so much time. It also impresses other people. I’ve got people on my podcast who have been through my course, like Jesse Villalobos. He got a raise, he got a promotion, and he had to, because all the other workers are coming to him, asking for his advice about parts in the auto body shop and stuff like that. So he just accelerates the manager, because he obviously has it all in his head. He’s managing a massive amount of material. So yeah, it makes you productive, much more productive and you stand out as an individual. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, gotcha. Can you share some techniques now that we know why it’s important, why it’s powerful, can you share some techniques like maybe some insights from your book on how to do? Is like probably we’re not going to do a lot of Sanskrit here, but actually it will be fun if you can read out, if you don’t mind, some of the Sanskrit that you memorized, just to hear how it sounds. Maybe a few seconds of it. 

Anthony Metivier: Very gladly. So, what I’m going to say here, the way that Gary Weber translates it into English is he does it in two ways. He does the actual sort of literal translation. And then he does a sort of compression of how to use it in more modern terms. But I’ll just give you the most powerful stuff. And if you just memorize this in English, I’m confident that it’s going to help you. And it’s so obvious why it will help you too once you hear it. But in Sanskrit, [foreign language 00:35:18]. That’s just very simple. Now what it’s saying there is that your mind is the greatest folly in the world. Your mind is like an undisciplined little boy running all over the place. And then it just sort of repeats that sort of idea that the mind is a great illusion. And to be seduced into thinking that your mind is real is just, it’s just complete misery and suffering. 

Anthony Metivier: Now, the more modern version, which I thought was the translation the first time I memorized it, I made a bit of a mistake. But a very fruitful one. It’s just simply, are my thoughts useful. How do they behave? And so, as I was remembering this, and we’ll talk about exactly how I memorized that I’m really focused on the Sanskrit and I’m walking around in my daily life or I’m sitting and meditating. And I’m just thinking, “Are my thoughts useful? How do they behave?” No, they’re not. And they’re behaving like an undisciplined little child and then they start to go away. Because you’ve just labeled them. 

Anthony Metivier: But I think something about that Sanskrit gives you even more critical distance, right? It gives you more focus and it gives you more tools for replacing it, because it’s musical. And when you have 32 or a 100 of them, I’ve progressively added this more and more questions. Like, “Do my thoughts have value?” Or, “How does the idea that I am my body come into being?” All of these wonderful things. By focusing on them in two languages at the same time, and then hearing the sounds and thinking about them logically as Sanskrit gives you a little bit more of a feeling of that logic, it just starts to dissolve your thoughts, right? It’s almost impossible for it not to. 

Anthony Metivier: And it neutralizes, I think dissolve is maybe not the right word. It’s more like it neutralizes them, just sucks them of life. So, how do you memorize it? Well, you do it the same way I memorize my TEDx presentation. You do it the same way I memorized every thing that I’ve learned in German or any language, really. You have a memory palace. And a memory palace is a mental reproduction of a room. So the last time I was on your podcast, you gave me some names and I don’t remember them all now, because I haven’t done this process of getting them into long-term memory. 

Anthony Metivier: But I remember the one that came up that was interesting. People might want to go listen to that episode, was Mary. That was one of those names. And I just placed that in a corner of the room, the same room we were sitting in. And I make an image. So with something like [foreign language 00:38:01]. Literally there’s a guy in a Hardy Boys novel that I read as a kid named Chet. And then a tambourine is an instrument, Chet them. And then Maha, it’s a little bit hard, but the Chinese symbol for maha can fit that quite nicely and it’s laughing, [foreign language 00:38:23]. And then doe sham, Homer Simpson from the Simpsons goes doe. Chamois is a kind of cloth that you use to clean cars. So [foreign language 00:38:33]. 

Anthony Metivier: And then the whole idea of are my thoughts useful. How do they behave? Well, you can think Homer Simpson going doe, is that a useful thought? This is sort of conceptual. And to weave it into memory even more completely, I run a little software that I call KAVE COGS. And that’s an acronym starts with a K for kinesthetic, auditory, visual, emotional, conceptual, olfactory, gustatory, and space. So in the beginning that can seem like a lot. But if you learn how to do it, you train yourself how to do it. It’s no more difficult than brushing your teeth or tying your shoes. And so it’s like, well, Chet from the Hardy Boys, what does it feel like to be him listening in his ears to Homer Simpson getting frustrated over the chamois there? 

Anthony Metivier: And that also encompasses the sound and the visuals of it is like, you can just imagine what these characters look like. And the emotions, frustration, et cetera, the little, the thoughts, undisciplined or whatever. You can start to build this little story. And then you think about, well the concept, well Homer Simpson is a concept. So is Hardy Boys, et cetera. The idea of a tambourine is the concept of music. And you go through to the taste of what is it, Duff Beer or something, and the smells. If you just go through that, you will remember stuff so fast, it’ll make your head spin, in a good way of course. It’s really fun. And then you just go back to that corner in the memory palace later, and you say, “What was happening there?” 

Anthony Metivier: And then you just start to piece it back together. It’s like a puzzle. And just by doing that, that’s called active recall. We know from the neuroscience of learning, and you can listen to neuroscientists like Boris Konrad talk about this. You will not really remember anything, whether you’re using memory techniques or not if you don’t practice active recall. You have to nudge yourself to recall things to learn it. And so we just go back and we ask ourselves what happened there. And if you do this right, maybe five or six repetitions, you’ll have it for a very long time. Maybe not forever, but a significant period of time. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, gotcha. So it’s like invoking different parts of your brain, not just your … Like I don’t know, maybe visual memory or auditory memory. You’re going through everything from taste to smell, to kinesthetic, emotional, try, like seeing how it feels and things like that to better … Like increase the chances of you memorizing. 

Anthony Metivier: Yep, yeah. And so the book goes through that in quite significant detail and I don’t bog people down too much in the science. But rest assured, this has been studied to the nth degree and memory champions have been put under all kinds of wonderful tests. And we just know a lot about it. The real question is, how do we encourage people to do it? And there’s a scientist named Tim Douglas who’s doing amazing work, showing how that these techniques help people heal depression. To feel better from having certain psychological issues because they’ve got PTSD or whatever. And it’s very compelling the results that he’s getting. Just from using memory palaces, in his research he calls it method of loci, which is an older term for memory palace. And he just has people using these tools to memorize certain things. And lo and behold, they report higher levels of happiness and less mental suffering. And it just makes sense. It stands to reason that you would. 

Kirill Eremenko: Let’s talk a bit of augment memory palaces. Specifically, I would like for somebody listening to this to get a takeaway on how they can build their own memory palace. So I have a memory palace, which I built when I was I think around 14 years old. This was even before I went to university. I think it was grade 10 or something like that. And because I did some training on how to memorize things better and how to read faster, it was like a speed reading training and it was very interesting. I learned a lot and at the time did learn to read faster. And one of the things was a memory palace. And I built that in the room where I was living with my parents back at the time. And I still use it to this day. When I need to remember things, let’s say we’re out with my girlfriend, we’re talking about something or in the car, and then I don’t have a place to write it down, I can’t put it in my phone in the moment. 

Kirill Eremenko: And it’s not a big thing to be taking my phone out every time and writing down, I just put into this memory palace. It has 10 spots. That’s all I have. You probably have hundreds of memory palaces with thousands of locations in each one. I just have one room with 10 spots, and so I might remember, okay, let’s say, when we go grocery shopping I need to buy rice, and then this, water, toilet paper and whatever else. And so I put them in these specific locations and that way, also there’s a bit of associative memory working, because each location has some unique feature. It might be opening a cupboard and putting the toilet paper roll in there. So when I need to recall it, I walk into the room and I go from left to right through these 10 spots. And then by the time I get a cupboard, I open it. I’m like, “Oh yeah, there’s a big, massive toilet paper roll in there.” 

Kirill Eremenko: Or I go to the window sill, the part of the window inside the house, and I see lots of water standing there, meaning that, “Okay, I got to buy water.” Things like that. So it’s a very basic trivial memory palace, but it’s helped me a lot to not forget trivial things. So for somebody who’s never built a memory palace, I think this is a very useful technique. Even having a tiny little memory palace just for daily things like that. How would you describe this process and what kind of steps can a person take to build a memory palace already today? Maybe they’re listening to this in their room and they can look around, or maybe if they’re on a jog, then they can think of their room, what it looks like, or some location. What steps can they take already today to build this memory palace? 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, that’s a great question. And the way that I teach it, and I teach it this for a reason, is to reduce cognitive overload immediately by drawing the plan. So get out a piece of paper and draw a square. Just as simple as that. And then think, where is the spot that is the dead end? So if you have just a room and the door is located in a particular place, where is the corner you would run into a dead end? And then reverse the journey and start in the dead end so you’re leading yourself out. And you can extrapolate that principle to an entire apartment or entire house. If you were to start at your door and move inside, which is the way the memory palace is normally taught, where would be the dead end? And then start at the first station of this memory palace at that dead end and then move outward. 

Anthony Metivier: I think that that’s the number one tip that I would give. It helps so many people because you’re externalizing it. You’re doing some strategy, some planning, and you’re removing errors later. Because if you try to build it as you go, which you can, and sometimes I do, but I always regret it because it’s just so simple to sit there and just draw it out first, settle on it to the best of your ability. You sometimes we’ll change it later as you go, but have a plan. Have a strategy. We all know this, but that’s how the game of life is won, plan and strategy. But also visualize it so that you can see it outside of your mind and have it better memorized as a result, because you’re using something that’s called the levels of processing effect, which involves drawing and writing some words. 

Anthony Metivier: You might say station one is the southeast corner and then plan out that journey. So if you want 10 stations to memorize 10 things or 10 lines of Sanskrit or 10 phrases in Spanish or whatever it is, then you’re going to want to predict how much space you might need for that. And then as soon as you can, start using it. And this is going to be very, very valuable for when you use it for getting it into long-term memory, because the next big tip that I have for people, and this is something that isn’t taught, I don’t know why it isn’t taught, but it’s very, very important, which is that the memory palace is not just for storing stuff forever. It’s for getting it into long-term memory. In order to do that, what you want to do is use it in a particular way. So you want to follow the journey forward and backward after you’ve memorized some stuff, then you want to start in the middle and go from the beginning and then go back to the middle and go to the end. And then you want to skip your stations. 

Anthony Metivier: And the reason why you want to do that, go from station one to three to five to seven, to nine, and then backwards over the even numbers is because then you’re giving primacy and recency effect to each and every station and the information that is laid there and you’re using serial positioning in order to do that. Now I know that that can sound like a lot in the beginning, but that is how you get it into long-term memory the fastest, by reducing the amount of repetitions you have to do. And when you have cave [inaudible 00:00:48:05], all along the way you are going to find, “Oh my goodness, I remember all this stuff.” And it’s miraculous. It’s the closest thing to real magic that exists. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Let’s take a few steps back for a second. So let’s say I’ve come up with a room. Does it have to be a location that the person knows very well? Or can it be like a random location like, I don’t know, the world map. Could use the world map as a memory palace? 

Anthony Metivier: You could use the world map, but you would have to have sufficient ability to recall the world map. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. So you need something that’s already in your memory, like your room, which you see every day is a good starting point. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. So for example, how many people actually know the correct number of states in the United States? And could they actually mentally organize all those states? Some people probably could, but if you want to use United States, why couldn’t you just use the cardinal points? So you could have the state of California for the west, you could have New York for the east. You could have, I don’t know, whatever is up, Michigan or something on the north and then Texas for the south. And then you’ve got four stations in your mental map of the United States. And I know some people will say, “Well, I’m not going to memorize a whole lot of stuff with four,” but we know the power of numbers. Four is more than zero. And so you’ve got this handy little United States map with four little things that you can memorize anytime. 

Kirill Eremenko: Let’s start there. I think that’s a very good example. Let’s start there so then people can take that as a blueprint and then apply it to maybe more stations in their homes. So we’ve got California on the left, Texas on the bottom. What is it? New York on the right, on the east coast, and we’ve got, I don’t know, which one did you say? Michigan. Is Michigan up at the top? 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. I think Detroit is in Michigan and you could see Canada across the river, so I’m pretty sure that’s north. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. So let’s say- 

Anthony Metivier: There’s a city in Canada that is actually south of the United States. 

Kirill Eremenko: Oh wow. 

Anthony Metivier: Across from Detroit. And it’s interesting how that works. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I’ve read that. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Gotcha. So Michigan with Detroit, right? And let’s just put it into perspective how it works. This is how I would use it. I would say, “Okay, California is hot. There’s a lot of beaches in California.” That’d be the characteristic that stands out of that location of my memory palace. Texas is also hot, but it’s more like desert. Of course, Texas, I have never been, but I’m sure it’s beautiful. But the first thing that I think of is cactus, desert, that type of heat. Different type of heat, not beach hot, but desert hot. New York, finance, lots of people walking around, very populated financial center. And Detroit, more like industrial, car manufacturing, robots, Robocop. Those are the things I would think. 

Kirill Eremenko: And so let’s say I need to memorize a shopping list of four. Like on toilet paper, water, and they come in this specific order. So I need to buy some toilet paper, I need to buy some water, I need to buy some rice, and let’s say I need to buy, I don’t even know, a computer screen. So I would go and I would put them, because my memory palace is already structured in that order. So it starts in California and then it goes counterclockwise. That’s how I structured it. So you don’t jump all around the memory palace. So I would go, “Okay, toilet paper, California.” How would you link putting toilet paper into that part of the memory palace into California? 

Anthony Metivier: So we got toilet paper, we got water, we got rice, we got a computer screen. I think that’s what you said. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. 

Anthony Metivier: So if I had to have the toilet paper in California, the thing I’m thinking of is Val Kilmer. There was a movie called Top Secret. It had the song Skeet Surfing, and then I would have him using toilet paper instead of shooting the skeet, while he’s surfing he would shoot toilet paper. And then Robocop in Detroit, it’s kind of unusual, but he would be pouring water over his head. And then rice, I don’t know, Condoleezza Rice, she’s at the UN or something, something like that that’s more rice-like, like a person named Rice. And then computer screen, the wild west. I don’t know. Maybe John Wayne is shooting the computer screen in Texas. So that would be an interesting way to do it. 

Kirill Eremenko: So you use, effectively, those features that stand out. In this case on the world map, you have these four locations. Use the features that stand out and link them to create a story with the item that you need to purchase. Is that the same thing you would do in your home, in the memory palace that you build in your room? 

Anthony Metivier: Yes. Although it’s not necessary to have a link between the location and the information. Some people want that certainty and it can help, but if you want to do that, then here’s a way to do this that is a bit more efficient. It just takes more setup. You would have what’s called a zero, zero to 99 PAO. And that means an image for every number from zero, zero to 99. So on station zero one, you would have an image. And so instead of, I was thinking in Texas of John Wayne and shooting, I would have my image for zero one in that corner. But I could also just as easily make it the Texas corner. It’s sort of what you want to do and how you want to do it. But personally, I just use the corner because why make an extra step when I know that that’s that corner and I can just focus on what’s happening there? 

Anthony Metivier: But the way I teach this is, this is a method for building systems. So if you want to build your systems and you want books or features in every place, then by all means build them, but don’t make it a burden. So what we’re talking about with the map there is where we are using natural features of the locations, but there’s no real natural feature of a corner. So it’s just that it happens to be my office, so I use that corner and I don’t need to lend anything. But I love this map idea because you’re right, there are these natural things. And if you just simplify it and you allow those natural things to come out, like Detroit and Robocop, which is a beautiful thing provided you know that, but you also might think of Kiss and Detroit. Rock City, I think it’s called. That song. You might think of other things, so it doesn’t have to be Robocop. And if you don’t know anything for Detroit, choose another city. But I don’t think that those steps are necessary. They’re certainly not necessary in my own practice. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. So how do you do it again without the standing out features? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, for example, that [Sanskrit 00:55:05] from the Sanskrit. I use what I call the pillar technique. So I’m just starting at the top corner of [foreign language 00:55:17] and then I’m writing down, almost like the ancient Chinese is written from top to bottom. And I don’t need anything there to trigger it off because I, first of all, know what I’m memorizing. I chose this memory palace and strategized it for that purpose. For one piece, it was 32 verses. It’s a very big memory palace. It’s quite long. It’s actually all of Kelvin Grove and the victorious mind has a map of Kelvin Grove that was designed and it looks really quite fun. And I show all of this, I take you through the whole journey. 

Kirill Eremenko: That’s very cool. I’ve seen that map where you created a map of the suburb you’re in. It’s really cool, yeah. You walk through that map. That’s very awesome. 

Anthony Metivier: It’s even got a little thing hidden in there for people who like Where’s Waldo. Because myself and the photographer are hidden in there. Oh, I gave away the secret. Sorry. But yeah, I just place it there. I don’t need it to connect because I know what I’m doing. And that’s what I encourage students to do. Plan and prepare so you don’t have to add these extra gimmicks. You just, “Oh, in that corner is Chet from the Hardy Boys and he has a tambourine,” or whatever’s going on there to them. It’s just, why would I need to add Robocop? I mean, it’s a deviation from what this technique can be, I think. But I also say, hey look, do what it takes to get done what you want to do. Just plan and prepare to do it. 

Kirill Eremenko: Fantastic. I love it. 

Anthony Metivier: Memory competitors, I don’t know, I haven’t talked to every memory competitor under the sun, but I don’t think that their memory palaces have any special links. There’s no time. When I competed myself, there’s no time. You just have to be able to lay information down in space and you got to do it fast. 

Kirill Eremenko: And I think it’s a more advanced level, which you’re talking about. You’re creating the story with that pillar technique, and once you remember Chet, the whole thing triggers. Chet, tambourine, I don’t know, I already forgot. Homer Simpson, something, something, something. So they flow on from each other. So you can remember 10 items or maybe more items. You told me a story where people were memorizing a deck of 52 cards, a random order of that deck by creating a story of 52 items that flows on from one another. 

Anthony Metivier: Oh yeah. Well, it’s incredible what you can do. You’re right. I have a weakness as a teacher of these techniques, which is I just assume that everybody has the same brain and that they’re just going to be able to do this. So I just start from possibility. But there probably is a lighter way to start. And I’ve always framed the Magnetic Memory Method as more intermediate, advanced sort of stuff, because that’s what I needed when I created this training. I read Harry Lorayne. Harry Lorayne was a mentor of mine, actually, and it was very powerful. But he’s got three pages on memorizing vocabulary. It’s just not sufficient. So I had to go and find this deeper stuff, and I just assumed that I wanted to serve people who also want the heavy lifting tasks. They want 1,200 digits of PI. They want long equations that they memorize. So I just teach directly to that. 

Anthony Metivier: But there are more appropriate trainings for beginner level, for sure. And my whole premise of what I do is this is the memory university. I’m never going to restrict information about what I knew out there, unless they’re a complete corrupt memory teacher. And some of them are. Some of them, they actually make their money not on their memory training, but on selling supplements on the back end. Which is, quite frankly, just unacceptable to me because there’s not really good enough research that those supplements actually help your memory. Anyway, the point being is, there’s a lot of really great teachers out there and yeah, you should find who is right for you. And I always do my best to promote all the best people out there. And I’ve had many, many of them on my podcast. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I was going to ask you about your podcast. How’s that going? How long have you been doing your podcast for? 

Anthony Metivier: It’s funny, a friend of mine, he looked me up on one of these things that you have there for looking up podcasts. He’s like, “How did I not know that you’ve been podcasting almost every week since 2014?” 

Kirill Eremenko: Oh, wow. 

Anthony Metivier: And I said, “I don’t know. I mean, you’re my friend. I just thought you knew.” 

Kirill Eremenko: Six years? 

Anthony Metivier: “Don’t don’t you follow me on Twitter?” That sort of thing, but yeah, since 2014, 

Kirill Eremenko: Oh wow. Really cool. And so what’s the main purpose for the podcast? 

Anthony Metivier: The main purpose is the vision of Magnetic Memory Method is to inspire, encourage and educate people about what’s possible with memory techniques, and to assume that every single individual is capable of doing the maximum highest level of performance, provided they want it. And that’s what it’s all about. So it’s not about the best training or some kind of bizarre, crazy claims about anything. It’s about promoting these techniques and also helping people to understand that this is thousands of years old and humanity survived because of these techniques, and we’re going to survive again because of what people have committed to their memory. Because doctors don’t have time to look up stuff on the internet, and we see that expertise is really, really important right now. And people need to be able to get real information from their head quickly. And so to me, memory is survival and memory is flourishing and it’s very, very important. 

Kirill Eremenko: Gotcha. Apart from what we talked about productivity, meditation, no thought, how good memory techniques and mastering your memory help somebody in data science? Somebody who’s very technical, not as much formulas, but more like, you need to remember different algorithms, when to use which one, maybe different use cases from around the world, research papers also, sometimes I like reading research papers. So how can memory techniques help a data scientist? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, many ways. So one thing, for example, is with understanding. So when you come across a concept you don’t understand, a lot of people say, “Don’t memorize something until you’ve understood it.” I say it’s the opposite. Memorize it so that you might understand it because you’re building a foundational framework for making connections in your mind. So if you come across the name of a paper, it’s not that big of a deal, but just knowing that Tim Dalgliesh wrote this research on method of loci and that he uses method of loci helps me understand what he’s doing, because I absorb it. So I don’t know what some specific examples would be, but if you need to memorize some stuff from research about data science, knowing the words that they use, knowing who did it, knowing the date that it was published is going to extend the foundations of your knowledge that gives you more connections so that you might know more. 

Anthony Metivier: And there’s a principle. The more you know, the more you can know, and that’s because your brain has more connections. So that’s one thing. The next thing would be is if you, I don’t know, when you say deciding which algorithm to use when if that involves decision trees, but you can memorize decision trees, for example, and then you have a mental image and framework that you’ve internalized to refer to, which creates knowledge, which leads to wisdom, which leads to expertise. It leads to a little bit of that secret sauce where you just really know this stuff, right? 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. 

Anthony Metivier: And that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it right every time. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to go and reference things from time to time, but you’re going to have internalized decision trees at a much deeper and better level than the other person, and you’re going to stand out in that way. 

Anthony Metivier: And the other thing would be just exercise with memory, which Nelson Dellis wrote a very kind thing about The Victorious Mind. He’s a multi USA Memory champion. He said he’s always thought that memory training was like meditation. And I think he’s right. You’re focusing on information, you’re becoming one with it as you use these tools as you’re weaving space and different multisensory aspects around, and then you’re going to have more focus as a result. So that focus can help you perform better, make better decisions while you’re performing, because you’re able to get rid of distractions, and just be in the moment and get more done with greater consistency and greater quality. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Got you. And that’s a real challenge for me personally, focus. I don’t do social media almost at all, except for LinkedIn. But even so, I can be working on one task and then I can be like, “Oh, let’s go check this,” or, “Let’s go check my email,” or, “Let’s go do this.” I even bought, I have here on my bed, Deep Work by Cal Newport. I heard it’s a really good book and I think I’ve read a summary of it on Blinkist, to help me focus more. So I absolutely agree with you that helping people focus would be a great benefit of doing these memory techniques, memory exercises. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It’s really important for me because one of my interests in getting rid of thought, even though I was hostile to it in the beginning, is that I was just overrun by thoughts. Even though I was already quite accomplished in what I do, and I already had a PhD and all that sort of stuff, I was still overrun by thoughts all the time. Tortured by thoughts all the time. And it’s hard to focus. So just being free of that noise and having information, whether it’s some crazy old Sanskrit or it’s just thinking through. I mentioned, what is his name? David Hilbert his hotel there, with the infinity sort of- 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I love that. 

Anthony Metivier: It’s very meditative just to think that through and imagine infinity doubling when you get people to move not just one room over, but two rooms over. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. 

Anthony Metivier: That is a kind of meditation and it’s very rewarding. And to be able to focus on it, it’s because… Is that his name? David Hilbert? I haven’t quite tested my memory. 

Kirill Eremenko: I’m not sure. 

Anthony Metivier: But in any case, I tried to commit it to memory and hopefully that’s correct. But having tried to memorize it and then thought through the puzzle, it is so wonderful and rewarding and it creates more focus because it’s better content than, “Oh my God, I have so many problems, and this happened in my business. And I’ve got shoulder pain,” because I do, because I have shoulder bursitis now. And, “Oh, I’ve got a skin condition,” which I do. My mind can just go, “blah, blah, blah,” but because I have things memorized, it’s just a better quality of thought. So it’s not just about having no thought, it’s also about just having wonderful things to think about. And you can think about them deeply because they’re in your mind. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I like it. In your book, you described that Magnetic Memory Method, that magnets not only attract what they want, but also repel what they don’t want. I never thought of it that way. I always thought a magnet attracts, attracts, when people use the magnet as a metaphor, but really you want your memory to be a magnet and attract the good things and repel the annoying or distracting thoughts. So, that’s really cool, that by training your memory it becomes like a magnet both ways. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s been really, really important because I’m not talking about memorizing everything under the sun, I’m also talking about focusing on particular things that legitimately improve your life, that move you forward, which you can’t have at all. And you also can’t afford to constantly be disrupted. So it’s about putting the information that is important in place and repelling the stuff that distracts you. 

Kirill Eremenko: Got you. Tell us a bit about the challenge-frustration curve. That’s something that you talk about in your book. And I thought it was quite intuitive, but at the same time, not many people stopped to think about it, and it was very insightful for me. So the challenge-frustration curve, what it is and how does it apply to learning to meditate or learning how to memorize things? 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah, that’s a great question. Thank you for asking about it. So the general premise is that people need to be challenged in order to grow. We don’t really progress if we just have easy street. We actually get lazy and our bodies will decay and our muscles will get flabby, et cetera. But at the same time, when we take on challenges, if we get frustrated, we’re going to quit, we’re going to give up. So we have to balance this equation between needing to be challenged and avoiding frustration at all costs. So it’s almost like riding a wave and finding a sweet spot that always has to change, and just accept we always say it, the only constant is change. And really accepting that, but not only accepting it, embracing it, causing it to happen. 

Anthony Metivier: So for example, in my own memory project, I know that I got to a certain okay-ness with Chinese, so I needed to add something a little bit more challenging to spurn on the next thing. I don’t necessarily want it to be harder, but I made it harder. So I went and took a class in Chinese, where they only spoke Chinese and they only used characters and Pinyin was only available upon request. And that was pushing myself to the point of frustration. But when I got frustrated, I would just simply ask, “Could you write the Pinyin, please?” That sort of thing. 

Anthony Metivier: So that’s a concrete example of it. And my Chinese just flourished as a result because I was willing to take on the additional challenge, and in the final exam, I only got one mistake. 

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It was like 99.9%. It was the weirdest exam I ever took, but nonetheless, it was so much fun and I’m really glad of it. And likewise with meditation, another challenge in meditation would be adding another big section of Sanskrit, but this time memorizing it backwards or something like that. But if it gets frustrating, then know when to scale back and make it so that it’s just challenging. Again, you don’t want to cause yourself to do anything that makes you quit. That’s not a good strategy at all. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. That’s very cool. So challenging, but not to the point that you are getting frustrated and you don’t want to do it anymore. Yeah. Okay, so that’s a very powerful technique. Again, it’s basically that curve is individual to everybody, depending on your skill set. Depending on where you are in life, you will have a different challenge-frustration curve, correct? 

Anthony Metivier: Yeah. It’s one of these things you mentioned, it’s a complex, ambitious book, and one of the ideas that’s wrapped up in here is the idea of existing competence. So you want to identify your actual ability in order to set goals that you actually can achieve, because so many people set goals they’re never going to achieve. They actually might achieve them, but only if they are willing to look at what skill they have right now and then set a goal they actually can achieve, because it’s achievable in the realm of their existing competence. 

Anthony Metivier: So for example, you might want to learn to fly a plane, but you actually don’t know anything about math. So are you going to start learning how to fly planes, or are you going to start with a rudimentary math course? I think it’s more likely that you could figure out where you are with math, take an initial course… I’m just throwing this example out there, that you can get some rudimentary math that would lead you to that path, be willing to do it based on your existing competence and go from there. And then you’re much more likely to actually become the pilot that you envisioned. 

Kirill Eremenko: Absolutely. For example, I think my brother had got me a helicopter trial class, an introductory class. Or it was the other way around, maybe I got it for his birthday. I don’t remember. But we went to do it and one of the first things they were asking was physics, “Do you understand how rotation works? And gyroscopes,” and whatever else. So you’ve got to be prepared for that. Absolutely, I agree. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Got you. What else from your book that we haven’t covered off that you’d like to share with our audience here today? By the way, we haven’t mentioned the name of the book, it’s called The Victorious Mind. I forgot to say the name. Yeah. The Victorious Mind. 

Anthony Metivier: The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. I guess the other thing that I would just say that I think is really important, if it’s useful and helpful for people, is that my biggest feeling is that we have a paradox, and the paradox is that one teacher is never enough, but you have to spend enough time with one teacher in order to even begin to understand what’s going on there. So I really would recommend to people that if you’re going to go into something, stick with that theme for some time and read a couple of books. So it’s not like I read one Gary Weber book. I read every book that I could get, I watched all of his YouTube videos. I really sunk into that guy before that I went and started, for example, some Zen Buddhism. Because Zen Buddhism is constantly interesting me because there’s all these koans and mental puzzles. And I like all this stuff. But it’s like, no, we’re not finished with the Gary Weber program. 

Anthony Metivier: And then there’s another guy, James Swartz. And I just did eventually read all that guy’s books, but it’s after, and then we spent some time with the James Swartz stuff, and then maybe go back and revisit Eckhart Tolle. But plan to spend some time, not just dipping in and out and so forth. So it’s a paradox, never one teacher, but always enough time with each individual one. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. That’s very nice. 

Anthony Metivier: You need a rule of thumb. Make it 90 days, because we know from neurochemistry that habit formation tends to require at least 90 days. People say habits need 23 days and et cetera, but I think the better number that Richard Wiseman shows quite elegantly with his research in a book called 59 Seconds is much more likely and makes a lot more sense when you look at the neurochemistry of understanding of knowledge and habit formation. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. That’s a good point. I saw a meme recently on somebody coming back to work after these coronavirus lockdowns are down, and they’re hiring personnel. It’s somebody applying for a job, and the hiring manager asking them on an interview, “So what have you learned in the,” the meme said, “300 days of coronavirus lockdown.” Hopefully, it won’t be that long, but basically, “What did you learn in the time of the coronavirus lockdown?” And the person in the meme was very lost for answers, because they were probably playing computer games all the time or just sitting back on the couch, watching movies. 

Kirill Eremenko: I think it’s an important time for self development and growth, and learning something. And then demonstrating that at your existing job or new job, or at interviews is going to be very advantageous. Why don’t we just say what kind of advice would you give to people on how to spend their time now during these lockdowns to maximize their return on investment, so that when they come out of it, they come out or better people? 

Anthony Metivier: I would suggest doing something that is a combination of an assessment of your life, your status quo, where things are, and in a vision statement that helps you think of where you want to be. And then think about your existing competence to actually achieve that and do some planning. You don’t have to follow the plan. Joe Polish, he’s an interesting entrepreneur. He says planning is often more important than the plan itself. But spend some time planning the progress towards where you would like to be one year from now, 20 months from now, 20 weeks from now, et cetera, and just think about what that would look like. So if it was to fly a helicopter, what is the most likely path given what you can find out about the tests? And then map it out, figure it out. 

Anthony Metivier: That’s maybe not the best metaphor, but I do this often with my own life, the things that I would like to see. And then I start to chunk it down into actually achievable units. And then I always stress test, do I really want this? And I ask five reasons why. Why do I really want this? And try to push it, because if you can’t get five reasons why, maybe you don’t really want it. And really work at finding out what you really want and keep in mind that for me, it was very simple. I just wanted to stop suffering from pain. And now, when I think of my vision, I just ask simple questions like, do I really want that? Is that actually achievable? Am I the kind of person who’s ever likely to achieve it? This has helped me so much, just getting peace with the kind of person that I am, the kind of limitations that I have. And then I get much, much better results because I’ve absorbed them into the planning and I’m just much more content. 

Anthony Metivier: So that’s what I would strongly recommend for people. And this is talked about in The Victorious Mind. And I’ve got all kinds of free YouTube videos and stuff that talk about vision statements and whatnot to help clarify that. 

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. Got you. All right. That’s very, very powerful advice on how to vision. For instance, I do my visions for the coming week every Sunday. Well, now I’ve gotten into the habit of doing it. And I was doing mine. We’re recording this on a Monday, so yesterday, I did mine for the coming week. And I really sit down and I write down the top three things that I want to accomplish in the coming week. And usually, it’s not that hard to come up with the things, but if you limit yourself to only three, you still have to make a choice like, do I want to record this video or these videos? Or do I want to look at seven new applications of marketing managers or contact seven people? Or whatever else. 

Kirill Eremenko: And then I still, for each one, come up with at least three reasons. You said five, which is even better. I come up with at least three reasons why I want to do it. Why does it excite me? Why is it important? Is it important from a point of view of connecting with other people, from contributing to the world, from growing myself, from being certain that the business is going to be able to run forward and continue growing? 

Kirill Eremenko: So I come up with three different reasons why it’s important to me. And that’s very helpful. That really pushes me to get these things done. So your answer is expanding that to more of a longer term perspective, figure out what you want and why you want it. So, I absolutely agree. 

Kirill Eremenko: Anthony, on that note, we’re slowly coming to a wrap of the podcast. It’s been a huge pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on the second time. Where are the best places for people to find you, if they’d like to continue their memory journey following this episode? 

Anthony Metivier: Well, everything takes place or everything is consolidated, so to speak at magneticmemorymethod.com. And I always appreciate people saying hello. And last time I was on a lot of your audience came by and let me know that they’d heard that episode. So I really appreciate it very much. And that’s where you can find me. And I’ve heard, I haven’t tested this myself, but apparently if your memory is a bit shot and Magnetic Memory Method is too long, I think you could just put Anthony and Memory, and I think I come up. It’s worth a test anyway. 

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Anthony. Looking forward to catching up in person in Australia again. 

Anthony Metivier: Absolutely. And hopefully we will be able to shake hands by that time too. 

Kirill Eremenko: For sure. Thank you. Have a good one. 

Anthony Metivier: Thank you. 

Kirill Eremenko: So there you have it. That was Anthony Metivier, memory expert and bestselling author on the topic of memory. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode, and as promised, I hope you are walking away with, at the very least a memory palace of four items, that map of the US with the West, North, East, South locations, something that’ll allow you to memorize anything. And I highly recommend practicing that. And if you feel that it’s helping you memorize at least four things, then create a memory palace of your own based on your room or based on the location you know very well, with certain distinct features which you can use to memorize items. As I mentioned in the intro to this episode, I’ve been using this technique since I was 15 or even younger, and it’s served me very, very well. 

Kirill Eremenko: What is my favorite part of the episode? Perhaps my favorite part was when Anthony was talking about how memory leads to focus, because in order to memorize things, you need to focus on them, and focus leads to getting rid of distractions. And that has been a theme in my life, over the past couple of weeks at least, where I’ve been focusing on getting rid of distractions and aiming to have productive hours in the morning and really focus on one task for two or three hours and get into a concept of what Cal Newport calls deep work. That has been very helpful for me. And it’s exciting to hear that memory techniques can lead to that, and I’m definitely planning on exploring that space further.
Kirill Eremenko: On that note, if you’re curious to explore memory further for yourself, you can always find more at Anthony’s magneticmemorymethod.com portal where you can learn more and listen to this podcast and find out more ideas and tips on memory. Plus the book that we discussed that is called The Victorious Mind. If you feel it’s right for you, then you can check it out. It’s available on Amazon. 

Kirill Eremenko: As always, you can find the links to the show notes at www.superdatascience.com/371. That’s www.superdatascience.com/371. There will include any materials mentioned on this podcast, any things that we specifically talked about, any links and the URLs that you might be interested in visiting. 

Kirill Eremenko: If you’d like to share this episode, it’s very easy to share, just send wherever you’re sending it to, the link www.superdatascience.com/371. On that note, my friends, thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and got some valuable takeaways. If so, make sure to share the love, spread the word with your friends and colleagues, family. And I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.