Secrets of Memory Champions

How’s your memory?  Would you like to know how memory champions increase their skills?  It is important for recruiters and HR managers to remember people, so this is a subject near and dear for us.  And yes, there really are memory competitions, and the champions have to do things like recreate the order of a deck of cards, reel off long lists of numbers, etc.  Most of these champions can walk through a large auditorium and name each attendee, after only meeting them once.

How do they do it?  It turns out that most modern day memory champs use the principle of loci – based on places – a technique that may go back to ancient Greece and Rome.  You create pictures and anchor them to locations, then take a “walk” through the locations, and the pictures you recall unlock the number, card, name, etc.

Take a look at this excellent article published in the Wall Street Journal, which outlines how this works!  Fascinating!