Websites for learning about memory techniques
My (Francis Blondin) own “in English” free instructional website! It’s not the most complete or best-presented website on this page. I really want to update and expand it during the next few weeks and months. It’s currently still a mess. But even in its current state, I still think it’s a decent place to start. And I think you will find plenty of valuable advice there, including some important ones that are often missing or under-emphasized elsewhere. I have a more well-developed instructional website in French at Toutretenir.com.
–
A real encyclopedia for everything related to memory techniques. Also a very active forum with thousands of users. You’ll need several lifetimes if you want to explore everything of value that is offered here.
Include a lot of very helpful articles and several fascinating interviews with top memory athletes. Florian Dellé, memory-sports.com founder, happens to be the man with noise-blocking ear muffs and the playing cards that you can see in the upper left part of our website.
Started by three-time World Memory Champion Alex Mullen and his partner Cathy Chen, two medical students who are both passionate about learning and memory. If you’re looking to use memory techniques for difficult subjects, this is the first website that we would recommend
Nelson Dellis “Random Memory Tips” Youtube videos
4-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis has uploaded more than 80 memory-related videos on his Youtube channel. His “random memory tips” series is particularly useful, well-presented and entertaining. We made a playlist of our 25 or so favourites videos of his that you can see by clicking here.
Websites for training:
This is the preferred website of most competitors for quick, daily-ish training. Getting into the habit of spending 5 minutes there at least once in a while instead of going on Facebook is one of the best ways to integrate the practice of memory techniques into your lifestyle. Unless you go into the options to change that, most of your attempts will be 1-minute long. You either train alone or you can compete directly against an opponent. Since the challenges are short, it is not difficult to motivate yourself to do them. And if you can find someone who is more or less at your level and meet him or her online for a series of quick matches, it’s surprising how formative and fun the experience can be. It’s free if you only do three attempts a day, $25 a year if not. Generally the more you will use it, the more you’ll like it. I recommend that you go into the options to put words and names in your preferred language and also sometimes to give yourself more time.
Free and very well-done training software with all the international disciplines. A must for serious competitors training for international events like the IAM World Memory Championship.
Another free and very well-done training software with all the international disciplines. Perfect if you want to print out something. You’ll to use your own timer if you want to train directly from the site.
* If you’re training for a CMSA championship, you should know that all the resources above use different formats and scoring rules than we do for most disciplines. That’s not necessarily a problem, but if you want to train with exactly the same format that you will be tested on at the next CMSA championship, we recommend that you use this page instead.
Great books about the Art of memory
Some people feel like they need to read a dozen books before they can start using the art of memory. That’s not true at all! You don’t need to read ANY book. All you need to know can be learned relatively quickly using this website or others. However, reading books about the subject can be extremely interesting. Read one book or read a bunch of books if you want to, but don’t use that as an excuse to procrastinate the real work of training and actually using the techniques. All that being said, here are some of my favourite memory-related books. If there’s an asterisk (*) next to the title, it means you can find a French translation of the same book. A longer list in French can be found here.
Joshua Foer, *Moonwalking With Einstein – The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, 2011
This is NOT a good book if you want an instruction manual about how to use the art of memory, but it’s one of the most fascinating, interesting and instructive books I ever had the chance to read on any subject. It’s also a real page-turner.
Nelson Dellis, Remember It!: The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget, 2018
Best “how-to” book on the art of memory as far as I’m concerned.
Lynne Kelly, The Memory Code, 2016 and Memory Craft, 2019
Lynne Kelly has produced those two groundbreaking works about how oral cultures all over the world have been using memory techniques to remember staggering amounts of information on all kinds of subjects. This is amazingly interesting and consequential. I was slightly skeptical at first but came away convinced that the author is a serious and hard working researcher who did her homework and actively sought disconfirming evidence before printing anything. Here’s an extract from The Memory Code. Memory Code is mostly about how those techniques are used. Memory Craft is about you can also learn to use those same techniques. Her website is: http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/the-memory-code/. The author is 66 years old and in recent years she has managed to memorize a spectacular amount of data despite her “appallingly bad memory”.
Kenneth L. Higbee, Your Memory: How It Works and How to Improve It, 2001
Not what you should read first if you want to become a memory champion as quickly as possible, but a very interesting and scientifically accurate work that will be helpful for students and for everyone who cares about the subject.
Oddbjorn By, Memo: The Easiest Way to Improve Your Memory, 2007
Darren Mark Michalczuk, Brain Magic: The Memory Code, 2017
Dominic O’Brien, You Can Have an Amazing Memory – Learn life-changing techniques and tips from the memory maestro, 2016