CEOs Know Their Numbers: How to Memorize Something Fast

Great CEOs aren’t only enigmatic and motivational leaders; they know their stuff, too! Building a great company or personal wealth depends on knowing your figures, products, and people. They know the new intern by name, the birthday of that new client’s son, and most importantly, your sales figures for last month. They learned how to memorize something fast.

It’s not that they have some magical memory ability that others don’t have. Your memory is a muscle you can train. You don’t expect to bench 315lbs your first time in the gym, but you’ll get there with training. Luckily, memorizing something fast is a self-improvement skill that won’t take years of grinding. There are only three things you need:

The desire
The information
The method

The Problem With Most Memory Techniques

Teachers likely taught you some of these memory techniques, but if they worked, everyone would be a straight-A student. You’ll see below that they all have one common problem.

Acronyms and rhyme
Mnemonics
Repetition and rote memory
Flashcards and memory training apps
Chunking and visualization

Memory champions don’t use these memorization techniques. These memory devices assume you can remember the acronym, rhyme, mnemonic, etc. These memory tricks rarely move the information into your long-term memory, so when it comes to recalling it, you can’t remember – like cramming before an exam.

Instead, you can use something you already know intimately to improve your memory, making remembering things easier.

The Desire: Key To Remembering

Motivation directs your attention like a spotlight, illuminating the information you seek to remember. You naturally pay closer attention to the things you find interesting or important, allowing them to enter your working memory more readily. Conversely, trying to memorize something you find dull or irrelevant results in a scattered focus and hinders information transfer to long-term storage.

Memories attached to emotions are more vivid and enduring. Motivation often taps into emotional drivers, like the desire for self-improvement, to excel in a career, or to fulfill a personal goal. This emotional connection creates a more substantial and lasting imprint of the information in our minds.

So, trying to memorize a list of dates you don’t really care much about will be more challenging than memorizing a list of figures that will drive your business forward—focus on things important to you.

The Information Itself

Before you can memorize anything, you must have the information you need at hand and isolated. A massive Excel sheet with thousands of lines is not optimum for finding data to commit to memory. Instead, extract the data you want to be able to recall. Think of a flashcard – the ultimate memorization tool. It’s a single piece of paper with a single piece of information.

Without the distraction of irrelevant information, your mind can focus on what it is trying to remember.

A note on your phone – “To Memorize” – will work, but Obsidian, a second brain application, is much more powerful. Use an Obsidian template to note down anything you want to commit to memory, and you’ll always be able to find it quickly.

Soon, you’ll have a list of information ready to memorize.

The Method: How To Memorize Something Fast

The fastest mnemonic device for memorizing something is an ancient technique called the method of loci. The idea is simple – connect the new data to something you already know. The method plays into an unconscious skill we all have – a knack for remembering our environment.

I’ll prove it to you. Follow these instructions:

Close your eyes and imagine you are in your bedroom (or if you’re in the bedroom, use the living room). In your mind, walk around your room and notice the things you see, such as the walls, the floor, the shape of the room, the furniture, where it is, and the other items in the room. Spend a little time there just noticing as much as you can.

You may have noticed clocks and windows, a book you put on your table months ago, plug sockets, and carpet stains. Whatever you notice, you can use it to memorize anything.

The room you just looked around in your mind’s eye is the key to the method of loci; it’s no longer your room; let’s turn it into your memory palace.

Close your eyes once more and look around your room again; this time, stand by the door and notice the first thing to your left. What is it? A light switch? A couch? Whatever it is, just notice it in your mind, then continue anticlockwise around the room, taking note of the five objects that stand out most to you.

These five objects will become the pegs you can hang new knowledge onto. Here are the objects in my living room:

Door
Couch
Painting
TV
Window

Step one is complete; you have your memory palace. Anytime you like, you can walk around it and familiarize yourself with your chosen five objects.

Next is to find some information to memorize. If you made a “To Memorize” list, note, or page in your personal knowledge management system, you should have some facts ready.

Let’s use three examples:

Someone’s name: John
An appointment: Dentist at 11 am
A sales figure: March up 12%

Now, you just need to connect the information to the location in your memory palace.

Step One: Turn the Information Into a Picture

The pictures you create don’t need to make sense. They only need to help you remember the information. Ensure you include all the essential information in your picture, so don’t leave out the “11” when creating a picture about the dentist.

The odder or stranger you make the pictures, the easier they will be to stick in your head, so feel free to get a little wacky.

Instead of imagining the name John, picture someone you already know called John, e.g., John Travolta
Picture sitting on a huge number 11 while getting dental work done
See an army marching up a giant number 12

Step Two: Connect It to Your Memory Palace

The first location in my memory palace is the door; it’s not a generic door; it’s the door in my room, and I can picture it. Here’s how to connect it to the name John. The key is to use action. The more vivid the action, the better.

Imagine the scene in your mind’s eye: John Travolta runs through the door and bursts into the room.
The couch has become a huge number 11, and someone is sitting on it getting dental work done.
The army is marching up the giant number 12, towards the painting on the wall.

By linking the images with the locations in your memory palace, you have stored them and can retrieve them whenever you like.

Step Three: Retrieving the Information

When you need to remember something fast, you don’t need to think about the information itself; you only need to go to your memory palace and look around the room. As you do this, you’ll see your locations and the information you stored without even trying.

Level up Your Memorization Skills

Now that you know the loci method, your memory improvement doesn’t need to stop there. As you become familiar with the technique, use these tips to continue to develop your ability to memorize information.

Expand Your Mind Palace

Five locations isn’t much of a palace. You can add more locations to your memory palace; add a new one when a room gets crowded. When all the rooms are full, create a new palace with another building you are familiar with. You can have as many palaces as you want.

Learn the Major System

The Major System is a technique popularized by Harry Lorraine, a magician and memory champion, to help remember numbers. Using spatial memory, you turn each of the ten numbers (0-9) into a sound you use to make visual words. A picture is much easier to connect to your memory palace than a number.

Remember Things Often

Like most skills, using the loci method will become easier the more you do it. So practice putting information into your short-term memory by learning things for fun. When reading a men’s style magazine, try memorizing the outfits. When you’re watching TV, try remembering the characters’ names.

Then, when you need to memorize something fast for your next big meeting, you can memorize it quickly.

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This post was previously published on Wealth of Geeks.

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