Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley

In the days leading up to my college graduation a few weeks ago, I was reflecting on the last four years with a friend over dinner. When we came into college, we both undoubtedly thought that we were decently smart. But looking back, it’s crazy how little I actually knew heading into college. I knew so little (and still do, relatively). 

During the conversation, my friend mentioned a statistic that people forget about 90 percent of new information that is presented to them within a week. If I’m going to be forgetting so much of everything I learned in my college classes, did I really just spend all that money and time for a piece of paper? The first thing that came to mind was Matt Damon from the movie Good Will Hunting talking to a Harvard student in a bar: 

"You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin' education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

Of course, not everyone has an eidetic memory like Matt Damon in the movie with the ability to remember the page numbers of information found in textbooks. Yet, as I was walking home from dinner, I felt uneasy. I don’t want to forget the things I’ve spent so much money and effort to learn these past few years. 

Fast forward a few weeks, I found myself looking at the book Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley. The book is a fairly short read about how to maximize the potential of your memory through a few learning and retention strategies. I figured if I read the book, I finally might be able to remember someone's name before they have to tell me three times, or if it gets too late to even ask.

For some reason, the author decided to use the strategies to successfully memorize the first 10,000 digits of pi. For that, he now has the title of “Grandmaster of Memory.” (Goals.) I used to cheat on eye tests in elementary school by memorizing the lines of letters while the person in front of me went—so pretty much the same thing.

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that I can seem to remember the most random memories from my childhood while reminiscing with my older brothers, despite the fact that some of these events occurred over a decade ago. How do these random scenes stick while others go by the wayside? 

Often times, I feel like the days fly by and nothing is significant to stick to my long term memory. It’s not that nothing happens during my days, it’s just that most of the time, things are simply routine. Because things remain routine, my mind often wanders without focusing especially on anything in particular. I find myself flipping through channels in my mind and not staying on one particular subject long enough to actually concentrate on anything effectively. Right now, I am typing, listening to music, and trying to listen to what my brother is telling me right now. I’m busy, but is it a good busy? 

In the book, Horsley contends that we live in an “activity illusion” by thinking that ‘busyness’ is equal to good business. Horsley writes, “Busyness may make you feel good and make you think you are more productive but when we look back at the end of the day we realize we haven’t done anything worthwhile.”

In terms of strategies for remembering things, Horsley provides details on how to form connections between the information at hand and often times absurd phrases or words through rhyming, a number code, or relating the information to items in a familiar space. 

With rhyming, I still remember the list—the 10 feelings that everyone should feel each day—that Horsley provides to prove that rhyming and forming connections between the information and absurd sentences works. For example: 

1. Love. Love is number one. One rhymes with bun. Picture a giant bun, baked into the shape of a heart to symbolize love. One is love. 

With associating a list of information with a familiar layout, this is apparently how you memorize the first 10,000 digits of pi. Picture the layout of your house, or anywhere else that you are familiar with. Picture your bedroom and three or four items in the room—say, the bed, nightstand, television, and closet. Now, you connect the information at hand to the various objects in similar fashion as the rhyming strategy. However, you can always connect more and more information to the objects as long as you can picture another object to tie the information to. Take my nightstand for example. I could connect more information to the book, candle, or succulent that’s always on top of the stand. (At this point, I’m just flexing about my domestic nature as a 21 year old male. That’s right, I have two house plants in my room.)

I feel like the most important thing to relay from the book is simply the advice of always trying to connect what you are actually proven to be interested in to the new information at hand. In cultivating interest about new information, Horsley writes, 

“Your deficits of attention are mostly interest deficits. Your mind never wanders away; it only moves towards more interesting and outstanding things.” (And you know this quote has to be intelligent because it has a semicolon in it.)

“The first step is to find your interests and then to find links or connections between your interests and the new information that you are learning.” 

Too often in college, I heard people complain about having to take a class outside of their major, claiming that they’ll never need to use the information from the class or assignments. Okay, maybe true, but every time I hear this (usually from a business school student) I always think about only wanting knowledge about accounting, finance, or economics—whatever major you want to choose. Imagine only knowing things related to your profession that you’ll be able to “use” in your job, ultimately bringing your personality to the coveted level of walking work cubicle that strictly only knows how to do taxes and fantasy football stats. 

I wish more people would go into learning situations with an open mind. Who knows where the 10 percent of information remembered after a week of learning the information will take you. As the author writes, “Always remember that where your attention goes, your energy flows.”

If you want to challenge your memory right away, the comments are always open to see if you can remember your credit card number and security code. Don’t forget the expiration date, either—for the exercise of course.  

And that's the way I read it.