Remember It!: The Names of People You Meet

Book Preface

Maybe it is because I am a neurosurgeon that people are always asking me random questions about the brain. How much does it weigh? What does it feel like? Is it really gray? The question I get more than any other, though, is about memory. Most everyone, young and old, wants to improve their memory.

How we can optimize our memory is a difficult question to answer. My simple reply has always been: Try and pay more attention to those things you are truly trying to remember. While paying attention certainly works, I knew there had to be a better and more thoughtful strategy. That is why I was so excited to meet Nelson Dellis.

The first thing you notice about Nelson is his size. I’m not sure what I expected of a memory champion, but a six-foot-six-inch mountain climber wasn’t quite it. The second thing was his congeniality mixed with an obvious attentiveness. In an age where it is difficult to get people to look up from their screens, Nelson was fully engaged with me and his surroundings. I was about to better understand why.

We were on location at a beautiful old mansion, the Swan House in Atlanta, Georgia, and the subject of my show was, of course, memory. Before we got into the techniques to improve and enhance memory, I wanted to better understand what made Nelson, a four-time USA Memory champion and grandmaster of memory, tick.

Like many people who make changes to their physical or mental health, Nelson was greatly moved to do so by someone close to him. His grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s and eventually passed away from the disease. This lit a fire deep inside him and inspired the tremendous efforts he has made to improve his own memory.

It is important to know that Nelson wasn’t born with any super memory skills; because of his family history, he may even have an increased risk for diminishing memory. After all, there are more than five million people affected by Alzheimer’s disease living in the United States, with the number increasing every year.

There is no way to overstate the memory capabilities of Nelson Dellis. He has memorized 339 digits in five minutes and 217 names in fifteen minutes. I went to medical school and studied neuroscience, but I can barely remember the names of five people at a cocktail party. Nelson is a memory athlete and a remarkable teacher. It was time to see if any of it could rub off on me. We settled on learning ten U.S. presidents, specifically the twenty-fifth to thirty-fourth presidents (because hey, why not?). The Swan House, Nelson told me, was a fantastic location to create a “memory palace.” With its old-time charm, nooks and crannies, trinkety-trinkets, and the like, Nelson explained that one could really store a lot of information in a place like this. It is an ideal memory palace.

He walked me around the room, starting with me imagining opening the window door to our left and seeing Mount McKinley in the distance, with arctic, snowy air blasting into the room. As soon as I envisioned this, I knew I would never forget it. Not only could I see the mountain range, but I could feel the cold air on my skin—which I can still feel as I write this—a constant reminder that William McKinley was the twenty-fifth president of the United States. Just to the left of that window door was a small bar with a large teddy bear standing there, sipping a drink—Teddy Roosevelt, of course. A large raft floating on a globe represented our twenty-seventh president, William Howard Taft; and a bright yellow tennis ball with the name Wilson on it—for Woodrow Wilson—smashing through a grandfather clock in the back corner of the room.

It took just a few minutes for me to encode the ten presidents into images and place them around the memory palace. At the time, I thought there was no way these images would stick in my brain, but it has been a year since my tour of the memory palace, and I am now confident I will always remember them. Even Nelson would agree I was exhibiting a fantastic memory, and it only took several minutes of him training me to get there.

As you dive into this fun and zany book of memory techniques, keep in mind the early lesson that we too often forget: pay attention, fully and thoroughly. You will not only remember better, but you will also experience and enjoy life more. This book will make remarkable memory an ordinary part of your life, and you will not find a more engaging teacher than Nelson Dellis. I have been using the techniques in this book every day, and if you do the same you will never again forget to Remember It!

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Staff Neurosurgeon, Emory Clinic

Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN