For those of you who have a mobile phone in your hands right now, maybe you can just wave it a little bit here. Can you wave your mobile phones? Okay, here's a quick question for you.
What is the memory capacity of your phone? How many GB's is it? 256 GB.
Anyone else? 512 GB. And is there anyone who forgot what your phone GB capacity is?
It happens. Don't worry about it. Now, it's incredible our pocket phones and the computers that we use today, we have hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of storage capacity.
Now, my question to you is, what is the storage capacity of your brain? What is the storage capacity of the human brain? Now, I'm sure you will all agree with me if I say that your brain has an incredible capacity to store information.
You agree with that? Thank you. Absolutely.
Now, in terms of gigabytes, your human brain has an estimated 2. 5 million GB of storage capacity. Impressive, yeah?
And the question is, how come we have such vast 2. 5 million GB of information storage capacity, but we are still very, very forgetful. Why is that happening?
So you'll find out the answer for that in today's presentation. Now, just before we go, I want to show you something really cool, something really interesting, something which probably will show you the power of the human brain when you train it. So for this, I request the participation of any five people who is willing to come down to the stage here.
What you need to do is very simple. Please come here and write a six digit number on the flip chart. Now, I'll be behind the flip chart, so I will not be knowing what numbers are being written.
Yeah, go ahead, please. Thank you. Perfect.
Okay, so sorry, your name is? Shiva. Shiva.
So please take this mic, if you don't mind. So all you need to do is, I'm going to close my eyes. I'm not going to look at the numbers, I'm going to close my eyes.
I'm going to stand here, close my eyes, if you don't mind, please call these numbers out loud to me from the first digit all the way to the 30th digit. Yes, sir. Shiva, go ahead.
6, 8, 2, 6, 8, 3, 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 4, 2, 3, 9, 4, 6, 1, 4, 9, 3, 1, 5, 8, 0, 6, 1, 0, 1, 4. Thank you. Yeah, that's it.
Big round of applause for everyone, including Shiva, for helping me with this. Thank you very much. Okay, so what just happened, hopefully, is I tried to focus on these numbers and I tried to remember these numbers.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to close my eyes and try to recall these numbers and see if I can do it correctly. And if I make a mistake, there is a possibility sometimes, if I make a mistake, just say stop. So I'll correct myself.
Is that okay? Let's try. The numbers are 6, 8, 2, 6, 8, 3, 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 4, 2, 3, 9, 4, 6, 1, 4, 9, 3, 1, 5, 8, 0, 6, 1, 0, 1, 4.
Thank you! Okay, so what you've seen is a short demonstration of what can be done if you train your memory. Now, one of my records very early in my memory days is I memorised a number consisting of 1944 digits.
Looks something like that. Memorised decks of playing cards for getting my Grandmaster of Memory title. For those of you thinking of taking me to the casino, I'm available.
We can talk about the negotiation later on. Just kidding, by the way. And I also happen to break a Guinness record for memorising the longest sequence of colours.
Now, when I share all these stories and my achievements, when people see this thing, the first thing that occurs to their mind is maybe I was born with this ability. Now, I've been living in Singapore for the last 16 years. But I was born and brought up in India in a place called Hyderabad in down south.
Now, in Hyderabad many years ago, there were telephone numbers which were only five digits long. And I used to struggle memorising even a five digit number and fast forward that to today. Today I can confidently say I can remember anything I want in a surprisingly short period of time with amazing levels of retention.
Now, the interesting thing is you can do the same thing too. And that's exactly what I'm going to talk about today. If you want to skyrocket your ability to remember, retain and recall information like you never did before, you need to inculcate the four habits.
If your memory is great already, it means that you are, without knowledge, using these four habits. If your memory is not great, it's time now for you to inculcate these habits. Because these habits will totally change the game for you.
Not only they will improve your memory and learning, but also they have the power to transform your life. And that's what we'll be talking about. So what are the four habits?
Number one is the habit of attention. And this is one of my favourite words I'll be talking about a lot in this segment and most of the speeches that I do. Because it's one of the important things in today's world.
That's number one. Number two is comprehension. The habit of comprehension.
Number three, the habit of recall. And number four, the habit of application. Whatever I remember in my life, I've used all these four habits.
And I highly encourage you to use these four habits as well. So let's first talk about the very first habit. The habit of attention.
Now, we are living in the world of rapid change. A lot of distractions, interruptions. And that's the reason why attention plays a very very important role.
Now, I'm going to tell you a simple thing that happened many years ago. In my school days in India, back then, in primary school, we had a teacher who used to say a million times in each class, "Please pay attention. Please pay attention.
Please pay attention". And one day, very innocently, I wanted to ask a question to the teacher, raised my hand. "Excuse me teacher, I have a question".
My teacher was not in the mood for taking questions on that day, I guess! Because she was very furious and said, "Nishant, stand up. What's your question?
" "Ah. . teacher, my question is.
. " Now I'm laughing, I was not laughing back then. "My question is, you've been telling us to please pay attention.
Can you please tell us how to pay attention? " Right after that, I realised that that was not a good question to ask your teacher. Because what I got back from my teacher was "Nishant, what a stupid question.
Pay attention. Sit down". What?
How come? She's not telling me how to pay attention? But it turns out your teachers are 100% correct.
If you pay attention, you have a good memory. As simple as that. But the problem is how to pay attention?
So let's quickly go through the process of memory. The process of memory consists of three Rs. Can you shout out loud?
What do you think are the three R's of memory? It could be right or wrong, just give me some R words related to brain and memory. Retention.
Thank you. Recognise. Thank you.
Registration. Thank you. Recall.
Got it. Repeat. Yeah it helps sometimes.
Remember. Thank you. Retrieval.
Okay, great! Now you know what? Between all of us, we got the three words that I really wanted.
The first R of memory process is the process of registration. Now, that's what is happening right now. Maybe you may call it as remembering, which is exactly the same.
Registration means the process of storing information into your brain. Right now, I'm speaking, you are listening. What you're doing is you are registering the information.
Similarly, when you are reading a book, watching a television, or watching a movie or whatever it is, when you want to learn something, you are registering. But the problem is, there are some right ways of registration and there are some wrong ways of registration. And if you use the wrong ways, you're seriously going to have a problem with the next two Rs.
The second R is retention. Now, retention means, how long can you hold, store the information in your brain for a very long time. Now, a lot of times people tell me, "Nishant, I can remember everything very fast!
" Good. "But also I forget very fast" Oh, that's not good. That's because this person has registration but may be struggling with retention, and we all face this.
And finally, the last R in the process is recall. Now, this is where, when people say, "Hey, I have a good memory". How do you know it's good memory?
That means you can recall the right information at the right time. Boom. Then your know your recall is good.
Then you know your memory is good. Now, the interesting thing is, if you make sure your registration is great, the chances are pretty high, your retention and recall will also be great. Not always, but mostly.
But the problem is, if your registration is bad, almost always, your retention will be bad and your recall will be bad as well. So we have to make sure we have to do the proper registration. And the way to do that is very simple: What your teachers said, pay 100% attention!
Now, the problem is, in today's world, which happens to all of us, how many times you are learning something, maybe you're reading a book, you're watching a video, you're attending a seminar and then you have your smartphone by you all the time because the smartphone has become a part of your human body. You have it all the time with you. So when you are learning, after some time, inevitably the smartphone notification will go off.
Now, what do you do? In the last one decade, we have trained our brains that if the notification goes off, you must immediately attend to it. Not two minutes later, not 1 minute later.
Must immediately you must attend to it. It's as if, you don't attend to the notification, the notification monster is going to pop up, grab you by the neck and ask you, "How dare you ignore me? " So people are afraid of the notification monster!
That's the reason why they go and then they check. Now, this is what happened. You were in the learning zone.
Notification. You went out. And you just messed up with the process of registration.
That is how powerful it is. Even if you do not click on the notification, just by looking at the notification, you already messed up with the registration. And if you're thinking this is light, no, it is not.
Because that is how your retention and your recall will be adversely affected if you don't do that. Now, you may be asking the question, " Nishant, what's the answer? " The answer is something that you may not like immediately, but you'll get used to it.
The answer is pretty simple: Turn off the notifications. At least in the time that you are learning. You can use notification some time else, but when you're learning, you have to do the turning off of notification.
Now, if some of you are thinking, "Nishant is it not drastic measures? " Now, here's my point. Learning is something that you do almost every day.
In fact, you have to keep on learning new things and new skills. If learning is so vital, why dilute the learning? Because when you dilute the learning, you dilute the quality of your results.
That's the reason why, at least for the time of learning, you must turn off the notifications. And that is the reason why you can do 100% attention and make your teachers right. Now, let's look at another word.
We have this word GET. Now, what is this word? FORGET.
A lot of times people tell me, "Why is it I keep forgetting, I keep forgetting, I keep forgetting? " What if I told you, the reason why you're forgetting probably is because you don't even get it in the first place! That's the reason why I say "Before you can forget anything, you have to get it in the first place!
" I'll give you a couple of examples. How many times it happens to you? You walk into a networking event, you shake your hands, you ask the other person, "What's your name?
" The person tells you his or her name. And within 1 nanosecond, not even a second, within 1 nanosecond, what happens? You just forgot the name.
And the people are going crazy thinking, "Oh my God, this person just told me his name. I don't have any idea. Does it start with a P or a G or a K or an H.
I don't know anything. It's just gone. I forgot" Did you forget?
You did not even get it in the first place. When you are shaking hands, when that person gave you his or her name, at that time your mind is going all over the place. "Am I presenting myself well?
What should I say next? Who should I meet next? " Your mind is not in that place, it's somewhere else.
So you're not even getting it. That's the reason why you forget. Another example I can give you is that when you are reading a book, this happens to all of us.
Now please tell me if you can relate to this. This is the text and these are the words in the text or in the book. Now watch this movement of my marker.
Because that's how your eyes normally move when you are reading. Typically these days. Now you go from one word, next word, next word, next word, come back.
Next word, next word, come back. Next word, next word, next word. "Hey.
. oh. .
yeah yeah yeah! " Come back. And then you keep on going and this happens.
You can relate to that, I guess. Now what is that? I've seen many people after opening a book and start reading after five or ten minutes.
They are in this position. The book is open, the eyes are open. The mouth is also open.
Hey, where are your looking? Where's the book. "Oh, thank you, thank you.
Sorry. I just got lost" Now after some time, this is the same person who says, "Hey, I keep forgetting" Oh, did you forget? No, you didn't even get it in the first place.
That's the reason why this is super important. Now you have to make sure you have to pay attention. One of the ways you can do, like I said, is by turning off the notifications.
Now that is how powerful attention is. Now attention will help you with the registration. But you know what?
We also have the next two Rs. And if you don't stack up the next habit, then you'd only stay with registration. And you may have problem with retention and recall.
The next habit I'm talking about is the habit of comprehension. Now, a lot of times many people think that hey, comprehension is something to do with children, students. No!
Everyone on this planet, you have to make sure you comprehend information. The problem is, a lot of times, people when they jump into the learning session, they jump in with an intention to remember. Now, I'm not saying, "Don't remember" I'm not even saying don't have the intention.
Intention to remember is good, but it cannot be your primary intention. Your primary intention has to be comprehension, understanding what you are learning. That's the reason why I say, "F irst understand, then remember".
First understand, then remember. Because if you straight go to remembering, you will not have comprehension. Which also means that you will not have very good retention.
And that's not a good thing to happen. Now, there are a couple of ways of how you can improve. In fact, there are a lot of ways of how you can improve comprehension.
But I'll just give you two for today. Number one is the process of association. This is a very, very important step for improving your memory and also a great way to comprehend the information.
Association simply means it's a process of connecting what you want to learnt with something that you have already learnt in the past. What is it that you want to learn today? You link it with something that you already learnt in the past.
So next time, when you want to learn an important concept or an idea, all you need to do is to ask yourself, "Okay, how can I connect this? How can I relate this? How can I link it, associate it with something that I already know?
" I will give you a simple example here. Now, to do this comprehension, you can do it by yourself. You can make some connections, or many times it's actually a good idea to talk to someone who's already an expert in that area or someone who knows more information than what you do in that topic, in that area.
Now, I used to have this problem and confusion when I was in primary school to know the difference between proper fraction and improper fraction. I don't know how many of you had this problem. I had this terrible problem.
So I went to my dad. My dad was very good at math. I said, "Dad, please help me.
What is the difference and how can I remember proper-improper fractions? " My dad said something crazy. He said, "Okay, good.
I'll tell you. Can you draw the picture of a human being? " I said, "Yeah, but I want to learn about proper fractions" "Can you draw the pictures?
" "Yeah, sure" as you'll know, right in a moment, I'm really, really terrible at drawing. Okay? So this is how I draw.
Something like this. So I said, "That's a human being" And my dad looked at it and said, "Great, that is a proper fraction" "What? " He took the pen back and he drew a line like that and said, a proper fraction looks like a proper human being with a small head and a big body.
Example: 2/3, 17/55. So the head is small, the body is big. Boom!
That is a proper fraction. And then he took the pen back from me, and then he draws something like this. And then he asked me, do you normally see a person like that?
No, I never see that. So that is improper. Very simple.
So just by making a connection between what I want to know, which is proper and proper fraction, with what I already know, how does a human being look like? Boom! I made the connection.
Several decades later, I absolutely have no confusion, no problem understanding the difference between proper and improper fraction. That is how powerful association is. And also it helps you with comprehension.
That's the first way you can do it. And the second way is also very powerful to improve your comprehension. And that is the checkpoint technique.
This is what I call as a checkpoint. Now, what is a checkpoint? A checkpoint is a predetermined spot or a place in a book or in a video that you decided, okay, this is one checkpoint.
For example, if you're reading a book, your checkpoint could be every section. A checkpoint could be every three pages. Checkpoint could be every chapter.
It's up to you. You can decide what a checkpoint is. Let's say you're going through an online course.
Maybe you're going through one of my online courses, and your checkpoint could be: After every video is a checkpoint. Now, what you need to do is very simple. When you reach your predetermined checkpoint, pause and ask yourself, okay, what are the three to five ideas that I have learned, the main ideas I have learned in the last checkpoint?
And next important thing, very important, can I rephrase it in my own words? First point, what are the three to five key ideas in the last checkpoint and can rephrase it in my own words? If you can rephrase something in your own words, it usually means that your comprehension is really high on that.
So that is how powerful registration is. That is how powerful the comprehension is. And comprehension can be done either by association or checkpoint.
As you can see here, the attention helps you with registration. Comprehension will help you with the retention. Now, of course, the next thing is the recall.
And you already know what the next habit is. It's exactly called as the recall. Now, here's some quick questions for you.
Please answer as best as you can. Question number one: If you want to be a better swimmer, what do you do? Swim more.
Thank you. If you want to be a better Badminton player, what do you do? Play badminton more.
Thank you. If you want to be a public speaker, what do you do? Speak More.
If you want to have a better memory, what do you do? Memorise more. No!
I mean, of course you can. There's no harm. Actually you can memorise more.
But if you want to improve your capacity to memorise information, you do not remember more, you recall more. A person who recalls more, a person who tests himself or herself, is the person who is going to retain information for a long time. A typical way people learn is learn, learn, learn, relearn, remember, remember more!
. Is that okay? Maybe.
But you can easily get tired and sometimes you struggle way too much to get the results you want in your life. So what you need to do is: You learn, test yourself, test yourself, test yourself. And that is how you can really solidify your learning.
So if you want to train your memory, the person who recalls more is the person who actually sharpens his or her memory capacity. That's the reason why I say, "Do not end your learning sessions without a recall session" Do not end your learning sessions without a recall session. So what's a recall session again?
It's simply testing yourself. For example, there are many ways you can recall. Number one is you can do a self test.
After the segment, after the book, after the video, after the seminar, after reading an article, close the book or close your eyes and mentally recall. Okay, what are the key things I've learned from this? And that process actually will train your brain, train your memory.
That's what you could do. Self test. An even better way is to actually recall it to another human being.
In other words, teach. How many have you heard this thing before? The best way to learn something is to teach it.
You heard that before? Why did they say that? Because before I can teach it, I have to first learn it.
I have to comprehend it and only then I will be able to teach others. So you can do self test or you can teach it to others. It's up to you how you do that.
The important thing is to recall. Bring out the information from your memory. Now, as you've seen here, attention helps you with registration, comprehension will help you with retention and recalling will actually help you with recall.
Now, if you want to go to the fourth R, you need the next habit. Now, what is the fourth R? We only have talked about three R's.
Now the fourth R has not much to do with brain and memory, but it has to do more about our life. Because the fourth R is results. If you want to improve results in your life, you need to have the fourth habit.
And the fourth habit, probably one of the most important habits you can think of to transform your life is application. I remember a time when I was very young that I used to wait, I had to, not used to, I had to wait one full week to watch cartoons. Those of you who are old enough, you can relate to that.
You have to wait one full week to watch a cartoon episode of 30 minutes. And I cannot choose what they're going to show. I don't know if it's going to be Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.
I don't know. I just have to turn on the TV on that date and whatever is shown. Boom.
I have to see that. That was many years ago, but fast forward it today, not only I can watch any cartoon I want any number of times, but also I can learn anything I want just by the click of a button. If I want to learn something new, I can turn on the television.
I can go to YouTube, for example, or I can fire up the podcast app. The problem is not about information availability. The problem is too much of information.
And that leads to something which is very dangerous, and that is Input Addiction. A lot of times people are in the learning mode. They have trained themselves to be info junkies.
You know why? Because learning is easy. Input is easy.
All you need to do is to turn on the television, type some letters on the computer. Boom, you are learning. Or buy a book, open a Kindle.
Boom, you are learning. You are in the input zone. It's very easy.
Applying what you have learned. That is what output is. And that is not easy.
It takes time, it takes effort, it takes commitment, it takes dedication. That's the reason many people do not do the output. And you've heard this thing before, use it or lose it.
If you don't use the information, you are eventually going to lose the information. That's the reason why I say, "It's not about what you learn, it's about what you do with what you learn that makes a difference" You need to not only to go through the attention and the comprehension, but also take some time for recall and also do the application. Now, if you don't do that, if you don't do that, what happens is you will do shallow learning.
Shallow learning means you think you are learning, but actually it's very shallow. It's not deep. What we want is deep learning.
How do you get deep learning? Deep learning happens when you pay 100% attention. Deep learning happens when you take the time to comprehend what you're learning.
Deep learning happens when you take the time and effort to recall the key ideas that you have learned. And deep learning happens when you take what you've learned and put it in application in your life. And that is how you get the fourth R.
That is how you get the results. "Because lifelong learning will get you the skills, but lifelong application will get you the results" Lifelong learning is good. No problem about it.
You need to be learning information on a regular basis. But what is more awesome than lifelong learning is lifelong application. So there we have it, the four habits.
Attention, comprehension, recall and application. As we come to the close of this presentation, I want to tell you something very important. If you're not being able to do one or more of these habits, you know what?
Many times it's not exactly your fault. It's because we all have gone through our schooling system for 10, 12, 15, 18. Some people even do longer.
Now, well-intentioned teachers, well- intentioned schools, they do not teach you these skills. They do not teach you these habits. Quick question for you, or quick questions for you.
Did you ever attend a school where they taught you how to pay attention? Did you ever attend a school where they made sure that you comprehended really deeply and fully? Did you ever attend a school where they give you ample times and opportunities for you to test yourself - without the fear of punishment?
That's important. And did you ever attend a school where they designed lessons for real world application? If you attended such a school, congratulations, you are in the minority.
But a lot of us have not attended such schools, and that's the reason why we have not used these four habits. Now, learning without all these four habits is like driving a car where the brakes are fully engaged. Well, you can definitely get along, but you'll be going in a snail's pace and you'll be struggling way too much.
And you're wondering, "Holy cow, I'm putting in the time, putting in the action, putting in the effort, why I'm not getting the results? " The moment you bring in all these four habits, not only you disengage the brakes, but also you're filling the car with high grade fuel and you overhaul the engine and even the slightest effort on the accelerator - Boom! Just keep moving forward.
So if you use these four habits, these four habits will help you to go from shallow learning to deep learning. These four habits are the bridge between your goals and your reality. And these four habits can 10x or more your powers of memory and learning.
Thank you very much.
