Kris Welcome to the Actual Fluency podcast. Each week you'll find inspirational, motivational interviews with some of the world's best language learners, industry experts, all trying to help you to learn foreign languages better, faster, and more efficiently.
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Hello everyone, and welcome to the Actual Fluency podcast. This is episode 159. And on today's show, I'm joined by memory champion Nelson Dellis, who's a memory grandmaster and a four-time US memory champion to talk about his memory techniques and his background, and also how can these memory techniques be applied to language learning. We'll also share his latest language learning project, which is learning Dutch, his mother's language in just one year.
So, stay tuned to this episode, it's a really interesting one, and I'll see you in the next one. All right, Nelson, welcome to the Actual Fluency podcast. Uh do you want to start off by giving the listener just a little background of yourself, where you're from, and how you got into this?
Nelson Dellis Yeah, sure. Uh, I remember show. Um, yeah, definitely. My, um, background is uh, we moved a lot growing up. Um, I was born in the UK, um, in London, actually in Wimbledon. And, um, then my my father's job had us moving all all around. Um, so we moved to Miami, then we moved back to Paris, then Miami, then London, then Miami. Um, but Miami's kind of grown to be my home. Um, I've lived in other places around the US, but I always end up coming back to Miami.
Uh, my parents are, um, my dad's French and my mom is Belgian, um, from the Flemish side. And so we grew up, you know, um, traveling a lot to Europe, seeing family. Um, French was my first language, um, but obviously I speak English, um, better now, um, than any other language, but, um, yeah, and that that's that's my quick story.
Kris Fantastic. So, obviously, and now we know you as a an accomplished memory expert, grandmaster of memory, memory champion of several times. Um, but how did that kind of come about? How did you get into that, I guess we can call it a a hobby initially?
Nelson Dellis Yeah, yeah, started as a hobby. I, um, you know, I I would never be one to say that I was gifted, uh, in in memorizing. I always tell people this because they assume that I just had a naturally good memory. Um, but I learned this, um, about 10 years ago. I taught myself how to memorize correctly. Um, I never had any predisposition for memorizing, um, and I really mean that. It's not like, oh, he's saying that and he was actually, you know, like the LeBron James of memory. No. Um, you know, I just struggled just like anybody to remember somebody's name or, you know, a homework assignment you had to memorize. I would hate that. I wouldn't excel at that at all.
But, um, uh, about 10 years ago my grandmother passed away from Alzheimer's. And she had been dealing with that for the past, the the previous like five, six, seven years. And, uh, it was it took a toll on our family and then when she passed away, it really kind of hit me in a way that said, hey, Nelson, you got to, you know, not end up like that. Um, I didn't know if that was going to be my future, but I did not want that to be any, uh, possibility at all. So I I started looking into, you know, memory health, memory training, if there was anything I could do to start now and and hopefully by the time I got older, um, I'd have a stronger memory.
And lo and behold, I find this memory championship that kind of interested me and, um, got me really hooked on, you know, everyday people being able to do these phenomenal feats of memory with just some ancient memory techniques. I never believed it, uh, fully at the beginning. I was kind of skeptical, but but willing to try and in a short amount of time, I learned by reading a couple books and audiobooks that, uh, it is possible and we all can do this and I took it to the next level times a million and, uh, uh, that's what led me to win these championships.
Kris Fantastic. So can you share maybe a little bit of the initial, uh, techniques, or maybe some of the things that you you started memorizing early on?
Nelson Dellis Yeah, yeah, so and this this is something I face with a lot of people who are interested in memory. They're like, well, how do you kind of measure how much better your memory is getting? And, uh, that's kind of my that was my thought too when I started this journey. I was like, okay, I want to improve my memory, but like how am I going to decide that it's better, you know? Um, so the the championship actually gave me a great avenue to do that because, you know, there's different events and there's different records or kind of levels that you aim for and if you can train towards those then and you meet them or exceed them, then you're you're improving, right? Like you can think of it like going to the gym. You you you do some bicep curls, some leg press. You work different muscles of your body and, you know, you in in your mind you have a certain, uh, amount of weight you can lift. And over time you hope that that increases and and the amount of reps you can do is more.
So, um, that's kind of what I I I did with my memory. And, um, uh, you know, every day I would memorize or train the events at the competition. So I'd memorize cards, numbers, names, poetry, lists of words, things like that. And I would do, you know, sets of them, drills to to get faster at, um, the the different kind of techniques and strategies and then, you know, you're getting better and better. I'd keep track of all the the kind of improvements in in a notebook and, uh, I was able to monitor my improvements.
And so these these techniques, um, these techniques you may have heard some of them, especially a lot of your listeners who, uh, learn languages and a big part of it is association is is coming up with an image in your mind for whatever you're trying to memorize. But really, I and I had heard of that too. It wasn't anything too new and and, um, awakening at that point. But the the big thing that kind of changed everything for me was this concept of where do you store this information, um, in a reliable way so that you can access it whenever you want.
And I'd never thought about memory in that way because I didn't think like how can you decide where you put it in your brain, you know? Um, but apparently there are techniques to do that and it they're thousands of years old and they kind of base around this idea of something called a memory palace, um, where you think of a familiar place like your house, um, or your office, something that you go to regularly and you know very well. And you imagine these associations or pictures laid out around the map, this mental map of that place. And you're giving those now images and memories a place to live so that you know where they are when you need them and need to recall them. So it sounds kind of complicated, but it's actually pretty intuitive once you get into it. Um, and our brains are very good at, um, thinking like this.
Kris Right. So, so the do you get better at the kind of creating this map and storing it, or is it just the amount of time it takes to actually, you know, put all the stuff in there so to speak?
Nelson Dellis No, yeah, so you get faster at it. Um, when I walk people through an example of this for the first time, you know, I'm very careful and slow and try to really create these visuals so they can really imagine it in a ton of detail. But as you get faster and faster at, you know, thinking of a memory palace, throwing some images in there, you're really just like, you don't spend much time on it at all.
Um, and that's through practice, you know? A good example is is kind of memorizing cards. That's one of the fastest events at these competitions. People can memorize decks of cards now in like 12 seconds. Um, but you think of, you know, how quickly you would have to encode all the cards and put them in a memory palace to do something in 12 seconds, right? A full pack of cards. And, you know, your first time memorizing a deck of cards, it might take you 20, 30 minutes just because each card you're thinking of that image and where it goes, but then over time, you kind of cut down on the detail needed to make sure that it sticks and, you know, through practice you chip away at that.
Kris Wow. That's really impressive in 12 seconds to memorize the the the sequence of 52 cards.
Nelson Dellis Yeah. To be clear, that's not my record. I can't do 12 seconds. My best is, uh, just a hair under 30 seconds.
Kris Right. But that's I mean, to me that's still amazing, for sure. What what's some of the sort of the largest, um, uh, kind of events at the at the memory championship, like with the most the most data.
Nelson Dellis Uh-huh. Yeah, so in the world championships, um, there's two events that are marathon events. They call them uh, one is for cards, uh marathon cards, and then one is for numbers, digits, marathon numbers. And it's basically you get an hour to memorize as much of is possible. So the marathon cards, you see competitors, um, set up at these big tables where they have 40 decks of cards laid out in front of them. And their goal is to try to memorize as many packs, uh, as possible in that hour. Can you imagine looking at 40 decks of cards? And yeah, I I forget what the record is right now, but it's it's somewhere in the 30s, um, 30 packs, 31, 32 maybe.
Kris Wow. Yeah. And then the numbers people do, you know, you're spending an hour studying as many digits as possible and I think the record for that is is over 3,000 digits in an hour.
Kris So, I guess the I wouldn't go as far as calling the elephant in the room, but the next question that a lot of people would probably be thinking is, well, that sounds pretty useless for me. I mean, I I don't need to go to the memory championships, you know, But how can we apply some of these things to kind of normal everyday life and
and do you think that creating these memory palaces for something like cards, would that help my memory in sort of in general? Do I just become good remember better in general?
Nelson Dellis Right. Uh, yeah, I mean, one of the, you know, people always ask me they're like, why are
