The Secret Knowledge of the Ancient Greeks: How to Memorize Complex Information

Free course of 5 video les­sons and addi­tional mate­ri­als. In this mem­ory course, peo­ple are intro­duced to mnemon­ics and from the sec­ond les­son onwards do phe­nom­e­nal things

Ini­tially, I made this mem­ory course at the request of the Kyiv State Admin­is­tra­tion in Ukraine.

I speak Rus­sian there so that the mem­ory course could be taken not only by Ukraini­ans.

His­tor­i­cally, every­one in the for­mer Soviet Union under­s­tands Rus­sian. In addi­tion to Ukraine, Belarus, and Rus­sia, there are also the Baltics (Esto­nia, Latvia, and Lithua­nia), the Cau­ca­sus (Arme­nia, Azer­bai­jan, and Geor­gia), and Cen­tral Asia (Kazakh­s­tan, Kyr­gyzs­tan, Tajik­is­tan, Turk­menistan, and Uzbek­is­tan).

If I spoke Ukrainian, only Ukraini­ans would under­s­tand me. But I want to help as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. I want every­one to be able to mem­orize the infor­ma­tion they need in their stud­ies, work, or per­sonal life. So I had to speak in Rus­sian.

I planned to make a mem­ory course in English. I didn’t want to make dub­bing of the videos that are already ready. Although that would have been the eas­i­est thing to do—I wouldn’t have had to do com­pli­cated video pro­duc­tion again.

But per­son­ally, I don’t like watch­ing dubbed les­sons. When the mouth says one thing and the voice says another. So I decided to re-record the course in English from the begin­n­ing.

But on Febru­ary 24, Putin’s Rus­sia attacked Ukraine. They are raz­ing peace­ful cities to the ground and destroy­ing Ukraini­ans. In Kyiv, I hear a siren sev­eral times a day, mis­siles peri­od­i­cally hit­t­ing houses. It’s impos­si­ble to record a course in such con­di­tions. All I can do now is con­duct mem­ory train­ing online.

Hope­fully, the war will be over in my coun­try in a few months. And if I stay alive, I will cer­tainly record a mem­ory course in English. This course is really worth the wait.

I suggest you save this page to your book­marks. Bet­ter yet, click on the green but­ton at the top and leave your e-mail so we can let you know when the English ver­sion of the mem­ory course is ready.

In the mean­time, we are post­ing the pre­vi­ous ver­sion here. Let those who don’t know English improve their lives with this free mem­ory course, too.

• how this mem­ory course will help you learn bet­ter, cope with your work, and stand out from those who use Google instead of mem­ory;
• about the nat­u­ral lim­i­ta­tions of our mem­ory, before which every­one is equal: both those who think they have a good mem­ory and those who are used to com­plain­ing about their mem­ory;
• the first lim­i­ta­tion of mem­ory: we can­not mem­orize abs­tract infor­ma­tion such as num­bers, fac­tual infor­ma­tion, terms, def­i­ni­tions, abs­tract words, names, abbre­vi­a­tions, let­ter com­bi­na­tions, syl­la­bles, for­eign words, etc. (exam­ples of phe­nom­e­nal mem­ory of famous per­son­al­i­ties of the past con­firm that they used mnemon­ics);
• the sec­ond lim­i­ta­tion of mem­ory: we are bad at mem­oriz­ing a sequence of infor­ma­tion, such as to-do lists, meet­ing lists, main thoughts, the­ses of the speeches, and the main points of the books;
• how peo­ple through­out his­tory have tried to bypass the lim­i­ta­tions of mem­ory and why most of these attempts are inef­fec­tive;
• his­tory of the emer­gence of mnemon­ics as a tool to help mem­orize any infor­ma­tion with abso­lute pre­ci­sion;
• basic prin­ci­ples of mem­oriza­tion with which you can write down infor­ma­tion in your head just as you would write it in a note­book or com­puter.

• mem­oriz­ing sequen­tial infor­ma­tion, what­ever it may be: from the sim­plest shop­ping list to the sequence of cases, meet­ings, talk­ing points, and book high­lights;
• a phe­nom­e­nal level of mas­tery of the infor­ma­tion you have mem­orized: you will read infor­ma­tion from your head in for­ward and back­ward order, selec­tively, by key­word or ques­tion, in alpha­bet­i­cal order, or by a sequen­tial num­ber.

• prin­ci­ples of mem­oriz­ing text: three levels of text (infor­ma­tion block, para­graph, facts), three floors of the text pyra­mid (the text, the seman­tic anchor point, the image), text col­laps­ing and expand­ing, mem­oriza­tion algorithm (from the para­graph to the infor­ma­tion block);
• mnemon­ics as encoder and decoder: how to con­vert infor­ma­tion into a mem­orable form;
• home­work: what you need to do after the mem­ory course to under­s­tand texts more deeply than 99% of other peo­ple (mnemon­ics is not just about mem­oriz­ing, it’s also about under­s­tand­ing).

• the thought-form­ing func­tion of lan­guage: lan­guage is not just for speak­ing;
• the tri­an­gle of under­s­tand­ing: which three of its ver­tices should always be con­trolled when you learn for­eign words;
• disas­trous mis­takes in learn­ing for­eign vocab­u­lary: this sins almost every video on You­Tube, which promises to teach you to mem­orize for­eign words (know­ing these mis­takes will save you a time of life and a lot of money);
• what mem­ory train­ers don’t tell you when they promise to teach you to mem­orize “100‑300 for­eign words an hour.”

• two exer­cises for read­ing infor­ma­tion flu­ently from your head: instead of pain­fully recall­ing and decod­ing infor­ma­tion, you will be able to repro­duce it as eas­ily as you would from a book;
• how to make your visual think­ing tena­cious: speak­ing in front of an audi­ence you will be able to answer ques­tions, track the audi­ence’s reac­tions, smile, and charm every­one, but you will keep in your mind where you left off so you can go back in your head and con­tinue your nar­ra­tive;
• how to man­age the reten­tion time of infor­ma­tion in your head: you will decide for your­self how long to remem­ber, from short-term to life­long stor­age in your mem­ory;
• the main ideas of the mem­ory course and rec­om­men­da­tions for your fur­ther devel­op­ment.

You will be able to use your mem­oriza­tion skills as soon as you fin­ish this mem­ory course. But in order for you to get the most out of it, there are some guide­lines to con­sider.

1. Watch on a dis­play of suf­fi­cient size. In our videos we will sim­u­late the work­ings of your imag­i­na­tion, sim­u­lat­ing what should be going on in your head.

This speci­ficity imposes lim­i­ta­tions: video les­sons are use­less to watch on a small smart­phone screen. Even on a tablet isn’t as good. The best way to watch them is on a lap­top dis­play or desk­top mon­i­tor.

2. Leave an e-mail where we can send addi­tional mate­ri­als. If you leave your e-mail in the form below, we will be able to send you the text mate­ri­als (when the English ver­sion of the course is ready).

There will be a methodol­ogy guide for this mem­ory course. If you want to run through the main points of the course, you won’t have to search through all the videos of the course. Just flip through the text mate­rial and refresh your mem­ory.

3. Don’t inter­rupt while doing a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise. Video les­sons are unlikely to be just “watched” or “lis­tened to” like lec­tures.

You won’t be able to “just watch” in-between, in trans­por­ta­tion, or over a meal like you watch an enter­tain­ing video on You­Tube.

You have to set aside time and cre­ate the most com­fort­able con­di­tions for study­ing. So that no one dis­tracts you, your phone doesn’t ring, so you don’t have to inter­rupt unex­pect­edly.

Imag­ine that you came to the gym. And the fit­ness trainer told you to do a cer­tain num­ber of reps in one approach. But you did one or two push-ups or sit-ups and then you talked on the phone. Then you did a cou­ple more push-ups or sit-ups and then talked to your buddy again. Yes, you might end up get­t­ing the right num­ber of reps. But you won’t get the results you need. Because this num­ber of reps should have been done in one approach.

So it is in this mem­ory course: until you fin­ish a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise, you can’t inter­rupt.

4. Rest before the les­son. Try to study rested, sleepy, and full of energy. We will be devel­op­ing intel­lec­tual skills, so your head should be fresh.

Try to leave per­sonal and work prob­lems for a time before or after class. I need you to mem­orize, not think about some bas­tard set­t­ing you up at work.