VANCOUVER—When you’re a memory athlete, training means memorizing hundreds of words in a handful of minutes. Canada’s new memory champion, Braden Adams, was humble when asked about how he can memorize 263 images in five minutes, 246 digits in five minutes, and 155 random words in 15 minutes. That score earned him the national title last weekend.“There’s nothing special about being a memory athlete,” said the Chilliwack, B.C. resident. “We are all normal people who work very hard at this.”Adams and about a dozen other memory athletes competed in the Canadian National Memory Championships this past weekend, where participants are judged based on the number of words, images, cards, digits, and names they can memorize in a set amount of time. Both speed and accuracy count.Adams, 32, said being good at memory competitions takes dedication, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have what people traditionally think of as “a good memory.” He described the technique that he and many other memory athletes use: the memory palace.Think of a familiar place in your mind — most people use their home or childhood home. Imagine the path you would take and label landmarks you would walk past. Place each piece of information you want to memorize at a landmark.Then, when you want to recall what you have memorized, walk through the ‘memory palace’ and use the objects to help you recall the information you memorized.“The more visual things are, the more memorable you can make it with those images, the easier it is to recall it,” said Adams.And everyone can benefit from this technique, not just memory athletes. Adams suggests using it to memorize your grocery-shopping list.“Put some bananas on the driveway of your palace, then put apples in the window.”Memory competitions are still relatively unknown in Canada, with only 16 people competing in this year’s national ch ...
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