Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2014 as news: Nelson Dellis had just won the 2014 USA Memory Championship for the third year in a row, and his records, training routine and future projects are as of that date.
I imagine that most people, when they watch those shows featuring gifted minds able to memorise what at first glance seems impossible to memorise, think these geniuses were born with a privileged mind, a gift, an innate talent. And that might not be entirely right.
Nelson Dellis has just won the 2014 USA Memory Championship for the third year in a row, beating his own national record by memorising 310 random digits in 5 minutes and memorising 193 names and faces in just 15 minutes. Dellis himself says anyone can do it, although what it takes is not so much talent or unusual brain power as training, and perseverance in that training. He himself once thought it unthinkable that he could do what he does today. How do you end up with one of the most prodigious memories on the planet?
Four and a half years of preparation and 5 hours of training every day are what have made him the national memory champion. The only difference between his brain and everyone else’s is that his is better trained.
Dellis says on his blog that every day he memorises seven decks of cards, plus a sequence of 360 random words, 600 names, 1,500 digits and 100 lines of poetry. By his own calculations, that adds up to more than 1 million bits of data memorised every year. He says the training is very simple for anyone who wants to improve their memory.
(Read: 7 things the most successful people on the planet have in common)
Dellis, who worked as a software analyst, was inspired to train his mind when his grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which led him to start researching these kinds of techniques. In 2009 he competed in the Memory Championship but did not even qualify. His obsession and perseverance made him work even harder until, in 2011, he finally won the championship, repeating the victory in the following years and finishing seventh in the World Memory Championship.
One of his records is memorising a shuffled deck of cards in 63 seconds, and 303 random digits in just 5 minutes. He has combined his training with his other passion, mountaineering, and says that while he was climbing Everest in 2011, he was memorising decks of cards.
In 2012 Dellis founded Climb for Memory, a non-profit organisation that raises funds for Alzheimer’s awareness and research.
His future projects include running his own memory tournament, to make the sport of memory more appealing to the general public and highlight the importance of working and training the brain to keep it from getting rusty, and, who knows, perhaps to stave off Alzheimer’s that way.
It is one more lesson in how hard work and training can end up beating talent.
Further reading
- A sushi chef shares the secret of mastery in business
- 5 keys to excelling at everything you set out to do
Featured image: Stryifm, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
