Published 15 September 2026 by Martin Hamilton
I remember my first memory course. I was working at United Airlines as a mechanic on the jets at the Oakland Maintenance Center. In the fall of 1995 I saw an infomercial on television about a memory course promising results that were impossible for me to believe.
I bought it because of the money back guarantee. I figured I would keep if I could impress my friends and thought that of the claims being promised that even half were true then I could definitely use it at work as I repaired multimillion dollar jet aircraft that carried professional sports teams, famous actors, celebrities, and people who were well known throughout the world.
The infomercials of the program I bought were heavily broadcast in the United States in 1995 and especially where I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area via late-night television. Actually 1995 was a record sales year for the memory program.
I bought the course on cassette tapes along with a workbook. William Morrow Company even published a hardcover book edition of Mega Memory, including the same techniques taught in the cassette course, in November of that year. You may be able to find a copy used somewhere, but it gets better!
The techniques I learned then are still used today. One person teaching them and with even more valuable techniques is memory Grandmaster Kevin Horsley. He’s not the only one successfully teaching memory training in today’s fast-paced content heavy world. These techniques and principles are the foundation of modern memory training also being taught by other memory champions, utilized by actors to remember their lines, and even used by neuroscientists.
The creator of Mega Memory, the program title I purchased in 1995, didn’t invent the methods though. He repackaged classical, centuries-old techniques that were originally created by ancient Greek and Romans.
The techniques are many, but my favorite and the best place to start is with the Memory Palace.
Download this free worksheet using the Memory Palace technique and How To Memorize a Poem here.
I’ve recently read modern day memory champion’s book entitled Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive by Grandmaster Kevin Horsley. It offers the same promises Mega Memory did and more!
Kevin Horsley didn’t start out with a gift for memory. He was dyslexic, struggled through school, and by his own account was never the kid who picked things up faster than anyone else. What changed was that he trained his memory the way other people train a muscle. It was through trial and error, repetition, and eventually scientific study.
There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Memory
Horsley’s starting point is really a reframe. Most of what people call “memory problems,” are actually “attention problems,” says Kevin. Losing your car keys or forgetting where you parked is what most of us think as a sign of bad memory.
It’s really a sign you weren’t paying attention in the first place. His fix for the parking problem is very simple and easy to fix. All you need to do when you park is to turn around and consciously notice something around the area you parked your vehicle. Now you’re not even needing to depend on memory to get you back to your car later.
This small technique compounds, Horsley says. The quality of your thinking depends on what you’ve actually retained. Thinking is actually an exercise that draws on both short and long-term memory storage. He points to Thomas Edison, who proclaimed that he didn’t just read a few books.
Edison actually read the library, and astoundingly remembered what was in that vast library. The more you can hold in your memory bank, the more ideas and facts with data you retain to generate more new ideas and make connections the people that haven’t used memory techniques miss.
He also rejects the popular saying that the shortest pencil beats the longest memory. Information on paper is something you read and see from the outside. Information stored in your brain is something that’s experienced throughout your physiology. That’s his case for why we need to stop treating phones and other forms of content projection devices as a substitute for our memory.
The Four Cs
Horsley approaches memory training around four principles: Concentration, Create imagery, Connecting concepts, and Continuous use.
Concentration means applying focus along with purpose, interest, and curiosity to what you’re going to remember.
Creating imagery means using your imagination and your senses together. The more creative the image along with some form of action, the easier it stays in your memory.
Connecting concepts means deliberately linking what’s new to what you already know.
Continuous use means just what it says, reviewing and practicing regularly. A technique only becomes memorable through repetition. Repetition is the mother of skill. Coach Nick Saban says we don’t practice a play to get it right, we practice it until we can’t get it wrong.
The SEE Method
This method allows you to turn a single piece of information into something memorable.
Horsley teaches SEE: Sense, Exaggerate, Energize. First, give the information a sensory quality. You need to picture it in your mind’s eye and then use the other senses to imagine touching it, smelling it, or hearing it. Second, exaggerate it. Make it bigger, stranger, or more absurd than it would ever be in real life. Third, energize it with action to turn a static image into motion, like a scene in a movie rather than just a still picture.
Horsley’s own example is his surname: picture a horse, and the image sticks to “Horsley.” The logic, he says, isn’t about being tasteful. The point is that the more illogical and exaggerated an image is, the more likely it is to stay in your memory. There’s no rule that says learning has to be dry or serious for it to be effective and long lasting.
The Placing Method
Another of Kevin’s core techniques is placing information into a location you’re already very familiar with. This can be your house, your daily commute, a familiar building somewhere. Horsley calls this a journey. The location acts as the paper, and the images you create act as the ink.
Since your mind is naturally good at recalling the layout of something you already know, you can walk through it in your head quickly and with little thought effort. An example would be walking in from your front door and looking at your living room, kitchen, stairs, bathroom and “place” one image you can clearly visualize at each stop.
The power of this method isn’t limited by how much space is in your home or apartment. There is functionally no shortage of “rooms” once you start using places you already know because you can use places you lived at previously, rooms at work, your parent’s house, and more.
I recommend this asset: Unlimited Memory
Learning by Doing Less
Toward the end of this fascinating book, Horsley makes an observation about how children learn language, not just how they learn in school. Regardless of background, children will pick up the language they’re exposed to the most even without formal schooling.
It’s like jumping straight into a puddle in front of you instead of walking around it. His point is that accelerating learning isn’t always about adding more effort or more learning systems. It really comes down to removing what gets in the way. We need to remove things like judgment, overwhelm, and the excuses we make about not being the kind of person who has a good memory.
In closing Kevin ties the whole book together by declaring that memory isn’t a side skill.
Instead, it’s where your life is actually lived. Without memory you can’t learn, grow, or even make change for the better, because there’s no intelligence system without stored facts to draw from.
Horsley’s premise isn’t that everyone needs to memorize something complicated as only a game. It’s that imagination and memory, used deliberately, are the engine behind genuine learning. And that engine is trainable and buildable by anyone willing to practice it.
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