← The Art of Manliness
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- [00:00]
A
So there are certain weeks in the McKay household where it feels like we're just living out of the car. There's practices, games, activities. By the time we get home, the last thing anyone wants to do is grocery shop and cook from scratch. That's where Factor Meals comes in. Factor Meals are fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs so you're eating well without having to plan it all out. My favorite they have lots of meals. My favorite is they got a filet mignon. It feels like something you'd order at a restaurant, but it's sitting in your fridge, right? Ready in about two minutes. The meals are sent directly to your doorstep. They're fresh, never frozen, and they use quality ingredients. Lean proteins, real vegetables, healthy fats, no refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, no refined seed oils. They've got around 100 rotating meals each week, including high protein and calorie smart options, which makes it easy to stay on track even when life's busy. There's no prep, no cleanup, no stress. Just heat it up and eat. It's ready in two minutes. Head to factorymeals.com manliness 50 off that's M A N L I N E S S 50 O F F and use code MANLINESS to get 50% off your order and free breakfast for a year. Offer only available to new subscribers only. Varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active again, that's factorymuls.com manliness 50 off code manliness 50 off Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers and leaders that glean their edifying life improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanlies.com, read the deeper dives we do in our substack newsletter@dyingbreed.net and turn our content into real world action by joining the Strenuous Life program@strenuouslife.com now on to the show. We tend to think of genius as something you're born with, a rare trait possessed by the Einsteins and Teslas of the world. But what if many of the abilities we associate with genius a great memory, quick problem solving, mental math, creative insight, or actually trainable skills? My guest today says that's exactly the case. His name is Nelson Dellis and He's a six time USA Memory champion and the author of the book Everyday Genius. In our conversation, Nelson explains why memory is the foundation of thinking well and why having information stored in your head still matters in the age of ChatGPT. He shares a practical technique for improving your memory, how to read with greater focus and retention, and how to study to actually make information stick. We then talk about the importance of developing number sense and how to convert imperial measurements to metric in your head, strategies for solving problems more effectively, and even how to gain an edge in the games Of Monopoly and Connect4. At the end of our conversation, we get into more esoteric territory including intuition, dreams and the idea of remote viewing. After the show's over, check out our show notes at AWIM is genius. All right, Nelson Dulles, welcome back to the show.
- [03:07]
B
Thank you for having me. How you been?
- [03:08]
A
I've been great. Thank you for asking. It has been a while. We had you on the podcast way back in 2019 to talk about memory sport because you are a USA memory champion. We talked about what that involves and how we can improve our memories. For those who aren't familiar with memory competitions and they haven't listened to that episode we did, what do they typically look like? What sorts of events do you encounter as a memory athlete?
- [03:34]
B
Yeah, it's a super fascinating competition. You know, when I first saw it, I couldn't believe what I was seeing people do. And it definitely wasn't something I thought, hey, I could do that I had to learn how to do it and practice it a lot. But they test you on all sorts of kind of random information. So nobody has an advantage in terms of knowing stuff in their memory beforehand, but they give you a shuffle deck of cards. You gotta memorize it as fast as possible. They give you a 500 digit number and 5 minutes to study it. You gotta memorize as much of it in order as you can. They give you a whole sheet of packet, really of headshots with names and faces, and you gotta remember the first and last name of everybody in there. They give you a poem, all sorts of things. It's basically information you got to memorize in a certain amount of time and memorize the most of it as accurately as possible under pressure against other competitors.
- [04:27]
A
How did you get involved with this? You saw this and you're like, that's crazy. And how did you go from like, that's crazy to like, I want to do that?
- [04:34]
B
Yeah. Well, I saw it and I thought, yeah, it would be cool if I could do that. It'd be amazing, but I'm definitely not capable. But then I read a couple of books by some former memory champions and started to kind of see this pattern that people who competed in these things, nobody was really claiming to have an amazing natural memory or photographic memory, anything like that. They all kind of had a similar story where they heard about memory techniques, these ancient memory techniques, and then they practiced, and then it got better. And to me, practicing memory sounded bizarre. I'd never heard of anything like that, that you could even do that to get better. And that kind of hooked me. And I started applying the techniques and realized, hey, it actually does work, and my memory is not as bad as I thought, and I was hooked.
- [05:17]
A
And then you also talked about there' a personal angle to this as well. Was it your grandmother who got Alzheimer's?
- [05:23]
B
Exactly.
- [05:24]
A
Yeah. Tell us about that. Really?
- [05:25]
B
That started it all. Because I never really had memory on my radar. You know, I had my own memory abilities. They were mediocre at best, and otherwise I would have just accepted that for the rest of my life. But I saw my grandmother and her memory deteriorate right before my eyes. She had Alzheimer's, and eventually it took her in 2009. And it was that moment when I lost her that I realized, man, I need to do something about my own memory right now so that when I get to her age, this hopefully won't happen to me. It was terrible to witness. And so I went down a rabbit hole of studying memory, and that's when I discovered about these memory techniques and memory competitions.
- [06:05]
A
Well, you got a new book out called Everyday genius hacks to boost your memory, focus, problem solving, and much more. And what do you do in this book is you make the case that genius isn't necessarily something you're born with. It's a skill. Just like, you know, memory is a skill that you can develop. In this book, how are you defining genius?
- [06:25]
B
Yeah, great question, you know, and it's an interesting topic. I'll preface it a little bit by saying, you know, some people would look at me and just say, hey, oh, man, Nelson, he's a genius. Because they'd see me do these memory things, and I'd be like, dude, I'm not. I'm not a genius. I am not. I do not want that title. I don't deserve it. I don't think I am anything close to that. The thing that I do that makes you think that I'm a genius. I just learned it and practiced it, and it made me realize, especially for the purpose of this book that genius is subjective. And we can all kind of agree on certain geniuses out there. Albert Einstein, maybe even Tesla, people who just kind of socially have been accepted as genius. If you were to push them further and ask, well, why? Well, you'd be like, oh, because they were smart and Albert Einstein came up with relativity. Right. Or, you know, I don't know if people could really explain why, but they kind of just hold these people that are publicly acclaimed geniuses as that just because it's socially accepted. But that doesn't really answer what is a genius. So I think, and I claim in the book, that I think genius is something that we can all tap into, that we can all train. And I think if I were to define it, I don't think it's a gift. It's really like a trained relationship with your mind. It's having agency over your mind combined with broad working knowledge of the world. So having all this information that you've trained with your mind and can do with your mind, but being able to broadly use it across many different pockets of the world and the world knowledge.
- [07:58]
A
Do you make a distinction between intelligence and genius? Because I think oftentimes we. We use those words synonymously.
- [08:05]
B
Yeah, exactly. I'd probably say that intelligence is more like your capacity for the things that you or hold in your brain, which I think with the right techniques, even with memory techniques, you could. You can always increase your intelligence, I think. But I think genius is more the application of your intelligence. I think if you can do that in a very flexible, malleable way, I think you fall more into this, you are a genius category.
- [08:31]
A
All right? So you lay out some foundational skills, sort of this idea that genius is a skill you can develop. There are foundational skills you have to develop to become a genius. The first one is naturally memory. Why is memory the foundational skill of becoming a genius? And I think the other question we can explore too, is like, why memorize stuff if you can just use ChatGPT or Google?
- [08:57]
B
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm biased, obviously. As a memory champ, I'm going to say memory is the most important thing. But I truly do believe that, you know, and I think the reason why I started down this road watching my grandmother lose her memory, it just showed me how important memory is to being human. You know, think about without it, like, who, who are you? And who are you to this place, this world? It's largely what makes us human. I'd argue it is the thing that makes us human is Having a memory. So I think it's the place to start. And if. If you can hold information in your mind easier and pull from those stores that you have of information, that you can then apply all that knowledge, as I said before, across a variety of domains. And that is the application of genius.
- [09:44]
A
Something I've noticed in the past 20 years with pedagogy, how we teach people, teach kids, particularly in elementary, middle school, and high school, there's been this shift away from rote memorizations. Like, oh, you know, just knowing the dates of battles. We don't care about that. We want to teach students how to think. Like, we want critical thinking, which I agree, like, knowing how to think is important. But I always come back to. It's like you can't learn how to think without having stuff to think about. It's right. It's like. It's like telling a kid, hey, we want you to learn how to build, but, like, not giving them blocks to actually build.
- [10:25]
B
Yeah, no, I'm glad you said that. It's.
- [10:26]
A
It's.
- [10:27]
B
It's totally the experience that I've had. You know, as I've tried to teach this stuff to as many people as possible, I've naturally been brought to schools to kind of see how we can infuse memory techniques into. Into the curriculum. And it's been such an uphill battle because I get faced with that, that fight where, you know, we don't memorize. Memorizing is bad. And the reason I think that's the case is because nobody ever taught how to memorize. So they're doing it wrong. They're doing rote repetition, which is tedious and boring and doesn't offer good results. Imagine if you could just in a fun way, memorize something quickly. And that's just not an important part about the whole process of learning anymore. It's just the easy first thing you do. And now you have the information in your mind. Now you can truly start to learn because the information is all in your head. You did it very quickly, and it's in a. In a format that can be easily recalled in an enjoyable way. I argue that get the information in your brain quicker, like, that's the easy step if you have the right techniques. And then we can talk about learning and understanding and thinking, because that information is in there and you can act on it, right? Yeah.
- [11:29]
A
You can start remixing the stuff in your head and using it in different ways, but if it's not there, you can't do that. I mean, we're Going to talk about some, you know, doing mental math in your head. But in order to do that mental math, there are some things you have to have memorized.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, going back to the question you said about AI and Google searching, like, why bother memorizing? Well, I mean, sure, there's obviously a possibility that one day, pull the plug, nothing works. What are you left with? Just your mind. And if you know nothing, then you're in a terrible spot. But that's probably unlikely. So then why memorize anything if it's always just a click or a search away? Well, I argue that. I think, going back to what I said before, that to be human is to use your memory. And I think in this day and age where AI is threatening to kind of take away our agency over our own brains, our cognitive skills, like even more so reason to use our memories and flex our muscles and kind of feel what it's like to own that agency over our brain. The thought of losing that seems devastating to me. I don't know how other people feel about it, but I don't want to lose that capacity. So I work on it and I make the effort and I feel good about it. I feel like there's this confidence that comes from being able to do things with your own mind. Yeah, yeah.
- [12:49]
A
No, I agree. So in our last conversation, that was episode number 546. For those who want to check it out, we go into detail about how you can improve your memory. We'll kind of do a summary here. One of the things I remember from that conversation that stuck out with me was this framework for memorization that you called C, like S E C linkgo. Can you walk us through an example of how you can use that to memorize just about anything?
- [13:16]
B
Yeah. So, you know, when I wrote that book, I wanted to distill down the steps I took when I memorize anything in competition or in life into simple steps. So C link, go. And that's really what I apply and what I teach. For anybody who wants to memorize anything, each step has its own little nuances. But in general, the first thing you got to do is see the information in a way that our brain likes to see things, and that is in the form of pictures, associations, things that are meaningful. You know, oftentimes in the day to day, we're faced with information that's super abstract, complicated, not that interesting, and our brain just tunes it out. Even though it has the best intentions to memorize it, it just doesn't like it. It just doesn't stick. So if you can see the information or turn it into a picture, a mental picture, that's the first step to memorizing anything. The next step is link. So what do you do with those pictures? And this is really, I think, the crux of the problem for most people that when they memorize and then they try to remember something and they can't, it's not that they really forgot. In some cases, yes, they did. But most of the time it's that they just couldn't retrieve the information. They know they know it. And maybe if somebody had told them what they're trying to think of, or they saw the answer, they'd be like, ah, yes, now I remember right. They recognize it. And if you can recognize it, that means it was in there. You just couldn't get it. So it's a structure, organizational problem there. And the link step is taking advantage of what our brains are really good at, and that is remembering spatial information. So we're good at remembering things around us, distances between things, where we are in space. And so if I can attach my images to places I can think about, like my house, I know, my house, my office, my school, whatever, you have a better way of memorizing the information because it's attached or linked to a location and you don't have to attach it to an actual location. But that is one of the best methods that memory athletes use in memory competitions. That's the thing that lets us memorize hundreds of cards and thousands of digits, all with this, what's called a memory palace. And then the last step, the go step, is really, you know, what you do with that information. So if you want the information, you know, just for five minutes, and then you can lose it. Cool. If you want to keep it forever, also cool. It's how you treat basically the information that you use in those first two steps. If you organize your information with the link step and you saw or see the information in the right way, in a memorable way, that go step is how long you can interact with that information and you have control over that. You know, people ask me all the time, how long can you memorize this for? How long until you forget it. And it's like, well, as long as I want, I can choose. It's what I do with the information once it's stored in my mind. And because it's organized in a way that I can remember, it's really easy for me to store information and keep it there for the long term.
- [16:14]
A
Can you give us an example of maybe something really easy about how you can use this framework to memorize an everyday thing that someone would maybe want to remember.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah, sure. So let's say grocery list. So let's say you have a few items on your list. I'll keep it super short, but let's say we have three items on our list. You could probably memorize three things. But imagine extrapolating this out to a list of, say, 10 to 20 things. But let's say that you have to get milk, some broccoli, and some bread. So first thing is to visualize or see those things individually. Right. So for milk, right. I would picture actual milk, like a glass of cold milk. Maybe there's a cow spraying milk out of its udders. So part of the C process is to make it as visually titillating as possible using all of the senses. And the more emotion you can add to these images that you see, the better. So a glass of cold milk there, that's okay. I'd give that like, a 5 out of 10 on the memorable scale. But a cow spraying milk everywhere out of its udders and mooing, and you're covered in milk now, and you know, it's kind of like filthy milk because it's straight from the barn. That's closer to a 10 in the shock value and emotional side of things. So you'll remember that better. All right, what about the next one? Broccoli. Okay, so maybe I can just imagine a huge forest of giant broccoli stalks, and I'm walking through this broccoli forest. Okay. And then for bread, you know, maybe I'll go the route of something disgusting so that the bread is just, like, covered in mold, and it's kind of fuzzy and green and rank smelling and withering away. That kind of evokes a disgusting kind of response. But memorable. That's the c part. Now, the. The. The link part is how do I attach that to something so that I can retrieve it easier? If you use a memory palace, you could imagine attaching those three images to places in your house. So maybe on the front door is where I imagine this cow spraying all the milk. So I'm covered in milk, but so is now my front door. All right, Then I walk in the front door, and there's my broccoli forest. I'm walking through it. There's broccoli everywhere, these tall broccoli trees. And then maybe to the left, if I turn to the left in my house after entering the door is the TV room, and that's where there's like piles and piles of moldy bread. Just like my couch is made of moldy bread, my TV is made of moldy bread, and so on. And you can navigate around your whole house doing this whole process with more things. And so now when I'm at the grocery store, if I want to remember this, I'm going to say, oh, it was in my house. What was at the front door? Oh, yeah, that was the thing covered in milk. The cow was spraying it to high heaven. Right. So milk. Then I walk in the door. Broccoli. Then I go to the TV room. Moldy bread. Bread, Right. So that's just a little taste of how the process works.
- [19:00]
A
Yeah, that's really cool. I've actually used this system for whenever I park my car at the airport in the parking garage, because, you know, you get back from the airport and you don't remember you parked, and so you spend 20 minutes trying to remember where you parked the car. So now whenever I park my car, I look at what section I'm in and say if I'm in, you know, let's say section B, I think, okay, B for bread. And then I just imagine my car filled with just a ton of loaves of bread. Or, you know, if you're. The parking garage uses colors for their system. And let's say you park in the red section, you could think about your car being filled with red blood. And when you open the car door, all the blood pours out. So, yeah, that. That's going to sear in your head. So, yeah, I've used this tactic that you shared in our last conversation, and I think the key with all the memory techniques is that memory is a skill, so you have to practice it all the time. So just look for opportunities throughout the day to practice your memory. So whether, you know, you can memorize your grocery list, memorize dates, memorizing the names of people, just do it all the time, and you're going to get better and better at it. So another foundational skill you have for becoming a genius is speed reading. Why is this a foundational skill?
- [20:16]
B
Yeah, and I'd like to slightly alter the word choice there. So I do titled my chapter there Speed reading, but I quickly change it to focused reading because I think speed reading can often get labeled as kind of a hack or a scam. And there's definitely programs out there that promise tens of thousands of words per minute, which I don't know if I fully believe that. Sure, anybody can read at X thousand words per minute, but do they remember anything that they read. But what I talk about in this chapter are real practical ways to actually improve your speed. Reading speed. I think we can all do that and increase our reading comprehension. There's definitely room there to do that. And you know, we do measure how fast we read by words per minute, how many words you get through in a minute. And this is a fixed number, but you can increase that. And I think it does vary depending on what you're reading. Right. If you're reading something to your five year old, that level of reading probably you could zip through at an extraordinary rate rate. But if you're reading like a dense biology textbook, that might not be as fast. Right. So it's yes, you can measure reading speed, but it's also subjective and depends on what you're reading. So hard to measure. But that and, and you know, speed reading doesn't always make sense as well. Like why would you want to speed read through, you know, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit or Harry Potter. Right. You probably want to enjoy those and take your time and reread parts. But there's other times where you're just trying to get through, you know, an essay that somebody wrote, you're grading it and you maybe want to go through it a bit quicker. Right. Because you got dozens to grade. So reading faster and being able to remember more, if you have the skills, you can kind of pick and choose when you want to increase your speed. Slow it down. Always remember as you read through.
- [22:04]
A
All right, so what are some quick tips on how you can just read faster that you can start implementing today if you wanted?
- [22:09]
B
Yeah, I think some of the things that are holding people back is first off, and this is obvious, is distractions. We live in a world where everything is vying for our attention, especially all the devices around us. So eliminating that or quieting those better and being more intentful with the time that you read. If you want to sit down and get through a book, make that time all about that. Don't sit down to read with your phone open. You know, go into it thinking, I want to like be there, present with this book. So eliminate distractions. Find places that are easier to read in, you know, not with your kids all around you, jumping down over you and maybe find like a quiet, peaceful place if you can. I have four kids. That's not always easy, but anyways, distractions is a big part of it. The other thing is backtracking. So when we read, we often find ourselves backtracking. Right. Like you might get through a few lines only to realize that you were not there and you maybe have to go back and reread something. So what I find helps. And this feels like you're doing something a kindergartner might do. But I do it and I have no shame. I put my finger on the page, or sometimes I have a pen, and I will guide my eyes across the page where my fingers are. And it forces me to stay on track and not backtrack because my finger keeps moving and I follow my finger. It's a bit weird to do at first, but you get super comfortable with it after a very short amount of time. The other thing is, I'll quickly say this is practice. Like anything, if you want to get better at reading, read more. You kind of feel out of practice when you don't read a lot and it's harder. There's more friction to reading when you don't do it for a while. But the more you get into it, you find that you just become a better reader.
- [23:46]
A
Yeah, I agree. And another tip that I use when I'm speed reading is a lot of people do this is eliminate sub vocalization. So that's whenever you're reading silently, but you might be moving your lips. Don't do that. Just try to see the word and just move on.
- [24:03]
B
Yeah. I also think if you eliminate sub vocalization, it forces you to rely on visualization more because you're not. I mean, you are reading the words, but you're not like saying them to yourself to process them. You're probably coming up naturally with some kind of visual in your mind to represent what you just saw and moving along. And the more you can do that, actually, you're going to make it more memorable as well. Tapping into that C part of memory.
- [24:28]
A
All right, so read faster or more focused reading. And that's. This can allow you to learn more. If you can read more, you're going to be able to learn more. Another foundational skill is learning how to study better. How do people typically mess up studying? And this is a. I mean, this. If this is going to be useful, if you're in college right now or you're an adult and back in school. But we all have to learn new things. Whether it's on the job, you have to learn a new skill. So this is important. How do people typically mess this up?
- [24:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with similar thing to what I said with reading, you know, is finding the right place to sit down and avoid distractions. Eliminate distractions. Finding your focus Zone and just making it so that when you study, it's all about the information that you're sitting with and nothing else. That's a place to start. I mean, it's not the end all, be all. But you can't have a good study session if you're not paying attention.
- [25:21]
A
One thing I was going to say one thing. I remember we had a guy on the podcast, what was his name? Peter Brown. He wrote a book called Make It Stick.
- [25:30]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:31]
A
And one thing I remember that stuck out for me. Yeah, it stuck out. Books called Make. Make It Stick. That book is that learning should feel hard at first. If it feels easy, you're probably not learning. And I think we talked about how some of these apps, these language learning apps, like Duolingo, like, people like it because it feels easy. You're like, oh, man, I'm racking up points and I'm not breaking my streak. But you're actually probably not learning the language. It feels like you're learning, but you're probably not because it's pretty easy. So if it doesn't feel like you're pushing yourself, you're probably not learning.
- [26:03]
B
Yeah, exactly. And that gets more into kind of the techniques to remember things for longer, which is what you want when you're studying and trying to learn. Like the information. Yes, you want to memorize it, but you also want it to stay there for longer and through your study sessions do things that will give it a higher chance of staying there. And one of the things, as what Brown was saying is if you can make yourself a little uncomfortable as you try to say, recall this information and pull it from your memory, at first it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's new information, you don't quite know it well. And you can always just peek at the information. That's the easy thing, right? That's passive review. But if you can do something called active recall, which is where you actively try to pull it from your memory, that's where the magic happens. And even though it's kind of like an uncomfortable part of the process, that's where the actual remembering for the long term, the understanding comes from. And if you compare that with another technique called spaced repetition, where you basically space out your review sessions, that's really the goals standard for studying. Well, you know, we forget things over time. That is a fact about the human brain. And there are charts that show this thing called a forgetting curve. Like all humans experience this and we all forget kind of at the same pace. But if you review at a certain amount of time past after the first review, you forget less. That forgetting curve doesn't dip as much. And then if you review again after a certain amount of time, that forgetting curve almost starts to level out and things don't get forgotten. You have a higher retention, so being able to space out your study sessions is super important to studying more effectively. And this is why cramming doesn't work, because you do it all in one set and you know it for about, you know, x amount of hours. And then it starts to forget as the curve suggests. And then the next morning when you take the test, oops, it's all gone.
- [28:04]
A
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- [30:44]
A
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A
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- [31:10]
A
Liberty.
- [31:10]
B
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A
Liberty. And now back to the show. All right, so with those foundational skills established, so we got memorization, reading in a focused manner, studying more effectively. Let's get into the fun stuff because this is like my favorite part of the book. It's just all these little fun little tricks, hacks that you can do that just make you feel and look like a genius. I'm talking doing mental math, solving complex problems on the fly. One thing I'm always impressed by is people who can do math in their heads beyond basic arithmetic. So I'M talking multiplying three digit numbers, doing square roots in their head, long division in their head. And you argue that people who can do mental math, what they have that most people don't have is number sense. What is number sense and why do you need that for mental math?
- [32:02]
B
Yeah, I think it's super important. I think number sense, if I had to define it, is like a comfortable relationship with numbers. And I feel like a lot of number sense is dictated by how you were taught as a kid and how you were exposed to numbers. You know, if you look at numbers objectively, they are just symbols, right, that interact with each other. And as a young student you learn these relationships and they can easily be frightening and discouraging, you know, if you don't get those relationships explained to you. Right. But I don't think it's too late to change your relationship with numbers. I think it's just a matter of, you know, getting better at grasping quantities and magnitude, like getting more playful with numbers and noticing relationships and patterns and then getting more flexible with how you think about numbers. And you know, some of the techniques that I, I show in this book hopefully open the door to that. And I think you should just be encouraged to explore numbers and try to look at numbers for what they are because they can be really inviting if you let them. And the more you play around with that, I think you build on that number sense. It's also, I think, largely based on confidence. You know, if you're not confident in your number ability, you probably don't have good number sense. But as you build the number sense, you probably build on that confidence as well.
- [33:26]
A
So it can be developed and you walk through how you can do different math operations in your head, whether it's multiplying, long division. But I want to talk about two that I think could be really useful that people can use on the daily. And I know I've used this trick in my own daily life. I think a lot of Americans find it useful. It's converting from imperial measurements, we're talking like freedom units, pounds, inches, et cetera to metric, and then doing it backwards. I've encountered this with my fitness training. Oftentimes you'll see body weight given in metric. And I'm like, okay, what's 90 kg? I don't know what that is. Like, okay, you can do this in your head really fast. So let's talk about this. How can you convert miles to kilometers in your head?
- [34:13]
B
Oh yeah, yeah, we can start with miles. So if you have miles going to kilometers, that's times 1.6, right? So you got to be able to do multiplication by 1.6 in your head, which isn't obvious to most people. Okay. Now, the quick way is just to say, you know, roughly, if I can figure out how to multiply by 1.5, I'd be close enough. Right? And that's actually pretty easy because if you think of you're multiplying by one, that's just the number itself, and then you got another half. So all you're really doing to translate between miles and kilometers is adding half of the number to itself. That would give you one and a half times. So let's say I had eight miles, and I wanted to convert that to kilometers the quick way. Half of eight would be four, and then you just add that to eight. So eight plus four is 12. So it's 12 kilometers, roughly. If you want to be super accurate at that point, you can just add 10% of the original number. And 10% of anything is super easy. You just move the decimal over. So if I had 8 miles, 10% of that is just 0.8, right? So if I have 12, I add another 0.8, it's 12.8.
- [35:20]
A
Bam. What about converting kilometers to miles? Because let's say you're an American in Europe, and you see, oh, I've got 35km to Berlin, and you think, well, how far is that? I don't know how far that is.
- [35:35]
B
Yeah, well, yeah. So if you want 35km, you're going the other way around. It's really just half it. That'll actually get you pretty close. And then you can add another 10%. Right. So if you have 35 kilometers, if you half that, again, you don't have to be super accurate, but you could just say, okay, that's 17. But if you know it's 17 and a half, which is half, then awesome. All right, and then you add 10%. What was 10% of 35? That's just the 3.5. So if you have 17. 17 and a half plus three and a half. Right. You have 21. Right. Depending how accurate you want to be. So that's 21 miles.
- [36:13]
A
Wow. Okay.
- [36:14]
B
Right. So the quick way is if you're going to kilometers from miles, just add half of the number to itself. If you're going the other way, just half it to keep it simple. And you can always play around with that extra 10 if you want to be super accurate.
- [36:29]
A
What about pounds to kilograms?
- [36:31]
B
Oh, yeah. Pounds to kilograms is. Is super easy. There's 2.2 pounds in a kilogram. So you can pretty much just double your pounds and then add 10% or just double, and that's close enough. It depends how accurate you want to be. But let's say that you're 200 pounds, so you could half that and then take 10% off. So if I'm 200 pounds, half of that is 100, and then 10% of that is just 10. So take 10 pounds off, and that's 90.
- [37:01]
A
90 kilograms.
- [37:03]
B
Yeah. And then the other way, you would double it. You know, if you have kilograms, you double it and then add 10%. So let's say you're 40 kilograms. So if you double that, that's 80. And then you can add another 10%. That's eight. So it's 88 pounds.
- [37:21]
A
Okay. What about Celsius to Fahrenheit? I've encountered this when I've had guests that live in Europe, and they tell me, oh, it's been so hot here. It's been 30 degrees Celsius. And I'm like, what is 30 degrees Celsius? And then I have to look it up, like, oh, my Gosh, that's only 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not hot. So how can you make those conversions?
- [37:40]
B
Yeah, so there's a whole formula, but I think to get close enough, the real easy way, if you're going from Fahrenheit to celsius, take away 30 and then half that number. So if you have, I don't know, let's say it's 100 Fahrenheit. What is that in Celsius? You take away 30, so that's 70, and then if you half it, that's just 35 Celsius.
- [38:01]
A
Okay.
- [38:01]
B
All right. And then the other way around, if you have Celsius, let's say you have 35. You would double it first, and then just add 30. So 35, double the 70, add another 30, you'd get back the hundred.
- [38:12]
A
Okay, 100. So 35, that's hot. 35 degrees Celsius. So when someone says it's 35, I'm like, that's hot. If someone says 30, I'm like, man, yeah, that's a nice spring day. And Oklahoma. Another thing you talk about is solving complex problems on the fly is something you've seen a lot of geniuses do. Einstein, Tesla, for example, did you uncover a framework that they typically use for that?
- [38:37]
B
Yeah. Across all these people we label as genius, one of the things that they all share is that they can Solve problems. Well, I think the number one thing to understand about being good at solving problems is that a lot of these people are always trying to solve problems. One of my friends, and there's a whole section on this about, like, solving puzzles and difficult riddles and stuff. And one of my friends is just so good at them. But that's all he does. He knows them all. He knows all their tricks. He knows all the kinds of answers that you typically get from these riddles. And so I asked him once, I was like, wes, how. How were you just naturally good at these? He's just like, honestly, I just do a lot of them. You know, as. As you encounter a lot of problems, you start to. I guess in his case, he picks up on these kinds of patterns that typically solve these riddles. And that's a big part of being good at problem solving, is recognizing patterns and making analogies to those patterns. Now, aside from that, that's not just it. There's more to it than that, I think being able to define a problem as basic as possible. There's this idea of first principles thinking where you look at the problem at hand and you try to just at least to start, strip it down to its most basic truths, and then you build from there. So it's like looking at a problem and say, like, what do I know for sure what is here? That's a crucial part to solving any problem. And some people don't even think about that. They look at a problem and they feel overwhelmed. They just don't know where to start. But always start with those first principles and then look for patterns and then experiment, iterate. So, you know, a lot of these geniuses who were good at problem solving weren't figuring it out on the first try. They were just trying things over and over again. You know, when Einstein came up with a lot of the things that he did, he wasn't just coming up with it right off the bat with nothing before that. He was building off of other people who had problem solved step by step to get to the next discovery. And he built off of that. But he also tried a million different things, and some failed and some came through all right.
- [40:41]
A
So again, the key is practice. These things you just talked about practice, you know, finding first principles, finding patterns, and then experimenting. Yeah, one way you recommend practicing is just doing riddles and puzzles all the time. And that just helps you learn the practice those skills on the fly. Is there a puzzle that you really like? When someone asks you, like, oh, what's a puzzle? I could do that can really help me with my problem solving skills. Do you have one you like to go to?
- [41:04]
B
Yeah, there's one that I included in the start of that chapter is because this is Ask the. I don't know if it's asked this much anymore, but it is a famous interview question and there is a right answer, like an actual physical, correct answer. But there are so many creative answers as well. And I think it's just a fun exercise to think about and see what you come up with, because I think any answer, not any answer, but a lot of answers can be valid. So the question goes like this. So you're shrunk to the height of a nickel or something really small, and you're thrown inside a blender and your density is the same as you would be normal size. The blades start moving in a minute. What do you do? How do you get out? You know, and so, you know, you think, okay, well, it's a glass container. I probably can't just climb out. I'll slip down, you know, maybe I can just duck and I'll be so small that the blades will miss me. But, oh, shoot, maybe the, the air currents that will form will lift me up and move me all around. I'll die anyways, so what do I do? Right? But anyways, I'll encourage your listeners to maybe think about how to do that. Yeah, I don't know if I should give the answer, but.
- [42:12]
A
No.
- [42:13]
B
Well, you can look up the answer if you want.
- [42:14]
A
Yeah, the answer is. It's pretty obvious once you think about it a while. So, yeah, we'll let people figure that out. Noodle on that. You have this fun section about how to win several common games. So I'm talking Monopoly, Connect Four, and a lot of these games, they're called solved games. Once you learn how to, like do the thing, you can win it pretty much every single time. Not all of them, but I mean, for the most part. Yeah, let's just talk about the, I think, advantage. Yeah, let's talk about. I think this is fun because if you're playing your nephew or your niece, like you want to be the evil uncle who just destroys them and demoralizes them. So what's the best strategy to always win Monopoly?
- [42:52]
B
Oh, yeah, well, yeah, so before that, I should just say that this whole chapter is about how to beat games in situations that are like game like. Because oftentimes if somebody's just always that person that can win at something, they tend to be thought of as genius. Like, how do they know how to do it. They always win this game. Every time I play Monopoly, I always lose. I can't beat this guy. He must be a genius. But, yeah, you know, there's a lot of components to Monopoly, for example, in a lot of these games. But there are little things that, if you knew that might help you kind of have an advantage. If you invest in orange and red properties, for example, those are the best because statistically they get landed on the most more than any other spot. So you get people landing on it having to pay you. What else? You could focus on like three house sets. So the houses are like super more cost effective than the hotels. So you can focus on putting up those house sets rather than getting the hotels. Yeah, things like that.
- [43:50]
A
Yeah. What about Connect 4? You know, if you're playing your kid,
- [43:55]
B
like, what can you do? Yeah, the main thing with that is just to always start in the middle. You know, if you play perfectly, meaning you're trying to build up your rows of four and you start in the middle, it's really difficult to lose there. And then, you know, thinking about ways to force your opponent to not have any other options, you can stack your pieces in ways that create these double win conditions where it's like, you could win if you put a piece here, you could win if you put a piece there, and then your opponent has no choice but to choose one of them and then you win with the other. Yeah. But the quick tip there is just like, put your piece right in the middle as soon as you can and start from there.
- [44:29]
A
Gotcha. All right, I want to end on this because you have this last section where you get metaphysical. You're a pretty rational guy, but lately you've been exploring, like, Art Bell type stuff, Extra sensory perception, remote viewing experiments the CIA did where they'd hire these people who possibly had ESP and they could remote view nuclear secrets in Russia from Virginia. It's really weird stuff.
- [44:56]
B
How did that happen?
- [44:57]
A
How did you get into this?
- [45:00]
B
Yeah, first, there's a reason why I put it the back of the book. I wanted to make sure that the book was all very practical things that everybody could get on board with. I understand that this chapter is definitely a bit out there and definitely like something five years ago, I would have never thought I'd write a chapter on. You know, I had an interesting experience happen to me in 2021 because of my memory stuff. I was reached out to by some people who were interested in having me join a remote viewing team. I'd never heard of the term at the time and was extremely skeptical of the whole thing. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm not psychic. I have no ability there whatsoever. I have a good memory that I trained. That's about it. But they were convinced.
- [45:44]
A
What is remote viewing for those who aren't familiar with it?
- [45:46]
B
Yeah. So remote viewing is the term given to this ability to see things that are not in the realm of things that can be perceived. So it's psychic ability in a fancier term. But it's really a protocol to kind of tap into intuition. I think that's maybe a better way to place it, because I think more people can resonate with that. I think we all recognize at times that we can have these kind of eerily accurate intuition come over us. And that's really what remote viewing, I think, takes advantage of, if you want to just, like, label it as something that's tangible and acceptable to most people. But, yeah, there was. There were military programs through the 70s, 80s, and the 90s. These are declassified. You can look them up on the CIA website and see actual programs and what they did. And they were using it to gather intel, you know, finding downed military planes in the Sahara desert, or looking into silos in Russia during the Cold War to see what was there. And there were these psychics that were sitting in a room with absolutely no information, getting information that was later verified. Remote viewing is the protocol in which to do this process.
- [46:59]
A
So here's one version of a remote viewing protocol that you highlight in the book. So you need two people. One's a tasker, and the other is the viewer. The tasker picks a target so it can be an object, a place, event, whatever. And then he assigns it a random number. And there's no inherent meaning, this number. It's just numbers. A random number. And the viewer, he gets that number and nothing else. So there's no hints about the target. There's no photos, no descriptions of the target, just the number. And then the viewer gets to work. And so what he does is you got to grab a pen and paper, and you write down the target number in square brackets at the top of the page. And then underneath that, you write your name, date, and time. Below that, you write the sentence, this session is about to begin. And then after that sentence, beneath that, you write, you rewrite that target number without brackets. This time now begins like this weird part. So immediately after you write that number again, without thinking, without hesitating, the viewer, you put your pin on the page, and you make this, like, quick, spontaneous Scribble next to the number. It's like random. Like whatever comes out, comes out. And this little scribble is called an ideogram. And this is like your first unconscious connection to the target. And then what you do after you drew that little ideogram, that squibble, you hover your finger over it like an antenna. And then while you're doing that, you're supposed to think about all the broad impressions you're getting. So are you seeing a landscape? Are you seeing structures? Are you seeing motion, energy? So this is called your gestalt. So it's sort of a vague wide angle signal. So you just kind of write down what those general impressions. And then after that, you draw a horizontal line. And then below that horizontal line, you start writing descriptor words. So, like colors, you're seeing textures, you're seeing your head. Smells, sounds, emotions, shapes, you know, it's like name specific things, but just kind of descriptor words and then just kind of stream of consciousness. And then after you do that, and things kind of start slowing down. You kind of sketch what you're sensing. So you're not trying to sketch the target yourself. You're just kind of trying to sketch these things you're seeing in your head. Shapes, lines that are coming through. And then when the flow stops, you write and big letters at the bottom, and that's your remote viewing session. Then you kind of look at this to kind of come up with what the target might be and what's cool about this. You provide some practice remote viewing sessions in the book for people to try. So you give target numbers and they can go through this process to see if they can remote view the object you had in mind when you created those target numbers. Okay, so that's a remote viewing protocol. And, you know, maybe there's something to it, maybe not. And I. I'm sure a lot of people are going to be skeptical about it. But I think the thing you're trying to hit home here with this section is that there are things you can do to develop your intuition. Genius. And you provide practices to enhance your intuition. Meditation is one. Paying attention to your dreams is another. And you point out the fact that a lot of geniuses got ideas from their dreams. Salvador Dali, Paul McCartney, he got the tune for Yesterday in a dream.
- [50:01]
B
Yeah, he had it in a dream. And he woke up the next day and swore that he had come up with a melody that he had heard somewhere else. And he was frantically asking around if anybody, what song this was. But it was Yesterday. And that came to him in a dream.
- [50:15]
A
Yeah. One of the practices you recommend is keeping a dream journal. So you just get yourself a dedicated notebook for this. And then you write down your dreams every morning immediately after waking up. And you want to do this as soon as possible because everyone knows how quickly dreams evaporate. And even better is if you write things down, if you wake up in the night. And so you just do this as much as you can. The more data you have, the more insights will come. And over time, you'll start recognizing or. Or seeing recurring themes and symbols and patterns. Do you keep a dream journal?
- [50:49]
B
Yeah, I go through phases where I feel like I'm looking for an answer to something. And sometimes meditation will help me get there. But I also will maybe then explore my dreams because I find that my dreams often will communicate to me if I'm paying attention. I think the world around us will communicate with us if we pay attention. And building intuition is listening to the signals around us that we might typically ignore. Like, not everything has to have meaning. Not everything is a sign. But I think it's super powerful to look at things as if they might be a sign and trying to notice patterns and just trying to not filter out that which we think is just noise.
- [51:31]
A
Well, Nelson, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book in your work?
- [51:36]
B
Yep, if they head to my website, nelsondelis.com it's all there. You know, I put a bunch of content out on YouTube with fun videos on how to improve memory, how to remote view, how to do all sorts of things that are talked about in the book. And yeah, the book's called Everyday Genius. It's a passion project of mine. You know, I kept this little journal through high school and college and all the way up to, you know, recent days where I would just always write down really cool things that you could do with your mind. That seemed genius. And there's tons of memory stuff in there. There's how to count cards, there's how to solve Rubik's cubes blindfolded. And that's all kind of what got piled into this book.
- [52:14]
A
Yeah, it's a fun read. We just really scratched the surface with this stuff. And there's so much more for you to dig in. So I encourage people to go out and pick up a copy. It's a lot of fun. Well, Nelson, it's been a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
- [52:26]
B
Yeah, thank you so much, man. Looking forward to hearing the show.
- [52:30]
A
My guest was Nelson Dellis. He's the author of the book Everyday Genius. It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Make sure to check out our show notes at AWIM is Genius where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIN podcast. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on the podcast player you use to listen to the show. It helps out a lot and if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member. You would think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminds you, not only listen to the A1 podcast, but put what you've heard into action. Before you go, here's another episode worth adding to the queue. In episode number 821, we explore why routines, especially over rigid ones, can actually make life harder, not easier. We talk discipline without obsession, structure without rigidity, and where real growth comes from. You can find it at AOM is routines. That's AOM isroutines. Go check it out. Episode number 821.