Talks at GoogleNelson Dellis | Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus... | Talks at Google
Talks at Google
Building trivia and calendar tricks 0:06
The conversation opens at Google's New York office, where Nelson Dellis is asked to figure out the day of the week for October 3, 1932, and September 5, 1752. He correctly works out both, though he notes that the second date technically never existed in some places because of the switch to the Gregorian calendar, which caused eleven days to be skipped and left people adjusting to a sudden jump in the date.
Memorizing thirty numbers live 2:00
Nelson is read a string of thirty random digits at about one per second, without seeing them written down. He then repeats them back correctly, both forwards and backwards, and does the same trick again with a second set of thirty digits, demonstrating the kind of recall his memory training makes possible.
How memory palaces work 4:30
Nelson explains that a memory palace is a mental image of a place you know well, like your own apartment, which you walk through in your mind while placing vivid images along the way to represent what you are trying to remember. He describes using a specific hotel from a 2011 trip to Kathmandu, pairing pairs of digits with characters like Goku catching a football or Charlie Brown eating a sandwich, so that the order of images lets him recall the numbers forwards or backwards. He adds that the technique relies on how the brain naturally favors associative images and needs some structure to keep information in order, and that the more unusual or sensory an image is, the more it sticks, because memorable moments in life tend to be emotionally charged and multisensory.
His grandmother and Alzheimer's 8:00
Nelson says he had only an average memory growing up and never expected to become a memory champion. Watching his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer's, and eventually lose her life to complications in 2009, affected him deeply, especially moments when she forgot who he was despite being a lifelong storyteller who cared about detail. That experience led him down a path of researching memory, discovering memory competitions, and learning that ordinary people, not just savants, could train themselves to reach extraordinary results.
Inside memory competitions and a Pi record 10:31
He describes memory competitions as essentially timed tests where competitors memorize things like strings of numbers, decks of cards, names and faces, and lists of words, with the fastest and most accurate performer winning. He also discusses his own record attempt with Pi, called a matrix test, where he memorized 10,000 digits split into chunks of five and had to recall the five digits before and after any of fifty randomly chosen chunks, a different challenge from simply reciting Pi, which others have done for over 70,000 or even 100,000 digits.
Memory can improve at any age 12:00
Asked whether memory can still improve later in life, Nelson says yes, describing a client near eighty whose memory and cognitive test scores improved dramatically after learning these techniques, surprising his own doctors. He acknowledges raw processing speed changes with age, but insists the brain remains plastic enough for anyone to significantly strengthen their memory.
Handwriting, attention, and reliance on tools 14:02
Nelson explains that writing by hand and reading physical books create stronger memories than typing or using a Kindle, because they demand more presence, intention, and active involvement rather than passive interaction. He warns that leaning on tools like AI to summarize everything makes the brain lazy, and that memory still matters because it is deeply tied to being human. He describes using AI himself only as a sparring partner, reading material first and then having it quiz him, while also recounting how it once gave him fabricated Pi digits and incorrect citations that he had to catch and correct.
Multitasking and everyday forgetting 22:00
Nelson explains that true multitasking usually fails because the brain is actually task switching, which carries a cognitive cost each time it reloads context, so multitasking often just feels productive rather than being effective. He notes about 2.5 percent of people may be genuine supertaskers, and suggests testing yourself by comparing performance on tasks done separately versus together. He also discusses why some memories, like song lyrics from childhood, stick effortlessly while daily details like calendars or where you left your keys do not, pointing to attention, emotional context, and how special or novel something felt at the time.
Skepticism about intuition and psychic ability 28:30
Nelson explains he only believes in this subject to the degree his own experience has shown him something real, having started as a skeptic and arriving at his views through trial and error rather than blind acceptance.
An unusual job offer 29:33
He recalls a vague Facebook post about six years ago offering paid hours to a memory athlete, with no details given, and being curious how someone might monetize memory techniques, he applied and was contacted for a call.
Learning about remote viewing 30:31
On that call he was asked about remote viewing, a declassified CIA program called Stargate from the 1970s through 1990s that trained psychics to sense distant things, such as contents of Soviet silos or locations of missing people, and he learned memory athletes were recruited because their strong visualization skills seemed to improve results, an effect he prefers to call intuition rather than being psychic.
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