There's a bigger story hidden behind the achievements of memory champions. The groundbreaking result from the past few decades is not that there is a way for a human to memorize a thousand numbers, or that a particular method of memorization (say, memory palace) is the way to do it. It's nice, but not that relevant for everyday life and not applicable to most life problems.

The true achievement is recognition and verification, across many disciplines, that: 1) there are better and worse ways to improve skill 2) anyone can improve any skill [if they do it the right way] 3) mental representations are key to high performance. Some are better than others. 4) one should study how to learn a given skill, or get someone who knows that to teach, e.g. to study people who are best at something - to find out their training regimen, their way of structuring the information/skill/work/memory/... - this is likely to work everywhere 5) If that doesn't help, i.e. little progress is made, one can still figure out, discover, create their own ways of practice to advance. 6) the upper limit of skill is way way higher thank we think 7) Many fields don't have clear criteria for success, so little feedback is available on low-level performance details, which limits the progress of training methods.

If you're interested in all that, I recommend reading the book of a renowned scientist who actually discovered a lot of this stuff and who worked with early memory champions, provoking them to push the boundaries of what was thought possible -- Anders Ericsson, "Peak: Secrets from New Science of Expertise".

After I read “Moonwalking With Einstein”, I pretty much think it’s a gimmick and still a lot of work. Spaced repetition is probably a better technique.

The main idea that seemed to work is the visual association. The visual of Moonwalking with Einstein, for example, was one of his mneumonics.

So the main tool that memory champions rely on is essentially 'visualizing/picturing' fake situations. Now, I have a solid memory outside of this. But when I picture things, it's pretty hard for me even for most familiar places like my home. Any memory experts with actual advice to see more vibrantly? I feel like I'm always fighting against the natural tendency to see black (as is natural with eyes closed) versus trying to focus on what I'm picturing.

If you want to run through some pre-built memory palaces to get a sense of how they work, I recommend you check out https://www.memorypalace.com. They have a platform where you can build them and post them for public viewing. I use memory palaces all the time and it really does take some practice, but they help me store things into long term memory. Part of the trick I feel is that you can review frequently in your head without accessing a book or digital, and so you can repeat it often to yourself so you can make that jump from short term to long term memory.

Despite all the media attention about memory training, there's actually little evidence this stuff works.

https://greyenlightenment.com/bullshitting-with-einstein/ Either memory is a direct function or IQ or due to 'savant abilities' and not something that an be replicated. There are no reputable studies controlling for IQ that replicate this.

Check out Alex Mullen's site where he explains this in more detail - https://mullenmemory.com/

There's a great app to train your memory: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doggoapps....

Having read Moonwalking with Einstein (which is fascinating and worth the read), I think of these skills as similar to studying chess - effective for the discipline but probably not generally helpful.

Memory experts sold their discipline as if it would radically transform an average person’s daily life, which has not been my experience.

I want to know if these champs can do like 20-back or higher(the n-back trainer) with three or more different types of inputs. If they can achieve 80% success rate, that will be super impressive.

Do such techniques work for mathematical stuff, like equations or formulae?

"Others may contain misspellings and factual errors. It doesn’t matter. This system is designed to create rich imagery, not accurate representations." Wait, what?!

Does it work for less well structured Data?

Digits of pi you can translate to characters and twine a story, but loosely associated facts are more tricky.