Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis: Review, Interview & Analysis

0:00What a treat that Nelson Dallas has written another book every day of genius. If you don't know Nelson he's six time USA Memory Champion author of multiple memory books all of which are unique add new things to the field and when they don't add new things and they're rehearsing the classic techniques they add art ways of describing the techniques that make them come to life. So in today's conversation Nelson and I get into memory techniques some of the new mental processes like mental math and card counting and remote viewing even that he's into in this book I push back a little bit on some of these things but I hope you find the conversation as interesting as I did I always enjoy getting to speak with Nelson on the podcast we've done many many episodes and all of them are evergreen so if you want to go back and listen to them they're there for you and you know support his books he's got books for younger people

1:02which is fantastic and he's got books for anybody who wants to improve their memory but now with everyday genius it's going into social skills it's going into dreams it's going into just places I think that we need to go and you need to go and I hope that you will and I hope you will take it as an opportunity to also get involved in the larger conversation about memory by demonstrating what you're able to accomplish so without further ado I give you another wonderful conversation with Nelson Delis author of everyday genius Nelson good to see you and congrats on everyday genius beautiful thank you sir read it twice so that's a kind of my interest but congrats it's I love when books have form and content you know like it looks beautiful and all the content is good so it really highlights that so bravo as memory experts we both share that

2:06you know I love to look at a book and feel invited by its design and imagery and colors and stuff too so so there's a lot of new stuff apart from just memory techniques and mnemonics and whatnot but before we get into that is there anything new in mnemonics or is it still just the same old stuff and I mean new in the sense of you know shadow was a kind of innovation anything on your radar that is pushing the limits or is it plateaued yeah no it's the same old stuff some different examples some fun interpretations along the way but you know the reason for this book was to really give a broad layout of a different a bunch of different mental skills memory being one of them so I'm assuming the reader you know isn't there necessarily for memory although that's a big part of the book but I you know I I would have loved to and maybe that's

3:13a future book but I would love to dive into more experimental more cutting edge techniques you know for memory techniques but I think a lot of people who will be picking up the book might not have ever seen memory techniques before so I need to keep that in mind yeah yeah I'm so biased in that realm of like everything mnemonic but I think that's one of the cool things about the book is it's bringing in other realms of mental athleticism and performance like reading for example so where is reading right now I mean it seems to me like an interesting moment where there's a lot of book flexing all over the internet and there's a lot of reading the spectator sport and so you included that but like what what's the genesis of including that and how does it match genius and so forth yeah I mean a lot of the pockets of where this book sits you know the reasons why I've done a chapter on this this and this is all because I've had some kind of interaction

4:15with it along my journey of exploring the mind which all started with memory right but it's never been limited limited to that and I'm sure you can understand that as well you know once you get exploring in the mind in one sense you kind of get sucked in into other aspects and that's what happened you know I was I found myself in 2016 at a memory competition in Las Vegas and there were it wasn't just a memory competition it was like a memorial a limpia of memory mental stuff so there was the memory competition there was a mental calculation portion and there was a speed reading portion and I had signed up for all the memory events I did a couple of the mental calculation ones just for you know for fun and then my buddy and I were like why don't we just do the speed reading one just just to say you know like just whatever we're not going to do well and it almost seemed ridiculous because there were mumblings of the top competitors there climbing you know they could do

5:16two three thousand words per minute I was like what is what does that even look like so we my buddy and I we did it and I wasn't going to pretend like I could go crazy fast but I I made a valiant attempt I think my what was my reading speed maybe like close to 500 or something like that so I was pushing for me and you know but I'm trying also to actually comprehend the information because the way these competitions work you you read fast it's some previously unseen text before and usually it's quite dense it's not like in a fiction bond little fiction story it's like technical stuff and then you're given like 20 questions about your to test your comprehension and I did pretty good in terms of comprehension which you were mostly scored on and then the people who got crazy scores in terms of speed they they failed miserably and you know they're like I was just a bad day you know whatever but I ended up third place I got a bronze medal in something that I

6:20like I don't know I hadn't done much with before and so it kind of I made a little bit of content around speed reading and reading faster on my channel did well and I've always kind of kept those techniques in mind as I read information not that I'm always trying to speed read everything in my book I started calling it speed reading but I switched it over to more of a realistic term focused reading which I feel is a better name for because speed reading can help and have a kind of a gimmicky you know scammy kind of a connotation to it so yeah yeah I think it's deeply problematic and that that is the thing that we've seen over the years it's like yeah you can say that you're reading it whatever speed but it's not just comprehension falls but also I think there's a problem where some of the books that they choose you can just make educated guesses about what they true say and then you can read the interviews I understand but I know I think both of us are

7:22admirers of Colonel Escherbach by Hofstetter yes so I mean that I saw a video about a person who said they sped read that and I could tell by their discussion that I mean just not that I know everything about it but I could tell by their discussion of the book that they didn't understand the first thing about Colonel Escherbach it was such a weird video that's weird you got to share my love video I would love to see it I'll see if I book you're good yeah yeah no please if you can find it you know and that's why I think it's speed reading is it always the end goal but having it as a tool can be helpful at times but like a book like that I spent months with it and not because it was hard it is hard so there were times where like I needed to like go slowly through but there were times where I wanted to reread sections because I was like that is awesome like some of the dialogues between each chapter between you know with the turtle and stuff I I loved it you know and I would reread it or even some of the exercises

8:23um even though the the first kind of logic exercise on on one of the first few pages I remember just saying I'm not getting past this page until I figure this out or give it a valiant attempt and so I was on it for a few days you know it took me months to finish that book and I I was happy with that process you know can't imagine speed reading it yeah this was from some years ago and that person had like a you-to-me speed reading course and so forth then okay I I was gonna make a commentary video about it but I just generally haven't made commentary videos but I think of it now you've done that kind of sort of detective expose so if I can find it yeah it might be a fun thing to comment on as you yeah spread the word about everyday genius um but one thing I was happy about is yes the pivot towards is it more depth focused reading and then you bring up the lightener box which is one of my favorite techniques that I think people kind of know it but they don't necessarily know it in any depth or maybe it's new to them but say a little bit more about

9:27where you discovered lightener and that what it is and how you use it yeah I'm trying to think where did I first hear about it wasn't early on it was later on in my memory journey and you know I've I've understood the concept of spaced repetition and trying to do it I've done it manually and enjoyed the process of that because I do recognize that writing out your own flashcards by hand and and kind of tactile like sense touching these things and moving them around and spending time with them actually I think is more powerful than say any digital kind of version so I've played around with it but not so formalized it would be more kind of like a feeling like yeah I know this okay let me organize it here okay don't know this then I have to spend a little more time with it and so I'd be moving cards around but not in in a box setting and the lightener method is much more formalized and there's different versions of it I'm curious what version of it you do

10:30but I usually try to have like five different boxes or five different sections that you know the first section everything I have flashcards for the things that I want to memorize and then I put everything in the first box and you basically look at it and if you know it it moves on to the next box for the next section if you don't know it then it stays there right and then it's this kind of pattern that you designate for a period of time usually like 30 days where you are to review schedule and things move up the box with the goal being that it gets promoted to the final box which is like stuff everything you know perfectly you don't need to review as much because it's so muscle memory at that point and yeah it just makes the process a little more interactive I think you know there's a lot of space repetition tools on on key and so the one memorize and other tools

11:31out there I'm sure there's any more but sometimes you don't you're not privy to what the space repetition kind of formula is or the pattern you're set a whim to the software but here you have like a hands-on kind of tactile again approach approach to dealing with the information it's it's super powerful in my opinion yeah I think part of it and I don't know if you agree you mentioned the the physical versus digital dynamic and I think part of the logic of just anything card-based physical is that two things you you can put it in your environment in such a way that you just can't ignore it and then the other thing is is that if you're dismissing the notification on a digital app that's like a different vibe than dismissing this box on your desk you know that it's just and you can put you can put your lightener box on your pillow so that if you're going to dismiss it you're literally dismissing it in such a way that you have to take it off and put it on the floor which is different than just swipe on a on an app to dismiss review time so

12:35I don't know yeah that kind of dimension to it but I never thought about it but that's totally a thing you know that I like physical things in my space because yes I have to interact with them I see them I have to go out of their way or move them around and when you have to do that physical exertion you know not that it's heavy or anything necessarily could be it's just it's more real you know than just a swipe or you know turn it click off the screen of your phone to ignore it you know yeah a couple of years ago somebody contacted me they were building custom lightener boxes for people and it wasn't far enough ahead for me to promote it because it didn't have like a product page but he wanted promotion advanced to see if there was interest and so forth and I don't know if I made the right decision or not to like not promote a thing that wasn't there yet but nonetheless he was making beautiful boxes so I think I wonder yeah I was going to say if that take that concept because I don't know how creative he was going to make

13:38these boxes but kind of morph that with the idea of like a totem right where you have some kind of physical memory palace right what if you could combine the two right where your um your lightener box has things that kind of have it's not just a box right maybe it's one more interesting shape that you can kind of tag certain cards or ideas to I don't know yeah well I mean you could mix it with the Lukasa yeah that's what I was basically saying yeah cool yeah there's lots to the physical thing I mean you also get into a different realm of cards rather than memorizing them things like magic and card counting and so forth um you're not worried about your your fingers broken at the casino or anything like that no you know I've spent my time at the casinos I don't do it as much anymore but I was playing on a team for a little while for a few years there and it's not that it was lucrative really I didn't you know I don't have that much time with all my

14:42kids and other commitments to being the casino grinding away for every weekend that's a young man's game not necessarily but um I have other things that I'm working on but I still put a lot of effort into learning the systems and training it because I did want it to be a part of my my story I've always wanted to count cards and play at casinos on a team and and see what I could do with my mind and I'm glad I give it a good shot and yeah I write about that in one of the books where we kind of tackle different strategies for you know beating games or performing better at certain games and you know I lead off the chapter with getting into card counting um because a lot of the times when you see somebody count cards and doing all this math in their head it's often associated with genius and like a rainman um there's so many movie scenes where somebody sits down at the table and does the rainman thing and it's like numbers are flying all over their head and it's like

15:44the geniuses in action um so the people have this fascination with this card counting ability and you and I both get that question a million times over is uh are you banned from casinos do you get your fingers broken uh you count cards and it's just like because we memorize cards you know they assume that that's that's what we're doing so I I felt like I had to reference it yeah yeah well it's it's an it's an interesting skill I mean what is it a two percent advantage at the end of the day and that's assuming you're really good it's not much yeah exactly do it perfectly but I do think it's an awesome mental exercise you know especially when you put it all together the card counting itself is honestly very easy uh anybody can do it but it's when you put everything together under stress at the casino you have to do so many things you're counting the cards you're playing basic strategy um you're acting a certain way so that nobody thinks your card counting so you've got to be casual do this stuff almost without thinking you're estimating deck

16:46sizes you're doing mental calculation to figure out whatever your running count is to the true count and then your figure out your bets you know and you also have to be kind of vigilant about what's going on around you are you getting too much heat um are you gonna do some cover plays now because you just got too much heat um so it's a cool like if you're interested in memory techniques you know and and how that makes you feel like this is an amazing mental exercise when you put it all together um oh yeah definitely um have you ever adabbed i have i have and you know back when i was uh when i lived in new york i did stuff around that and i was in a bar one time and i met a guy and he was apparently i mean people say stuff so i don't even i don't know if it's true but he said oh i produced David Blancho so show me something and uh so i showed him some stuff and he was like yeah you're good but that's already on tv so no didn't get a card and like that but um

17:47yeah i was i was deep into that stuff for quite some time and i still am a little bit like in this bookshop that i'm putting together i'm gonna do i don't know actually maybe maybe you can help me decide exactly how to do it but one thing i want to do is like make memory demonstrations as exciting and interesting as possible so uh i'm working on some various routines that involve cards but uh more in like the south p sante realm i don't know if you know some of those uh like he does the rain or he has done the rain man show um because he knew kimpeak oh no i actually know that yeah it's like a big tribute to kimpeak show um it's quite interesting anyway but i don't i mean i don't want to do what sal does but i'm working in those realms anyway one idea i have is just get a dex in four people's hands they shuffle them up and then i tell them who has what and that sort of thing but try to it as fast as possible um well and uh yeah i don't

18:48know if i'll do any kind of card counting i think i wouldn't really know how to how to demonstrate that but there is card counting in the sense of any any card at any number in uh in a magic trick um so yeah requires calculation well depending on how you do any card at any number there's versions that require a mental calculation um depending on what you see imagine yeah that reminds me there was uh i don't i don't forget the name of the show because he didn't last many seasons but it was a show in the u s uh where kids kids would show off kind of like uh a feat of some thing that they were talented in and there were these two little twin girls maybe 12 or so that actually had competed in u s competition um and they did a memory demo at the card table that the hosts had set up and they did something similar to what you're saying where they dealt out hands and then the girls were able to say like what everybody had and it was a really cool demo um i was impressed by it because you know we always see somebody memorizing the cards

19:49and then saying them but on a on a playing table for poker or something it's actually uh super interesting to see that that way right right yeah yeah there's uh if you ever get a chance to look at it um what's his name? Steve Forty he has some really interesting ideas for card stuff in this two big volumes and at the end there's a that i have to tell it to you after i guess because it's a little harder to explain but it's a it's a very different card memorization system than i've ever heard before and it's Steve Forty i've never heard of that name oh man he's like the underground underground underground gay but he's really well known in uh in car shark world and okay and to some magicians um but anyway you i think you'd find it really interesting cool yeah well yeah you had mentioned magic yeah i there's a whole chapter on kind of like social skills social genius and uh it starts off with an experience that i've had with a

20:51close friend of mine who is a magician and just kind of how his approached uh not manipulating people but kind of like guiding interactions uh which is a very uh magician mentalist kind of mindset um but how it applies to just everyday connections that we make yeah the magic part is is is super interesting and you you have uh you you you break the magician's code in some sense but but i'm not a magician so is that is is it a code that i stand by? um no i know i got permission so from from a magician so well the reason why i go that way is because you also get into critical thinking and you say at one point something that i kind of want to challenge you on which is you know you can only make good decisions if you have good information but now it's as we're recording this 2026 and it's a different world now so what is

21:54information i mean this may be back to girdle extra box but like what is information how the heck do you know it's good anymore yeah i mean yeah that's a great point um yeah you know you there's so much coming at us and especially here in the us like people at many levels of power are just bending what the truth is the truth doesn't matter it's it's hard to know what's real anymore what's what to believe um yeah no that's a great point uh and maybe i should have been a little more delicate with that uh claim but um yeah i don't know in this day and age you know you have to obviously have some of your own common sense um and then you know i don't i don't even know where to start to answer that question what about you what do you think well i don't i don't really i that's the whole thing right like yeah one thing that blew my

22:58mind was seeing an interview after chat GPT came out with Douglas Hofstetter and he said something that just still bakes my brain that the guy who wrote girdle extra box could say this he said humanity has been surpassed or the the pinnacle of humanity has been just overrun like it's good done and i was just like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa like yeah but that was like when chat GPT first came out you know um but i still think it's weird that Hofstetter would say that such a thing as human even exists you know because of the because of the vicious vicious rigorous problem and yeah labeling and then self-referential labeling and how quickly that it leads to loops and you know just the idea that there is a human in Hofstetter's world was a little bit problematic and so that's that's the the idea of genius right like yeah part of genius as a stable

23:58definition relies on human as having a stable definition you know so this is where yeah i love that that's right yeah but actually where i'm leading is actually i think the decision making stuff that you talk about is even more important not to push back on it as no longer being relevant but that it's good stuff like the what is it five twenty five or something like that that sort of thing so maybe talk a little bit more about those yeah well i was gonna get to as you're talking about it more like the whole i think the important thing now more than ever and it's mentioned in my book is that all these mental exercises that you know could easily be outsourced to AI or some tools now some tech like sure but i think as we do that we're just losing more of what our humanness is all about you know and so if if we're talking about like what is like true if you at least can control and have some ownership and agency over your own

25:06cognitive abilities i think that's where the truth is going to lie you know moving for it you know that you have the ability to think critically to be creative to calculate to remember things to organize information as it comes to you like that's going to be you know the most important thing as we move into this next world here right and this uh and then go ahead go ahead no please i'll remember yeah uh going back to the question the five twenty five rule it's basically you know sometimes and i talk about this in one of the chapters where you know decision-making sometimes you are overwhelmed with so many options and ideas and thoughts that you want to consider or work on um and um Warren Buffett had this idea where you know you can write down a list of uh twenty five it doesn't have to be twenty five but like

26:08a long list of all the things that you want to do or or want to tackle or that are most important need to get done whatever list this is um things that you're making decisions on uh and then to circle um five of the ones that are like non-negotiable you have to those at the top right just circle five and then you know you think like okay well i would prioritize those yeah that makes sense but no what he's saying is like eliminate the other ones like the other ones that are not the five that you selected are the do not do at all costs um because they're distracting you from what you just said are the most important that's a cool way to a different way to think about you know how you attack um things that are overwhelming you and and there's just so many choices is like we're always trying to especially nowadays there's just so much going on so many notifications so many distractions like it's easy to just have a pile of things you want to get done a pile of things you want to do with your life um but you'll you'll never get there or very

27:14slowly um unless you you know focus on and only on um those those top things yeah yeah i think this is where the memory training and all of this is so powerful because if there is such a thing as information and then you're going to make decisions based on it if there is truth and what not i mean it's it's semantic right like there's certain things that are not going to change relative to someone's opinion and that's what right that's what makes memorization so exciting it's like it's it's this word that was in this location and i remember the time and internet's difficult i haven't figured out a way to like memorize you are else that change or get back pages that have disappeared which uh such a utopian fantasy about like an internet that you publish it and it stays there without getting a move but um you know still if you can recall more with higher degrees of accuracy what those things were then you can make the argument

28:16and you can actually decide on how you're going to make the argument so i think all that stuff still sort it still has its basis and its foundation yeah but about that 525 thing you mentioned at least once a figure that you name a polymath and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and whether you consider yourself polymathic and if so why so and if not why not yeah um you know it's it's this term used for someone who has a variety of interests to a degree that is i think somewhat proficient but i think deeper more more deeper than deeper than that is someone who just has like this deep interest across a broad variety of domains i definitely feel like that is who i am i've always been interested in math languages language learning you know the arts history everything is interesting to me and

29:21i always dive in and try to keep kind of a good level of of knowledge and all of the domains that i'm interested in um i don't know i i feel like i maybe look at that term more subjectively i don't know how you view it um it's funny because recently you know i had this um i've always said this thing in a kind of a sheepish way where you know when i got into memory techniques it was the first thing that i ever really like mastered you know because i had always been interested in so many things i was always like i would say jack-of-all trades master of none and then you know everybody's heard that term but maybe a month ago i didn't know there was a tail end to that quote did you know that that's not the end of the quote oh no well please i i'm not sure i've ever heard anything beyond that i will i will read it to you so a jack-of-all trades is a master of none and that's usually just by itself but but of but oftentimes better than a master of one that's the full quote right and i'm like

30:26yes that's that's that's what i that's what i always kind of like gut felt is like yes you don't want to just like flippantly be master like good at everything but not great at one thing but i think it's a it's an amazing thing to be good at a lot of things um rather than just like uh like a master of like one single thing um so yeah that's that's kind of my my always has been my view on that yeah i think the emphasis there is on oftentimes probably but um oftentimes yeah i'm glad you mentioned that because this is a problem overall like quotation right and snippetization of quotes like there's the old line that people attribute to Nietzsche which is whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger right but that's actually not what it says what he says is from the military school of life whatever doesn't kill you and that changes that changes everything wow yeah i didn't know that that's crazy he's not exactly saying that

31:28there's thing yeah yeah who's it's funny like who decides that you know it's like which media outlet cut it up so that that became the the well-known part of the phrase right and misinterpreted over all these years uh oh yeah well this is the isomorphism to use Hofsteader again between what the human mind is like and what the LLM's are like right because if you think about the internet as like a FLAC file like a flat file and then any output is like the mp3 like it's so lossy you know and our brains do that too we're like lossy we chop out the central part of the quote and go with the the feel good thing yeah that's true it means it's meaning right so yeah yeah that's uh an LG anyway to the polymath thing i would make the argument that you are a polymath and that it's not just a varied set of interests but i don't want to be like the policeman of here's this special word let's like fill it with special meaning and therefore

32:33it's locked but the reason i make the argument is because Peter Burke makes the argument and he says that there's at least two kinds of polymaths he has a bunch of lists of kinds but the two kinds that leap out at me as being quite useful are the center of pedal and the center of fugal and okay so the central fugal would just be like layering on all kinds of interests left right and center just because but a central pedal and here's where i get you to assess yourself again the central pedal polymath is layering on skills with a unified vision that is leading to something yeah so in your case it's like you've built the skill of writing books very well but towards a vision maybe Mount Everest is not directly related in some visionary sense but yet you weave it entrepreneurial into this larger memory mental skill vision uh and so so

33:37interesting i love that and then you have your mental skill set or your memory skill set but you're speaking skill set all this i'm not trying to loop lump on praise here but i think in the post-truth world this is one of those things where i think it does make sense to like narrow in on what these terms are and try to find models that we can look at and emulate and say okay so this is a thing there are people who behave this way and then there's there are rando polymaths that aren't like focused on their skill sets being interwoven somehow so Peter Burke isn't interesting guy to read in that realm yeah and so are you is he insinuating that the centrifugal polymath is like it's like not the true polymath idea no they're both acceptable and just different kinds yeah i don't think there's any polymath police who are just like this is not acceptable here's the punishment no and look i've got criticisms of his book too i have criticisms of

34:39labeling anything just because it winds up with contradictions and blah blah blah but nonetheless i think my problems with labeling have to kind of sell a little bit especially given that a robot can just pump out 30 pages of of words right and then we right right right i think we more need to remember how we used to operate with words and and maybe have a little bit more guilty to definitions anyway that's why i was curious about how it comes up and and i would make that argument that you you have the hallmark signs of of this like pre-chat GBD definition of the central pedal yeah yeah and i would agree you know and everything you said the the mountaineering the the even the mental exploration this speech giving um way i love to teach like it all comes from like the the desire to like be interested in all these things does really come back to kind of one unifying goal or idea and that is really like to try to understand the world um that's why i started

35:46my physics degree that's why i want to climb to the top of the world is because i i want to kind of see what it's like up there introspectively um the mental stuff was like trying to get to the heart of my mind um so yeah that's that's cool that you bring up i'd never thought about that before i heard it so well let's stack up more because there's youtube scripting there's which is its own realm and then there's the editing shooting idea conception blah blah blah but also just to ask you about something you talk about chasing the high of like the next viral video and so forth um um what do you do to deal with the inevitable lows that come with you know you've got these skills you're very good at what you do but every once in a while there's going to be hits or there's going to be misses basically it can't all be hits right so how how do you deal with with that yeah i was talking my wife about it the other day um because you know sometimes my videos pop off

36:51and that they they go viral quote-unquote and um you know i got a influx of new subscriber slash followers and it's like i get hooked to that feeling i don't expect it it's always nice to know that a video or something is doing well um and obviously when a video gets attention people come to your site your your your channel whatever um and start following you you know um but i then it eventually tapers off you know it doesn't doesn't say hot forever and then there's always like a like a drop off a low that like oh man i'm not interesting anymore but it's stupid because it's still better than when i was the attention wise what i was getting before the video went viral um and so it's it's i don't like that feeling because i feel like there's some kind of primal thing going on that i don't have much control over like the swing of emotions um but it's also funny i'm not good at creating consistent viral content and a few of my peers are and i look at their

37:52content and i think like well why i could just i could do that like i could just pump out more of what i know will do well um it's not guaranteed but i have an idea and i could model it after what these guys are doing and it's like i've done that stuff before i can see why it's viral but like i don't that doesn't feed me um and yes i do want to teach people as much as i can but oftentimes that that content doesn't really teach people um but anyways i'm more interested in creating stuff and then this is the how i deal with those lows is i just make sure that the content that i put out is satisfying me first i know it sounds selfish but honestly the stuff that i create the most in line with what i'm interested in and what i want to make you know in the whole process right like the ideation the scripting the editing the storytelling um the actual research going into it like i'm a part of that process i don't have a team that does it for me so

38:52i have to be involved with that one hundred percent of the way and if i'm not like into it it's it's it's gonna fizzle out or it's a terrible comes out terrible you know that's a terrible video so as long as i'm doing my make my content with that in mind um usually i'm happy with whatever outcome happens and yeah there's some ups and downs there but generally i feel like i i love my channel like i look at my channel and it's like a collection of all my favorite ideas and i i spent so much time making them i loved the way my videos look some better than others but like i'm so happy with it and you know sometimes the numbers don't reflect how good a video i think it is and sometimes the other ones i didn't think too much about did really well and ultimately it doesn't matter you know at least that's my my my feeling about content in the in the world so to what extent if at all in terms of all the different things you're doing has the intuition work

39:56it affected things and in it if so in in which way yeah um yeah we talked about this a little bit in our last call um it's a while back but um what i'm a last chapter is about intuition and some of the more woo woo higher level of the self stuff and um i didn't really give too much credence to it like four five six years ago and i went through this whole experience where unexpected that uh it kind of came barging into my life and it's kind of transformed how i view things i listened to my intuition intuition a lot more than i ever used to and you know it doesn't always give me the right results but i do listen to it more in terms of what i feel like is the right move in my life or um you know what the right thing to create or or go down a path or um so it's something that i'm more in tune with that's probably the best way i can describe it but i've spent time training it um instead of

41:01just kind of listening to it that's not the end of it i also have been working on it through these remote viewing programs that i was lucky to be a part of hmm so what i mean to me there's a weird feeling about it all which i don't we talked about it before and i i don't know exactly how to express it because i'm all for all these experiments for sure but what i was thinking about yesterday while i was reading this um reviewing it again anyway uh uh was okay let me put it this way like i do a lot of these ancient books uh qigong tai chi like whatever all this kind of stuff and i don't think it's woo i think it's like earlier forms of science or it it just it still is a kind of science but one of the things that they often have is this warning of uh you should not do this if you have any kind of mental illness

42:07and then i'm always just like oh and i go into it but then i i had that sort of concern a little bit because i've been going around following your suggestion and like practicing making guesses about things and so forth and yeah i mean it's not that i have a concern that i think anything anything anything needs needs that same kind of warning label but i'm so emotional about things and there's like this deep disappointment when it when like nothing happens and then there's nothing to blame because there's a kind of well first principles thinking is really really important except here right but then you're almost you you almost have to do first principles thinking in order to run these kinds of experiments so i do too all the time but then i just wonder you know what are we doing to ourselves like what is the first yeah of it i think with all this intuition stuff

43:13it's i think it's an old ability of of humans that used to be better honed but i still think it's something that like our current version of humans isn't it it's in its infancy stage i think like humans 5.0 whatever that looks like this will be a bigger part of how we navigate through life but it's not quite there yet so i think that whenever we have flashes of intuition and may happen to be correct with these gut feelings that you know are right you can't explain it um you know it's hard to always listen to that because yeah if you're too delusional you could really mess up your life because it's not going to always be correct and you might interpret those signs or messages totally wrong and so i'm i'm always trying to

44:14put one foot in and then kind of keep one foot out in the real world and more first principles thinking um because you kind of have to have a balance right now right again version 5.0 i think maybe that transitions and and we are just these incredibly bright beings that can interpret the world in the way that we can't even imagine right now but i think we're just on the fringe of that and so it's not it's not something you should just ignore because i think there's information there that is real and useful and important that can't be accessed through other means um so what do you do that you just ignore it i mean it's there so you got to play around with it um but at the same time kind of balance in a way that you know you don't give it too much because yeah you could get caught in kind of like a weird world where you know you you think everything's a sign and everything is is meant to be this and that and and you just guess things out of thin air

45:17and you're wrong a lot but you know the big hit will come where i just interpreted it wrong it's still right but i just interpreted wrong um yeah it's a slippery slope but i feel like it would be silly to ignore it um because there is a lot that you can i think train and and hone out of of recognizing those abilities um yeah what do you do you have experiences in the opposite direction so it tends to be like a pro intuition like this number will be 17 positive or whatever but what about the opposite i'll give you i'll give you a quick example that bothers me a lot lately um sure don't know exactly what to do with it but i could use your help because it relates to our work i can't be like look at every problem that's happening with this physical memory palace like we just found cracks in the wall then we had to get a uh a bricky they call them in Australia to like fix it and then there were ants in there all of a sudden and my mind is just like

46:18this is such a bad idea what the hell am i doing and it's just like i feel like almost i'm entering fraud territory because this this big strong mind i'm supposed to have is just like melting after problem after problem and i don't even know you know where it so i mean how do you how do you filter that from being an intuition of as opposed to a fee year or wait a second you did year five twenty five and like you decided that this is the thing so like you know like what what do you do how does intuition help with there when it feels like your intuition is screaming in the opposite direction yeah um i'm trying to think how to go down this answer here but i'll give you a counter example of what's not counter example but example that happened to me recently where the last year and a half i've like absurdly found dimes everywhere like i've always found dimes in

47:25my life like this was always like a little funny thing like oh i'm i just collect them i they've pop up in my life i never really thought much about it um and then uh kind of when i started getting into this remote viewing stuff i started to listen more and um in recent times these dimes just like in i like i can't even start to explain where they've shown up and how they've shown up at what times they showed up but a lot i have a whole jar of them right now and it's it's insane it's not and i've tell i tell a lot of people around me and they're like no so i can find dimes and they don't find dimes i find the dimes i'm with these people and we're looking for dimes i find the dimes they don't find the dimes you know um but anyways it i think i didn't know what it meant you know i'm playing around with it it's like i would find i take notes of like when i would find them and what was going on in my life was it an answer to something was it me kind of manifesting it and and the universe answering what does it all mean um you know in this at this point it's

48:25like a neutral kind of intuition related thing right like i don't know if it's good or bad it feels good it's money you know um and it's it's usually associated with a positive thought that like hey i'll find dimes or like i'm doing something interesting and the dimes pops up but then i felt like it was leading me or like the the amount of them that were showing up was leading to kind of a head like to a point in my life and it did and there was a point where like a disastrous thing in my life happened and uh i look at it now and i'm like well was that all to kind of guide me to this really terrible point and if so are all those things that i was intuiting and manifesting whatever was that all negative um but i i i i feel like i had to go through that uh that that terrible thing and i think because of that i'm in a better place and the future looks incredible um so that now i look at those dimes differently that they are

49:30actually a positive thing that uh they guided me to the right place that i needed to and whatever that is you know whether it's a higher being or it's just myself right and like being more attentive to these things that i'm finding and making more out of them mentally for myself right like whatever that may be me guiding myself however you want to um um word that so you know i think you can view those problems or things that are troubling you in many different ways but i think ultimately it's kind of the thing where yeah i think the you can view it as something that it's all negative but there's a a greater positive going on you know um and i think you also personally bring to light what you want them to be i think that's kind of the bigger message with it at all is like if you want to just look at it as problem after problem and they are problems like i'm not saying that they're not problems but that there's always another way to to view that and

50:30maybe maybe it causes you to shut down the shop right and and fuck that was your dream uh and i would love to see your your your shop come to fruition but maybe it's not meant to be for many other reasons that we don't quite know just yet or maybe it will make when you open that shop so much sweeter because you went through so many trials and tribulations right and if you hadn't maybe you wouldn't be so invested in making the success of it you know and then it becomes even better because of those tribulations right um so i don't know i all i'm saying is like the cards that you're getting dealt anybody's getting dealt i think you're listening to them and i think that to the to the situations that are popping up but um i think it's hard yeah this is where it's like it would be nice to know what they're for which you only kind of know what they're for or have an idea a better idea once it's all over once it's passed but um i would say try to look look look at it through different lens you know um but there's maybe a bigger picture at work there uh that is actually positive

51:37well let me um i mean i think i uh just a by way of bringing things to to a a genius conclusion in an everyday way because everyday genius is a great title and a concept let me ask you this because i don't i know you know a lot about just computers and about the math that they run on and so forth i think that where i am totally in alignment with the idea that there are things that we can perceive and so forth is is the possible conclusion that platonic reality is real at least in the math since like numbers are are real they're really out there and then maybe that's what we are into it if you know what i mean yeah totally um i'm not opposed to that idea i i don't know but i'm totally i feel like all of this stuff in the last chapter about that you know just because we can't explain it doesn't mean it has to be like aliens or or god puppeteering us all um it

52:43could just very well be physics in a form that we don't have an explanation for and maybe that is it's just all numbers maybe it's little wiggly strings dancing around to the rules of the universe maybe that is god to you maybe it's not who knows um but uh yeah i mean i'm open to that idea for sure well what do you have in mind for the reader who takes this book up and you know wisdom for the especially the people who struggle because some of us we read the advice and then we just implement it right and you you actually talk about that kind of thing like reading and then taking it and doing something or even just taking a book and just reading it like a speed of implementation kind of principle yeah for the i believe every single person is a genius so like for those who are just stocking in action what do you think is like the number one takeaway that you know can get them into some of the intellectual noodling read done if that's what they want to do or

53:46build a business if that's what they want to do or memorize cards or whatever what do you think is there one big thing yeah i mean i think that's kind of what i had at the heart of my book like when i wanted to design it and and and create it for a person was for that person who is not convinced they they have that genius within them because i'm with you i think everybody has genius potential um it's a subjective term but i think we all have glimmers of it and i think we all can work on it and and train parts of it so i wrote the book with that in mind that there's a broad just a variety of different kind of mental aspects associated with genius that you could try and maybe some chapters don't really speak to you maybe look at the numbers mental calculation chapter and they're just like i don't know you know i'll give it a read i'll give it a try um but maybe it's not for me and maybe another chapter surprisingly

54:46really speaks to you but i think i've presented them all in a way that are at least inviting enough to play around with them um you know my sister is notoriously terrible with mental math anything she'll say that over and over again but when i gave her the book to read and i was surprised by this she said the chapter wrote on numbers like i've never read a chapter about math or a book about math and i couldn't put that down and it's been so helpful and she was so happy that i wrote something like that and i was amazing to hear you know and that's what i hope for people who are you know a bit down on the other abilities mental abilities that you know you don't have to be a master at everything yeah it's cool to be a master a jack of all trades as we mentioned but i think just dabbling and being open to all these different things can open a lot of doors and make you see more inside yourself that your capable of than you previously thought

55:46awesome well thanks for all your many many efforts polymathic efforts in helping people find those ideas and those techniques and paths to follow it it's a tremendous work i know a lot of work goes into it and i i certainly appreciate it thanks for spending the time to look deeper into everyday genius thank you and i appreciate you always having me under show and supporting the work i do i think what you do is amazing too so thanks again for having me want to thank nelson for yet another great book i hope you'll go and get it i hope you'll buy copies for your friends and your family and your teachers and your doctors and your lawyers and everybody that you care about so that the good news about memory about various mental techniques mental math critical thinking can spread far and wide we need it in this world more than ever before and it's on us to take those

56:47actions so the more people get involved in reading and applying and sharing these techniques the better the world gets for us all and always remember the more that you remember the more you can remember the more that you can think critically about something the more critically you can think about yet other things so develop your mind develop your memory and become committed to your own everyday genius thanks again and until we have a chance to speak again visit me as always at magneticmarymethod.com and keep yourself magnetic