Self-Help Review 12: Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory

Self-Help Review:
Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory
1995
By Kevin Trudeau

Before reviewing this book, allow me to poison the well a little: Kevin Trudeau is a convicted con man, and nearly everything that comes out of his mouth is horseshit. I do not pretend to know as much about the guy as a lot of his critics do, but what I have learned is pretty damning. Trudeau is not, as his book claims, "The World's Foremost Authority On Memory," and he has never participated in the World Memory Championships, to the best of my knowledge. There is a large, world-wide memory community, and Trudeau is not involved in it. His fake-ass "American Memory Institute" does not have an official website and doesn't even seem to be currently operating, and it appears that he has stopped doing memory seminars and has given up promoting his memory products, with the exception of selling his books and audio programs. As it stands, and this may be simply because I've yet to review an Anthony Robbins product, Trudeau stands as the most hated person I've ever reviewed a book by. In short, the man's a fucking twat, and there is absolutely no reason for you to believe a word he says.

But does this product work?

Ugh. As much as I hate to give this little bitch any kind of business...yes, it does work. It works very, very well, which is something that his critics refuse to admit. While reading up on Trudeau I found a bunch of message boards filled with angry consumers who have purchased his products and have taken to bitching about them. One story involves a mother purchasing the audio program package and listening to it with her son in an attempt to improve his memory and grades. Apparently she felt embarrassed because it wasn't working as well as she wanted it to, and her son said "It looks like you've been had." Now, considering Trudeau's reputation and how justifiable many people's anger towards the man might be, I have a hard time believing that anyone listening to/reading this program would not be able to improve their memory. It just smacks of laziness and insane expectations on the consumer's part. Yes, Trudeau pushes this product with some ridiculous claims (claims which barred him from selling this product on infomercials), but as with any new skill, if you put in zero effort, guess what you're gonna get back? NOTHING.

What exactly is in this book? It's the same peg systems, association, location, linking, and card memorization tricks that have been around for decades...centuries, even. The difference is that this time, these old-as-dirt techniques are given a twist: Trudeau takes credit for creating them. In fact, there is a lot of recycled information in this product, and zero reference to where it came from. One idea is the Johari Window, which shows how learning goes from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. Trudeau takes this and calls it "The Four Steps to a Mega Memory." There is also a foreign language word learning tip that Trudeau outright steals from the classic Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas book, "The Memory Book." The problem is, unless you're a student of memory and are familiar with the classics in this field, you will more than likely think that Trudeau actually did create these techniques.

Now, if you are completely unfamiliar with how a book can improve your memory, there are certain ideas that all memory books seem to contain. One is that you will remember something better if you have a vivid image attached to it, and that you will remember things in a certain order if you create an action linking each vivid image together. A quick example...I recently took to memorizing some random-ass books on a shelf in order. Somewhere near the middle I linked Charles Dickens' "Hard Times" to Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" My image was a newspaper (the LA Times) with a gigantic erection. I linked it to an Indian sucking on the head of it's cock while it was being fucked in the ass by a black guy. That was my way of connecting "Hard Times" to "The Red and the Black," and even though the images in memory books aren't as disgusting, this is EXACTLY how they work. By the way, if I wanted to remember the author's names, I would just add more information to each image. For "Hard Times" it's ready-made...after all, it was written by DICKens. For "The Red and the Black," I could just imagine the two of them fucking in a puddle of water filled with garbage, sludge, etc. It would be DIRTY WATER, which happens to be a hit song by The Standells, who's name would bring to my mind Stendhal.

The next major trick is the use of locations. With this trick you take a room, pick five unique objects in it, and choose four separate rooms to do this in. Once you have the rooms and objects down, in order to memorize lists and key words for speeches, you just have to create a vivid image for each word or idea and "peg" it onto each item in the room in the order that you want. As you move through each room you will remember the order in which you listed the words or ideas. This can be done very quickly once you get the hang of it, and eventually you'll be able to just rattle the shit off without having to think of the rooms. This is very helpful with speeches and other shit where the order of ideas is key.

The hardest idea for people to wrap their brains around is the use of a phonetic number list. In order to memorize telephone numbers, credit card numbers, or just any long-ass number, you just convert each number into a specific phonetic sound, create a word with it, and then put them together as either combined images or a sentence. It works like this:

0 = s/z
1 = t/d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = sh/ch/j
7 = k/g
8 = f/v
9 = p/b

If you want to remember 27, for example, Trudeau suggests thinking of the word "neck." For 49, "ruby." Now, I have used this system before with some success, when I learned it from the Lorayne/Lucas book. For longer numbers, though, it might take some work, and I think that the DOMINIC system, developed by World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien might work much, better. With this system you associate look-alike images to single digit numbers, and for longer numbers you break them into two and associate a person with them. I'm not going to go into the specifics of his system, but ask me next time you see me and maybe I'll tell you. The problem with the phonetic system is that for very long numbers, it might not be as desirable as it appears. Check out the sentence I came up with last night when trying to commit the first 50 digits of pi to memory by turning them into sounds, then words:

Matt Rydell, punch Liam, love. Pukey Pam Gnome, very chonch, rim my fuming gobbles. No fever! To pug, dish bum pop. My kill, 'tis!

=

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

Yeah. So I either need to develop this skill better, or drop it and use a different one. Trudeau spends a ton of pages teaching you phonetic number words from 1 - 100, but the dipshit forgot entirely to give you a word for "0." Fucking jackass. I also spotted several occasions when he quizzes you on a number, and gives you the wrong fucking word as the answer. The worst part is that this retard apparently doesn't even know the system that well himself. For number 93 he gives you the word "palm." If he took care to read his own fucking book, he'd realize that "palm" actually gives you the number 953, not 93, because YOU PRONOUNCE THE "L" IN PALM.

There are techniques for remembering names, important dates, learning vocabulary by breaking it into smaller words and giving them odd associations, and how to memorize a deck of cards. His techniques on how to do all these things work great, but like I said, they aren't his methods. The only thing that I give this book credit for is clarifying for me a trick on how to tell the day of the week that a certain event happened on at any point in history. It's a long-ass series of switching months and centuries into numbers, using multiples of 7, and all this other shit, but the two times that I tried it out it worked. So numbnuts gets a brownie point for teaching me a neat trick that I had a difficult time understanding from a different memory product.

There is also a special chapter telling you how the brain works when memorizing things, or when trying to remember. He gives you page after page of medical advice, warns you of memory-damaging diseases, and tells you what kinds of vitamins you should take to sharpen your memory. This advice may or may not have any truth to it, but I obviously suggest looking into other sources for this kind of information, since getting health advice from Kevin Trudeau is like getting dating advice from a rapist.

The question most people will ask is, "By using Mega Memory, will I have a Mega Memory?" Your memory will improve, and since Trudeau talks to you in the book like you're in a special ed class, you should have no problem learning all the tricks and applying them. The problem lies in the mistakes that are scattered throughout the book, the way the later chapters are poorly organized, and the fact that by buying this product you're giving your money to a con man. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this product is that because it works so well, some people will be suckered into buying his other products because, "if this one works...maybe his other stuff works, too." Trudeau has other questionable products available, such as a math, speed reading, and weight loss plan, and I recommend that you buy none of them. I suggest also that you skip this book and read "The Memory Book" or listen to Dominic O'Brien's "Quantum Memory Power" CD set. There are a ton of memory products out there, and everything Trudeau teaches you in Mega Memory is available in these other books Furthermore, people like Harry Lorayne, Dominic O'Brien, Tony Buzan, and Scott Hagwood all are involved in the "memory community" and have a lot of worthwhile products available that give you the same advice, but from people who ALWAYS use it, and don't have it as just one "wing" in a series of products.

A warning: By using memory products, you can't just use them for a month, stop, and then a year later bitch that they didn't work. No, they did and DO work, you just didn't do the work of maintaining the skill. It's like working out for a month and stopping, and then bitching a year later that you're a fatass because exercise doesn't work. You have to create a habit of doing something constantly if you want to own the skill. If it's hard for you and you don't want to go through the effort, then you're doomed to always have a shit memory, and no book will ever help you. All memory books can offer you something, and if you must read this book, order if from your library and get it for free. You really don't want to be giving your money to this guy. Trudeau can kiss my ass.