Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis: Review, Interview & Analysis

Nelson Dellis delivers yet another epic memory improvement book with Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving and Much More.

In my view, this book is also a corrective to the increasing mountains of bad memory training advice online.

I mean, spend ten minutes browsing memory improvement forums and you’ll start to see the rot.

Same recycled advice.

Same flat explanations lacking nuance.

Same people “teaching” techniques they’ve:

• Never stress-tested in public
• Never pushed to the limits
• Never offered anything more than mostly copied explanations of standard mnemonic methods

The toxicity for the serious student of the memory arts and mental skills is only getting worse as people ramp up their use of AI to produce even more untested “teaching” of these techniques.

So the fact that Nelson actually demonstrates and performs a kind of “immersion journalism” when it comes to the techniques he teaches provides just one of many reasons why Nelson Dellis’s Everyday Genius matters so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJoc5gLIx2c

How Everyday Genius Takes Memory Training Into New Terrain

It’s not that Nelson has invented any new memory techniques in this book, which you can learn more about on Abrams Books.

He hasn’t. And it’s unlikely that anyone ever will.

Nelson told me as much at the opening of our interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcTJuCiDVqE

Anyhow, “new” doesn’t come into the picture for people serious about memory and accelerated learning.

As someone who has received and read Amazon reviews on memory improvement books for decades, I always find it odd when someone writes, “nothing new here.”

Since even Giordano Bruno essentially announced that nothing new would be coming to the field of mnemonics back in the 1600s, the real task is to:

Stop Confusing Activity with Accomplishment

Nelson’s book matters first and foremost because it comes from a mnemonist of actual accomplishment.

A real practitioner, not just a reader of memory improvement books who then comments on them.

He’s someone who has put his mind on the line under pressure, in competition, with nowhere to hide.

In other words, Nelson’s history of accomplishment adds weight to every page.

And you can feel it almost immediately.

Everyday Genius is written by someone who has actually lived inside the machinery of memory and various mental tactics and then extended these into real life situations:

• Giving a speech
• Making new business contacts
• Solving real-world problems
• Exploring the nature of the mind

At the risk of repetition, this distinction matters more than ever, because the internet is drowning the memory arts with all kinds of secondhand certainty written by people lurking behind anonymous user accounts.

What Kinds of Real-World Problems Will This Book Help You Solve?

As most memory improvement books worth their salt do, Nelson covers the Memory Palace technique, a.k.a. the method of loci.

But he doesn’t just recite the classic approach to this technique. He describes it from lived experience.

And his approach to mnemonic images and pegword systems likewise comes from accomplishment.

Then, when you go through his explanations of how to apply these mnemonic systems to remembering names or speeches, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how to implement them.

Likewise when it comes to critical thinking.

Nelson takes you through actual real-world scenarios and shows you how various critical thinking examples can make life a lot smoother and more successful.

Making Memory & Learning Both Relevant & Fun

Another major thing Nelson gets right in Everyday Genius is that he doesn’t shy away from blending the use of memory and thinking tactics for fun with more serious learning outcomes.

I know that I’m guilty of not finding that balance in my own writing, even if personally I perform card magic with a memdeck and play music, etc.

The cost, however, is that using memory techniques for activities like card counting can be learned a lot more readily when you have at least some of the foundational mnemonic strategies working for you.

In reality, learning them doesn’t have to be a grind. And the stories and profiles of polymathic geniuses Nelson shares throughout the book will help you see the multiple layers of fun in store for you.

The key is to find ways to make these techniques integrate into your everyday life. Figuring out how to do that can be a challenge, but that’s all the more reason to pay attention to the examples distributed throughout Everyday Genius.

The Potentially Controversial Aspect of Everyday Genius

Now, you might be wondering…

Is Everyday Genius perfect and free from critique?

No. And unlike his previous books like Remember It! and Memory Superpowers, Nelson takes risks that I partly admire and partly question.

And one of my criticisms goes back to at least two years prior to its publication when Nelson first told us about his “remote viewing” experiments on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j240eFZNq04

Now, I worry about being hypocritical if I lean too heavily against Nelson when he enters such contested territory. I’ve run similar experiments myself at various times, and perhaps entered just as questionable territory with The Victorious Mind.

I’m talking about:

Intuition. Remote viewing. Out-of-body experiences. Lucid dreaming.

To take just one example, learning to remember your dreams is easy enough to do. But Nelson talks about practicing memorizing a deck of cards while lucid dreaming, and it’s just not clear how you could test the accuracy or measure the contribution of such untestable practice to your skills.

At least in the case of remote viewing, Nelson has practiced a kind of immersion journalism.

He’s gone to various labs and institutions where people conduct tests in remote viewing and out-of-body experiences.

Whether those tests are “scientific” or not is itself a critical thinking exercise, but I admire that Nelson:

• Goes into the field to report back from lived experience
• Is willing to face tough questions about the claims people make about such phenomena
• And unlike the lucid dream claim, various aspects of the claims about remote viewing and out-of-body experiences can be tested

In any case, Dellis doesn’t build the book on the foundation of these more experimental activities. And it is of great importance that you are invited to experiment using the protocol Nelson provides.

I tried the provided remote viewing protocol myself.

And frankly, I would rather explore strange terrain from Nelson Dellis who has proven all kinds of astonishing accomplishments than from yet another forum philosopher who has yet to demonstrate… anything they make claims about.

The Future of Memory Training

And the whole realm of claims that people make is the larger issue here for me.

In our growing culture of cognitive indifference, people forget names, forget what they read, forget what they meant to say halfway through saying it, then shrug and call it normal “because internet”.

But digital amnesia is not normal.

And you don’t have to outsource your memory or your attention.

Your standards can go up.

And your self-respect along with it when you join the ranks of those who have actually done the work.

That is why I think you should read Everyday Genius.

Not because it is safe.

Not because it is perfect.

But because it is something that few books ever are:

It is alive.

Alive with real accomplishment.

Alive with a pulse that pushes ancient tactics into modern use and combines them with other disciplines.

Alive with the real signs of genius that anyone can achieve.

And it treats memory as something you train, not something you talk about.

But don’t stop with reading and implementing this book.

Do your part to help fix the culture.

Stop letting the swamp of bad information on the internet define what memory training is.

Memorize the most challenging information you can find and demonstrate that you can do it.

Take on hard skills and prove that you’ve got them.

That is your duty now if you want to distinguish yourself from the swamp and the robots.

Raise the standard.

That would be truly genius.