#471: Adam Grant — How to Remember Anything

Tim Ferriss (0:00)

Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out their routines, habits, influences, books, techniques, tactics, et cetera, that you can use or apply to your own life. This episode is gonna be different, and I have a surprise for you. Many of you have heard my interview with the superhuman Adam Grant, which was one of the most popular interviews of 2019

I titled that podcast, The Man Who Does Everything, because Adam seems to accomplish more than the next 10 people combined. His colleagues are kind of mystified by it, and he has built systems and habits that allow him to do this. That's the important part. So it's not just that he came out of the womb with these abilities, he trained these abilities, and he has systems. He and I share an intense interest in just how far and easily you can train your memory to do things that seem completely impossible. That's what this episode will focus on. So it's gonna be very, very tactical, very practical.

For those who don't know Adam, Adam is an expert in how we can find motivation and meaning and lead more generous and creative lives. He is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he's been the top rated professor for seven straight years. He is the number one New York Times bestselling author of four books that have been translated into 35 or so languages, Give and Take, Originals, Option B and Power Moves. His Ted Talks have been viewed more than 20 million times. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA and the Gates Foundation, just to give you an idea of the spectrum. He's been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers, as one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He's received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. It just goes on and on. The good news is that, like I said, this isn't all freakish genes and good luck.

Adam uses uncommon tools and strategies for getting all this done. You can find our previous episode about a lot of this at tim.blog slash adamgrant. Adam now has his own podcast with Ted called Work Life, in which he takes you inside the minds of some of the world's most unusual professionals to explore the science of making work not suck. Put another way, how do you make work actually work for you? To that end, I wanted to share an episode of Adam's podcast that I really enjoyed titled How to Remember Anything. It is highly tactical, and you can just listen to the first five minutes to get an example of just how incredible you can hone your memory with the proper approach and tools. One last thing, for legal reasons, we didn't have the flexibility to remove any mid-roll ads, so Accenture, this one is on me. You're most welcome. And to those listening, please enjoy the episode. You can subscribe to Work Life with Adam Grant wherever you get your podcasts.

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