How to memorise (almost) anything you read in 20 minutes

Main Ideas

The speaker presents a four-step method for memorizing facts that are difficult to retain through ordinary learning. He emphasizes that it is a last-resort technique, not a substitute for understanding material or learning how to apply it.

The central principle is to avoid rote memorization whenever possible. Repeated flash-card reviews can become unsustainable when new facts accumulate faster than they can be reviewed. The speaker distinguishes memory—being able to recall information—from memorization, which he uses to mean learning through rote repetition.

He connects this advice to the forgetting curve and the spacing effect: repetition can slow forgetting, but relying on repeated reviews for every fact creates a heavy, growing workload. Information that connects to what someone already knows is more likely to stick without extensive repetition. The speaker calls this existing network of knowledge a schema.

The Four-Step Method

1. Use a Memorization Filter

Decide whether a fact really needs rote memorization. Ask these questions in order:

• Do I understand why this fact is important? If not, investigate its relevance.
• Is it similar or related to something I already know? Look for a connection or analogy.
• Do I need high-level mastery of it? If the fact must support complex problem-solving or be integrated with other concepts, rote memorization alone is not enough. If it only needs to be recalled at a basic level, memorization may be appropriate.

The aim is to connect facts to existing knowledge wherever possible. If a useful connection is not obvious, try to create one. If the fact is important for advanced use, work toward building the understanding needed to integrate it.

2. Prioritize What to Memorize

For facts that pass the filter, identify the specific details worth committing to memory. Don’t memorize an entire table or list indiscriminately. Look for:

• Unusual or distinctive facts that are easy to confuse or forget.
• Repeated, predictable details that can be inferred or remembered as a general pattern.
• Information that can be worked out through logic rather than memorized separately.

In the antibiotic example, common side effects appear across several entries, so the speaker focuses on more distinctive details, such as a particular drug group’s association with bone-marrow depression.

3. “Absurdify” the Facts into Memorable Characters

Turn each prioritized group of facts into a vivid, unusual character or image. Give each feature a visual cue that represents a fact. For example, the speaker imagines a geothermal rock monster to represent sulfonamides, with a broken bone for bone-marrow depression and red rashes for allergic reactions.

The speaker says these images can be drawn by hand or generated with an AI image tool. The important part is that the image’s details act as cues for recalling the facts.

4. “Storyfy” the Characters

Link the characters in a story, especially when the facts relate to one another. The story should include meaningful interactions that help show how the concepts connect, rather than just a sequence of unrelated images.

In the antibiotic example, the characters’ interactions represent relationships among the drugs, such as two being used together or one being a common first-line treatment. Linking the characters can also help the story itself cue the facts.

Review and Limitations

The speaker reports that, in his own experience, this approach substantially reduced the number of flash cards he created each day and helped him retain material. He also says the images and story still need occasional review so that he remembers what each cue represents. He suggests refreshing the material every few weeks rather than repeating it constantly.

The method does not by itself build the deeper understanding needed to apply knowledge flexibly. Use the filter first, and reserve vivid-image and story-based memorization for facts that genuinely require it.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Justin Sung — the sole speaker and narrator in the subtitles.
• Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve — referenced as a model of how recall declines over time.
• The spacing effect and cognitive science research — cited generally in connection with repeated review and slower forgetting.
• The method of loci (memory palace), story/link method, and mnemonic techniques — named as influences on the described workflow.
• Anki — mentioned as an example of a popular flash-card and spaced-repetition app.
• Higgsfield — identified by the speaker as the AI image/video tool used in his example; the transcript also renders the name as “Hicksfield.”