How to Become an Agileish Super Learner

Table of contents

• Being a super learner the first time
• Losing my superpower
• My attempts to become a super learner again
  • Reiki
  • Silva method
  • Photo-reading and mind maps
• It is possible to become a memory champion
  • Memorization techniques
    • Peg list
    • The PAO (Person, Action, Object) method
    • Memory palace
  • Speed reading
• Becoming a Super Thinker AKA The Hundred Thinkingish Smurfs Methodish
• Open sourcing myself
• Being an Agileish Superhero AKA The Agileish Mind Methodish
• The Pomodoroisch Techniqueish
• Where I am at the moment?
• My plans for the future
• The proof of the usefulness of techniqueishish I have written above
• My first-ever live Agileish superhero session

HI!

I am Miki Szeles from Hungary, Budapest.

I am an average guy, a single human just like you. A single human with one small twist. I am a super learner.

Being a super learner the first time

The first time, when I was a super learner was 40 years ago, just right after I was born.

Kids are super learners. They suck the information into themselves as a sponge sucks the water. Babies are touching, smelling, and tasting everything. They are playing with each object they find. They drop it to the ground, to hear its sound, to see whether it breaks or not.

Super learning is the ability with which babies extend their knowledge about the world at an extreme speed.

Losing my superpower

As I got to kindergarten and later school, I was taught a different method of learning.

I was told I must repeat things in my head many times in order to memorize it. Unfortunately, there was nobody with me who could tell me that this method is completely flawed. So, I learned this method. It was enough to get 5s(As) in almost every subject in the school, but it was far not enough to get good grades at the university later.

At that time, I thought being a super learner is a very important skill. By now, I know being a super learner is the most important skill for a human.

Why?

Because in case you are a super learner, you can exponentially increase in everything, no matter what it is exactly.

My attempts to become a super learner again

I was around 10 years old when my parents enrolled me in the Silva method for kids course. It was interesting, that was the first time I met with the peg lists (Memóriafogasok in Hungarian). I played with the peg list, but back then I did not see its value of it.

Later I turned toward the supernatural.

I did believe things like telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, astral traveling, and reality shifting are existing. After I went to university, I did not believe in this anymore. By going to grammar school, I got a new religion called SCIENTIST.

I did not believe in anything that was not proven by science. But before this happened, I tried a few things.

Reiki

I thought regeneration and healing others is a real thing, so I learned Reiki. I used Reiki a lot when I was a child, and it did great things, but there was no exact thing by which I could say, this is definitely working.

Silva method

I visited the normal Silva method course of László Domján.

It was amazing. This was the second time when I met with brainwaves like alpha, beta, delta, and theta. The first one was when I had an epileptic seizure and thanks to that, I had to go to check-ups for years. During these check-ups they put cold gel on my head, then they attached small electrodes, just to draw an EEG curve. I will talk about this in an upcoming article soon.

Let's get back to the Silva method.

I have seen in life that the Silva method works. You can achieve unbelievable things with that. I even had 2 books with the title Agykontrollsikerek, which is a collection of success stories.

Photo-reading and mind maps

In order to improve my learning, I tried to learn Photo-reading. First via a series of audio cassettes but later also on a Photo-reading course.

This was the time I met with mind maps. Even though it was fun, I did not use it afterward as I thought it too cumbersome to draw something just to remember one simple thing. Today I am using mind maps all the time but in a completely different way. Instead of having one connection between elements, I have several connections between all the things in my head.

I tried to employ photo-reading in my life, but I have miserably failed. Even though I failed, I learned 2 very important things:

• Előolvasás (preview in English), is a crucial point in reading anything. With előolvasás you can immediately determine whether this book is for you or not, most importantly it can wake up the curiosity of your inner child, which is one of the cornerstones of learning.
• During prereading, your inner child comes up with a lot of questions if you let it do that. Having questions that are relevant to us is crucial in the learning process.

I was great in subjects that had a clear logic in them like Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, and many others.

Ok, I lied. I was only good in 2 of those subjects.

But I was struggling with history, grammar, literature, biology, geography, and especially with PE as I was 86 kgs back then.

I was good at learning practical things, especially if I could use them immediately in practice. For example, when I have learned a mathematical formula, I could immediately apply it to calculate some results. That was a good first step to memorizing something.

It is possible to become a memory champion

Later I read Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. That book is amazing. Joshua is a single human just like you and me and without any background, he was able to become a memory champion. I highly recommend reading that book, I will also reread it soon to further boost my already very strong motivation.

Memorization techniques

I have read multiple books from Dominic O'Brian about memorization. I highly recommend reading them, I will reread them again soon. I had many attempts with memory palaces, peg lists, associations, and number memorizing techniques.

Peg list

This technique is very simple. You come up with an object for each number. For example, 1 looks like a candle, so my object for 1 is a candle. For me, the number 2 looks like a pirate's hook on his arm.

Let's say I want to memorize a deck of cards which I did back then. You can read about it on [my former personal blog] (msz.team/3NSGB14). It is in Hungarian, but thanks to Google translate you can read it if you are interested.

To keep it short let's say I want to memorize a queen of heart, and a diamond king in this order.

So I imagine a queen with a crown on her head wearing a robe. The robe is open, and I can see a T-shirt on the queen with the text "I ❤ chocolate cake". To connect it with number 1, I imagine she is eating a pistachio cake that has a single candle on it.

This is enough, especially as I was able to connect it with a very memorable thing. The movie "És megint dühbe jövünk... (Odds and Evens in English)" features Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill.

So for the king, I imagine a huge room in which there is a hook on the ceiling. A king has clenched his fists on this hook, to make sure he won't fall to the ground. As the room is completely full of alligators. The king has a huge diamond in his hand but in order to prevent falling, he drops the diamond and one of the alligators swallows it.

As you can see this is a very effective technique to memorize things in a certain order.

The PAO (Person, Action, Object) method

The PAO method is like the peg list, but in addition to having objects, you also have actions and persons.

In PAO we do not care about the order of things, but of course, you can combine it with the peg list technique. My first person will be my son Levi. I could reuse the previous image, but to demonstrate how easy is the process let's create another image.

So, I imagine Levi wearing a robe and a crown, sitting on the iron throne from Game of Thrones eating chocolate from a heart-shaped box.

The action will be carried for example. I imagine a burglar who just escaped from a jewelry shop carrying a one-meter-high diamond. He cannot really bring it, so he puts it on a truck and immediately brings it to her queen Sasha, who is his love of life.

As you can see, things get much more memorable in case you extend them with tiny details, as I did with the name Sasha. Also, as you can see you can create not just single images but also imaginary videos which will make memorization much more efficient.

And let the 3rd card be a 7 of Spade. For me, the spade looks like a fan. To connect it with 7 I imagine the seven dwarves holding a fan in their hand all of them are fanning Snowwhite as she is very hot.

Well, I have to tell you I messed up. However, the above-mentioned thing works pretty well, this is not the PAO method.

So, let's revisit the topic!

Person: Levi wearing a robe and a crown, sitting on the iron throne, eating chocolate cake.

In order to use the PAO, Levi has to do something.

So, Levi is holding a diamond in his left hand, and a Barbie doll called Stacie (who is dressed as a queen) in his right hand (watch out for the tiny details, they make everything much more memorable). In order to have some action too, let's imagine Levi throws both to see, how far they can get.

The object is a 7 of the spades. After Levi has thrown the diamond and the Barbie doll a 7-headed dragon called Draco comes in then collects the thingies and brings them back to Levi. Except not. He puts the diamond in his treasure chest and starts playing with the Barbie doll, as he is so lonely. He only has a visitor haphazardly. Instead of stamps, he is collecting shields and swords.

As you can see this technique is very simple but extremely powerful.

Memory palace

Memory palaces are highly effective to memorize anything either ordered or unordered list of things. There are people who memorized all single bones in the human body using this technique. Of course, you can do that without this technique, but this one is not just much more effective, but also much more fun.

The memory palace can be either a real place, an imaginary place, or even a place from your favorite game.

The idea behind this technique is to put the information you want to memorize somewhere in a room.

It is very important to connect the thing you want to memorize with a certain part of your room. For example, I want to memorize the word gulyás (Goulash in English and グヤーシュ in Japanese) which is traditional Hungarian food. Maybe even you heard about it. 😊

Dear Reader! What is the first word that comes into your mind when you hear the word Hungarian? Please share it in the comment section.

While I was using memory palaces, I usually used the place with which I am most familiar which is our flat.

So in order to get into the flat, I open the door, but an accident happens. There was a bogrács (cauldron in English, 大釜 in Japanese) and the door dumped the cauldron, and the hall is completely filled with potatoes, carrots, and meat cubes.

That's it.

If you want to memorize the order too, it is important to have a visiting order in which you visit the parts of your room.

That's enough about memorization techniques. Let's talk about the big gun!

Speed reading

I have tried to learn speed reading 3 times. The first 2 were a complete disaster. I have used tools like Spreeder and others with which I was able to boost my reading speed.

But there was a tiny little problem. I could remember almost nothing.

The fact that I have never known a single person who can really do reading with 700 words per minute with 90% of comprehension leads me to the conclusion of speed reading is a hoax.

That is how I lived my last 15 years.

But something changed since then.

My Udemy course library is similar to my Steam library. It is full of never visited courses/games which I bought when there was a sale. So back then in December, I found a course called SuperLearner and bought it.

As it is promised I will become a super learner I immediately bought it and started to watch it.

It was a disappointment for me. The subject was interesting, but I had the feeling it is just talking about things, and not giving any guidelines to follow.

Then I found out it might be intentional as Jonathan Levi who has created the course founded a company Super Learner Academy.

You can enroll at this academy for a nice amount of money. In exchange for that, you will get access to a lot of courses. There is a basic and a premium offering, and I have decided to go with the premium to get the most value from it.

I have only watched a small portion of the Super Learner Master Class, as for me it did not provide enough extra value, except for an excel sheet, which contains what you should practice when.

So, I decided to cancel my subscription. After writing a mail to the support to cancel my subscription I got a mail (I guess an automatic mail) from Jonathan Levi in which he explains why I should stay.

This is a perfect marketing strategy; he was able to convince me to keep the subscription as I was interested in productivity-boosting about which they also have a course.

I just canceled my subscription a few days ago, as I am becoming more and more productive since I became an agileish super learner.

Despite this, I highly recommend giving it a try. If it can only improve your learning speed a little bit, it is still a great value. And of course, you can cancel your subscription anytime, as I did.

I happily pay even a high price for something which gives me value, but as I am constantly changing it is always something different in which I see the value now.

I have learned one very important thing from the Udemy Super Learner course: Up till you do not have a great memory, there is no point in learning speed reading, as you will forget everything.

The course came up with the example of filling a bucket with a water hose. No matter how fast the water is coming, in case your bucket is full, then you just waste the water/time by trying to fill it.

The information that you must improve your memory first was crucial for me.

Becoming a Super Thinker AKA The Hundred Thinkingish Smurfs Methodish

In case you read my writings you already know I have introduced more than 30 imaginary characters by now. In the beginning, they were inspired by Edward de Bono (who is a genius)'s Six Thinking Hat, then later I realized there is an even better method.

The method is coming from Peyo who is an even bigger genius than Edward de Bono.

Peyo is the father of the Hupikék Törpikék (Smurfs in English, スマーフ in Japanese).

But he does not only have 6 hats, but he has more than 100 smurfs.

So, let's see how they connect:

My first character was Minnie. I have no idea where she came from. I do not believe in the one and only God as it is described by the Bible, but I do believe in a higher intelligence.

At the moment I cannot exclude the possibility of the idea that this came from a higher intelligence, but I will revisit my writings in the upcoming days who know maybe I find something just like in [The Mystery Of The Supposedly Red ❤ Emoji AKA The Story Of How I Became A Software Developer Detective To Debug The Internet].

So as at that time my most important feelings were empathy and enthusiasm Minnie came alive.

Almost immediately came Nikolai, who ruled my life for 3 decades.

The appearance of these characters completely changes my thinking process. Thanks to De Bono and Peyo no matter what exact question/topic we are talking about, I can think crystal clear.

In the beginning, I had to write down everything in a conversational style, then I just separated my thoughts in my head by naming the source of the thought.

By now, I can immediately tell which of my thoughts coming from whom.

I do believe we have everybody in our heads who have affected our lives in any way.

Of course, the loudest people are our parents, but I have thoughts coming from every single person I interacted with in any way. All the characters were there, and they were talking all the time, but I couldn't hear them as they were talking at the same time.

By putting on the white hat, I became a moderator who makes sure everyone has the chance to talk and also makes sure that only one character talks at the same time. By doing this I have become a Super Thinker, it is like having a quantum computer in my brain.

I use this super thinker skill to make the world better for my son Levi, for all the children, and for the adults too. I have many ideas, but I love to think in groups much more, as it is much much much more valuable. In order to start the conversation with people from all around the world, I have decided to make myself open source.

Open sourcing myself

I am a foolish guy, so on the 1st of April 2022, I decided to make my mind open source via GitHub.

I share my thoughtishish, my writingishish, and my artisticish creationsishish and as I do it on GitHub I also share my thinking process, my writing process, and my art creation process.

You can find it here if you are interested. Just click here!.

In addition, to start a conversation with open-minded fellow humans I have created it to have a legacy for my son, Levi, for my wife, Panni, for my family, my friends, and for everybody who is interested in it for the case when the time comes, or in case a tram goes through me.

Being an Agileish Superhero AKA The Agileish Mind Methodish

As I am an agileish learner, I commit after each iteration.

Approximately 1 week ago Metro joined our team. He is our Scrum Master who is responsible for the retros. For those who are not coming from the agile world:

Scrum is a methodology for software development, but it is universal you can use it almost everywhere. Actually, that is what I am doing. My life consists of short sprints, no matter what I do thanks to Metro.

So a Sprint is a 1-6 weeks long etap, during which the team develops the features which give the most value to the customers. After each sprint/iteration there is a meeting called retrospective.

During this meeting the team creates 3 lists:

1. What went well?
2. What went wrong?
3. What we will do differently?

With this simple process, you can make sure your team is continuously improving. Just imagine you have 2 weeks long sprints, and you can improve 1% in something which is relevant after the retro. This means a 1.296 performance multiplier in 1 year and a 3.64 multiplier in 5 years.

1% might sound over-optimistic, but believe me, it is not.

In the beginning, I only applied the retro for my writing after finishing an article. That was already a huge step forward.

By now I do a retro after each paragraph, and in addition to that, I do a retro for basically everything that I do, thanks to this I improve exponentially no matter what I do.

Dear Reader! If there is only one thing you will bring home from this article, I kindly ask you to bring home this:

Everybody can become a super thinker and also a super learner by following the simple guidelines I have shared here!

In case you are stuck, I will gladly help you just contact me on any of my channels which you can find at the bottom of this article.

The Pomodoroisch Techniqueish

I use the Pomodoroish techniqueish to do iterations, which consist of 2 parts.

1. 5-25 minutes smoking, during which I am thinking.
2. 15min - 3-hour creation and thinking till I am in the flow. My son Levi might ask me to play with him after 15 minutes, but in case my family is sleeping, I could go up till 3 hours.

There are also longer breaks after a few sessions to have lunch or do this and that.

I am so agileish. I am not only writing my code in iterations but also my creativeish technicalish articles too. Earlier I had a retro after each article. Now, I have a retrospection after each paragraph.

Thanks to this, I can improve exponentially.

Minnie: Wow, Miki! That sounds amazing! Nikolai: This is bullshit. Mritishish Scientistish: We have proven with my colleagues that Humanish Intelligence (HI) cannot overperform Artificial Intelligence (AI) anymore. Miki: We will see. We will see. Nikolai: Without any proof, this is just a fairy tale. Do you have something? Miki: Sure! First, let me tell you where I am now.

Where I am at the moment?

Thanks to the Hundred Thinkingish Smurfs method I feel like Paul Atreides. Paul has all his ancestors in his mind, and I do have all my ancestors in my mind because my parents are in my head, and they are the improved versions of their ancestors.

Thanks to the Agileish Mind Methodish I feel like Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) on NZT or like Paul Atreides being high thanks to the spice. At the moment I can type as fast as I vocalize the words in my head. This is the current biggest barrier to my improvement.

I have contacted Andrea Szabó, who is a Super Learner coach at Jonathan Levi's Superhuman Academy. I contacted her to help me get rid of subvocalization (that is the official term for vocalizing the word in your head while you are thinking). Andrea teaches memory techniques and speed reading. I highly recommend contacting her, as the value she provides is invaluable.

I do think you can progress on your own with the methodish I shared here, but in case you need some guidance just contact her, or me.

If I can get rid of subvocalization I will be able to think only in images which will give an extreme boost to my memory, as the brain can process images in a fraction of a second.

My plans for the future

So let's see where I am at the moment!

My ultimate goal is to arrive at the point when two humans can communicate with each other only with their thoughts. For this, I think we will need a temporary solution in which we can convert our thoughts into text and the other person can (super) read it.

I will create a GitHub repo with the name The Hamunisch Intelligenceish (HI) Projectis. I will collect all the projects in that repo, which help to make this planet a better place for our children and for us too.

At the moment I have 3 project ideas:

• A Douglas Adams-inspired life simulation game.
• An universal sign language.
• Converting brain waves to written text.

I write here about the 3 projects but in case you are interested in the others, just drop me a DM.

All of these projects will be open source. The license type will be the Hamunish Licenseish. To quickly sum it up, you can use it for free for any project, even for for-profit goals in case you use it for making the world better.

In case AI will be used in these projects, they must be understandable and ethical AI solutions only.

Everybody will have read access (even AI), but it is not allowed for AI to incorporate these projects into their learnings.

I would like to find kind and helpful people who are willing to contribute to these projects. Just drop me a DM in case you are interested! You can find my contact options at the bottom of this article.

Regarding the 3rd point I have defined the following goals which will be transformed into HSMARTish goals in the near futures.

• Being able to transfer 0 and 1 to the computer. I do believe the best approach is to define a common language between computers and humans. At the moment we are the smarter ones, so we should speak the computers language first.
• With this we could convert any thoughts to written texts, even if it is cumbersome.
• Teach the universalish sign language to the computer, so we can have a conversation with it.
• Communicate with the computer by transferring the subvocalized words.
• Communicate with the computer only with images.
• Communicate with other humans using a middle layer (computer).
• Direct image-based communication between humans.

The concept is working as 3 people from California University have created such a solution with which they were able to recognize 96% of the words.

Unfortunately, it is not open source as far as I know, and it is limited to 30-50 sentences.

I already borrowed a Muse (1st gen) dry electrode EEG device from Andrea and soon I will order the Muse S. I do believe if we reach some goals, we can get Muse to support us with EEG devices. At least I will definitely ask them to do that.

With this device, you can get the RAW brainwave data in real-time. I have not written a single line of code, but I found projects with which you can control the computer with blinking.

My plan is to collect all my friends on the Craft Conf about which I will write later. I want to collect them to join this project, I would like to put the basic cornerstone of this project by Hungarian minds.

Immediately after that, I will open it as an open-source project. Just drop me a DM if you are interested. So let's get back to Nikola's question

The proof of the usefulness of techniqueishish I have written above

Andrea Szabó has shown me a game called Camera Mind on the webpage of the Super Human Academy in which you have to memorize the position of colorful circles.

Andre told me she has a student who reached level 102 where she stopped, as in case you can memorize 102 circles you can memorize as much as you want.

My goal is to reach 103, and later reach the final level. At least I guess there is a final level as we will run out of empty space at some point.

I had my first session on the very same day.

I had 3 sessions and I have reached level 52, where I miserably failed.

In this video, I demonstrate almost all the memorization techniques I have learned during my life, and I also demonstrate how you can use the Agileish methodish in real life.

I am thinking aloud in this video, so you can understand what I am doing.

It is so easy even children can learn it. Actually, it is much easier for them, as they still have an unimaginable memory.

You can find this video on Youtube. Just click here!

I kindly ask you to challenge me. Write memorization challenges in the comment section, so this way, you can lead the topics of my upcoming online sessions.

Feel free to ask any questions about learning and memorization in the comment section, and I will do my best to answer them.

BECOME AN AGILEISH SUPERHERO!

Learn how to memorize anything in the world with me. In this series, I teach you everything I know about learning and memorization, including memory palaces, marker images, number memorization techniques, etc.

You can already find the first videos on my Youtube channel in which I show you that it is possible to memorize such boring things as positions of circles.

The next session will be online to make it an interactive, fun session. You can ask any question, and

You are warmly welcomed to join.

Just click here to join!

My credo: The Mystery Of The Supposedly Red ❤ Emoji AKA The Story Of How I Became A Software Developer Detective To Debug The Internet

Read my story, in case you would like to understand how I think and act as a developer and tester in the real world. You can get some insights into my humor, and I am also happy to tell you that this is the article about which I am the proudest now.

In case you do not want to miss my posts, just follow me here on Hashnode, on LinkedIn, on Twitter on Medium.com, on dev.to, on Hackernoon, and even on Instagram. 😊

• Minnie: Miki! Are you still here?
• Miki: Sure. You know I am waiting for the teaser trailer.
• Minnie: Me too. What will be the teaser this time?
• Miki: It will be the story of how I get rid of depression and anxiety forever.
• Mritishish Scientistish: We have proven with our colleagues that it is not possible to get rid of depression and anxiety. You can only get rid of happiness and euphoria, but not the other way.
• Minnie: Thanks for your valuable comment. So what will be the title?
• Miki: How Depression and Anxiety Ruled My Life For 3 Decades AKA How Szilvia Kiss My RED Coach deported depression and anxiety in one minute AKA How you can do the same in 1 minute.
• Nikolai: This is bulls*it.
• Miki: Well, it worked for me, so let the readers decide for themselves.

Miki, Minnie: Dear Reader! Something good will happen to you today!

Also published here.