# Don Michael Vickers Memory Expert & Cognitive Skills Trainer, Vickers Memory Consulting Canonical: https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/don-michael-vickers ## Biography Don Michael Vickers is one of the most unlikely world records holders you will ever meet. He is not a savant. He did not grow up with a photographic memory. He did not spend his childhood impressing teachers with feats of recall. Don Michael Vickers grew up in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia — a working-class mining community on Cape Breton Island — playing hockey, competing in athletics, and living with what he genuinely believed was a mediocre memory. He was, by his own account, nothing special in the cognitive department. That ordinary beginning is, in fact, the entire point. In 2020, a vision-threatening injury ended his hockey career and forced a reckoning. What do you do when the thing you've built your competitive identity around is suddenly taken from you? For most people, that question has no satisfying answer. For Don, it had one that would change the trajectory of his life. He picked up a book — Nelson Dellis's 'Remember It!' — and discovered the ancient art and modern science of deliberate memory training. A colleague named Braden Adams pointed him toward Memory League, an online platform where memory athletes compete in real time across disciplines including words, numbers, names, images, and cards. Don logged on, tried a few rounds, and felt the competitive fire ignite. He was hooked. What happened next is a study in the power of applied methodology over raw talent. Within five years of picking up his first memory training book, Don Michael Vickers became a world record holder. In April 2024, competing in the Memory League Pan American Open, he became the first person in history to perfectly memorize 50 random words during an official competition in 37.54 seconds — a feat that had never been achieved before at that level. He then broke his own record weeks later, bringing the mark down to 32.41 seconds. In practice, he has since pushed the barrier below 20 seconds, memorizing 50 words in 19.90 seconds — a speed that strains credulity but is well documented by the memory sports community. Those numbers deserve context. A full deck of 52 cards, memorized in order, in approximately 25 seconds. Eighty digits, perfectly recalled, in under 20 seconds. Thirty names and faces, matched in around 50 seconds. These are not tricks. They are the product of a training methodology so rigorous and disciplined that Don compares it explicitly to athletic conditioning: progressive overload applied to cognitive performance, deliberate practice at discomfort, systematic encoding through visualization and spatial memory. Don trains his memory the way a sprinter trains their legs — pushing beyond comfortable pacing, targeting accuracy at speeds that exceed his competition level, accepting partial scores in practice so his body adapts. At the heart of his method is the memory palace — a technique dating to ancient Greek orators — married to a modern encoding system that translates abstract information (numbers, words, cards) into vivid visual narratives anchored to physical locations. The approach is not innate and not mystical. It is learned and teachable, which is precisely Don's core message: photographic memory is a myth. Exceptional memory is a skill. Anyone who is willing to train can build it. In 2025, Don competed in the Memory League World Championship as one of the top 16 memory athletes globally, finishing third — an extraordinary result in a field dominated by athletes who have been training for decades. He has since launched Vickers Memory Consulting, offering personal memory coaching at $100 CAD per session and corporate memory workshops, with a mission to bring the performance science of memory sports to working professionals, executives, and anyone frustrated by the daily friction of forgetting. Don Michael Vickers appeared on Center Stage on Mornings in the Lab alongside host Sophia Grant, where he demonstrated his methodology live, walked through the science of encoding, and made the case — with infectious conviction — that the phrase 'I have a bad memory' is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of untrained potential. ## Links ## Transcript We've all been there, nation. You meet someone, then forget their name 10 seconds later and feel stupid. And let's be frank, it's not just names. It's passwords, meetings, finer details, and the fear that your brain is slipping. Well, we're all in luck. We've got a world record holding memory athlete in the lab. Yes, Nation, that's a thing. Don Michael Vickers trains memory like an athlete trains for strength and mobility. This guy holds a world record for memorizing 50 random words perfectly in 32.42 seconds. He can take a full deck of cards and memorize the exact order in about 25 seconds. And this year, he's competing in the Memory League World Championship as one of the top 16 memory athletes globally. But he didn't start as the guy with insane memory skills. In 2020, he truly believed he had a poor memory. He was a hockey player who lost vision in one eye. Determined to rebuild his edge after hockey ended, he discovered memory sports and found a new competitive outlet. Today, he's on a mission to prove memory isn't a gift. He calls photographic memory BS. Memory is a skill anyone can learn. Nation, get ready for an awesome conversation. Don, welcome to the big show. Can you remember my first line? Uh, this guy joining us today can memorize 50 random words. Johnny, only 50, like one out of 100, faster than you can clean your shoes. He's a world record holding memory athlete who used to think he had a terrible memory and that it was just over four years ago. Today we're going to talk about how your photographic memory is apparently BS. Let's bring him up. Don Michael Vickers this morning on Mornings in the Lab with Keith John and Friends. What's going on, Don? >> Hey, good morning Keith. Good morning, John. >> How are you, man? >> What's up, brother? How are you? >> Doing pretty well. Yeah, I like the intro there. Your guy has a lot better hairline than me, but I'll take it. >> Where are you joining us from, Don? >> I'm in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, Canada.