Bitácora (Memory Chronicle #11)

Memory Training Journals
1

New year, new challenges, new methods…

I’ve started another semester in college. I’m going prepared with a new addition to my Learning Temple: I’ll use Benavente’s technique (here’s an article in spanish http://www.mnemotecnia.es/articulosdoc.php?ref=PalacioBenavente ).

I’ll use my Learning Temple as always, but the only addition is that every locus is filled with a person. In each person I can make a journey of 20 loci. It gives a boost to my palace.

For example, in every bench/step I have 12 loci (I’ve added the door as a locus, before I had 11 loci. More information about my Learning Temple here http://mt.artofmemory.com/blogs/olegario-nicasio/bitacora-memory-chronicle-4-4103.html ).

Now I go as following:

-I find my class/course.
-In my door I place a person.
-That person makes 20 loci.
-I go to my nearest right-hand wall, place a person and fill the loci.
-Then, I go to my nearest right-hand corner, place a person and fill the loci.
-I go to my right-hand wall, place a person and fill the loci.
-I go to my right-hand corner (two 'o clock), place a person and fill the loci.
-Repeat until you fill all the “walls”, “corners”, “ground” and “ceiling”.

So, 12 loci x 20 person loci = 240 loci/person loci (or 240 loci in bench/step).

This is a great way to make some space and make images more memorable.

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I finished memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements. I just memorized the atomic number and name (in spanish). I used 118 loci from my AMP.

As I mentioned before, now my rooms have 12 loci instead of 11: now I use the door as another locus. This makes my counting of loci even numbered instead of odd numbered.

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Update: January 17, 2014.

I’ve thought the following: instead of putting a person in every loci of the room, I’ll put a column and around that column I add three persons (except the door, that has only one person). The room has five walls, four corners, one floor and one ceiling. So, I’ll add ten columns: five for the walls, four for the corners and one for the floor and ceiling. Around every column I’ll add three persons, so:

12 loci x (3)20 person loci = 720 loci/person loci (or 720 in bench/step).

2

Hi Olegario,

Firstly, congratulations on a major achievement with your temple!

To assist my understanding of what you are doing:

  1. Do you have a map or plan of the current state of your temple showing how many steps you have used and how many loci for each subject?

  2. Could you give a detailed example of the images you have and what they mean from one or two steps?

  3. How much time do you need to spend on repetition to keep the information fresh and available in your mind? (I am assuming you will be retaining it all for the long term.)

  4. How exactly do you know which step to go to when you need information?

As I write, I can see that answering all this might be quite a lot of work, but anything you can share would be much appreciated.

Gavino

3

Hello,

I appreciate the questions.

  1. No, I don’t have a plan or map for my current state of the Temple. I’ve used 80 loci (more or less). The purpose of the Temple is to maintain information fresh for a minimum of six months (the average time of a semester). With the information stored I ace my exams.

  2. I’ll give you one example from my last semester. I had a test and I needed to remember a lot of information. One important thing to remember was that the spaniards were ready for conquest and exploration at the beginning of the XV century. For this I needed to do the following:

-Find the class (in this case, history class). Every class is represented as an allegorical sculpture. My class was HIST 3241 LE0 (which I symbolized as an allegorical sculpture of Batman [32] breastfeeding [41] a lion [LE0]).

-Store the information. I looked out for an empty locus (if a bench/step had all the loci filled, I stepped up another bench/step and kept looking: every step works as a room) and filled it with an image of Einstein [15] ballooning [Mario 64 DS style of ballooning].

  1. Repetition depends on importance. My last example was important. Every month or two months I go back and look out for the images I want to remember. Most of the information was filled to ace an exam, but certain information is worth remembering.

  2. I don’t know how to answer that one. I just remember at what time I stored the material I wanted to remember. I go to that place and look out for my image. If I wanted to find the example used in answer 2 I think the following:

“At what time I stored information about Spain, Portugal and the conquest? Oh, it at the time of my first exam. That was for history class”.

Then, I go to the benches/steps that are about my first exam and look out for the loci concerning Spain and Portugal and find my Einstein ballooning.

§

What I explained in the answers is what I did last semester. My Learning Temple is, at the time of this writing, going through some of the modifications explained in this blog entry. Everything stays almost the same way, except that now I’ll have more loci for each class.

I hope that I assisted you well.

Greetings.

4

That is amazing, I understand that you place 20 loci per person to spread out storage.
What I would like to know is are all the persons unique throughout the Learning Temple?

5

All the persons are unique. I haven’t filled a lot yet and maybe I don’t have to fill all the persons. Maybe a class just needs two or three persons. Every room in the Learning Temple has turned bigger and I don’t know if a class needs a whole room. Still, I’ll have one room per class.