Building memory skills (& creating accountability)

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

To be honest work should be so pressing that I don’t have much time for memory training at the moment, but I’m too into my main project of remembering the kanji that I’m definitely slacking on my day job. Whoops!

Japanese Kanji & Pokedex Project, Day 3: I use the website Kanji Koohii to keep up to date with my work on Remembering the Kanji, as not only does it have a database of all kanji in order that I can have a physical reference for all my mnemonics in case of need, but it also has a spaced repetition system I’ll be sure to use.

I’d been able to remember 100 kanji on the first day pretty successfully (also the first 10 I already knew so I could write them off already), but yesterday, on day 2, I (thankfully) had an error; despite being so confident in my abilities to recall the first 151 Pokemon in order of dex entry, I managed to get all the way to Pokemon #80, before realising I’d completely forgetten #56 and #57.

At first, I was mortified - the 23 successive Pokemon, which is almost 50 symbols I’d encoded, were out of order now, and by the time I wanted to try and rememdy my mistakes, I was losing my place again and so called it an evening.

Today, however, was really good; I guess I hadn’t encoded the mnemonics that well? Or perhaps they aren’t as rigid as I believed them to be; whatever the state of them were, I’ve made up for lost time and then some today, as I feel pretty good about 210 of the Kanji, which is already nearly 10% of the book. On top of that, I fairly easily replaced my previous stories and links to other Pokémon, to get all of these back in order, which felt great!

I believe spaced repetition will humble me, as I may start to forget what constitutes what, but I’ll be thinking about the kanji before I go to sleep tonight. Really hoping to keep at this pace - a soft target is to go through all 2200 by 3 months of now; so, by the end of February, that’ll be a good indicator of how wrong I end up being!

Though I do want to work on other memory lists, this is taking up a lot of my day-to-day as is, let alone on top of my full-time job. So I hope that once I’ve taken on all these symbols, I can start to focus on other things I’d like to go to. Hopeful signs nonetheless!

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Day 7 of Japanese Kanji:

The pace definitely slowed in the past few days thanks to a deadline, and although it says 460, I think it’s a lot closer to 410. I did the most recent 50 over today and yesterday, but though some stick, a lot haven’t well at all. Which is fine! I just need to go back over them.

I also tested myself on the previous 410, and beyond 8 mistakes, I was able to recall them all fairly accurately. One fun observation is forgetting how a kanji links to a Pokémon, but knowing what it is in isolation perfectly. This goes to show it probably isn’t a perfect system to learn them, but one that interests me nonetheless!

Chess: This is a much more relaxed secondary project, especially as I’m so bad at chess - but I bought the Chess Memory Palace by John Holden recently. I’m far too beginner to apply anything right now, but thoroughly fascinated by the method to learning certain chess repetoires, and would love to find an application for it somewhere in the tree diagram aspect of it.

Also shows me that my inability to do PAO kind of transcends all systems, as the really cool notation system Holden uses, while it makes sense to me, is something I cannot put into the sharp practice that it needs haha

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Japanese Kanji, Day 10:

I missed a day of progress due to work commitments, then used another day to go over everything I knew, especially the previous 50 I’d tried to learn. That seems to have worked out well, and I’m now nearing on a quarter of the way there.

I don’t really know if this system to learn kanji via a vessel like the Pokédex is necessarily the best way to do it, but one benefit is the ability to review and follow along. It can be time consuming, but I plan to go over the 500 or so I’ve learnt just to make sure they’re stuck with me.

Still, I think it’s going well! One frustrating albeit entertaining issue is knowing what kanji I mean, but I have no way to find it through the Japanese system if I’ve never come across its readings in the past. The conversion from 2200 kanji that I know the meanings of, into 2200 kanji that I can assign a common reading to, is going to be an interesting process. Nonetheless, happy with it.

Other Memory things: I took the time today to also learn Ceremonial Counties of the UK; I used the same list as my list for UK cities, and I was able to recall both decently well. Part of me feels like I’ve gotten into a decent groove with giving memorable prompts and keywords for each point now.

However, 2 things have stuck in my brain:

1). Welsh counties and memorising ‘obscure’/harder words: I love the Welsh language and would love to pick it up after I get good with my Japanese; that said, learning the 22 Welsh Counties and regions have some real headscratchers:

• Blaenau Gwent
• Caerphilly
• Merthyr Tydfil
• Rhondda Cynon Taf

I’d be curious to see how people who’ve combined mnemonics with language-learning approach words like this; I envision a lot might be based around rules of the language they’re following, similar to Lynne Kelly’s rapscallions and gendered French vocabulary - but looking at a different language in a bubble makes me curious how I’ll approach it in the future.

2). Encoding stats into each point: I’m interested in adding attributes into points; I’m learning the countries and states by alphabetical order, but I do want to be able to have some form of recall for other forms, like size of the country/state, size of the population, etc. How I have it mapped out in my head is:

List point (e.g. Taskmaster Contestants) is dressed like State, and holding State Capital. Then, a/my major system person for the state’s population size (relative to other states, or in total) comes in and is holding an/my Object in major system that relates to state size, before being destroyed by next state.

Finding a means to encode all the little bits of information I want about states and what not is definitely the most challenging yet intriguing part to me, and if I can get into a groove with it, I’ll be feeling really good about all my long term information.

Going well so far though! Practiced my most recent 54 kanji before this post and was able to recall them all, so it’s just generally a slow but steady process that I’m happy to be keeping with.

[LynneKelly]

@Lukelustre

I’d be curious to see how people who’ve combined mnemonics with language-learning approach words like this;

I use bestiaries for anything with vocabulary. For English and French, I have bestiaries with animals (or the best I can manage if there is no animal) for the first two letters.

• Blaenau Gwent (Blue whale and the Gwanda snake - Gw was a pain!)
• Caerphilly (Caterpillar)
• Merthyr Tydfil (Medusa and Tyrannosaurus)
• Rhondda Cynon Taf (Rhinoceros, Cyborg, Tapir)

For the rest of the word, I’ll use some association . If I can’t manage that, I’ll keep using the bestiary. Caerphilly - I would use Caterpillar, Ermine and philly cheese, so the caterpillar has a lovely warn fur coat and is eating philly cheese.

I also have a bestiary for single letters, so I might bring that in as well. There is no overlap in the bestiaries in any of the languages.

I have a similar one in French. I sometimes borrow from it, especially in International names - I am just starting on training on that - so my ideas are still not tested very well.

My bestiary for Chinese is a different structure, and I pinch from it when I need to - especially for International Names.

It took a long while to set up all the bestiaries, but I now use them all the time for lots of purposes as well as learning languages. Just the English one is enough for most of my needs. You end up with some really weird stories!

Lynne

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

That’s a brilliant shout, thank you! I’d been putting off making a bestiary for a while due to the fact I felt confident alone in my visual alphabet, but evidently it can be incredibly useful for what I’m trying to use it with. Coincidentally it also appears that Pokemon may be a fantastic tool to use in that too, for the more abstract spellings. Will give it a try - thank you once again Lynne!

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Japanese Kanji, Day 13: It’s slowed a fair bit the past few days; the next week or so sees a big work crunch ahead of me, so I don’t know if it’ll hold too well, but I’ll do my best to retain what I can. Likely will involve restudying to ensure that the kanji stick.

However, I’ve definitely found a fascination in something else predominantly, recently.

3-Digit Systems: It was until 2am this morning that I was under the impression PAO was the predominant system in memory competitions. I’m certain people must still use it too, but hearing people use 3-Digit Systems gave me a renewed sense to pursue those topics further.

Soft goals for the future: a 2-Digit PAO, and a full 3-Digit System. The 2-Person PAO is much more achievable for me to go for, as well as remembering the Actions, Objects, and hopefully the Adjectives and Locations I aim to add on.

I’d been using a 3-Digit major system in my US State Class System I’d been trying to build, but I found that Josh Cohen’s variation of the Ben System just works for me. It’s still really hard - there’s a lot of digits that I have nothing for in my brain, but I definitely want to participate in memory competitions in the future, and I think having Pokémon Pokédex as my loci system is a fairly strong backbone to assigning 3-digit combinations to.

After doing a control on a website to see how many numbers I could remember in a small timeframe (which averaged to about 9ish numbers fairly okay, under the timed conditions of Human Benchmark. So, from that starting point, I’m now looking to get better and better at challenges like 5-minute numbers. This was the best result I got today.

I should be happier with it than I am, but those 6 digits I missed in the middle are really bugging me haha; I also tried it again before this post, but just forfeit; too many combinations with nothing coming to my brain about how to encode it. However, that’s a perfect trough to (hopefully) compare my progress with in the future.

Either way, I’m keeping at it. I genuinely love all these memory techniques I’m using and learning about, and the more I find, the more I see myself getting distracted with too many things I love doing haha

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

I anticipate a week hiatus of sorts because I’m now in the crunch period of my work, and that’s going to suck for me to do anything other than work aha

However, I’ve been keeping with the 3-Digit system! I ended up going back to the Ben System’s original formation, with some slight variations to try and transfer it into a Shadow System in the future.

What I will say, is that it is absolutely awful to feel like I’m doing okay in a practice attempt for 5-minute numbers, and then I come to a number that nothing generates in my brain towards. I had 578 translate to ‘leeb-’, and though ‘leapfrog’ is an obvious connection, I’m trying to refrain any usage of the j/ch, p, and d sounds in order to use them eventually for J, Q & K.

It’s still something I thoroughly enjoy - I wish there was an app equivalent of the IAM trainer! - but after filling in ~700 Ben System words for the 1000 possible digits, I’ll be chipping away at possible combinations/alternatives to what I’ve got in front of me, as well as an accompanying Anki deck for any of the exceptions to make sure they’re always in my brain!

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Finished my work for the year! Looking forward to my partner flying out to see me in a few days for Christmas, so will be preoccupied with her, but have a few days to reflect on memory things, as interest continued to persist throughout my work.

Japanese Kanji: Completely stalled it during work, and had to review 231 kanji as I came back. Didn’t do too bad though! Some are really starting to stick.

Need to keep going, making sure what I struggle to forget really sticks, but happy with my progress! Also I realised that while I’d liked to have kept with 50 a day, doing 20 a day is both far more digestible and realistic, which would let me hit the goal for March of next year. So that’s my new plan!

UK Cities and Counties: Just revised both of these, still with me! Think I should get a review app of some kind, that I can input when I’ve learnt something, and it reminds me to recall what I’ve gone over when it’s time to review. Is that even an app? I’m sure I can work around it if it’s not.

Memory Palace “mining”: Not sure what to really call this, but I’m now super interested in the concept of memorised lists as a memory palace since learning the 1017 Pokémon relatively difficulty-free. So, I started playing a game called Yo-Kai Watch, which has some characters based on Japanese folklore with some fantastic designs and characters to work off of. Below are a few of my favourites that I’m looking to enjoy using in some capacity.

There’s a lot of overlap in purposeful character styles in the same way I think Pokémon functions, which is fantastic for looking to memorise them. Second to that, there’s apparently 223 Yokai in the game, and while I imagine quite a few are very similar to one another, that’s a rich list of colourful characters to utilise in the future.

Definitely helps to have an interest in what you’re ‘mining’ from! I’m going to probably dive into a bunch of (J)RPGs to go even further with the research, and anything that I can use in my Ben system will be greatly taken!

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

I spent a great few weeks with my partner over Christmas, so Memory work fell to the wayside for a bitl albeit, I’m always thinking about it on and off, so I had productive thoughts about the concepts!

SMART Goals for 2024:

Learn the different Shaper Systems: I became fascinated with the more ‘friendly’ nature of this system; I think it’s not only a great system as an amateur to mnemonics, but I think it’ll supplement a lot of different endeavours I have in mnemonics this year.

Create a 2-Digit PAO (+ adjectives) system: Have sat on the idea of a PAO for a while, and think it’d be good to finally get on top of it. Hoping that I can use the Shaper System as a supplementary system to better remember some of the harder/easier to forget options.

Work towards, and build, a system for cards and 3-digits: I really want to get into the memory sports at some point over this year or the next, and so I’d like to establish a system for reading cards and 3-digit numbers.

A consistent issue I find is seeing which works for me, as I like the Ben System’s logic, the Major System’s liquidity, and the Shadow System as a concept. I’ve flip-flopped between all of them, but I think that I need to really sit down and find what works for me. Then, on the back of that, I should start getting these systems going.

Remember the first 999 Pokémon, with digits encoded: I’ve already proven to myself I can remember every Pokémon in dex order, and while that’s great as a central palace, I want to go one further; being able to recall a Pokémon to their national dex number will be a fantastic secondary 3-digit system I’m hoping to use.

And in goals unrelated to memory foundations:

Remember 10 Geography-related lists: Currently planning to remember every Country, Capital City, US State, Canadian Province, Irish County, Japanese Prefecture, Mexican State and Australian + New Zealand City. Need to think of 2 more lists, but would like them as a minimum to recall, as it’s something I’m interested in and think it gives a variety of challenge and topic.

Learn every Kanji in James Heisig’s Remembering The Kanji: Currently a quarter of the way there at ~500/2200. If I learnt 20 a day - maybe even 10 a day - I’d know them all well before the end of the year. Perhaps it’s better to take it slower and consume more language learning materials in congruence anyways!

We’ll see how these go; for now, I’m going to read about the Shaper System before heading to bed and hoping for another great year.

[AndersonAraujoBrasil (Memory Athlete Anderson Araújo)]

Luker… I saw that you made a mistake… maybe some advice… use repetition… after 4 objects, repeat… depending on how you do it, you will get almost 100% correct… @Lukelustre … good lucky!

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Thank you for the advice! That was definitely a problem when I was first practicing as I just kept on encoding numbers without trying to remember the first few - will remember that next time!

[Magno]

This is true, it happened to me that I wanted unique characters for my palace or numerical methods and I started to memorize names of actors. I’m a bit picky in this regard, I memorized the names first and then moved on to methods like pao and Bruno’s practices for words in “de umbris idearum”.

After you number the characters and memorize them, meaning a number, after this, assigning the actions and objects will be simple, since with the chain and story method they can be easily chained.

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

I’ve been kept quite busy with life and work to the point that I felt a little ashamed in updating this so late, but I think it’d be good for me to do so anyways.

I’d tried and largely failed to keep with goals set a few months ago, which was quite disheartening to think about. They’re not impossible to get back to, but losing habits I built is a shame.

But memory training fell to the wayside to other things going on - I had a meeting with a therapist a few weeks ago; in short, they believe I have strong signs of an attention disorder.

I can’t confidently agree with their assessment until I get screened properly, but in reading about excerpts from people with ADHD on the forum and elsewhere, I see a few similarities.

I’m trying to keep a cautious opinion on it, but it would really help re-contextualise a lot of behaviours and events in my life. It’d also feel quite comforting that, what I wrote off as dispositional failures, might be more complex and less self-afflicted than I thought.

I’m not entirely sure why I’m sharing all this - it feels good to get it out there at least. But I’ve given myself some leeway and stripped back my memory focus. However, I’m very interested in the use of characters/Pokémon as memory lists, and am working on a small personal project about it - hopefully I’ll get somewhere with it.

[LynneKelly]

LukerYT All the very best for whatever you find out and the path you take. I hope you can keep us updated. I have been doing quite a bit of research into neurodiversities, asking the question why evolution left them in a significant portion of the population, across all cultures. So I am very interested in your perspective, should you feel like adding more.

Lynne

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Thank you Lynne, I’ll definitely try to! I still throughly enjoy learning about the methods and reading the literature you’ve provided about the subject.

I’ll hopefully get a sense of perspective come the pending assessment as neurodiversity has never really been something that’s crossed my mind of path in life. If there’s any contributions I could make assuming the signs being pointed are true, I’d love to help in any way I can

[LynneKelly]

@Lukelustre

If there’s any contributions I could make assuming the signs being pointed are true, I’d love to help in any way I can

Thank you so much for the offer, Luke. It is less than an hour since I submitted the final manuscript for my new book in which there is a chapter about why evolution ensured all populations had a decent supply of neurodivergent people. So I can’t add anything now. I will be intrigued to see if your experiences match the academic research and that I have done with neurodivergent people. Hopefully the book will offer insight into memory methods beyond those we are all so familiar with already.

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

Wonderful to hear your next book is in that stage! I’ll eagerly be awaiting to purchase and read it

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

I’ve had a weekend to get back to some memory techniques and training, fortunately. I’ve mainly been keeping my time to a video project I’ve been working on regarding a mnemonic exercise, and I’m hoping to finish that at some point in the near future! Although I’ll have to look around on the forum about posts related to creating a mnemonic exercise to make sure I don’t stumble into any pitfalls.

Countries of the world, in alphabetical order: This has been my newest undertaking with my Pokémon knowledge, going through the Pokédex order and linking each Pokémon to a country.

It shouldn’t surprise me at this point how effective memory techniques are, but the fact I can, relatively quickly, encode 70 countries and recall them without much trouble still feels great.

I anticipate I’ll be able to get all the countries memorised by the end of the week. I’ll also look to encode a skip list for each letter too, to really round out its navigation. However, the topic of peg lists came to my attention.

Peg lists & their depths: I’ve erroneously believed that my Pokémon order I’ve memorised could otherwise be considered a memory palace, and though it’s not completely out of the realm of believability, it’s definitely better defined as a peg list. Under the comments of someone who I went to regarding it, it fits that definition more, and though peg lists and memory palaces definitely overlap to an extent, it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

The analogy I read about peg lists came from a post discussing it that I feel accurately describes where I’m at with them as a system:

@elitely

Even though,both “Peg List” and “MP” can be used in any situation to memorize something,Memory Palace has a clear advantage over Peg List. I consider “Peg List” to be a 2D system/just like Mono Sound,whereas “Memory Palace” to be a 3D system/just like Stereo Sound…

Memory Palace’s ‘Spatial nature’ is what I found to be the most beneficial thing. You can put multiple items inside a Memory Palace and you can visualize all of them simultaneously! This is an amazing thing/skill to have which is difficult to achieve with Peg List.

Let’s say,you want to ponder over three different ‘thoughts’ on three different topics simultaneously. You can do that inside a Memory Palace. This is difficult to do with Peg System. This is why,I consider a Memory Palace to be a 3D system…

Previously, I’d tried to expand my current system of memorising the countries, to be not just in alphabetical order, but to link the capital cities to each country too. And I had some mileage with it, but I found it way more difficult than what I’m currently trying to do. And I’m trying to figure out exactly why that is?

Ultimately I figure that Peg → Country → Capital feels more difficult than Loci → Country → Capital. Maybe it’s because trying to encode the country link to the peg can be more difficult? And that’s then compounded by linking said peg to a capital too, whilst the loci is a bit more of a blank slate, and I don’t need to link the capital to the loci.

But, I do what to try and learn how far a peg system can go with its depth, as well as how far others have taken their’s. Maybe a Peg System of people is a more malleable and useful version of one than a Pokémon one? I’m not entirely sure.

One thing I do think is that it could be quite useful for speed in memory games? But that’s only based on something else I worked on.

Using Pokémon as the pegs for each image worked a wonder here; this wasn’t my first try, but the previous 2 attempts had me score 28 and 25, so I felt consistently good about this. I’ll be playing some other games on Memory League to see if I can (someday eventually) reach level 10 in all the areas, but that’s going to take a while!

Either way, I feel good coming back into memory stuff again.

[Lukelustre (Luke)]

I really love memory sports, training and techniques; I think I’ll have to put any major work on it on hiatus, though. Juggling a pending ADHD screening on top of financial insecurity in my family + work crunch in my job is just a draining combination.

I’d love to pursue and go further with mnemonics, and maybe I will every now and again, but I’m just incredibly tired and beaten down. I’m looking forward to when I feel the spark to dive head first into it again, and maybe I’ll buck my behavioural trend by sticking with it when that happens again.

[TheHumanTim]

Hey buddy, take care of yourself! Thats the most important thing!

If you miss us, you know where to find us. I’m sure we’ll be here forever debating verbatim memorization, the effects of sports psychology, and all of the reasons why Major beats Dominic.

Be good!