Yes, that’s true, just 9 weeks and few days ago, I was miserable because I couldn’t get even under 10 minutes. But when I think about it now, my daily memory training is “nothing”. 5 decks of cards, it’s maybe 15-20 minutes of work (memorizing, recalling, shuffling and so on). That’s time time I travel every day to school and back home.
Recalling takes about 01 : 15. I don’t arrange the second deck to the same order, just sometimes.
By my view, the hard times are already gone. When it was 20 minutes per deck, for example. Just one-two decks a day, and one hour gone. But now? Everyone could find 20 minutes of free time to train.
That’s pretty awesome NW. I’m actually right behind you. I clocked a 34 second time (0 errors) this morning. I’m continuing to practice with the Ben System. There were definitely moments that I stalled a little too much, so I still have to practice recalling some of the more obscure images.
London007, that sounds like a challenge.
We can try, who’ll get as first under 25 seconds, what do you say? Just for fun. I promise, I won’t lie about my results. I would just lie to myself, anyway.
I see, that Boris uses the same system as me, and he got under 25 seconds, so I don’t even think about changing the system. I’ll try to get maximum from system I use (52 images (major based) / 52 loci).
I started new “training plan”, so I will train cards only in these days :
Tuesday (20 minutes cards)
Saturday (Speed cards (5 attempts))
Sunday (Guessing picked cards from deck, and maybe speed cards, if I have enough free time)
I don’t have enough loci, and I want to practice also abstract images, numbers, words, and so on, so that’s why I cannot train cards every day.
I think that you wouldn’t have a very strong opponent against you.
Sounds like challenge I’m up for! I practice almost every day. I’ve also been focusing on my random words (5 minutes - best = 80), names and faces (5 min - best = 46), historical dates (5 minutes - best = 50), and abstract images (5 minutes - best = 100). Having enough loci is definately important. I’ve been expanding mine continuously when I memorize my class notes.
Thanks Boris. I’ve been hitting less than 45 seconds for a few weeks now. The hardest part of the Ben System for me was really just translating the cards into images. So I practiced a lot my conversion rate (i.e. just being able to recognize the cards). The images come pretty easily once converted. I use them for both my decimal and binary systems.
I wrote you a personal message when I couldn’t get under one minute. Do you remember?
Your advice was : just practice. Yeah, just practice, nothing else.
I’d like to have some experiences from memory competitions, but I’m just 17 (born on 04. 04), so I have to wait to go far away from home. And I have no one to go with me.
English’s not my mother tongue, and I don’t have enough courage to try “dates & events; random words” disciplines in English. I saw papers used before, and I understood, but still, it would be better to have it in mother tongue.
On WMC they translate it, right? You just have to post them e-mail few months ago. Or did it change?
Maybe, when I’ll be older, and if WMC will take place in England, I’ll try it, just to get GMM. Maybe I would be the first Slovakian! Just one woman from Czech republic is GMM (Michaela Buchvaldová-Karsten). Czech and Slovakia are like twins, so that’s why I’m comparing us.
There was a Prague Open Memory Championship once in Czech…I understand Czech language as Slovak language, so I would certainly try it. Or the word “Open” means “English”? I’m not afraid of English, but at first competition would be a lot of stress, and translating wouldn’t help me a lot.
There are many tips on this forum on how to improve your times. I think that I may be able to contribute one more, but I’m not entirely sure about its validity or if some else has already floated the idea around.
It has come to my attention a number of times while training that what I do prior to attempting to memorize a pack has a noticeable impact on my results. For instance, if I work one morning on various roman rooms (or loci) for 3 hours and then eat lunch and then try memorizing a pack (Less L. Method) with rooms not involved in the morning session, I find that my results are much better than if I had done some other activity not related to memory training in the morning. Has anyone else experienced a similar phenomenon?
Hi there…
Now, I’m going to post here a little bit weird time, 20 minutes…It’s time for memorization deck of cards using only my natural memory! No images, just pure “names” of the cards, no journeys, just a default system for memorizing: repetition.
I decided to memorize them by following way:
I picked 4 cards, repeated them, picked another 4 cards, repeated last 4 cards, and then all 8, and so on…
After 20 minutes, and few seconds, I was sure with 50 cards, two of them weren’t clear, I had to think…
What do you think about this? I read somewhere that it would take about 1 hour…
When I registered to this forum, someone told me here, that it’s pretty fast that I can memorize the deck in 20 minutes. No, shame on me! And I’m glad I’m far away from those times!
I think that mnemonics improved my natural memory, too. I have to test someone who has no experiences with memory training, and then I’ll post the results.
Hey Nightwalker, a good experiment might be to see how many digits you can memorise in 5 minutes without using any mnemonics. If your natural memory has already improved, I’d be interested to see the result!
Edit: Just hit 4:51, forgot 1 card which took me about a minute to recall, but I think I’ll count it anyway. First under 5 minute memorisation with my PAO! Onwards from here.
Nightwalker – those are great scores. Do you want to come to one of our Google Plus hangouts and share some tips on your system and on achieving that kind of rapid progress?
The online meetings are usually on Sundays at 7pm GMT. (We could do it earlier in the day if that is better…)
Josh, I appreciate your offer. I think, I’ll try it next Sunday.
By the way, about my system. I’m afraid I don’t have anything new to say. Probably you’re not the only one who thinks that this isn’t the worst progress, so here is all my system described in one sentence: “I use 52 images based on major system (a lot of them are from book “How to develop a super-power memory by Harry Lorayne” (I’m not a native speaker, so I had a problem with some finding words that fit MS)), and 52 loci (route around my house, for example).”
A didn’t have enough loci, so I trained just 5 decks a day (sometimes when I chose to train numbers, I had to leave cards alone). That training was really lazy, I guess. 5 decks, it’s nothing. It never took more than 30 minutes (memorization, recall, shuffling).
And I started to use loci when I registered to this forum. Before that, it was just pure linking. I trained only words, and numbers. I couldn’t improve my time for cards, so whenever I tried it, the result was the same or worse than before. I described this problem once here on this forum. But method of loci solved it.
Anyway, I’ll join that hangout, I’m also curious what you guys talk about there.
Hello. I am practicing my deck memorization. I have the images for the 52 cards pretty well down and also the 52 loci in my house. Now it is just working on speed. One thing that is difficult is that it seems I can only practice the memorization once or twice in an evening because the images from one practice session begin to blur with the next. I was wondering if when you practice you use several different routes to make the practice easier and keep from getting confused. Thanks!
Hello. I am practicing my deck memorization. I have the images for the 52 cards pretty well down and also the 52 loci in my house. Now it is just working on speed. One thing that is difficult is that it seems I can only practice the memorization once or twice in an evening because the images from one practice session begin to blur with the next. I was wondering if when you practice you use several different routes to make the practice easier and keep from getting confused. Thanks!
Yes, as I said, I practiced only 5 decks a day. So I have just 5 different routes. I use one route just once a day. Last days I was working on another 5 routes, so the training will be more intense in the near future. (I want to break 25 seconds. I challenged London007 who will be there first!). And when the weather is fine, I’ll create another 5.
By the way, maybe not all of those journeys are good enough to break you personal record, for example. I have a journey through our kitchen, and I always have with that journey the worst time and results (there are a lot of small objects that are not so memorable for me). If you have just one or two routes it’s not good, because you don’t know something new, you don’t experiment.
Thanks for the advice. It seems I just need to get more journeys under my belt. On a somewhat related note. When you are memorizing short term things I assume you use certain journeys over and over. If you want to remember long term things do you restrict certain memory journeys for those things (e.g., names of presidents, history, book plots etc.)? If so, what is the best method to practice (i.e., to go back to the journeys) so you don’t forget them. It seems as though some people can retain tons of long-term information but it seems like you would have to have a very systematic and regular practice to review those long-term items or even those would soon be forgotten. Thanks for patience with the new guy.
Yeah, if you want to remember something you want to use in the future, use some special journey for that information. I started using mnemonics just from the beginning of April, so my first goal is to reach some better skills for competition disciplines.
I use mnemonics for learning vocabulary, I memorized about 1500 English words in one month (I’m not a native speaker). I don’t know how often you have to repeat that information, but I memorized calendar for this year (date of each first Sunday of the month, and then I can calculate the all dates), and I remember it still. And it was three months ago.
As I mentioned learning vocabulary, some words sticked to my head very strongly. I created association once, and I realized after some time, that I have no problem with that word. I think it depends on the information. And the truth is, that mnemonics make memorizing strong.
Have a look at the forgetting curve. (if anyone knows of some more up-to-date research in this area, I’d love it. As a scientist, my mind is screaming at me to not believe the results because of Ebbinghaus’ experimental procedure)
Most of us are using a revision that follows a similar kind of pattern. An hour later, a day later, 3 days later, a week later, a month later, 6 months later…just go back and visit it periodically.
There’s also a thing called Anki, this’ll remind you when to revise certain stuff!
It turns out that this Sunday (29 July 2012) will be about memory techniques for medical students. Will you be around Saturday 5pm GMT? If you want, we could do another Google+ Hangout then, just for a general chat about memory techniques.
5pm GMT would be 1pm in New York City and 6pm 7pm in Vienna.
(Or let me know another time on Saturday or Sunday that would work for you and I’ll schedule a hangout.)
