1:29 for me, zero mistakes.
I’m getting faster every day.
Wessells - Amazing! You will be under a minute before the month is out!!..
DH - Time it and let us know!!.. 
Alright, I did one. There were several errors - two blank loci and one instance where I couldn’t remember the (P), BUT - I did it in 1:40 (32 seconds faster than my record) - and thought I had memorized them, that is, had formed what I felt to be a satisfactory image for each PAO. I should have taken a little more time visualizing just to break the 2 min mark, but I had no idea I was moving so fast. I’ll update when I have time to do a few decks later today.
For the most part, what I’m working on right now is making sure that I jump immediately to the next loci. I can tell many of my mistakes come from sort of forgetting where I am. I KNOW the loci well, but when decoding cards, it’s easy for me to get lost.
Edit: Oh, and good job Wessells, keep it up!! Now where is that guy who posted the remarkably fast improvements…?
I am finding that about once per deck, I decode a PAO in about 1.5 seconds. They have to be among my “favorite” cards, and I have to get a little lucky and hit it just right, but God will it feel good when that happens every time!
You have a deck yet, Huggy?
Hi DH,
Yes, I actually have several decks, but to be honest, I never use them!
I find it quicker and easier to just use my phone app. When I get to my target level of 1 minute, I may well use a deck to see if it is any different, but as I am still improving, I don’t want to change just yet.
The last time I gave up cards for almost 24 hours, and focused exclusively on digits, I was much more comfortable with cards upon return. I think I mentioned in a previous post that those times where I can read all three cards quickly, the images stick far better even with less visualization. Thus, there is an exponential return for increased skill in this area, pretty much in the same way as when you are fast enough with cards you don’t have to constantly review (which is why you jump from 15 minutes to 10 without a lot of intermediate work. So, I won’t be timing my cards for a while but for the record I did Time twice successfully yesterday and both of them were over two minutes, then I had a couple under 1:50 that I didn’t toally recall. So yesterday was no good, I guess. Nevertheless, on February 1st, my fastest time is going to be faster than Wessell’s! It’s on!!
I think that another reason you may have been more comfortable on your return is because you are allowing your mind to rest and clear the loci’s of information that was being subconciously retained.
Created another journey today - now have 7.
We’ll see about that. I just got to 1:18 without any errors. That’s 11 seconds faster then yesterday and I clocked 2 times at 1:14 already (recall wasn’t good).
Let’s just put it this way:
1 second from top 100
4 seconds from the national record
18 seconds from the 1 minute mark (which isn’t my real goal, I just wanted under 2 minutes but I can’t let DH get past me this easily, someone has to stop him so I guess that’s going to be me).
Congrats Wessells!! I have to say, I am quite envious and impatient that I am only on 3:19 when reading that, but I do understand that time will bring me closer to my goal…
Today I ran through a couple of decks with times of 2:25 and 2:30. Which is a lot quicker than my last few days, I have only gone under 3 mins once.
Masses of blanks, no errors though.
I was a little disappointed at first.
But thinking about it, I managed to form an image, at the time, and move on.
It was the recall where I really fell down.
I am thinking I may try a few days of these ‘too fast’ runs and see if my recalling picks up.
Or I could try nudging along at a more comfortable speed and improve that way.
What do you guys think?
I personally think that having a day with fast times and a lot of errors is good because then you can push yourself to go faster, your mind will adjust to it and within a day or two the errors will fade and only the fast time will stay.
You know I just said that to motivate you, right Wessel? I’ll level with you guys, though. Yesterday I was put on an anti convulsant medication (I was already on one - just not this one) and I can not think for ■■■■. I don’t know what my deck time is today because I can’t memorize one. What is worse is that I am stuck with it until February 12. Not only will I not improve during this time period; for lack of practice, I will in all likelihood gtet slower. I was recommended. This change in medication because as you know, I was rarely sleeping. It seems to me that the chance of my failing this last semester of school is also quite high - I have already given up on the opportunity to run that experiment that those of you who have read many of my posts know I was thrilled to run. So that’s that.
Oh god I just read your post Wessel! Even under better circumstances… Well that’s really amazing,
Please share your practice schedule And methods if you don’t mind, Wessel.
Oldmanpaul - You just asked the question that was running through my head too!! Thanks! 
I have been getting faster and faster at flicking through the cards, but then getting blanks at certain loci. I can only assume it is because the image isn’t strong enough to stick, because when recalling it isn’t always the early loci that I blank on. For example, it could be the 10th loci that I get a blank on, when I remembered the 9 beforehand (which were memorised earlier) with no problems.
It is frustrating knowing that you could take 30-60 seconds longer and have an easy recall, but I have faith in the advice of my fellow memorisers on here who advise pushing it and making mistakes!..
Will be nice when I get to the two minute mark with no errors and easy recall though!
A question for all of you:-
What would you say is the fastest time you can get (roughly) without any problems in recall? My best is 3:19, but to have no problems in recall and reel them straight off, it would probably be 4:30-5 mins! Intersted to see others responses?
Hi guys,
@ DH Sorry to hear you’re having problems with your health, I hope you’ll get better soon.
@ Wessells Congrats on your times! You’re doing great man. I wish I was there with you, but beware I’m right behind you, so rest not!
Personally I haven’t memorized any decks nor digits for nearly a week. The last entry in my practice spreadsheet dates from 12 Jan. Apart from being preoccupied with other stuff, personal and professional, I also felt this inner resistance to the whole memory thing. I know It’s fun, and that practice yields results (and a rush!), I know that it’s good for me, and yet I have felt this resistance to the whole thing for the past week. Do you guys recognize this?
Another reason for not having practiced is that I decided my PAO list needs revision. I’ve known this for some weeks but I kept delaying it. I’ve been unhappy with certain dull Ps, Os that just don’t work and As that do not have enough action in them. So an excuse I made up for myself was that before I could resume practicing I needed to revise my PAO list, so not carve images in my brain that wouldn’t make it through the revision anyway. So that’s where I am right now. Last night I changed around 25% of my Ps As and Os and I thought I was ready to resume practice tonight. However, there are some great ideas to be found in the forum and I couldn’t resist revising some more, especially with the help of this thread:
So I’m not sure if I can start practicing tomorrow already. Anyways, the resistance is gone and I’m very eager to start again. Not having practiced for nearly a week, and having to get used to my updated PAO list, I’m expecting and accepting much slower times, but I’m not gonna panic. I’m sure I’ll go sub 1 soon.
@ DH By the way DoubleHelix, you got your happy noob! Some of my new Ps and Os come directly from your awesome list. Thanks for posting! I’ve seen quite a few PA(O) lists on the web, but yours definitely stands out when it come to originality, and I think many people will benefit from it.
1.13 and thus I have beat Rick the Jong, National champion of the Netherlands.
So, unofficially, I just broke the national record.
I’m pretty excited but it’s all right, I think I’ll bring it down some more, just to be sure to get some nice times in a championship (also, I had 4 decks which had more then 8 errors today so I’m not really stable at this speed).
Rompie, I am waiting for you at the finish line and yes, I really have the feeling that what I’m doing is really useless. No one shares my interest or competitiveness and so I’m pretty much on my own memorizing 6 decks of cards every day.
So, yes, I do feel like I shouldn’t be doing this and instead I should study and work on things that are more important (like finding a job and such) but I try to keep myself amused with this as long as possible, maybe I will be able to use it for my study.
But for now, place 88 on the worldranks with 1 minute and 13 seconds.
Thanks for your kindness Rompie. Obviously I’m pitying myself and sulking a little but I was driven by big dreams for March; dreams that are fading a bit.
I’m thrilled that you got some usage from the PAO! Yes! One thing I am still capable of right now is building and memorize lists (not on the spot - I mean like naming PAOs, etc.). So that’s how I’m spending my time. Maybe I should get to work on a 000-999 object list - that would be worth my time for sure. Today, I realized that it was stupid (in my case - perhaps not yours, Huggy) to include my cards in My PAO list and try to memorize them - It’s a slow process. So I redid a lot of the PAO today - kept only the cards that matched the major system, but moved their numbers around accordingly. Some of my New PAOs have actions and objects relevant to the character, rather than matching the major system, to experiment with which works better. When those are all hashed out, I’ll post all the new If you want, because that’s 50 or so extra PAO’s.
Huggy, do you review which Loci you miss? You might find a pattern if you do. Sometimes I feel like the P A and O don’t match too well, and in those cases I benefit from taking an extra moment to be more creative and take liberty with the PAOs.
Just for fun Wessels, why don’t you double deck a few times? Of course your time will slow a bit, but maybe you could shed some light on how and why it feels different.
I hope you don’t mind if I share a dream I just woke up from really quick in summary. It was the trippiest and most amazing dream I have ever had. First, I was with my girlfriend and a younger version of her and their clothing was made out of cards that kept shifting in groups of three. While the card/clothes were shifting, they were talking to me in detail about the images that those cards would produce: “Oh, look at Scooby…did you know he could ride a unicycle?” and so on. And the images MATCHED the cards. This card Guru/father figure was giving me pointers on how to win the competition that I thought I was about to attend. Some of you may know that clocks can’t produce consistent times in a dream. Apparently, cards are different.
Then I was in a video game (my diamonds are vid game characters) and I was on this huge floor of red tile (4115) and I was trying to complete the objectives of the game which all had to do with carrying out the actions of my cards with the objects and persons in my cards. Each time I would complete an objective, like flying a kite around with my friend Joe or hookshotting into a sandwich (hookshot is a retractable chain/harpoon that pulls you to the destination after it hooks in), some of the tiles would raise. Finally, when all the tiles raised, everything zoomed way,way, out, and I saw That I was just a tiny, colored speck on the jacket on Eric Cartman! And he was going around doing actions with objects in his “Enormous” world! (This ending is no surprise since last night I experimented with zooming in, in, in, on my loci). At this point, my quality of consciousness changed - I won’t say I knew it was a dream, but I was more conscious, I guess - I was thinking “Wow, this is so vivid and amazing.” Then my girlfriend woke me up :. It was like Foer’s dream, but BIGGER and MORE than what he described…exhilarating!
When I read his book, I thought he made up that part about the dream he had the night before the competition…silly me.
I know, this is off topic, but I had a very interesting dream few days ago… But it wasn’t about cards. It was about numbers.
I’m not gonna write it all but the point:
- One guy was showing me numbers written on paper. One by one. It was two digit numbers. And I was memorizing them. I don’t know why, but I used my first journey I created, and it’s being used for cards, so when I woke up, that particular journey was filled with images of numbers… So I had to remember it, because there’s no way to find number images in that journey, I don’t use it for numbers… I remember all those 15 2-digit numbers guy showed to me. I was creating associations as I normally do. I found it really interesting…
By the way, DoubleHelix, amazing dream! I like that feeling when you wake up and you’re like “God, I wanna another round!” 
Maybe (probably) that dream reflected the consolidation of gobs of information during sleep.
In frustration, I just drank a pot of coffee - that’s 10-12 cups, folks.
And timed 1:40! No errors. Now I get an ice-cream cake. Better not rest too much, Wessell!
Looks like I’ve found a ritual. I’m 24 years old - what are the odds of having a heart attack in the next 20 or so days?