I’ve just created my PAO images for the full deck of cards and was wondering if it’s the method used to get under one minute memorization times. And if so, how much did it take you to get under one minute times?
Thanks in advance,
Juan
Almost any system, given enough fluency can give you very fast times.
How long it takes to get there depends on many factors. To get under 60 seconds with a single card PAO, you’ll need to be able to recognize your imagery at a rate of 1.15 seconds per card. That’s just RECOGNIZING them. You’ll also need to be able to merge 3 at a time into a PAO scene, and make it interact with the loci in sequence (assuming you will use a memory palace to anchor the scenes.) This means that your true recognition speed will likely need to be closer to 0.65 seconds or so per card, with the 0.5 added for the scene creation. This is quite fast.
I hesitate to put a timetable on how quickly people can get that fluent, but a realistic expectation is likely in the multiple months range. You should do a baseline test and see what pace you’re currently recognizing images at. This will give you an idea of how much of a speed increase will be needed to hit your goal.
Try to set a realistic percent-based speed reduction goal per week or month, say a 5% improvement each week and see what that would project out to.
Crawl before you walk.
Walk before you jog.
Jog before you sprint.
There are some who advocate going as fast as possible and just letting yourself catch up. There’s merit to that, but I’m more of a fan of keeping expectations realistic and setting incremental attainable goals to help prevent you from getting discouraged or burned out trying to bite off more that you can chew at the start.
2 Likes
3 months.
I believe it can be done faster. I highly recommend listening to this interview by Ron Johnson with Andrea Muzii for how to create a good PAO system.
3 Likes
Yeah that seems like realistic expectations. Also while I’m at it, is there a substantial benefit to making three cards per image than only one? I find it easier to make links between specific cards, but I’m just starting out.
Thanks for the response,
Juan
Thanks! I honestly thought longer. I’ll give the podcast a listen, thanks for sharing,
Juan
Was 3 months for me, but Cards is also where i started. If you have some experience with say doing Images you will probably be faster than that with regular practice. I was doing 3 decks a day.
You may get there faster or slower, just build your system and enjoy. One error i made initially too was having just one palace. Keep it fresh with multiple.
3 Likes
Not totally sure what you mean. There may be some confusion in terms happening here. I like to think of the smallest single association that contains encoded data as an “element.” Multiple types of elements can be combined to form a single “image” or a “scene” which represents several pieces of information. You could have a person as one element, a color as another, an emotion, a smell, a texture, an object, all as other elements that represent various pieces of encoded information.
If you are talking about a scene that contains elements from 3 cards within it, encoded with the elements of a person, an action, and an object… that is the standard PAO setup. Card 1 is represented by the Person in the scene, Card 2 is represented by the action the person is doing, and Card 3 is represented by the object the action is being done with/to.
You could add adjectives to the mix to encode 4 cards per “image” but you would still be only encoding one card per “element” within that image.
More on this idea here:
Some of us have built systems that compress two cards per element, usually as a person or object image. This has the advantage of only needing 26 elements to encode a full deck, versus 52 elements in a single card system. The tradeoff is that a two-card per element system requires 2704 associations to be learned, one for every possible combination of two cards in a deck. This obviously is a much bigger and lengthier task than just learning the 156 associations in a standard PAO.
I’ve been working on learning and applying a 2-card system since the beginning of the year, and I’m down to 97 seconds to memorize a deck after 6 months of work, still haven’t cracked the 1 minute mark. So it definitely takes quite a bit of time.
For comparison, a true “three card per element” system would require over 140,000 associations to be made to cover every possible set of three card combinations. This is not only impractical, but practically impossible to learn without literal decades of non-stop practice, and there is almost not enough distinct words / imagery to account for a unique one for every set.
Hope that kinda gets to what you were asking about?
2 Likes
Thank you, yes I meant as in the difference between using three different images for each card, each using one different spot of the memory palace and using one image for three cards as in one space in the memory palace for a person with an action and object for each card. The post you linked was kind of what I was talking about.
Thanks for answering,
Juan
1 Like
This is the way. 
2 Likes