I’m looking for some advice please to improve my digits memorisation game. I’m very much a beginner (mostly used mnemonics for trivia/history until now) and have just started practicing 30 digit sprints. I’m using a 2 digit PAO system and have fairly instant recall of my PAO elements, but I’m struggling to make the complex scenes “stick” to my loci.
For example, if I’m memorising 28-75-34 (Mike Myers - hanging upside down - gold cube) on a Sofa, I visualise Mike hanging from the cube which crashes into the sofa. The trouble is at the recall stage, I often remember the action, but the person or object feels fuzzy. It feels like Mike Myers or the Cube aren’t that relevant to the locus/image as they aren’t altering it, so my brain doesn’t bother remembering it for the recall stage.
My main question is do I need to link each element (Person, Action and Object) directly to the locus to make it memorable?I feel like this would cost a lot of time if trying to be quick so was hoping for a more efficient method. I’d love to know what exact steps you are using when placing a PAO image to ensure the whole scene is locked in and easily memorable before moving on. Thank you in advance!
When Memory Palaces are well-formed, there is no need to add additional linking.
It should be like a rollercoaster car that is always already bound to the rail.
And you achieve that by making sure the journey is drawn from memory and logically divided by using the established principles… or principles of your own devising (or both).
Efficiency is not much of a goal without effectiveness established first. Keep that in mind and you should soar along very well.
Yes yes that frustration. It burns you and leaves scar as well even after a while. My partner joked saying I do not do anything of use and just play the number ‘game’ because learnt mnemonics has not been utilized to crack this competitive exam which is the goal. I still laugh how she belittled my SKILLLS.
Specifically for you, your problem is what psychology calls ‘cognitive binding’. That is choosing locations, numbering them, creating a journey, vivid visual representation of information and placing them in locus does not complete the circuitry. The missing glue is that ‘cognitive binding’. How to go about it? First know there are many and some potent are spatial binding, auditory binding, visual binding, social binding(that is assigning action to image), visual binding(the picture you created), tactile binding. Now that you know them, start your little experiments.
For few practices, assign certain comical action to your characters and see which of your images retrieve and which did not. Another few rounds with another kind of binding and so on. At a point you realize one of them is more sticky for you(it is a very personal thing). Capitalize on that but also experiment with other bindings here and there just to see any other binding is just as effective.
The beauty of this is that now you have trained one of the most essential skills. You have gained autonomy. Next time when some of the images do not retrieve, you can diagnose and make approximation why was that and repair that.
My most brutal experimentation was to encode numbers in journey I have created and trying to retrieve them after a 2 minutes without any mental run(that is making sure the images are there after fast encoding which is utilized by almost all memory competitiors). That stripped the method to the core and provided me with glimpse on how the method works.
Hi. I dont know much about the method. But I think you could link only one idea to the locus. The stronger. Therefore you could save cognitive energy. So you could relate only Mike myers to the sofa. And the other items are united with it. Just an Idea. People here know more.
You can add more than one item per loci… I have added up to ten, but when it comes to high speed, it is better to use one item per loci, since you don’t have time to organize them and it is slower if you are going for speed. For memorizing at medium speed, it is fine, and that is what I usually use when memorizing concepts. It can be up to a paragraph per loci.
That’s very helpful thank you all for your insights.
So just to confirm I understand. If learning at own pace (e.g. trivia, concepts and so on) you can pile on the images to loci (and obviously reinforce this via spaced repetition).
However, if you were doing 5 min numbers for example you wouldn’t use PAO and instead you’d do one image per locus? I was trying to utilise PAO for speed as I’m still building up my temporary palaces and the efficiency of PAO on palace space has been very helpful.
Lastly, when I’ve been using PAO I’ve found more success in linking the locus to the person first and then letting the action/object impact the locus together logically. For example, say we have the digits 41 55 11. For me this is Bumblebee (from Transformers) juggling with a lightsaber. If we stick with the sofa, my image would be Bumblebee leaking oil on sofa (with radio noises) and juggling with lightsaber which drops and cuts whole sofa in half.
My question is do you have any advice on the above example to make it more speedy but just as memorable for recall phase? Thanks again all for your help on this.
I insist that I dont know much about palace. Just ideas. I have problems with palace I dont like so much.but im trying.ive seen that in my case furniture are difficult to remember. But I improve if i use a character in the place too. like Shakira. I think thats stronger but more complicated. It could be Shakira singing in the sofa with the music of bumblebee radio in the sofa. Just an Idea. But maybe too much images. Maybe it can be used if the furniture does not work.
It’s just through practice; you really do adapt. As Giordano Bruno says, add locations ten at a time until you master them, which will be quite fast if you train.
I usually memorize new places very quickly, but I don’t think I used to be that fast. The important thing is to practice. The brain is lazy, and if it doesn’t see quick results, it becomes even lazier. I’m really lazy, but curiosity always drives me forward.
You’re not the only one. There are some people who only like to use the chain method, along with other image composition methods, and they’re quite fast at memorizing. Just choose the one you like best and train with it. I use any method depending on what I need, but for the long term, I prefer locations.