THERE WILL BE MY JOURNAL DEDICATED TO ME TRYING TO GET A MEMORY BETTER THAN STAGE 6 DEMENTIA PATIENT
sorry for any typos, this text is kinda huge and I might’ve missed some of the mistakes. You can always tell me about them ig!
(inspired by Kyiote’s training guide)
Hey, lemme introduce myself to ya a bit just in case you don’t know me (I hope you don’t lol, I’m not that famous yet)
I’m Fiskih, I come from a foreign country and have to combine my job with studying.
I’ve been investigating on memorisation techniques for quite a while, and on late autumn 2023 got a memory course. I’ve been studying it quite hard, trying to memorise words, numbers and other information, tho mostly my performance was one of the worst ones for some reason.
However, it didn’t last long. Late December I’ve become affected by a severely traumatic event and my performance got waaaaayyy worse. I didn’t experience much emotions regarding that event, but my brain started working differently than before. I’ve lost all of my ability to concentrate to the point that whenever I turn on my phone to google something, I forget what I wanted to do/google in a couple of seconds. I couldn’t study properly just cuz I forget that I am supposed to study. I forget everything. This definetely made it harder for me to keep following the course, to the point that I’ve dropped it completely. I know a person who experienced something similar after their best friend died - they lost any ability to do mental math. Even something like 7+2.
However, now, after approximately 8 months after the event I’ve started noticing that my memory and focus started to regain again bit by bit, which inspired me to continue my memory journey. My other inspirations are: low-wage job that isn’t what I want to do for my whole life; the need to imigrate and enroll into a foreign university in order to get a good education and an ability to do my dream job; and the fact that I’m probably going to get kicked out of school of I don’t fix my knowledge on almost all of the school subjects; aand I guess the star guest: I have to generally speed up because in order to provide for my family and, y’know, probably not get kicked out on the streets this autumn I should get better at my job and work more, which leads to the need to somehow speed up the studying process for school, cuz otherwise I am probably going to not have enough time for my job, especially knowing the fact that I will have to prepare for graduation exams (which are very hard here) this year in order to enroll into a university (and I have to pass them very well so I’d have the chance to get the education for free, cuz I won’t be able to pay for it)
Now you know a bit more about me and my background.
Onto the training itself
The fact that there really is no such thing as talent and my skills solely depend on me is quite inspiratonal in my opinion.
Fun fact: I tried memorizing all of the key points of Kyiote’s guide as locis. Immediately learned a couple of lessons. I used my fingers as a loci. Figured out that if I just put a 3d image of a word associated with a tip from the text it just won’t get remembered. I have to imagine PAIN that these objects cause to my fingers.
Alright, so, the plan:
1. Determining a goal
I want to learn memory techniques in order to be able to excel in studying, talking precisely - to be able to learn a whole textbook completely (around 300-400 pages) in a day. Which means all the definitions, key ideas, facts and overall paragraphs. Also I want to accelerate and train my brain in order to be able to memorise any information as fast as possible - numbers (60 per min), maps, places, people (30-50 per min), words (200 per hour), definitions (100 per hour), facts (150 per hour) etc.
My dream project is to try and memorise the map of my city.
Also I want to learn at least 3000 words for Spanish and some other languages to test out my techniques on different types of words
The deadline is 6 months.
2. Creating a schedule
Knowing myself, I can say it’s better to start little. So, as it was said in the tutorial, I am going to start with 30 mins of training a day and increase it by 15 mins every week or two until I hit 4 hours. Talking about an exact time, honestly I am unsure about it. My schedule is kinda messy lately. I wake up at 12:00-14:00 and get my free time after 22:00. Go to sleep at around 6:00-8:00. I prefer night life currenly cuz I am a bit tired of the daylight rn, and it also seems like it’s my activity peak. I’d say it might be a good idea to excercise between 00:00 and 00:30. I’ll probably get back to waking up earlier some time later, so it will be changed. The perfect option would probably be to excercise from 10:00 to 10:30.
3. Excercising
I’ve done some research and came to the conclusion that the main key to the great memory is locis/memory palaces/whatever-you-call-them. The funny thing is that throughout my previous training I ignored them completely and actually dislike them (I don’t remember why exactly), but they really do seem to be working cuz I still remember some stuff I was forced to store in the locis back then, after 8-9 months, without repetition. So, since I’ve got very little experience w/ locis and they are going to be my main focus, I’ll dedicate a lot of time to build and learn how to use them, and try to apple them to my everyday life as much as I can. Fun fact: yesterday I thought and researched about them so much that in my dream I was trying to create those darn locis as well.
Also, I have some troubles with visualization: my brain is kinda lazy and I cant imagine anything vividly. All of my images are kinda unstable and the way I connect them to each other is usually quite boring and hard to remember. So, that means I’ll have to dedicate half of my time to work with visualisation.
AND ALSO I am extremely slow! Not only in studying, but in everything else as well! And as you may guess, it is a biig problem. Even tho I feel much more comfortable doing everything in a slow pace, I have to get faster and get used to it. And that means that I will spend another half focuing on the speed instead.
Now, after I determined my focus points, I can head on to creating specific excercises for all of the areas.
10 minutes - creating locis for future excercises
10 minutes - visualising and connecting info as vividly and memorably as possible, focusing on quality instead of quantity.
Stuff I am going to visualize:
First week:
- Encoding of foreign words/names (will change every other day)
- Encoding of numbers
- Encoding of definitions
- Encoding of facts
- Encoding of formulas
2 mins per excercise
Second week:
- Encoding of the connection between foreign words and their translation
- Encoding names and faces (I have an idea of using people themselves as a loci for the info I have about them like bday, name, hobbies, etc.)
- Connection of numbers
- Definitions
- Encoding and connecting the formulas
- Encoding and connecting dates
- Facts
Since on the second week I am supposed to train for 45 mins a day it means I’ll have 15 mins for each section, so now I’ll have 15:7= 2 mins 10 seconds per excercise
We’ll see what will be on the third week later ig
10 minutes - speed memorising
It’ll have the same excercises as the previous 10 mins but now I’ll be trying to focus on the speed instead, so now I’ll have quantity goals:
Week 1
- foreign words/names (will change every other day) - 20 words per 2 minutes
- number chains - 40 numbers per 2 minutes
- definitions - 15 definitions per 2 minutes
- facts - 20 facts per 2 minutes
- formulas - 5 formulas per 2 minutes
2 mins per excercise
I will determine the speed goals for week 2 depending on the results of first week
4. Journaling
You are here. Honestly, I don’t have a very clear idea on how exactly am I going to journal my journey, but I want to try this:
I will write what I excercises I have done every day, and on the end of the week I will write a summary of the things I realized and etc.
5. Increasing the challenge
As I mentioned earlier, I am going to incease my training time by 15 minutes every week. Also, I will raise my goals for speed every week as well (the increase depends on my current speed). I think adding up 15% of what I am capable of every week will let me improve quite smoothly and not fall into a burnout. Maybe I’ll change it later depending on my future memory expirience.
6. Making it public
Hii! As far as I know, there are some people who are into memory training too on this forum, so I guess it might just be the best place for me to post about my memory improvement journey. It will be nice to get advices and make friends here who could help me stay consistent with my training. Something like mental gym bros lol.
7. Treating advices like gold
Aaaand here comes your time, dear reader! Go on and drop something useful if you want! I’ll be happy to communicate with people here and will try to use all of the tips I am given.
8. Being fine with mistakes
BRO, I AM A WALKING MISTAKE, I CAN TAKE IT
Well, talking seriously, I might sometimes hate myself for not improving fast enough or smth like that, but I know that this behavior is unproductive so lately I’ve been getting rid of it quite successfully. Also failing is a part of studiyng, it means that I am probably improving/going to improve soon. And I have no chance to give up.
(+ food, schedule, excercise
Weeeeelp…
bruh…
Food: currently I eat whatever I find, my diet is very inconsistent and ususally quite poor, tho I am used to eat quality meals thanks to my parents. I can’t change much except trying to eat less sugar/processed foods. I guess I’ll have to limit my candy intake…
Schedule: it is very unstable as well. I am naturally a night owl, I always get activity peak at night and I prefer rest and relax first, then work. And it works quite well (wait, nah, I thought about it a bit and realised that this system is destructive af… oh well, gotta work on it ig). You see, I don’t have a reason to wake up early. My job starts at evening, and for some reason it’s hard for me to do anything productive before it. So it’s best to self-improve after. And also I feel more comfy at night in general. Thinking about it, I realised that I tend to avoid sunlight a lot for some reason lol. GOSH CREATING A SCHEDULE TURNED OUT TO BE SO HARD AFTER I STARTED THINKING ABOUT IT. Wait a sec, Ima try to write down my actual plan and then come back. Alright, I think I’ve created a scedule I like now. Basically I am gonna sleep from 6:00 to 12:30, meaning I will get 8 and a half hours a sleep, which is supposed to be enough. I won’t go in-depth about my schedule here, but all of my studying will be done after 00:00 when I’m done with the work. I hope with the memory techniques I’ll have enough time. Fun fact: looks like I am only able to access this forum and the league itself only either at morning or evening bc I have some network problems usually when it’s day. Actually its a whole other topic which I would really like to discuss with forum administration, so maybe I will write about it later here.
Excercise: damn that part be hitting my weak spots. Well, I was into sports before, but abandoned it all this summer for some reason. I don’t know if my job could count as a physical activity cuz it’s very unstable just like everything else in my life. So I guess it will be a good idea to do basic excercises for 15 mins a day and then gradually increase the time to 30 mins. I think I’ll just find some video with a pack of excercises and repeat after it. I think the best time for it will be 10 mins after I wake up.
OMG THIS POST IS FINALLY DONE. MY FIRST NORMAL POST IS FINALLY DONE. You might be surprised, but I actually spent 2 days on completing it (or will it be more correct to say 2 nights?). Well, I hope it’s worth it and some people actually stumble on my post. I WANT TO MAKE ACCUINTANCES HEREEEEE
