Every day of the year memory palace

General Memory Chat
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First post! I came up with the idea of storing information at loci which all repressent a date of the year. 365 loci is one large memory palace so perhaps having 12 smaller would be easier.

For this project I think I might use a linear video game where each level represents a month. Perhaps I’ll use Diddy Kong Racing, or linear areas in Dark Souls 2. My ambition is to at least develop this system in one year one month a month.

Before I undertake this task. Do people already use this system? And are there easier or more powerfull systems?

I would also very much appreciate suggestions on games with linear paths that you have had success with. I find super mario 64 a bit messy because of the freedom to walk whereever you please.

Cheers

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Let’s assume I want to be able to tell someone about a celebrity who shares his/her birthday. Or perhaps I want to tell someone about historic events that occurred on a particular day (irrespective of the year). I would use 12 memory palaces, each of which contains approximately 30 stations. On the outside of each palace, I would place an image that signifies which month that palace represents. The memory palaces themselves would just be homes I walked through virtually on a real estate site like Zillow.

That’s how I would do it. Hope that helps.

Richard

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Ocarina of time and Mayora’s Mask have 12 temples in total. Maybe I’ll try those games.

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Hi. And why with the 365 days? Whats the use for it?

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If there is something I must do on a certain date at a certain date and time, I should with this method be able to store the exact time and an association to the event one full year in advance. The loci itself tells me what date it is. The drawback of this would be that I can only memorize 1 event for each date.

If this method is combined with story method for example, multiple events in a day should be storeable in order.

Placing any random item as a temporary memory palace at a certain date should make it possible to remember multiple events in a day as well.

Basically I would use this memory palace as an extra tool, not to replace my calendar.

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Okay, I might be saying crazy stuff, but why do you decide to put in all the effort of building the system when you can just put this in your phone or a physical planner? Or both.

I don’t want to discourage you, a 365 loci calender has useful sides, but to use it as a planner has a few drawbacks. I tried it for a while and it was not worth my time to be honest.

Firstly, you want to be able to put more things on each day, and to do that you need to add time. You might also have to add a place and a person, leading you to an even more complex image in a more complex system. It can be done, but why do the effort?

Every long-term memory palace needs reviewing. I can’t make a mental note for 17th of january 2024 and then leave it, I have to do recalls to solidify the image. Which leads to another consequence.

Ghost images. You just reviewed an image for 7 months, it does not want to leave and be replaced by another. There will be points where you get confused about which image is the old and which is the new. This has been one of my struggles in all long term palaces.

No reminders, and no permanence. Sure you might review daily, but in the end you don’t get an alarm inside your head saying “hey, it is meeting time!” Now, physical planners don’t do this either, but what they will do is allow for permanence. You write it and it stays, your mind does not work like that. It changes all the time.

If it is a support tool, I would advise you to use it to learn rather than to have. A mental planner is a great way to practice images, stories and systems. You will find a lot of things that work, and a lot of things that don’t work. Keep note of these to slowly build towards systems that work for you.

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I basically want to be overpowered. I’ve been memorizing for about one year so decks of cards and random numbers has lost its novelty. I’m memorizing japanese, texts and creating a millenium pao at the moment because those skills will be forever usefull. I think a mental calendar would be something of use for the rest of my life, but I haven’t started yet since I don’t know if this is the best way to do it.

Learning to plan one day → one month → two months and so on ahead is probably wize. That way one should be able to learn where diminishing returns kick in.

The lack of space at each loki is the one weakness I’ve identified myself. The effort required of this system is unknown to me since I haven’t tried it, but just as I’m learning the pao millenium very slowly I could also learn my mental calendar very slowly. I want to make lifetime tools.

I plan to place the memory palace within my memory palace for mental repetition so that I don’t forget to review it, yeah maybe just planning one week ahead is less painfull.

My experiece is that daily calendars work very well. Since they are important they invade the mind every hour or so.

Thanks alot for your reply Maya! Your pao millenuim thread inspired me to make my own.

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I could see the mental calendar as being useful not as a future planner template but as mental journal of accomplishments and daily highlights. If you can create imagery to remind you of the best thing that occurred each day and fuse that to the loci for that specific date, then you can review and to some degree re-experience those moments.

You could start with 12 large loci, one for each month, or get more granular and do a 52 loci one for each week, or your 366 approach. Depends on how often you’d like to mark significance.

As years go by, you can add to those scenes and realize how many full and enjoyable moments you’ve had.

As we age, sometimes time feels like it is flying, partially because our days homogenize and blur together. If you can create distinct and lasting memories each day, this could slow the perceived passage of time.

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Why don’t you do this, instead of past events memorized why don’t you memorize future plans for your life? A future inspired future mental diary.

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This is meant to be a question to for @TheHumanTim right? Everyone else here is talking about future events. Only @TheHumanTim has thus far talked about the “reverse”. Intrestingly enough one should be able to do both, but it would probably require a new memory palace every month and not loop with a one year interval.

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I like this idea a lot, but I’d probably have a continous success palace with no definite end. I’d probably store the success and try and have a rough idea of when it happened (yearly). The most important thing about this palace is to visit often and remind yourself but to have everything exact down to date. However one goes about it, I think its a novel and great idea. Thanks.

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I’m thinking of changing my pao from giordano (GMS) to Major system. The reason is simply because it’s the most common system, and so there must be a lot of phrases and such with meaning already developed that I can learn without having to think about systems. I’m not making a new tread but asking here, why isn’t H not in the Major System? I’m thinking of including it with number 2 of the major system (t,th) since H is number 2 in the giordano system (T, H, Z).

I feel like I’m the only giordano (GMS) user on this forum. I’ve developed a
giordano (GMS) 0-240 pao, but question myself daily. Do I have any advantage using the giordano (GMS) system?

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H is a filler sound in Major. By allowing it as a free sound, it opens up many more options for word construction. The system is less important than the fluency you have with it. If your motivation is that it’s easier to find more pre-built major words so there might be less effort in construction, I’d caution you that just trying to learn someone else’s words is much tougher than having your own brain do the work. It may save time on the front end construction phase, but you’ll likely find yourself replacing many words and struggling to force yourself to associate non-instinctual images.

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Expanding on this … If you do use the Major Number System, search the forum for people that have listed their major system peg words. Or better yet, make up your own first, and then search to find better ones.

I started off with the list from The Memory Book, and it was not an awful experience. I have since changed quite a few:

4 aiR
5 owL
11 DuDe (I still sometimes use ToT if it works better)
17 DuCK
31 MuD (I still sometimes use MaT if it works better)
35 MaiL
39 MaP (I still use MoP if it works better)
41 RaT
45 RaiL
51 LiD
53 LaMb
63 JaM
64 ChaiR, though I do like the original CheRRy
67 SHaKe (as in milkshake)
71 CaT or GoaT
77 CaKe
79 CaPe
80 FaCe
81 FooT
84 FiRe
90 I sometimes use BaSS, as in the fish
94 I sometimes use PeaR, or picture a BeaR eating a PeaR
95 BuLL
96 I sometimes use PeaCH, or picture a PeaCH on the BeaCH
98 BeeF

I try to use animals, food, and parts of the body where possible because they make for reasonably vivid pictures. I keep a spreadsheet of many possibilities for each number, and when I become dissatisfied with one of them, I will refer to the spreadsheet and switch. You can also look up possibilities in an online database (search “major system database”), though not all entries follow the rules exactly.

In short - it’s not the end of the world to switch peg words, but you may as well start with words you like and can use.

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Hi! Thanks for your reply! One thing I forgot to mention about my doubts of the GMS system is the number 9 that is c. Its not a phonetic, its the letter c. If used as a phonetic it can overlap with 4=k, 2=z and 7=s.

I solved this problem by making my own secret almost phonetic system that I’m quite happy with and is now in the process of simply changing the numbers that my original PAO repressent. In my pao I translate the numbers into names but I also use dominic system sometimes (objects are simply added to the person and others are from the GMS user Mattias Ribbing).

The actions are the weakest part of my pao at the moment. I use actions such as blow on, explode object and many more that I’m not all that happy with. I’ve however decided not to bother changing these any time soon since that can be a project after my pao is complete (only 100 actions).

Do you have recommendations on pao lists that champions use? I wonder if they use silly actions too? The 100 best actions should have been found out by now.

I store my pao in Anki for repetition.

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I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but there are some ideas here:

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That list of actions can come in handy for me later so I made a bookmark for it, thanks! It’d be cool though if for example Jonas Von Essen’s pao was known. Someone like him may have filtered out actions that don’t work so well. Or his list of actions may be similar to mine or even terrible. It would be interresting to know none the less if not only to feel better about my own list of actions.

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Searching for “English action verb list” or something similar will give you a bunch of results.

Something like this might be useful:

Typically the more animated an action can be, the better. “Smashing” is usually better than “Considering.” If you can imagine the action happening in visual form, than that’s usually better than one that’s less visual.

I really can’t stress enough that coming up with your own list is preferred as it takes advantage of strong pre-existing associations and imagery already in your brain.

Don’t be afraid to start working with what you’ve got. Lots of folks (myself included) can get so focused on perfecting a list before ever using it that they waste tons of time that could be spend learning what works for your individual brain. What I’ve found out too is that many times I’ll think some word is really great, then I go to work with it and I find a completely different image pops effortlessly to mind that works way better. Nobody can really say what will and won’t work best for you, you’ve just gotta try it and discover that for yourself.

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To rephrase and riff on this idea, if you are spending a lot of time on creating a huge system, that is time you are not spending using the system.

In product development, there is a concept of “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP). It is the smallest product you can make that will work. Think of it as version 1.0. If you can come up with a small system that can be a subset of a larger system, you can then get started using it.

For example, you do not have to start with a full-blown person-action-object PAO system where every term is perfect. If you start with a “P” system for cards with one suit, you can practice memorizing one suit and see how it goes, maybe changing up some of the words that don’t work as well. Then you can expand by adding either another suit, or adding actions for just that suit to have up with a PA system. Then try it out and adjust entries as you learn from using it. Then either add another suit or the Object.

I cannot find the original quote so this is not as elegant, but the general idea is “Every successful large system started out as a successful small system.”. Find the simplest thing that could work but that you can still build on, and adopt it. Then keep adding and improving.

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“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system”
― John Gall, The Systems Bible: The Beginner’s Guide to Systems Large and Small

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