I’m working on getting my deck-memorization time under 5 minutes. Right now, I’m struggling with PAO (3 cards per locus). I actually find the classic Dominic Person–Action approach (26 loci for a full deck) more reliable.
My question is: how do you know if PAO can be trained, or if some people’s brains are simply better suited for PA (2 elements per locus) or even just P (52 loci per deck)? Do you know any top memorizers who use PA or P (for 52 loci I know that Boris Conrad was doing sub 30 seconds).
Even when I build vivid PAO images and anchor them strongly to each locus, I often lose one element — usually the object, sometimes the person or action. Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, how did you push through it (or did you stick with PA instead)?
Practice is all there is to it, in my opinion. You can master any system with enough repetition. It may take longer for some people than others. Think back to the first time you were introduced to a QWERTY keyboard.
For a 5 minute deck using a PAO, you’ll have around 17 seconds to “read” each PAO set and compose a scene and lock it in to it’s location. That SHOULD be plenty of time, IF you are reasonably fluent with recognizing and translating the cards into their PAO elements.
There are basically 3 factors that affect your speed with cards (and numbers too.)
How quickly you can see the card or the number and translate it into it’s associated imagery.
How quickly you can combine those mnemonic elements into a scene and integrate it into the location.
How quickly you can navigate through your locations.
If any of those is weak, it can kill your time and your focus. If you have to actively pause and consider one of those things it can cause previously seen scenes to fly out of your brain because your focus was interrupted.
So you need to make sure you have zero hesitation and are fluent with those things. That will only come with LOTS of reps and practicing seeing a card and jumping straight to its associated element. There’s no shortcut to this. You just have to do it until it becomes like a second language.
So it very well could be that you just haven’t spent enough time drilling that recognition.
Sometimes less complex scenes can work great. If you’ve been at it a while (like several months) and it seems like you’re fluent at recognizing and visualizing each element, then it could be that you need to simplify things. But nobody can really answer that for you. You have to give things a good attempt and see what works and doesn’t. The best system is one that you like using and that gets results FOR YOU.