Most memory athletes seem to have a fixed image for each number (like in Major or PAO systems). That’s great for speed, but I’m wondering about overlap when studying different subjects.
For example, suppose I want to memorize historical dates, legal sections, and other numbered lists. If I use the same image for “14” everywhere, won’t that cause confusion (since 14 could point to very different facts depending on the subject)?
How do people usually manage this?
Do you create a separate peg list for each subject?
Re-use the same images but store them in separate memory palaces?
Or add some kind of domain marker to the image?
Curious to hear how experienced memorizers keep multiple datasets distinct without slowing recall.
Store the periodic table of elements in one palace use your 14 image to link to the 14th element.
Store your presidents of the usa in another palace and use that same 14 image to link to the 14th president.
The location provides context for the scene so there is no confusion.
The example I like to use is the Star Wars movies have the same characters but there is no mixing up of the content of scenes across different movies. Like Luke drives his sandspeeder on tattooine, rides a tauntaun on hoth, and uses a speederbike on endor. There is no way I’d mix these up and mistakenly recall luke riding a tauntaun on endor or his sandspeeder on hoth. The location provides the context.
So even if you use TaRa or TaR or whatever as your image to represent 14. You will be recalling based on the location as your starting point and shouldn’t have any problem with that same element appearing across many scenes or stories at different locations.
More fundamentally, I think it is actually better to keep using the same image and know that it is number 14 whenever it crops up. You don’t get confused with using the number itself in multiple different contexts, so nor should you with the image for 14. At least that is my take! (I can sort of see why you might think about having a separate image - used consistently - for the 14th item in a sequence, but I don’t do that either.)
Yeah, think think of it as people in a book or movie. One character is going to be in different places throughout the story, in each chapter/scene and you won’t mix things up because of it.
Harry Potter in the cupboard under the stairs, Harry Potter discovering Diagon Alley, Harry Potter killing the basilisk, Harry Potter in potion class, etc. Always the same person, many many differences places.
Your brain is fine. It’s a story, it likes it. In fact it’s probably better that the characters stay the same (would be confusing to have new people each chapter).