How I'll kill it in 2015

General Memory Chat
1

Hello, and welcome to the 2015 installment!

This is the version of my 2014 thread updated for the new plans of 2015.

Here is the old thread, but please post in this thread if you have any questions.

The major mistake that I made in 2014 was thinking too small. At first, I wanted to get a score of 700 across the board by the end of the year, and as I started crossing 800 and even 900 in a couple disciplines in very rare cases by July and then again in August, I was having to raise my goals higher and higher. I would much rather my goals be forever out of reach than achieved too early, because then I would at least have a reason to continue to try my hardest.

Here are my personal bests right now on October 12, 2014:

Personal Bests:

1:00 words: 29
5 minute words: 85
5 minute words, no loci: 71
15 minute words: 167
15 minute words, no loci: 152

5 minute Int. N&F: 51
15 minute Int. N&F: 85
5 minute Nat. N&F: 54
15 minute Nat. N&F: 114

5 minute numbers: 406
15 minute numbers: 813
Hour numbers: 2084
50 digit sprint: 0:12.64
100 digit sprint: 0:38.83

Spoken digits, 1/second: 222
Spoken digits, 1/second (no loci): 120

1:00 binary: 252
5 minute binary: 901
30 minute binary: 2925

Single Deck: 0:28.62
Single Deck, No Loci: 1:13.365
10 minute cards: 6 decks and 3 cards
Hour cards: 15 decks

Historic dates, 5 min: 109.5

Abstract images, 15 min: 416

By the end of November 2015, I want to have all of these moved up to 1100. It sounds very high, but for the tippy-top MA’s, you see scores not only of 1100, but 1200, and even 1300+ sometimes! 14 months is far enough away that the monthly improvements required are very manageable in most cases.

My October 11 Scores :::::::1100 Scores:::::::::::Required Monthly Gain

5 min # - 406 - 517-----------------------8
15 min # - 813 - 990-----------------------12.64
30 min # - n/a
60 min # - 2013 - 3080----------------------76.214
Speed Cards - 28.68 - 22s-----------------------.5s
10 min cards - 315 - 7d38c---------------------6.214
30 min cards - n/a -
60 min cards - 15d - 33d------------------------n/a, bad baseline
5 min words - 85 - 138------------------------3.71
15 min words - 167 - 303------------------------9.714
5 min N&F - 51 - 77-------------------------1.857
15 min n&F - 85 - 187------------------------7.2857
5 min binary - 901 - 1100----------------------14.214
30 min binary - 2925 - 4400----------------------105.357
15 min abstract - 416 - 556------------------------10
spoken # - 222 - 453------------------------16.5
historic dates - 109.5 - 137.5----------------------2

You’ll see if you look above that for 5 minute binary, I only need to add 3 images every two months. 2 historic dates per month. For speed numbers, 7 images every three months. For 5m N&F, 9 names in 5 months. 10 Abstract images per month. These goals are far from impossible. A couple of them aren’t even intimidating. It is true that the schedule will break down before the 14 month period in most cases, but in other cases, I would not be surprised to move beyond the 1100 point mark. Note In 14 months, some of the “1100” point marks might have gotten pretty crazy. Naturally I’m sticking with the 2014 millennium standards.

Yesterday, after I worked out the schedule, I hit the monthly goal for hour numbers. Spoken digits probably looks like the most difficult one, but luckily I am on the verge of a breakthrough in that discipline. Yesterday, I got the scores 293/300, 296/300 299/300, and 222/222 (PB). I did one more run this morning which was 299/300 once again. Times like this make me want more loci. ¯\ _ (ツ) _/¯

I’ll leave you with the target scores for the end of this month in order to be on track, and I’ll update periodically. Thanks again everyone for responding to my cluttering the forum with threads like these with minimal complaints. It is very motivating for me to have community support and some sense of accountability!

End of October Scores:
5 min # - 414 -
15 min # - 825 -
30 min # - n/a (couldn’t care less) -
60 min # - 2090 - complete
Speed Cards - 28.18 -
10 min cards - 321 -
30 min cards - n/a (couldn’t care less) -
60 min cards - n/a (must establish baseline) -
5 min words - 89 -
15 min words - 177 -
5 min N&F - 53 -
15 min n&F - 92 -
5 min binary - 915 -
30 min binary - 3030 -
15 min abstract - 426 -
spoken # - 240 -
historic dates - 111.5

2

The positive results over the past two days were Huge.

My 2 most recent PB’s were achieved 34 days ago. Over the past two weeks, I have done very little memory training. There probably has not been a single week in two years where I trained less than in these past two weeks. All I did that I can think of was reading through my 2704 images all shuffled up two and a half times.

So this is the kind of break that The Greats swear is beneficial to take the weeks before a championship. I must agree with them about that. My fastest single deck (out of the thousands I have memorized) was about 28.5 seconds. And on my really fast runs, there are almost always 10+ cards missing that I have to play with for a couple of minutes before I can order the deck.

Sometimes if I’m really tired or my palaces are saturated for the day, I’ll put a metronome on and visualize cards or digits in the loci, but I won’t bother with recall.

Long story less long,

I had the metronome set at 60 BPM. At that speed, the deck is exhausted in 24.x seconds because the last few images are glanced at and slapped down onto the table.

So I had a deck generated on the computer and wanted to experiment with 2 images/locus I have never even tried that with cards.

The images sprang into mind more naturally than ever before. After memorizing that deck in 24.8 seconds and then going back a page I generate another new deck, I ran through the deck in my mind and immediately remembered 46 cards. About ten seconds later, I remembered two more cards.

I had pressed the back button already so I couldn’t officially restructure the deck. But 48/52 cards is extremely rare for me, even if I take 50+ seconds on a deck.

So it was never actually reordered. But that was a 24.8 second deck, and it looked cleaner than 95% of my decks. That was a 24.8 second deck, folks.

Yesterday I tried for 300 spoken digits, which I’ve gotten close to succeeding at before, as I mentioned above.

I remembered them. No problem.

My previous PB was a long-standing 222. So this was a 78-digit improvement.

Now that I’ve beat that level, the audible digits generator gives me up to 400 digits in a row. Out of curiosity, I tried for 384 digits. The current world record is held by Jonas: 380.

I remembered them. No prob. This is 162 more digits than my last PB!

Unfortunately I made a couple of
Encoding errors. But the fact that I remembered them all means that I’ll be breaking my first world record soon. And you know I’ll come back here ecstatic when I do.

3

Those are some very impressive scores!! especially the spoken digits. I have a hunch that spoken digits would be really easy to mess up at a competition though, under pressure, in a below par noise setting, after competing in other events so hats of Jonas for having such a great score. For example, I think it would be much easier to get that WR if there was a competition every month in Austin (wouldn’t that be great! hint) and you didn’t have to put an entire years worth of training on the line once a year. Besides those minor nuances, you’re well on your way!

I’m also glad to see that using 2/loci had some benefit since I tend praise it, but my scores aren’t as good as yours. As far as recalling entire decks are concerned, I sometimes practice decks where I don’t use a recall deck. Instead, I name the cards to myself before flipping them onto a table and I also sometimes time my recall of the deck so the goal is not speed as much as perfect recall that’s fluid without pauses. I may also just not be memorizing fast enough anymore so, out of curiosity, how many cards do you usually need to figure out in a successful deck?

I saw in your other “How I’ll kill it” thread that you’re making a 12 digit binary system. Isn’t that overkill? Personally, I felt like 10 binaries was hard to read but 12 would be extremely difficult. What was wrong with your 3x3’s? You can one look them with practice and 512 is a much more manageable number to train recognition on. I intentionally memorize rows as [8,8],[8,6] so I always look at the same points in a line and can master the recognition of 256 images. Wouldn’t such a massive system go to waste if it was used for only one event?

Overall, I’m very impressed that you always keep improving. I’ve hit a bit of a plateau myself (not practicing enough could be to blame). Good luck in the New Year!

4

1)It’s so easy to mess up no matter what, so I’m sure you’re right! Yeah, hats off to Jonas…:). He really is amazing at holding it down under pressure. My unrelenting envy of him has been a primary motivator this year, so I have him to thank for that too, as well as my own immaturity.

2)Yeah…we’ll see what happens. I’ve had excellent runs sporadically in many disciplines with different methods, but they’re usually just flukes that will accompany a large number of trials.

  1. I do stuff like that all the time. When I do perfect decks or anything else, I often do it without using loci. That has helped me improve my linking a lot. My best time for a deck memorized without loci and recalled verbally is about 1:23. I don’t remember exactly but it’s in my Bio along with the rest of my PB’s. You’ll see that I keep track of many “No Loci” PB’s.

  2. I have forgotten as many as 20 cards and was still able to reconstruct a second deck in under 5:00. On average, I probably forget about 12, which isn’t a problem at all. But if I were trying to go really fast and memorization was sloppy, I can forget just an image or two and mess up the deck because I won’t recognize the missing image from the options, and that is a mistake I make a lot.

5

Congratulation Loci on your new US Speed Cards and digits records.
Want to share more on what happened that day? What’s next?
How’s your myriad system going?

6

It’s June 20 now, half way through 2015 and I have returned here to share my progress. One thing that I’ve accomplished in 2015 is earning the rank of #1 in the US, #10 in the world, and I’ve set 7 US records.

Alright, so I’m looking up at those 2015 goals I set. I can remember arbitrarily coming up with the goal of 1100 across the board, and whenever I actually did the calculations I remember asking myself “Is it feasible that I’ll actually get any of these scores in just one year?” Half way through the year and I’ve already gotten a few…

June 20, National standard PB’s:

5 min # - 480
15 min # - 900
30 min # - n/a (couldn’t care less) -
60 min # - 2641
Speed Cards - 22.044
10 min cards - 428
30 min cards - n/a (couldn’t care less) -
60 min cards - 26 decks
5 min words - 92
15 min words - 214
5 min N&F - 63
15 min n&F - 111
5 min binary - 1171
30 min binary - 3813 -
15 min abstract - 450
spoken # - 480
historic dates - 127.5

So my Fantasy Scores today are:

WMC: 9330
National Standard: 10005.

I knew from the beginning that there were certain disciplines that I just wouldn’t be able to get 1100 points in. 5 and 15m N&F, 5 and 15m Words, and Spoken Digits. I was wrong about that last one ;), but I’m probably right about the others. So a more realistic goal for me than that is to average 1100 points across the disciplines, even though I should keep reaching for these monthly benchmarks. It looks like I’ll be able to pull that off for the national standard, but I still have to increase each of my WMC scores by 171 points on average to hit that fantasy score this year. So that’s 35 points per discipline, per month, on average. Is that impossible?

My “myriad system?” Hmm, I don’t remember that. So it must have been another of a heap of projects I’ve abandoned and forgotten. :slight_smile:

7

2015’s coming to a close.

It’s a tad discouraging to look above. I see with plan numbers that I’ve made almost no progress in the past 6 months. That’s hard because a couple of the people near me really shot through the roof in that same time.

I got a couple points here and there. 480 → 491 speed#'s. 1171 ->1275 5m binaries and 3883 → 4050 binaries. 63 → 64 in 5m N&F and 111 → 129 15m N&F; 93 → 103 5m words and 214 → 229 in 15m words. 127.5 → 137.5 historic dates, 480 → 525 spoken, 450 → 509 Abstract, and 22.044 → 21.83 speed cards. I’ve worked very hard, but less has come of my effort in these past 6 months than any other span of that time. There were a couple blocks of time in the middle where I had become quite discouraged and had found it difficult to train at all. I’m sure some of the slowness to improve was because of those periods.

However, now that the standards are much higher for us all, since it’s been a while since I’ve made major improvements, and since my American rival has become #1 in the world, I foresee making leaps and bounds in 2016. My goals will be more ambitious than ever before, and you’ll hear about those very soon, when I create them. I am thinking something along the lines of averaging >9400 points for each full, ordered run-through of both WMC and National Standard championships. The notion of being the world champion is now very appealing to me as I feel I am capable of maneuvering myself into being of the top 3 favorites by the end of 2016. It’ll mean catching up to those who are better than me and then continuing to progress more quickly than them, as well as being so solid and consistent that I can perform at the top level even without the important practice of attending championships of these types.

A goal along these lines is now the most appealing of all because it wouldn’t necessarily entail that I improve in any discipline in particular. I would just have to learn how to do nearly every time what I can already do today when at my best. There will be some improvements along the way though, and these will give me a buffer so that I can make more errors without falling short of the goal.

I’ve just calculated my WMC fantasy score, and in the past 6 months it has moved from 9330 → 9793. +463 points is not bad, so my improvements were a bit greater than I had perceived.

Overall, I’m very happy with 2015. The past 6 months weren’t all that I wanted them to be, but the first six months more than compensated for that. The better I get, the harder it is to make improvements of the same magnitude in the same time frame. But I got my first world record which Guinness confirmed that they will recognize. I couldn’t be happier about that. That one fact makes my year.

Fantasy scores
WMC: 9793 (+463)
National Standard: 10,484 (+479)

8

Personally, I don’t think you should be discouraged at all, Lance! It seems to me that you’ve laid some very important foundations.

Being in the top 3 nowadays seems like a massive target. Yet, it will be interesting to see the social impact of having someone from your country - who used to rank below you - as World Champion. It’s difficult to imagine a stronger motivator!

Congratulations on the WR. Very impressive.