Hi, I’m Basak. I’m reading “Use your memory” by Tony Buzan but the problem is, I’m having struggles whilst using my dream power :"). It is common to have problems whilst creating visual images? It seems like people do it easily. Thx.
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It seems like you have aphantasia. I advise you to inform yourself about that, there are several topics about it on this forum.
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OMG thank you but actually, I’m a maladaptive daydreamer. Sometimes I imagine myself as a famous hacker, sometimes an anti-hero. I can draw faces from my imagination and I can make up stories in my head (For example I wrote a story about my oppressive school and the story was saying “What if Hitler comes to modern Turkey?”). The problem is when someone gives me a list of a bunch of stuff, I can’t do anything. And if I manage to make up a story with these things, It doesn’t stay in my mind. I’m not dyslexic either bc I have great notes in math…
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Is your problem creating an image quickly for something you want to remember? If that’s the case then just play an association game throughout out the day. For example: everytime you see something, think of what it reminds you of. Get in the habit of doing that a lot.
If you aren’t using mind palaces then definitely start using them. Start with the house/apartment you live at to get the hang of it, then make more. Once you get the hang of it you can do virtual apartment tours on your computer to get a ■■■■ ton of palaces that work very well (3Dapartment and zillow3d are good). But use buildings that you’ve actually been to first.
I have about ten palaces that I cycle through all the time for stuff I don’t care to remember long term. These are things like; memory League training, things to do, stuff people tell me. Basically any “on the fly” things I want to remember, I’ll put in one of these ten palaces. Once the first is filled up, I’ll go to the second, then the third and so on. When I’ve gone through all ten palaces, I’ll just go back to the first palace and use that one again. This works well for me because it usually takes a while for me to cycle through these so by the time I get back to the first palace I’ve forgotten what was there and can place new info in it. The more palaces you can cycle through the more effective they’ll be because you have less “ghosting”. 10 works well for me. These palaces each have between 20-40 locations in them.
I find this works way better for me then doing a story or link method.
If I want to remember something long term I do not put that info in these 10 palaces.
There are a few things that you can try. Try describing the thing you want to imagine out loud, like you are describing it to someone else. You can also look up images on the internet if you need to see how something looks like. You cannot imagine a bird like a Robin unless you have seen it first.
For remembering there are two aspects:
To remember something you have to create a connection between the hook and what you want to remember. This is done with mini stories. These stories can simply be one sentence. If you find it hard to remember, try adding details to the story. You don’t even need to write it down. Ask yourself questions like, Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Then try and use your senses. What do you see, hear, smell, taste and feel. The more details you add the longer you will be able to remember. Using your humour and sexuality are very helpful.
The next aspect, you have to realize that to remember your information you have to think of you hook first before the information you want to remember will come to you. This is something that I didn’t realize at first. You are hanging the information on the hook. It takes some repeated remembering before the information will come by itself without having to think the hook first.
I struggle too with visualization but over the years my mind overcome it by looking at shapes of cards and numbers as objects and people etc. I don’t think there is a way to change the brain to see mental images I read alot about this but still heard about only few who really succeeded but with the time if you practice hard. I’m pretty sure your mind will find way how to overcome the visualization part. I think it’s a huge advantage when it comes to high rates of spoken numbers or memorizing short sequences of numbers and cards and not only disadvantage because your mind doesn’t need to create an image, so you don’t have to stuck on creating images.