As mentioned above, I had to change the approach I use for refreshing the images pinned to my mental calendar. Rather than recalling selected days from each week and month, I moved to recalling the days sequentially. In some ways this is easier because of the associations between events and places.
However, I’ve noticed that since doing this I’ve lost the spatial awareness of the days on my mental calendar for the more recent days. Accordingly, I’ve reintroduced passing a two-day window over each week for the past six months. Stepping from week to week on the calendar in my mind’s eye more firmly fixes the image to the day on calendar, helping me to remember it in isolation from the surrounding days.
This spatial awareness is an important additional tool to aid my recall. I guess it is similar to walking through a memory palace.
This is super cool, congrats. I am trying this too as of January this year (new years resolution). It has been difficult to reshape the system as I find the inefficiencies as the scale grows and grows, but I think I have something now that will last at least the year, and we’ll cross the bridge of adding an additional year when we get to it. ; ) I am curious: roughly how much time and energy do you have to put into this daily to keep it up? Is it quite the effort or do you have it down from so much practice? Also, how do you test yourself to when you get to 7 years worth of days? Keep up the work, it’s inspiring to know someone else is trying this and has gone so far!
Congrats on 7 years! That is a very commendable length of time to do what you’re doing. To anyone who hasn’t seen this thread before, check out Lembran’s blog, it’s fascinating.
It’s time for me to spill the beans on my attempt to remember some of my daily experiences. Spoiler alert: I can remember the days, but not their order.
So, here’s what I’ve been up to:
So, I generally started asking myself questions such as:
-What I have been doing today? So there is some sort of story
-Where have I been? To remember places, so additional information can be retrieved from the place.
-Who have I met? So I have characters in my stories and places.
-Which interesting, unusual , weird, funny details I have noticed today?
And, of course, I keep an eye out for interesting, unusual, weird, or funny details from each day.
Before bedtime, I quiz myself on these topics while brushing my teeth or drifting off to sleep. It’s kinda fun and doesn’t feel like I’m opening my third eye to see mental objects.
But, here’s the twist: after one week, I couldn’t recall the days correctly. And after two weeks, I had 14 different days locked in my memory, rich with details and events, but all mixed up, with no sense of chronology.
Now, I’m pondering how to bring some order into my future memorization attempts. I’m thinking of using loci or something similar. Perhaps even converting days and months into pictures. Any suggestions?
I was thinking of trying this a while ago but was too lazy. My plan was to convert the date to images with the major system, then write a few keywords to remind me about the day and memorise them with the link method.
e.g. today (uneventful yet because it’s only 1pm):
231108 Wed => gnome tit safe weed
Had violin class, started the E flat scale for the first time, got the train back to pick up kids from school, had nice omelette in café, group music class later => violin dish (D# since an image for Eb didn’t occur to me) train kids omelette group.
The link system just means making an image for each pair of words, e.g. “violin dish” could be serving my violin on a plate, then “dish train” could be throwing plates at a train, etc. The sequence sometimes breaks down if you forget one link, so I’d maybe put those written notes and keywords into Anki to avoid forgetting later.
Maybe I should try it since my days tend to blend together in my memory…
This is why I had a few symbolic animals and trees to represent the day and month to work them into the story of the day.
I haven’t kept it up - so I can’t honestly say it worked for me.
But a few days still stand out: one day for example was the day of the otter and it stands out because it formed a bit of the part of the fabric for the day.
I’m about 950 days into it, myself. I’m trying to just retain one image from each day. I use my PAO system characters and a loose sort of “color/feeling” associated with each month to try to anchor the images, somehow.
I have lost a few images along the way (and had to restore them from old photos or calendar entries or emails), but for the most part, I think I’ve got a pretty good archive going.
I have trouble in conceptualising time. How it is done?
I have tried to use my calendar, but somehow it doesn’t stick.
I have tried to have a unique image for each month, but somehow it is not working too.
The same is true for a week. I can imagine the week as a journey uphill where you finally arrive home.
But it is repetitive and gets blended after the third week of remembering.
Okay, so for now, I have two weeks of trying to remember every day.
At the end of each day, I will try to reflect on how my day went and then pick the most memorable moments. After that, I will create an image that represents the day.
I will write key memories onto a separate Google Calendar dedicated to memories, so I can track them later.
At the end of the week, I will review my YouTube history to check what I have watched and identify the key idea of each video.
My main problem now is that I cannot remember dates and the sequence of the weeks. So I have images that can trigger more memories, but if you ask me what I was doing on August 21, 2024, I would have no idea. Of course, I could deduce it by counting days, but it might take around 10 minutes.
