Ickathu's Memory Progress (fo' shizzle this time...)

Memory Training Journals
1

Go ahead, start laughing. No, seriously. I need you guys to laugh at me. I’m going to be back now.
Like, actually back.
[insert comment about the number of times I have said that before and how many times I have followed through]

Here’s my starting mission: memorize a deck of cards in less than 5 minutes by the end of December.
Here’s how I’m going to do it: memorize a sequence of 3 cards every day, minimum. I’ll do this almost first thing in the morning. My current routine is: get up, get clothes, shower, do a duolingo lesson in Spanish and one in German. I shall add in my 3 card minimum memorization after the duolingo lessons. I’ll probably end up doing more most days, but all I have to do is show up every day in December. No exceptions, no days off.

Ignore random digits. Ignore names and faces. Ignore tea party (side note: that is probably the most impressive event to me). Ignore random words. Ignore poetry.
Just cards.

I’m starting with just a 52 image person system, I’ll advance to a PAO system from there at some point, but I don’t want to get held up trying to create the “best” actions and objects at this point. Nor am I going to worry about creating the “best” people assignments. Here’s my current layout, and it is probably hopefully going to be something very similar to what I am using at the end of the month. Otherwise I get too distracted changing people around and stuff because some people are “hard” to visualize, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s all going to be hard for me at the start.

Hearts: the Doctors from Doctor Who (they have two HEARTS). A - 1st doctor, 2 - 2nd, 3 - 3rd, …, J - 11th, Q - 12th, K - war doctor

Spades: Star Wars characters, vaguely based on Major system. A - Dooku, 2 - R2D2, 3 - C3PO, 4 - Rancor, 5 - Luke, 6 - Chewie, 7 - Grievous, 8 - Vader, 9 - Boba Fett, 10 - Sidious, J - Han, Q - Leia, K - Yoda

Diamonds: Dwarves from the Hobbit, in order (Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur Bombur, Thorin)

Clubs: Doctor Who companions, followed by a “key” enemy to that companion. A - Rose, 2 - Cybermen, 3 - Martha, 4 - the Master, 5 - Donna, 6 - Davros, 7 - Amy, 8 - Angels, 9 - Rory, 10 - Silurian, J - River, Q - Vashta Nerada, K - Clara

Here we go. I’m going to do my first three cards now. (Although in reality I expect that I shall attempt a full deck afterwards.)

2

3 cards in 16 seconds. Kili is lying on the ground, agonizing because he took an arrow to the knee. The 3rd Doctor is standing to the side attempting to use the sonic to fix it, but a Cybermen comes up behind them and deletes them both.
(2D, 3H, 2C)

I shall now attempt a full deck. At that rate (lol) it should take less than five minutes…

3

20:53.76 first attempt at a full deck, 100% accuracy.

Nice.

For record keeping. Or something. And because why not?
Room 1: River, Dwalin, Luke, Clara, Bofur, Davros, Bombur, 6, Leia, War
Room 2: Martha, Greivous, 10, 1, Balin, 12, Rancor, Donna, Silurian, 5
Room 3: Ori, Vashta Nerada, C3PO, Kili, Gloin, Chewbacca, R2D2, Palpatine/Sidious, Han, Bifur
Room 4: 9, 8, Fili, Dooku, 3, Rory, Yoda, Oin, Weeping Angels, Dori
Room 5: Master, Amy, Cyberman, Rose, 11, 7, Boba, 2, 4, Darth Vader
Room 6: Thorin, Nori

Question, who knows what significant thing Gloin does? I’m tentatively replacing him with Gimli (son of Gloin) because I can’t actually picture Gloin doing anything except just kind of standing there… It’s pretty lame.

4

Day 2: 15:21.70, 52/52 cards

Struggled with recall a bit, but managed to get it without having to guess at all. Also, 52 images is a lot. At 10 images per room, it takes nearly an entire house to do one deck, and there’s certainly not enough rooms left over to get a second deck in. Alas. Perhaps I’ll start adding in objects or actions and cut my images in half.

Even just after doing 2 decks, I know what person each card is so much better. Yesterday I had to be referencing a “cheat sheet” on most of them (in memo and recall), today I only did it a few times.

Loci: Beach house (yesterday was my house)
Room 1: Cybermen, War Doctor, Gloin, Greivous, 10, Martha, Han, 12, 3, Weeping angels.
Room 2: Yoda, 11, Kili, Dooku, Master, 1, River, 5, 7, Donna
Room 3: C-3PO, 8, Rancor, Dwalin, 2, Leia, Silurian, R2-D2, Bifur, Bofur
Room 4: Palpatine, Rose, Dori, Darth Vader, Luke, Clara, 4, Rory, Chewbacca, Nori
Room 5: 6, Davros, Thorin, Oin, Ori, Vashta Nerada, 9, Boba Fett, Fili, Balin
Room 6: Amy, Bombur

There are so many dwarves. And Doctors.

5

Day 3: 12:09.95, 50/52 (swapped AH and 7H)

So close. A lot faster again today though, so I’m still happy. I may work on creating objects today and then start using them tomorrow. That may cut down on the time again (it’ll probably go up first, while I’m learning the objects, but hopefully not too much).

Loci: Karate dojo
Room 1: 6, Rose, Bifur, Han, Bombur, Rory, Balin, Martha, Greivous, Thorin
Room 2: Rancor, Ori, Luke, Yoda, 3, Angel, C-3PO, Donna, Gloin, 9
Room 3: Palpatine, Dori, Boba Fett, 10, Amy, R2-D2, River, Clara, Dooku, Oin
Room 4: Fili, Kili, 12, Silurian, 4, Dwalin, Bofur, Vader, Vashta Nerada, Leia
Room 5: Cybermen, Davros, Chewbacca, Master, War Doctor, 2, 5, 11, 7, A
Room 6: Nori, 8

6

Phew, added in objects today. I thought it would make it easier, but it was insanely challenging.
17:20.63, 52/52

Too lazy to copy down my memo, and that doesn’t really gain me anything.

7

12:50.25 52/52*

Used objects again. Today went much better. Easy-ish memo this time. Slightly forgot some images, but got it all in the end.

*I correctly memorized the sequence 4S+6S, and in recall, I correctly recalled that it was supposed to be 4S+6S, but I switched the cards when I stacked them, I suppose. I know in an official competition that wouldn’t fly, but I’m not in an official competition, haha. Honestly, as soon as I saw the 4S/6S swap, I was like, “Hang on, isn’t it supposed to be a rancor picking up arms?” and then I realized that indeed, the memo’d deck had 4S+6S, but my recall deck had 6S+4S, even though my memo was right. So I let it slide this time.

8

Day 6
12:41.92, 52/52

Tough recall. I ran through my entire deck once at the end even though I was pretty sure I had everything memo’d. Would have been faster, obviously, without the review, but considering the difficulty I had with it, I’m not sure I would have done as well. But ya never know. Still slower than my 12:09 with just P, but the memo is easier for sure. It’s just so much less stuff to memorize, or rather, fewer places are used.

9

Day 7
9:28.37 52/52

Sub-10 in a week - not bad…
Tough recall. Pretty hard. Here’s what my memo was like:
memo 20 (10 loci), quick check of images (but not full review)
memo 20 (10 loci), full review of everything
memo 12 (6 loci), full review of these 12
quick check of everything

It worked pretty well (I did get 52/52…) and definitely saved a lot of time by not reviewing a bunch.

10

Day 8
8:48.60 52/52

Finished memo at like 7:15 (it felt so smooth!) and decided to do a full review at the end. Recall was easy-peasy, just a few that I wasn’t sure on until later when my card choices had been narrowed down a bit. I was considering adding in an action, but I don’t know. This seems to be working pretty well at the moment.

11

Day 9
7:18.96 52/52

That recall was insanely hard. Finished memo at 5:xy and decided to review everything one last time. So I did that, and stopped the timer, set the deck down, then ran through everything in my head real quick. Then I got out my “reset” deck of cards (just A-K for each S, H, C, D, if that makes sense), separated by suit, and started to recall.
And then I was like, “Wait, what was my first image?”

Yeah. So then I sort of piece-mealed everything together bit-by-bit. The memo came back to me all the way by the end, but it was like my brain just completely decided “Nope, not important information. Bye!”
But I got it in the end, so I’m happy.

12

Day 10
7:18.27 52/52

Just a tad bit faster today, but recall was much easier. I memo’d differently today too. Instead of doing three rooms numbered like:

3--4--5 2--X--6 1--8--7

X = floor+ceiling = 9, 10

With a strict arrangement, I just did all the images in the room I’m in right now. So I had one on the dehumidifier, one in front of the door, one to the corner of my desk. Then people got smaller: three on my desk, one climbing the wall, two on a ledge, etc.

It worked pretty well, I think. Maybe even better than the pre-defined 1-10 arrangement in each room. I’ll try it more tomorrow and see if it was just an easy deck to recall/memo.

13

It was late yesterday, so I only did a few cards (I think I did 4). Still keeping the streak! (though I’ve been doing it at night, which is not the best idea)

Day 12
6:32.75 52/52

Time’s are still dropping. Memo was easy. Finished going through the deck the first time right at 5:00, but then reviewed the whole thing once at the end. Recall was easy; a few minor image misses here and there, I discovered them pretty quickly afterwards.

14

Day 13
6:27.86 52/52

Okay, so this deck started off horribly. It was just really slow and hard to memorize. But then it got easier. But I wanted to finish faster again, so I didn’t really review at all except once halfway through. Then during recall when I got near-ish to the end, I couldn’t think of the order of the images, but I could still remember the person-object pairs, so I grouped them up, and was like, “Hmm, I think he was here on the table. No wait, this guy was too. I know XYZ was my last image, but what came before that?” and so on. I didn’t think I was going to get the whole deck, but I did, so yay! Pushing outside of comfort zones is definitely good, I guess.

15

It’s been getting late the past few nights so I’ve only been doing a few cards. Full deck today though.

Day 17
48/52 6:40.83

I swapped two of my images on this one. I anticipated it during recall; it wasn’t so much that I remembered wrong as it was that I didn’t remember at all, haha. Still pleased. Did a review about halfway through the deck, then reviewed the second half at the end. Images were fuzzy and hard to remember at times, but as a whole, not too bad.