Heyy, so I’d like to share the system which I used to create my PAO 
(Well, the persons 
) Being on the forum has given me a bunch of inspiration, so I thought I’d write this up in case it might inspire someone else 
(This is quite a long post. Sections not strictly relevant to explain the system at its core are hidden – if you are interested, feel free to read them 
)
Backstory
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After having read Moonwalking with Einstein (hi, yes, me too!), Memory Craft by Lynne, the Free Ebook from here as well as multiple posts on the forum and after having dabbled with a few memory experiments here and there…well, the time finally came. Finally I crumpled my fear of the seemingly overwhelming task of creating my own PAO and decided to go for it! I wanted to convert all the numbers from 0-9 and 00-99 to images and tried to think which would be the best way to do so for me personally. I knew that I wanted:
- my system to be based on characters (I was quite fond of them – after all, how could I not after having read Memory Craft)
- my system to be designed in such a way that for each number I’d have a strong suggestion for which character to pick
I liked the Dominic System because it was person based – but I didn’t like the approach of arriving at people through initials (personal preference). Also, on the forum I sometimes bumped into posts, where people wouldn’t quite know which image to choose for a particular number and asked for ideas (I think this was for Major as well as Dominic based systems). Which is fine, but I kind of wanted something which wouldn’t get me easily stumped by a number – for me, I preferred more structure.
Hehe, and well, after some thinking my answer to that was the Intersecting Category System 
Explaining the System
So for my system I picked a category for sets of numbers: 0-9, 00-09, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39,… But also I picked a category for each digit from 0-9. So each number from 00-99 would belong to not one, but two categories – if you’d show that in a table, they would intersect – thereby giving me a pretty good guide on what character to choose for any particular number.
For the sets of numbers the individual categories were all either a show or a movie I liked:
- 0-9 Avatar the Last Airbender
- 00-09 Atlantis: The Lost Empire
- 10-19 Brave (the Disney/Pixar one)
- 20-29 Spirited Away
- 30-39 Monsters, Inc.
- 40-49 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
- 50-59 The Boy and the Beast
- 60-69 Alice in Wonderland (2010)
- 70-79 Encanto
- 80-89 The Owl House
- 90-99 Coraline
For the category of the digits between 0-9 I chose tropes/archetypes/functions of characters in a story:
- 0 Animal
- 1 Goofy Character
- 2 Side Villian
- 3 Strong Character
- 4 Helping Character
- 5 Doofus Character
- 6 Main Villain
- 7 Wise Character
- 8 Special Power Character (basically a joker for me personally, I could assign any character there which was hard to fit anywhere else, or a character I wanted to be in my system)
- 9 Main Protagonist
So basically the tens place of a number is connected to a movie/show and the ones places is connected to a funtion of a character in a story.
A concrete example:
66
6 in the tens place means Alice in Wonderland
6 in the ones places means Main Villan
the main villan in Alice in Wonderland is the Red Queen
66 = Red Queen
Not Always Straight Forward
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So, obviously I picked a really nice and tidy example above – but no, even with this system it’s not always straight forward as of what character to use. For example: 0 in the ones place is supposed to be an animal, but there are shows/movies without any notable animals or shows/movies with a lot of animals as characters. Atlantis: The Lost Empire didn’t have any notable animals, so I chose the character Mole for 00 (he is human but kinda acts like a mole ). Alice in Wonderland has the reverse problem: Many characters are actually animals. So for 60 I chose the White Rabbit, although I also have animals for 62 (Cheshire Cat), 63 (Dormouse) and 67 (Absolem). Also, Cheshire Cat isn’t an actual Side Villain (which is my category for 2) nor is the Dormouse very buff (3 are Stong Characters).
However, I didn’t make this system so I could follow it to a T – I made it to give me pretty solid suggestions on which character to choose for any given number. So in any ambiguous case, I just went with my first instinct or what seemed to fit best and then used imagination to justify it. So the Dormouse seems to be quite the fighter and tough despite its size; Cheshire may not be a proper Side Villain, but hey, shady enough. One more fun example: George Sanderson is my 37 (my Wise Character for Monsters, Inc.). For me personally, that movie didn’t have your token sage character, one who offers wisdom to the protagonists. However, I mean, George Sanderson was the poor soul who got a kid’s sock stuck on his fur and got shaved bare as a result soon after, so…there must be some sort of wisdom related to that now, right? Anyway, it’s pretty funny coming up with reasons for why an unlikely character does fit this one or other function – so I have no issue with the fact that this system isn’t always 100% straight forward after all
All my Persons in a Table
Here I put all the characters I chose for the persons in my PAO neatly arranged into a table. In the table you can see the intersections more clearly – also, if you feel like you want to try out the system, feel free to use it as a template
Strengths & Weaknesses
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I think the biggest strength of this system is how it gives you a guide and really helps you to choose images – this is also extremely helpful for recall during the learning phase! I had the system learned extremely quickly, as for each number I had two cues to help me remember which exact character I chose. Mind you, to get automatic it still takes so much practice and drills – so I don’t mean that. I mean that I didn’t need to look at my notes for very long to know which number meant which character – I just thought about the respective categories and already I had it, or at the very least had only a few options of which one it could be. (Yes, you do need to first remember which category responds to the tens and the ones. An aid I used for that is elaborated on in the last section.)
Its weakness is what causes its strength, however: Yeah it gives lots of structure, but that can be limiting. In a regular category system you have a category for specific sets of numbers, but within those you are completely free. This intersecting system is a bit constraining in a way. So it all depends on what you want!
Conclusion
So. Of all the possible ways to convert numbers into images, this is one way. It was my way. It does not have to be yours, if it doesn’t seem like the right fit. If you do consider using it – feel free to adapt it as much as you like, or just use it as an inspiration to come up with your own system.
If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to add – feel free to share
Here are two more sections as an add-on for those interested:
Using This System Yourself
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Just a few notes in case you want to use this system yourself:
- You don’t have to stick with movies/shows as categories for the tens place. You can literally throw anything in there and mix it up: celebreties, sports stars, Pokémon, game characters, people you know… However, you do then need to find 10 things that can connect to all of these categories. For example, if you choose the categories sports stars, celebrities and Pokémon (among others) for the tens place, and you choose “tall” as a category for the ones places, then you’ll need to have one tall sports star, one tall celebrity and one tall Pokémon. So you can literally pick anything as long as you can make that intersection happen (which you can aid by being imaginative
). - A few more ideas for categories to use for the ones place: attributes like black hair, tall, bulky, annoying, loud, a character you dislike, favourite character, bearded, small, green, animal-like, animal, human, fantasy creature, snobbish… Sort of something tied to how something is or a function that it fullfills.
- Also! Yep, I based my system on characters. Does this necessarily have to be the case? Nope. You can also choose objects for it: Just have different categories of objects for the tens and different attributes of these objects for the ones (like big, bulky, small, usefull, useless, furry, cute,…). Whatever floats your boat. It’s an intersecting category system as soon as you have two categories which, well, intersect. Doesn’t have to include characters.
Associating the Digit with the Category
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Okay, this is a thing I think many people do to learn their images: associating the image with the number. I also did that with the categories and the tens and ones places, which really really helped me to memorize them quickly.
I mostly used an approach I myself call “The Reverse Shaper System” – but actually is just associating exclusively by shape and is nothing new or fancy.
So here are my associations (most are shape based, but not all):
For the number set from 0-9/the tens place:
- 0-9 Avatar the Last Airbender because it’s my favourite show ever, so obviously it comes very first before anything else
- 00-09 Atlantis: The Lost Empire because 0 flipped to the side is like a submarine
- 10-19 Brave because 1 is like an arrow Merida shoots
- 20-29 Spirited Away because 2 looks like Haku in dragon form
- 30-39 Monsters, Inc. because 3 is fluffy like the fur of Sulley
- 40-49 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because 4 reminds me of the shape of a chocolate bar
- 50-59 The Boy and the Beast because in the movie two characters squat at one point and it kinda looked like the shape of a 5
- 60-69 Alice in Wonderland because Alice can be imagined to make the shape of a 6 as she tumbles down the rabbit hole
- 70-79 Encanto because 7 is like the tower of the house Casita
- 80-89 The Owl House because our trusty Hooty can twist into crazy shapes…like 8
- 90-99 Coraline because 9 can be like a button with string dangling from it
For the digits 0-9 in the ones place
- 0 Animal because 0 reminds me of Appa from the Last Airbender and he is an animal
- 1 Goofy Character because 1 looks like the top of a jester’s hat
- 2 Side Villan because 2 looks bent over like villains do when they scheme and chuckle evilly
- 3 Strong Character because, well…shape of muscular biceps
- 4 Helping Character because 4 looks like a chair in an ambulance, and an ambulance is super helpful
- 5 Doofus Character because when you slap your face real hard you’ve got a mark of five fingers on it and it kinda looks like a 5
- 6 Main Villain because the belly of 6 can be an eye and the tail the evil downwards sloping eyebrow
- 7 Wise Character because 7 can be a cup of tea but also 7 just already seems fitting for a wise character
- 8 Special Power Character because 8 kinda looks special already
- 9 Main Character because it’s in the last spot and also because I first associated Aang (from Avatar the Last Airbender) with it as he is standing and slightly bending forwards – so he’s kinda a symbol for all the other protagonists
I practiced these associations a couple of times and they stuck pretty quickly! I actually went on to associate each number shape from 0-9 and 00-99 with the character as well, so 00 are the big googles of Mole, as a straight forward example. This I did just to be able to access the character even quicker by hiding a clue in the shape of the number.
Initially I thought it was completely unsuited to be expanded and that one would have to just continue with a regular category system, but after reading your post I actually had an idea!
