Learning journal (because it's not only about memorization)

Hari-P · March 21, 2025, 2:09am

I always resisted the “training journal” thing because I’m not consistent usually, and it feels like a chore / one more thing on my to do list.

But I do see the value in pausing to think and take stock of what I’ve been doing. I think I can manage to update at least every 2-3 months.

How I function:
I always have several projects going on at the same time, but not all of them have the same priority and intensity. I usually have periods of 4-6 weeks during which I’m passionate about a project, then it fades and the project reverts to “relaxed/maintenance mode” until the next intense phase (or for some of them is abandoned entirely).

Japanese (December 24-February 25)

On December-February, I’ve been on a Japanese kick.
I had been learning/reviewing the NativShark, jalup and jlab cards everyday for months, and I suddenly felt I understood the anime I was watching much better than before. Well enough to do my own cards based on native material myself.
I developed the following method:

take a screenshot, paste it in anki
dictate the sentence in the dictionary to check it (speech to text is awesome, it corrects minor mistakes and means you don’t have to search for the kanjis yourself), paste the sentence in anki (with furigana if necessary)
if necessary, write the English translation (but often it’s not even necessary)

I really focused on getting it done quickly. My goal was to get as much exposure at possible, not to spend 10 min. on each sentence. If there was a snag and I couldn’t be sure of the whole sentence after all, I just skipped it.

After a while, I noticed I was frustrated not understanding the different verb tenses well, it became a pain point. So it was time to hit the grammar book again (for the first time in a very long time), but this time because I really wanted it!

I also noticed that some anime really didn’t age well (or maybe my taste was terrible in my teens , nostalgia wasn’t enough to make some anime palatable).

Now the fire has faded and my Japanese studies have reverted to relaxed mode… The new cards I made are slowly trickling in in anki, bringing fond memories of the animes I (re)watched during that time.

Science
Medicine (February)
On February, I had a “medicine” phase, which was a consequence of the Japanese phase I just had. Because I discovered the anime Cells at work, which has all the ingredients for memorization: memorable characters (personification of cells), good story-telling/visualisation of the workings of the body and immune system and of what happens when something “goes wrong”. Plus the anime does a really good job of helping you learn by repetition (seeing several times in different contexts what happens when there’s a wound to “repair”, what helps and hinders the cells each time in different circumstances, etc). It is surprisingly accurate in many details, which (as a very ignorant person in this field) I wouldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t watched “doctor/pharmacologist reacts to cells at work” videos.

I watched it once for the Japanese and then I rewatched some episodes to make anki cards about pathology/immunology, mostly just screenshots with a brief explanation to remind me of a particular plot point, which explain something about the body, like “why do scabs itch?”, “what is pus?”, “what happens when you drink coffee?”, “why do you feel bad when you have a hangover?” or things like “why is killer T cell depressed in this episode while white blood cell isn’t?”, “what was the excess delivery of calcium foreshadowing?”, etc.

Hard to measure progress on this one (and since I do it for fun it doesn’t matter I suppose), but when I briefly Google something (are the effector T cells and the killer T cells the same thing?) I feel like I understand medicine articles/descriptions better than before, if only because I now have the basic vocabulary about the things they’re talking about.

Science
Chemistry (March)
I learnt the periodic table of elements, talked about it here: "In My Head Only" Project (test with the periodic table)

I’m now thinking about if/how to continue this project.

I think the most interesting thing was :

how great the “no notes allowed” approach felt
the realization that I can, after all, use artificial memory palaces, if I go at it the right way

So what started as a random, spontaneous project turned out to be really interesting for other reasons than the material itself.

Bible memorization (February-March)
This had fallen by the wayside because my memory palaces and anki decks were a mess, and I don’t do well without a tool telling me when it’s time to review something (I find it hard to keep track). So in February-March I’ve taken the time to reorganize everything and improve my decks.

In the process I learnt some new things about anki, like creating my own note types, use hint fields, layouts, automatic image resize, etc.

I had completely abandoned my memory palace for the gospel of John, because it was one of the first I ever made and it was just… bad. Always felt clunky.
But the outline was still usable, so I took my sketchbook and went to a nice garden, to put my sketches in a new memory palace. Since most of the organizing work was already done, it was quick after all.

In the meanwhile I’ve noticed that for the subjects where the point is to spend time and slow down, instead of only being quick and efficient, that I like my memory palaces to be nice/relaxing places (mostly gardens and parks, or houses with good memories).

For now I want to enjoy my new/renewed memory palaces while I decide on the next thing (a book verbatim? a book outline? mind mapping and continue building my library of abstract key concepts?)

English (no dates/fail)
I’ve completely failed at my objectives for this one. I intended to continue to use the InFluency app/platform, because it really has a lot to offer, and I love the community there. But after 10 months of very intense English learning in 2024, I guess I feel sort of burnt out and I just need a break from English studies.

There is also the problem that I can’t use too many apps. I do anki and nativshark everyday without fail, but the others fall by the wayside, even if they are excellent. I really like biblingo, clozemaster, kanji tree, etc. And I use them on a weekly-ish basis, for focused/additional studies. But two apps seem to be my limit that I can integrate into my daily routine.

So if I can put things in anki, it gets done, whether my day is relaxed or hectic, but otherwise…

Hari-P · May 14, 2025, 8:17pm

Update April - May

Japanese: still going strong. I discovered that iyashikei anime usually features everyday scenes that I can understand easily, so I feel motivated because it means that I can be pretty sure it won’t be too hard/frustrating. I did a tiny bit of grammar (mostly verb conjugations) because I felt frustrated and wanted to get more clarity. Now I recognize the verb tenses when I hear them. Kana PAO is very useful (even if still incomplete and probably never going to be).

Italian: I’m still doing the kofi deck in anki (drilling conjugations), and began reading/watching content. I wanted to test “immersion” learning, with comprehensible input, since up until now I had never begun learning a language from the start with extensive reading/listening.

The negative is that I had forgotten how hard it is to find contents that are interesting enough when you start a new language as a beginner (even as a “false” beginner, with a language that is “easy” given the other languages that I speak).
I really believe that mid and long term, it’s a much more enjoyable and rewarding way to learn, but the first 100 hours or so of comprehensible input as a beginner are… kind of a grind to be honest (even if it’s gratifying relatively quickly, I wouldn’t qualify it as fun).

The positive is that thanks to the kofi deck I basically recognize all verb tenses. I don’t really mind having some things I don’t understand and can accept that some things aren’t 100% clear and I’ll get it later, when I made progress, but still I feel I’m benefiting more from my exposure to the content, and hope I’ll be able to use these verb tenses correctly much quicker.

999 PAO: It’s slow progress because I don’t have as much time as I would wish for it. But I’m motivated because I need it! Even with it half-done I’m using it a lot, so each time I need a number and I don’t have it yet, it keeps me motivated to continue chipping away at it until it’s finished.

General reflexions
Anki (pacing): my reviews take me about one hour every day in total (several times 10-15 min add up relatively quickly). But I still want to be mindful that it is not a tool for learning, but only reviewing, and that it should NOT be the main use of my time, for any subject.

So I’ve decided that I’m stopping after one hour (whether my reviews are finished or not). If I have more down time I’m not allowed to just do more cards to distract myself, but I should engage with the subjects I’m studying in other ways. Or do something else (creative).
I’ve changed the settings so that the new cards only come up when all reviews are finished, so that I don’t get a huge backlog accumulating over time.
A side effect is that, since I want to get to these new cards, I’ve become more mindful of the cards I’m creating (and their quality). Any half-baked “just in case” card is a delay preventing me to get to the good/fresh/interesting cards and should be deleted mercilessly.

Hari-P · August 20, 2025, 2:04pm

Summer being the busiest season, my main worry has been “how do I spend three weeks of holidays without (almost) no time on my phone without having a gigantic anki backlog when I return?”

Turns out that even a big backlog is resorbing much quicker than expected (thanks, probably, to the “intervals decreasing” option for the reviews - I’m not quite sure, but I’m happy with the results anyway).

Also I discovered the Refold channel which explained how to install the ASB player extension to automatically create anki cards. It took me a while to set up everything, but it’s great for intensive immersion! (Although I did try to stop myself from adding tons of new cards just before holidays).

Hari-P · November 18, 2025, 7:35am

These last few weeks I’ve fallen into a chemistry/physics rabbit hole.
After memorizing the periodic table “just to see if I can”, I’ve been studying basic concepts, going into more details on things that strikes my fancy, and I’m honestly surprised how much fun I have with it.
It may be because it’s different from my other projects which are languages and language-based. Or because I began with no expectations at all concerning chemistry (whether personal or professional), so I can explore freely and try different memorisation/study techniques without consequences if my experiments fail, letting me time to be creative with it.

I also have made one big change in my routine, which cascaded into lots of small changes which I had to adjust as they came. Overall positive (I’ve been doing well with doing push-ups, walking and reading every day for example), but it still has to be tested during high stress (and recovery) periods.

The “deadline” I have to see how far I’ve come in Italian is this week. I’m interested to see the results of what I’ve tried out (kofi deck + comprehensible input only - I’ve done some journaling but not enough that I feel it counts).

Hari-P · November 25, 2025, 5:17pm

So even if my PAO isn’t finished, I had time last weekend and decided to at last start with my attempt at a History memory palace.

21.11
Did a list of neighborhoods, defined one per century.
Starting with 21 century and going backwards.
Starting with city center, then going out in spiral, through my own neighborhood first.
Loci most used (because recent history, more dates and more precise ones) should be nearest.
Begun list of events (per year).
To do next: walk through the “21th century” neighborhood (N21) and choose loci.

22.11
Went for a walk. Made memory palace for 21th century (one locus per year: from 2040 to 2001). Can still expend later in 2040 if so wish.
Made anki cards with loci of N21.
Made 13 anki cards with events of the 21th century to test things out.
Roughly planned journey in 20th century neighborhood (N20).

To do next:
Learn these cards to test system.
Walk through N20 and define loci.

Questions/problems:

One station per year is a lot. I don’t know if I’m beginning something too big that I won’t ever finish… but after my experience with my 1000 loci memory palace for PAO, I feel important not to cram to many things in small spaces. Especially since the point is to have a framework to add more things later, so I’m spacing things out.
For example, if I study the timeline of WW2 there certainly are several events per year. One locus per decade wouldn’t cut it.
I expect that the more into the past I go, the less precise the dates are going to be, so it doesn’t need to be 1 locus per year forever.
Why/how question cards would be better. But I’m building and testing the framework for now. But need to pay attention when learning about events to formulate better cards than just “in which year did X happen” or “what happened on (date)” ?

23.11
Went to do pics of N20.
But I had an unexpected problem: it was really cold and my hands hurt so I had to stop mid-way (in 1943). Need to find better gloves.

To do next: go back and finish pictures for the 20th century.
At least, I’ve seen that there is plenty of POI in the city center that I know well, so I’ll probably be able to do more than two centuries there (I’ll just have to tweak the “neighborhood” division a bit. I’ve used the “census division” as a starting point, but nothing said I can’t make my own!).

Update about the “Italian test”: there was only one presentation in Italian at the conference, about patent translation (and which AI tools can be used for it). I understood everything (including the jokes) but the speaker was very careful to speak slowly and clearly so I don’t know how much of a test it was. Still it was gratifying (and encourages me to continue). I’ll just need to fix myself another goal (one with a shorter time frame).

Hari-P · January 4, 2026, 4:42pm

Holiday break did a lot of good. I was at my parents with extended family so I was forced to do “nothing” (as in spend time with family, help cooking, swimming and wellness…) and I really slept a lot. I didn’t realize how much l needed it. Must remember to plan for more sleep in my schedule because I tend to not notice I lack it until I fall sick.

During the break, learnt lots of Geography with the app Seterra (friendly competition with my niece) and by making memory palaces together. I don’t know if she’s convinced to use memory palaces by herself, but at least she knows how it goes and she finds it fun.

Last year, I summarized every week in my journal (by hand) and every month in Obsidian. (But I sometimes don’t post here on the forum because my notes are messy and I’m lazy to translate it into English).

For 2026, I enrolled in a drawing course. (I know there are free ressources on the net, but I want contact and to be able to send my drawings to a teacher to be more motivated).

My main project for 2026 is going to be my history memory palace:

I’m still missing about a hundred keywords for my 999 PAO, but the memory palace is finished, and could still be extended (haven’t used all space available by far, there still are several places to go through). I’ve decided to re-use this PAO memory palace for my History project, for the negative dates (BC). No reason to let a good 1000-loci memory palace be underused after all.
It means I have now loci for the dates 1000 - 1 BC and 1848-2026 AC at my disposal. I began reading about King Ashurpanibal (somewhat at random, I listened a podcast about him and found him interesting) and encoding some dates.
I’ve also been making anki cards with maps of important places for the Assyrian/Babylonian/Mittani… Empires. I like to visualise things on maps and it serves me well that I learnt all Asian countries during the holidays, because comparing with modern countries helps me anchor where these ancient civilisations were.
I’m making a lists of books I want to buy/borrow. I’m beginning with the Assyrians and Babylonians. Then probably Medes/Persians, then Greeks… still unsure because I really don’t know much yet about that time period, and the process is still new for me. Will see how it goes. Suggestions welcome.

Hari-P · March 23, 2026, 11:52am

February-March update: I’m continuing with my usual projects (hebrew, italian, history memory palace, chemistry).

999 PAO is complete at last which allowed me to advance with my history memory palace project, which I’m enjoying a lot (even if still incomplete)!

I’m adding events from my readings (I’m now reading “The library of ancient wisdom”, from Selena Wisnom, about Ashurbanipal’s library), but also some dates that have personal significance.

For example, I was talking with my parents last week-end and realized that compulsory medical insurance was only introduced about 30 years ago. No compulsory medical insurance seems unthinkable to me nowadays, because it means lots of people do not have access to basic medical care, which was the case for my grandparents, and it significantly impacted the family. (And yes, I realize that I am extremely privileged to live in a country where access to basic medical care without getting into debt is the norm).

When I began this project, I was more thinking about the study of (ancient) history, but being able to spontaneously encode the dates of historical events which have personal significance is even better! It’s incredible how we tend to forget things that didn’t actually happened THAT long ago.

Josh · March 23, 2026, 4:41pm

Let me know if you find any good ones. I’m interested in those topics.

Hari-P · April 24, 2026, 9:49am

April 2026

History Memory Palace is finished for the BC period. Now I need to fill it up to “stress test”… I want to be able to make a spontanous “note” when hear about an historical event in passing (or in a podcast).

Italian is continuing well (language transfer, podcasts, TV series). Only I stopped reading because I finished Pepper & Carrott and the Topolino older numbers aren’t accessible online anymore. If anybody has a recommandation for fumetti/comics I’ll gladly take it. Ideally a daily strip (like on gocomics, but not only for english/spanish).

Chemistry (or rather physical science in general): it’s going well. I’m trying to be really selective and not add too many anki cards (especially since I try to maintain my anki review time to less than 60 min a day).

I’m listening to my inner brat. Who is he? He’s the child who doesn’t do his homework and doesn’t learn what he should at school because he doesn’t see WHY it’s useful. Or the teenager who is saying “yeah… so what? Why should I care?” Well, don’t bully them, they’re right.
Every time I see a concept and I don’t understand it, but most importantly I don’t really know why it’s useful to know it, then I need to answer this “why?” and “so what?” first.
If I can’t, go back to the basics, because they seemed easy but I apparently need to relearn/memorise them to give a break to my mental octopus who is juggling too many things for me right now to understand. Then, when I come back to the (formerly) difficult thing it’s easier (and envjoyable).

Hari-P · June 8, 2026, 4:12pm

Made a 50 stations memory palace to place inside the book of Genesis that I had memorised with a 50 animal peg list (I wanted to give a simple peg list a try, but I never was quite satisfied with it). A memory palace really makes the navigation/recall so much easier! Apparently even for something learnt a few years ago.

PAO: I’m now in the stage of learning/drilling my (relatively) new 999 system. Honestly it’s kind of boring. Because I believe in the principle “learning by using, if possible in different contexts”, I added dates in my history palace for the corresponding periods, and made a maths memory palace for squares and cubes (and roots). If anyone has ideas about numbers that would be useful to learn I’m all ears.

Two things I want to do and made only a little progress with are: 1) having less then one hour of anki reviews a day (main problem is that I’m adding too much new cards, new subjects/decks) to have more time for other things, and 2) having a less skewed proportion of “source cards” vs “Zettel cards” in Obsidian (sources cards are the notes I take from things I read/listen to, Zettel cards are when I put these ideas into practice and/or use these ideas to create something else).

Pig · June 8, 2026, 4:54pm

Did you do one image per chapter and assigning that image to 50 animals alphabetical?

Hari-P · June 8, 2026, 8:04pm

Yes, it was an animal peg list, chapters 1-26 A to Z, then again from G (so chapters 7, 27 and 47 are all animals with G).

The associations worked great (linking the animals to the events), but the real problem is that the alphabet isn’t actually a list that I know well: I can recite it (a, b, c, etc.) and I know approximately if a letter is more at the beginning or at the end, but I don’t instinctively know, for example, between U and P which one comes before the other. Unlike numbers where I don’t even have to think about it (for any number I will know instinctively if it’s before of after another one).

So although I have grown fond on this peg list, I felt I spend cognitive load to learn/manipulate the list rather than the material I want to learn, which is sort of… counter-productive.

Pig · June 8, 2026, 9:42pm

Interesting! Have you tried adding a layer by linking the number to the letter?

So if you have the Gorilla holding a key for Major Sys he can still be used as your representation for the chapter as well as keeping the number in the series instantly recalled too. Also adding 27 and 47 objects to him or other G animals should work too maybe he’s wearing Nikes and holding or stepping on a rake at some point that stands up and hits him in the face like the classic cartoon skit.

Hari-P · June 9, 2026, 6:04pm

Well I didn’t boot the animals out, they’re intertwined with the stories by now so they’re in the memory palace as well, but they’re not the anchors serving for navigation anymore. They just, well, happen to be there for historical reasons

I know that giraffe is seven and gorilla 27, etc. easily because I associated story + animal + PAO person = number, but it always felt like having a supplementary step every time I decode, which slows things down. Plus it’s kind of useless because knowing which letter/animal is associated with a chapter doesn’t give me any useful supplementary information. (If alphabetical navigation would work it would have been useful for that but I discovered it doesn’t work “fluently” enough for me.)

Hari-P · June 25, 2026, 7:55pm

For this update I extracted some statistics of anki and my excel inventory of memory palaces.

Themes

History/Georgraphy: 3 memory palaces, with 1125 loci in total, + 20 anki cards with maps (not in memory palaces, like placing Carthage on a map, tracing the limits of the Roman empire at its peak, etc.)

This History Memory Palace project is (relatively) new. My memory palace for dates is still growing (I’ve finished the memory palace for all BC dates but I’m missing loci for the period between 1952 and 1 AD).

I really like how it’s turning out. Having a framework with dates gives me a lot of “hooks”, not only for studying history, but also useful for general knowledge – isolated facts/trivia I come across but aren’t a part of a subject I’m systematically studying.

For example, I read an article about how “fatbergs” block sewers and can cause floodings, so I added “2015: The term “fatberg” is added to the Oxford English Dictionary”. The exact date isn’t important in itself, but it gives a hook so that the idea isn’t just floating aimlessly in my mind (and gets forgotten quickly). It means that every time I review “2015” I’ll remember what fatbergs are and at which point they became a problem common enough to get into the dictionary.

Bible/Ancient literature/Poetry: 17 memory palaces, with 695 loci in total. 155 loci for verbatim, the rest are chapter/paragraph summaries + 20 anki cards (not in memory palace) with cultural notes or illustrations (like teraphim – what are they, what did they look like, which religions used them)

Science: 2 memory palaces, with 156 loci, + 192 anki cards (not in memory palaces)
I’m deliberately limiting the number of palaces and anki cards I create because I don’t want to drown in reviews. Memory palaces are useful for the basics that you need to know and review (like the periodic table), but otherwise I prefer anki cards (SRS) with “why/how-questions” that test not only facts, but why these facts are important to know and how they influence each other.

I also began a Human Body project, inspired by the anime Cells at Work and this thread:A truly epic mnemonic system build for human proteins - General Memory Chat - Art of Memory Forum. I’ve just started and I’m not quite sure what “the final product” is going to be. I’m reading the MSD Manual (consumer version) and Wikipedia on a theme, then I chat with Gemini (which I suppose is like the Feynman technique) to perfect my stories/metaphors/mnemonics, and finally I redact a “zettel” (note) for each cell/organ/hormone/”question” (like what happens when the body doesn’t have enough water, what can go wrong during a blood transfusion, what makes you feel hungry…).

These zettel/notes are all in Obsidian - I like the graph view showing how all the notes are connected, but I’m not sure if it’s useful or a nice distraction. For now, I don’t bother to formally review anything, because I feel that after having built the stories and characters (and drawn some illustrations) I pretty much already know them without formal memorization, and since everything is interconnected “reviews” happen naturally.

Languages: not much to say, I have my systems and routines and I stick to them.

Stats: I have 4 memory palaces, with 316 loci in total. But I’m not really using them (anymore): alphabet memory palaces are very useful, but short-lived (you don’t really need them anymore as soon as you’re reading fluently). For vocabulary, I did some memory palaces (both dispersed and linear), but they are all abandoned now. Soundalike mnemonics with SRS (anki) are more efficient.

And in any case, the aim is always to get to the level where I can just use the language in daily life (read, listen, watch, talk) instead of learning it. Meaning that ideally there wouldn’t be any memory palaces / cards to review at all.

Other statistics - types of memory palaces:

House memory palaces (indoors): 7 memory palaces, with 175 loci in total. Range: up to 50 loci.
I tend to use indoor locations for small to mid-size memory palaces (the biggest has 52 loci).

Street memory palaces (outside): 6 memory palaces, 1492 loci in total. Range: up to 1000 loci (or more).
Going out and walking around in a city is ideal if you need a big memory palace: you can potentially walk around forever and there are a huge diversity of things that can be used as loci.

Park memory palaces (outdoor, more natural spaces, a park, a short hiking trail, etc.). 8 memory palaces, with 621 in total. Range: up to 150 loci.
I like to be in nature, but I find it harder to place a lot of loci there (unlike in a more constructed environment), because loci are less distinct. You would think that a forest gives you lots of loci, because each tree can be one, but I don’t know trees well enough and after a while they’re all the same to me. Also things in nature change more quickly (flowers grow and wilt, streams and brooks change course, ponds dry, paths/trails get blocked and go different ways, etc.).

Artwork memory palaces (drawing, photographs, any object to manipulate): 18 memory palaces, with 165 loci in total. Range: up to 15-20 loci.
I love using artwork for memory palaces, but it’s only for small memory palaces (15-20 loci is the most I’m comfortable with). Should experiment more with lukasa-like memory palaces, I like the kinesthetic aspect of it.

wobulous · June 25, 2026, 9:17pm

I love seeing details like this. Very inspiring. I need to step up my memory palace game!