I need some initial support/help in trying the major system to learn phone numbers in personal life. I have attempted to learn the system only for one and two digit numbers.
Here’s an example of a number I’m trying to remember: 201-3734.
I am doing the conversion as follows:
- 20 = Nose
- 1 = Tea
- 37 = Mic
- 34 = Mario
And my way of remembering the sequence is that I imagine the following story:
Person X (whose number I’m trying to imagine) has a long Pinocchio nose that has tea dripping from it. The tea falls on a mic (microphone) on which the video game character Mario jumps every time a drop of tea falls on it.
Is this a good way to remember this number? I’m looking for feedback and suggestions. I don’t find this as a very “sticky” visual for my memory. How can I make it more memorable?
Moreover, how can I avoid making the mistake of recalling unintended details? For example, I want to avoid making the mistake of recalling “iced tea” or “hot tea” instead of just “tea”, which would inadvertently add some extra digits and make my recall incorrect on the whole.
This is a great way to start.
You have to review consistently for it to stick. It will probably take a few days for it to lock in and then as long as you make sure to use it and review it every so often (weekly or so once you’re comfortable with it) you’ll have it solidly in there.
I wouldnt worry too much about extra incidental details clouding your recall. It looks like your system does not include adjectives or modifiers, so it really doesnt matter if your tea is hot, iced, or whatever. If you know that hot and iced are not part of your number word list then they’re just in there as added embellishments for your scene to make it more vivid.
Although, I suppose I should ask… Are you using major on the fly with whatever words come to mind in the moment like 34 could be MaRio or MaRy or a MoRay eel? Or are you pre-determining a list that you pull from where 34 is ALWAYS MaRio?
If you have a predetermined association, you won’t have to worry about accidentally decoding incidental details into numbers.
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Thank you.
Until I have more experience using it, everything is just “on the fly,” but I get your point in that I can probably find better conversions/words/images to use to make things easy to remember. I expect some practice and experience will help.
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Its not that its necessarily finding “better” associations, its about knowing exactly what each number is. If you make 34 MaRio, then every time you search your stored data and you recall mario you know it represents the number 34. If you sometimes use Mario, and sometimes Mary, and sometimes Mare, and sometime Mire, and sometimes oMar, etc… then you may have trouble recognizing when the image translates back to 34 and when it represents something else in a scene possibly unrelated to numbers. If you choose a consistent association you can also drill that and get super fluent in reading those numbers as those things. You can save a lot of time in the encoding process that way.
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What you’re explaining to me may be a subtle but very important point. I do have a pre-determined list of numbers to words conversion for all the 2 digit numbers. For some numbers, I’ve got several word options to choose from because they are easy ones, but for some I have forced myself to come up with 2 words. So to answer your question - yes, the number 34 can represent
- Mario, the video game character
- Mayor (of a city)
- Myra (my neice)
- Maria (an acquaintance)
- Let’s say there’s an action verb I can find for this number
- Let’s say there’s an catchy adjective I can find for this number
I choose whichever one is easiest for me to visualize based on the story method I use to stitch all the numbers together. This does slow me down because I have to make choices that fit best.
On the other hand, if I restrict myself to only one or two words for each 2 digit number, then it may be more difficult to stitch them together with nearby numbers to form a memorable and sticky story that I can easily recall later.
It seems like it’s a trade off between speed in conversion and make the mnemonic easier to remember. Thoughts? Feedback?
These are the things I’m getting bogged down with. It slows me to much to the point that I lose interest. Another example is that I’m trying to remember the number 1436. So I have:
But ‘match’ can mean ‘match (stick)’ or ‘(tennis/cricket/sports) match’ and I just keep thinking which association to use and end up wasting too much time in the encoding process.
Any help in making this less confusing will help. I’m getting lost in the subtlety of using the system 
Usually the less abstract and the more solidly physical and specific the better. This is why people and objects are usually the foundation of pre-defined number systems. I’d choose match as in matchstick. It can be anthropomorphized, animated in many ways and easily combined with other objects or people.
Tire + match = A bike tire with burning matches as spokes. Or a tire running over a giant burning match that either snuffs the flame or causes the tire to light on fire. If you have two well defined elements, read them as a single “phrase” and try to use whatever may first pop into your head.
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This is kind of the tradeoff at first. I’ve found that after getting familiar with my pre-defined elements, I “know them” and how to make them animate and interact. This means they are quite easy to remember even though they are arbitrarily determined by the system when memorizing. If time is not of the essence, you can take your time and try to find matching major options that “fit” together “better” or that might relate better to the subject matter, but after a bit of working with a pre-defined list, you sort of learn to turn those elements into memorable scenes pretty quickly.
It seems like you’re suggesting a very hard-in-stone pre-defined list that’s a one-to-one that can be ‘encoded’ and ‘decoded’ without any second thoughts. For example, I have the following in my list for 60: juice, cheese, chess, and another 1-2 in another language. For some 2 digits, I have only one phonetic. Are you suggesting that I stick to one- and only one of these to make the process quicker and efficient i.e. stick to only cheese (e.g.) and not use the rest?
Yes, I would try that approach for a bit. Save your list of options but pick your most vivid or unique match for each number and try using it exclusively for a bit. See if that helps reduce hesitation. You can always expand to using more options per number in the future.
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Hi you can create funny stories. And to avoid forget review the images not the words.