Focus in on the details. It’s not just that something crazy is happening, it is how CLEARLY you can imagine it. Focus on the sensory details of the image you are conjuring up.
Think of a pie sitting in front of you right now. You might think, “OK, got it.” But spend a little more time with it. See the pie tin it’s in…what color is it? Is it fresh? Is there steam? Is it a hot pie? Is it a frozen pie still in the box with frost that is starting to melt onto your coffee table? What flavor? Any juices spilling out of the top? What’s the SMELL like? Touch it, is it a crumbly crust, a flakey crust, a poorly baked biscuit-y crust? Getting those details, especially with an unusual image, helps solidify it.
In practice the other day I had Tom Hanks sitting in front of a smoking bowl of cereal. I imagined his mood and his reaction, staring glumly at this bright red bowl of Fruit Loops that was smoking like there were 40 cigarettes in it. It smelled terrible, and all the smoke was coming out of each Fruit Loops loop. The fact that he was looking so forlorn starting at this terrible and detail-rich meal is what helped anchor it.
When are you ready to start going for TIME, you’ll have to make these details come quicker…but I think that just comes with practice. In the meantime, work on creating the story behind the wild images.
I have a challenge. I am currently teaching a college course and I told the students that I would be able to demonstrate a memorized deck before the end of the course. I’m just beginning and it’s much more difficult that I ever imagined. I don’t expect to set an American record, but I don’t want it to take 20 minutes either. The course ends on June 30, 2011. I NEED HELP: I need a coach. Any coaches out there??? Please email me at [email protected] – Thanks!!!
Rob, it’s theoretically do-able. I’m at 3/4 of a deck in about 4 minutes and have only been working 3 weeks or so, and not very regular. If could commit to tracking your own time and working a solid 30 minutes a day I think you could do it. I’m no coach, and I only have the literature I’ve read to go on (and my experiences).
The main thing to do is to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day working with your cards. Each card needs a PAO, and you need several memory palaces to work with. Your home, old apartment, school…are all possible examples.
I did clubs until I had all thirteen. Then I added A-4 of diamonds and went through the whole deck again. Then I added 5-9 of diamonds, and did it all over again. Then 10-K. Then I had two suits, and I worked on starting to put them together (P…A…O…) That gave me about 8 locii to remember. Not too hard, and I placed them around the house I grew up. Just the week I added spades, doing the same thing. Whenever I have a chance I flip through my deck naming the cards. Occasionally I’ll work on putting them into locii. Should probably start doing that more. Not moving on to Hearts (my final suit) until I’m confident with my spades. But I’m also not working a steady 30 minutes a day. If I was (focused and working) I imagine I could confidently add a suit every 4-5 days or so. Then use the rest of the time going through the deck with a timer.
It’s very important you RECORD your times. You need to see your improvement, and need to figure out how to break through them. If one card is always giving you trouble, spend some time with it and figure out why. 3 of Clubs (James Bond dealing cards) is giving me some trouble because I keep associating different Bonds over the years. It eventually helped to just focus in on the fact that he was the only person in the deck wearing a tuxedo.
If you are still going slow, try using a metronome for each card (you’re not linking yet). Set it to 1 click a second. The ones you are having trouble with, set aside. Go through them on their own. Shuffle the deck, start again. Do this until you can identify each card in 1 second, or less. Then linking them together into locii should be quicker. I wouldn’t start working on linking locii in your memory palace until you are confident on each of your cards PAO on their own. Each card should be that rich.
Find a quiet place to work. 30 minutes - 1 hour a day. Don’t overdo it. Don’t underdo it. Record your times, record your times, record your times.
It’s doable. I’m not an expert, but feel free to find me on Skype if it isn’t progressing quickly enough and you have any questions. Skype username: j_hostels (Greece time zone).
Man, it’s not a problem. To remember PAOs for cards on a good level you need 7-10 days and other days of your course you can remebmer cards.
After training about 5-6 times a month after 2-3 months. They were not regular trainings. I can do 52 cards in 4.5 minutes (it was long ago in the beginig of Febuary).
Now i think i will have worse results, because i didn’t practice cards remembering
Performing in front of other people is several times harder than practicing alone.
Performing in a different place makes it harder also. Try to practice in situ.
If you haven’t started PAO then you might consider instead one image per card and one loci per card. You can get that down to 10 minutes or so faster than following the steep learning curve of PAO.
Dale: Great advice. Thanks. I’m interested in one image per locus versus PAO. Please tell me more about the steeper learnning curve. I’d be thrilled to do it in under 10 minutes. Rob
I use PAO for its potential for speed, but when I switched from one image per card my performance took a huge hit. PAO requires 156 separate “images” and 18 loci. One per requires 52 images and 52 loci so there is a net savings. The loci are the easy part to remember because they don’t change.
There are several ways to come up with the images for your cards. You can use the person part of the PAO method. You can use words that start with the same letter of the suit and the major system letter for the number. e.g. 2 of spades could be Sun. There are several systems that help you learn the cards equivalents.
Then you just turn over one card at a time and associate it in some wacky way with the location.
It’ll still take practice, but it might be good for this short time frame.
So I’m at a decision point. “P” versus “P-A-O.” Theoretically, if I were to practie 30 miunutes per day between now and the end of June – by the end of June would I be faster with “P” or “PAO”?
Rob
I think just one image per card will be faster to learn. They don’t need to all be people, though they could be, in case you want to expand to PAO later.
If you have already selected your 152 PAO elements and are comfortable with them then I would continue that way. But it took me a long time to decide on and internalize the PAO. That’s the preparation and learning curve I was speaking of. If you’re starting at scratch I’d say the P method would give you the best bet of a satisfactory time. That’s my take on it Others might have different but equally valid ideas on it. Josh suggested two or three cards per loci. Either way it will be a great experience for you.
Dale is technically right that with PAO you are memorizing 156 “elements”. But I never thought about it that way.
Personally, it doesn’t take me much more trouble to memorize Tiger Woods/swinging/golf club as it does just to remember “Oak Tree” or something. Every element of my P,A, and O are linked inextricably to each other. If you were to try to remember Tiger Woods/bouncing on a/cupcake I can imagine that would be tricky. But I also think that seems needlessly complicated.
PAO lets me group 3 things together simply. Josh, how does just “P” work? It seems to me like that would be MORE to remember, since you can’t chunk people into one another? You’d need 52 stops along your journey, instead of 18.
I find the biggest difficulty for me is running out of locus, not “descrambling” the loci. I’d rather have a loci of 3 images in 18 places than a journey of 1 image in 52 places.
Dale is right though, it depends on how far along you are now, what you’ve already done. The important thing is that you pick with a method and go with it. Neither is going to be wrong, neither is going to screw you up if you want to change to a different method in the future, and both will work for what you want to accomplish by the end of June.
You’re right that the PAO is easier to memorize than 3 disparate elements, but when you’re using the system is when you might end up with Tiger bouncing on a cupcake.
K♣ = Henry VIII -- typically dangerous. Sometimes with guillotine if necessary. (Anachronistic, but symbolizes beheading or execution.)
Arthur Rubinstein is playing his piano. Inside the piano is Otis Redding who is furiously beating Henry the VIII with his microphone as the piano hammers fall on them.
Different order:
Otis Redding (A♠)
Henry VIII (K♣)
Artur Rubinstein (4♥)
Otis Redding is standing on Henry’s shoulders, hitting him with the microphone (trying to save Artur) as Henry drops a guillotine blade on Artur’s grand piano, chopping it in half.
Another order:
Henry VIII (K♣)
Artur Rubinstein (4♥)
Otis Redding (A♠)
Henry drops the guillotine blade on Artur’s piano, which goes silent, and Otis falls out of the wreck, singing…
Etc…
See this post for examples on how I determine the order and placement of the people/objects/animals…
I use a lot of objects and animals in my system (wolf, elk, woodpecker, antelope, kri kri, pufferfish, giant emerald, apricots, apple, iced tea, onion)…
I plan to switch to Ben’s double-card system eventually, but I haven’t finished it yet.
^^ See, that doesn’t seem much different to me than PAO. You’re still remembering more than 3 elements. Dale’s point was that with PAO you have to memorize 156 different elements, and that is harder than just “P” (or just “O”) where you have to memorize only 52.
But you’re not memorizing 52 - you’ve got just as much “coloring” your scene as I do with PAO, right?
I don’t know… I think of it as only 52. If I have to memorize “Artur Rubenstein playing tennis with a toaster”, I still have to know Rubenstein’s personality and what the toaster looks like. I don’t think it’s much more work to become familiar with 52 people/animals/objects.
The thing that might make learning PAO take a little longer in the beginning is having to search down the index and then horizontally. If you see the 4 of Spades, you search down to the 4S row, then might have to mentally go through the P and the A column to get to the O:
AS | P | A | O
2S | P | A | O
3S | P | A | O
4S | P | A | O
5S | P | A | O
Etc.
