Hello everyone! My name is Bryan and I need some advice.
I’ve been reading about memory techniques for about four years now. I have a working PAO system for remembering numbers from 00-99, but I’m not an expert yet. Recently, I’ve been trying to develop or find a method for studying and memorizing things efficiently. I know that memory palaces are a powerful tool for memorization and that Anki is effective for spaced repetition and active studying.
I’m wondering if I can use these techniques for daily studying, such as memorizing key points from 10 textbooks with 1000-1500 pages. I don’t need to remember everything word for word, but I want to retain the main ideas of a large number of topics.
I’ve tried this for a couple of days, and it seems to work well. I can retain around 90-95% of the information, but it’s a slow process that requires a lot of effort. I’m currently able to study and memorize only 6-8 pages (just the key points of paragraphs/pages) per hour.
What is your opinion? Do you think it’s possible to use these techniques to retain a large amount of information for the long term?
Or I will be wasting time because I should study using anki and use MP only to reatin specific things?
I ask because I read Alex Mullen blog and he have very good insights about not using MP for everything but recently I found this topic here and it may be a game changing for me. I mean I’m not the dumbiest guy in the world and I can learn the concepts I need in tradional way. What I’m looking for is a more structure way to internalize concepts and have it avaible in my mind.
Short question: can I use MP to study everything? (only memorize key points of each topic/page)
Thank you guys for any help! Sorry for bothering you.
EDIT: fixed spelling mistakes. EDIT 2: Creating new palaces is not a problem to me anymore. I’m creating it using virtual 360 houses tours and google street view. So the first difficult one can have of limited locis is not a problem anymore to me.
I definitely think MPs can be used to retain information for longer than the usual rote learning can. When it comes down to “how much” one can remember, as much as they can make visual representations for. Some may try to remember word-for-word of whole pages, while others may extract only the key information from a specific section of a book and memorize that instead. Others just extract specific points and don’t remember them verbatim, but create images with which they associate it, allowing them to remember the general idea.
That being said, using MPs in the same way for different types of information, in my opinion, is wrong. The reason is that different types of information may be better remembered in different ways and with different forms of structuring.
Thank you for taking some time to answer me. I really apreciate.
If I understand well what you said I think we can use MP for prety much every kind of information, the encoding phase is what you need to adapt to different kind os subjects.
My concert is to put this ammount of effort and it turn to not be viable in long run with this big ammount of information. 10k-15k pages of contents to extract key points, encode and put it in memory palaces is a big task.
At the end of the day I think I will need to try it myself but I hope get some tips of more experienced usershere to avoid some mistakes. I’m afraid most because for a long time I doubted one can use MP and other menomonics to study in long term in viable way.
This is what I switched to for my chess openings. I use chessable the equivalent of Anki for 80% of the content and MP for only the 20% most serious content.
Half of my planned MP work which is only 10% of my total project took me over 6 months. I want 100% of my project done in a reasonable timeframe and am willing to sacrifice some accuracy.
Sure! MP is too powerful to be ignored but needs so much effort to make it work. I really don’t know if it’s really viable as a study method based mainly on MP.
What I have tested and concluded until now is that images are very strong but they need some loci to stick, or you may forget them with time (MP needs to be revisited time to time too).
Anki is very good but not compared to the power of MP. It’s so easy to memorize concepts with images/MP, and with Anki, you will have the same result after much repetition, and only if you use a kind of active study (which MP essentially is).
I see your concern, however, before you try to ask whether MP or other memory systems can do X and Y and how efficiently, always think about the “normal” way of studying most people use.
I doubt anyone here can argue that the best form of studying is studying where the information simply remains with you for a very long time without any techniques but raw understanding, things such as being able to name the capital of your country, your age, the names of the people close to you, things like that are remembered very very quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, most information is not like that [unless you drill it into your bones].
I bet anyone here can name at least a couple of books they have read and now hardly remember even 1/20th [a completely random number] of the things inside of it. Memory techniques such as MP are not godly methods that make you a walking encyclopedia with little to no effort. We simply use techniques that utilize some of the best parts of your memory - spatial and visual [others such as emotion can be included as well].
Memorize what needs to be memorized. Understand what needs to be understood. Try not to cram. Learning takes time and so do memory techniques. But once you get hold of the core concepts you will appreciate it . Use mp and Anki on a daily basis and slowly develop your skill.
I confess it was not what I was expecting tho. I do think there is a way to systematize (perhaps a framework) that can improve the performance and memorization in study. Always staying in what “normal people” do prevents evolution, even more when most people complain that they were never taught how to study effectively.
The way normal people learn varies greatly from person to person. Some people unintentionally use mental imagery or recitation (or other methods) to help them memorize concepts, some other simply use brute-force learning, and most don’t even know what they’re doing and forget about the subjects days later (I want to go beyond and not stay in the middle). Furthermore even easy things as mentioned in the answers are also forgotten, no matter how basic the information is. So I wonder what would become of more complex concepts like the textbooks I mentioned… 50%+ would simply fogret it one day later or minutes later without appropriating the concept to mind.
Of course I don’t intend to memorize everything. I do want to understand (and it is not that hard) and memorize the key concepts. I will try create/use a system that helps me master certain concepts in order to achive it. I may fail, but I think it’s worth a try.
Again thank you all for the answers, but I was expecting something more technical, a personal experience from someone who has actually tried to use the techniques learned here systematically and not just sporadically. After all, if we are on this forum it is because we believe that the techniques are effective, the question is whether they can be used daily and systematically or not.
btw english is not my native language. So I apologize if it sounds like I’m offending anyone, it’s certainly not my intention!
