Good choice. I made that mistake and ended up drowning in too much material.
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Swift update. Things are not going as well as I’d hoped.
- Fifteen points of information for each member of my family.
- Two Robert Frost Poems
- Countries in the UN and their populations as of 2019
- The 20-times table
- Squares up to 25 (I used to know this, so it is a refresher)
I’ve managed to do some work on memorisation of family information. But just two family members. I also decided to stop trying to do countries and populations into a memory palace, but to just get all the countries into their loci, and then go back and put in the population numbers. I’ve got the first ~25 countries and populations down pat.
Everything else has been sort of parked for the moment. I need to work on my Korean vocabulary, and I have a small lonely planet travellers book with a small 14-page dictionary at the back. I’m thinking about memorising this. But it does mean I need a lot of loci. So I’m undecided about how to go about doing this. Needs more thought.
As I alluded to in the last update, I have a lot on my plate at the moment, and although I have scaled back on the list of things to memorise, I think I need to scale back even more. So I’ve revised the list down even further!
- Fifteen points of information for each member of my family.
- Countries in the UN and their populations as of 2019
After I have these done then I think I’ll add back some of the other stuff.
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Which poems by Frost?
The two I have been working on are:
- Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. (This is the one I know well)
- The road not taken (The one I’ve been struggling with)
But I think I’ve only been struggling because I haven’t invested the time. 
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The Road Not Taken
Is one of my favorites. A subtle and ironic poem.
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Things have been slightly better since I scaled back on my ambitions. I have managed to firmly entrench the information regarding my family. The last two people can be problematic at times, but they are getting there.
For countries and populations, I decided to take a slightly different tack for the moment and make sure I have every country in loci before I go back to update the population information about them all. It takes a massive amount of time to review all of them. So I plan to get all the 233 countries firmly in place, then go back and associate more information with them, then I can mentally review them in blocks of 25.
This week I’m going to add back in some stuff. I want to get the Robert Frost poems in my head, and return to the times tables. I read some interesting stuff regarding memory improvement in the elderly, and being an older gentleman, I decided that rote memorisation of some things could be useful.
So I’m going to rote memorise the 20-times tables. The countries and populations gives me more than enough practice with my Dominic system of numbers. This isn’t something which I need to “meaningfully engage with” in order to understand. In this area, I believe that automaticity given by rote memorisation will be an advantage. And I can always start using mnemonics if I run into problems! 
I’m also planning to add back in a cheat sheet: AWK programming language cheat sheet .
So for the next week or so:
- Robert Frost poems
- AWK cheat sheet
- 20-times tables.
I am pretty close to having memorised the Frost poems, if I manage it then I might try to move on to a longer more complex one like Pablo Neruda’s “A dog has died.”
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Curious to hear how that goes. I used the Major System to acquire the tables and then practised for fluency. In the process the MS encoding became nearly transparent.
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It has been a long time since I did an update, but I was away to Italy for a week. I didn’t do any reviews during that time, and I find it interesting that I have forgotten just about everything. To be fair, I could remember one of the two poems in full, and about 3/4 of the other. (Although I memorised those via rote memorisation, not method of loci or any mnemonic device.) None of the population stuff survived a couple of weeks without a review. Very little of the information about my family remains.
For me, this brings up a perplexing question. Have I really memorised anything, if I have to constantly review it daily or at least a couple of times per week?
I can remember things for months or years without any review if I learned them from rote memorisation. I can even remember my friend’s phone number from 25 years ago, even though that number no longer exists in the UK, and he moved to Australia 20+ years ago!
As I said in my initial post:
I’m still not convinced that these mnemonic tricks are anything more than tricks, since the only thing which seems to have stuck is the stuff I did via by rote. I’m wondering if I have to do these reviews daily for 1-2 years before they stick, and if that is the case, then why should I bother? I could spend less or the same amount of time to memorise by rote. My enthusiasm for this experiment is waning, but I’ll pull out the list of stuff that I had “memorised” before and relearn it and review it to see if it will finally stick. But so far, for me, the experiment appears to be failing.
My xperience is similar. Mnemonics help with acquisition, not so much for long term retention and not at all for fluency. The last two require drilling and that is the bulk of the work, especially if you want fluent recall.
Many here are practising for competitions or exams and long term retention is not on the radar. Sometimes it’s a good thing that mnemonics fade. Do you want to remember every grocery list forever?
But mnemonics do make the practice easier. They give one something clear and bright to hold onto and one can practice without reference to notes.
The spaces between repetition stretch out over time and after a while review need only happen occaisonally.
If not used or reviewed, all memories fade over time. I know people who’ve even forgotten their native language after a long period of disuse.
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What a nice experiment.
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In Dominic O’Brien’s “You Can Have An Amazing Memory”, chapter 13 is “Spinning The Memory Plates”. He says: “Knowing when and how many times to review the data you need to remember (whether that’s decks of cards or a shopping list or information for a meeting or exam) will make the difference between success and failure in your attempts at recall.”
zvuv talks about “The spaces between repetition stretch out over time and after a while review need only happen occasionally.” You could augment your learning with a flashcard app such as Anki (desktop version of same name, Ankidroid for Android, I’m not sure what for iOS). This app uses spaced repetition to present newer and forgotten items more frequently.
Spaced repetition is rather efficient because you waste less time on things you know well, and spend more time on things you don’t know as well. After having gotten through all the Spanish material in Duolingo, I abandoned it for Anki, which I used diligently to learn Spanish vocabulary. People were amazed at my progress. There was no other memory technique other than spaced repetition.
In your case, you could use a hybrid system, wherein you learn the information initially using memory techniques, and then use a spaced repetition app such as Anki to cement the knowledge into your brain. As you review cards, you are still referring to whatever system you set up to remember the knowledge. Note that this idea only just now came up while reading this thread; I have not tried to combine these two practices yet myself.
In the big picture, you could use Anki as a guide to tell you whether your system is working or not. If you are forgetting lots of cards in a particular category, perhaps the system you used to memorize the information isn’t the best.
One tricky part is deciding what to put in Anki, and when. With Spanish, I started off putting everything in Anki, but there were lots of words I never heard or used again. I then decided to write all words I didn’t recognize in an article, book, or movie/series (subtitles are your friend) in a notebook. When I knew the existing words I had entered in Anki well enough that I would not have to review many words each day, I would review the notebook looking for words that had appeared multiple times, and enter some of those into Anki.
The goal is to find something that works for you. You can always change your system over time and try to wean yourself off of Anki as your memory systems get better and mature.
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It has been a very long time since I updated this thread. I’ve more or less given up on most of the memorisation stuff. As I’ve noted elsewhere, there really isn’t much use in all this for me. I’ve learned a couple of poems and some shortcut keys. Most of the other stuff I’ve already forgotten, although I could probably dredge up Shakespeare’s plays if I had to.
I think the thing that has made me stop is the reviews. You have to review it constantly, which would be fine if I wasn’t just memorising stuff for the sake of it. I’ve had zero use for any multiplication tables, squares, populations of countries, the Chinese zodiac, etc.
What I have got out of this little experiment is the knowledge that if I did have something I needed to memorise, then I could do it fairly quickly and easily. So I’ve decided that I’m not going to memorise anything which is of no immediate use to me. But I think I might memorise more poetry, since I don’t actually mind reviewing them, and I like them.
So my takeaways from this experiment are:
- If you don’t have a use for it, or a desire to know it, don’t bother.
- Reviews are required, and you need to be systematic about it.
- You can memorise things which have no utility, if you enjoy having the knowledge. (e.g. poetry for me)
- It is worth spending some time prior to memorisation working on the organisation of the data.
- Anki is better for retaining random lists of things (like vocabulary) for me than memory palaces.
I may add to this thread sporadically, but for the moment I’m signing off.
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Your comments match my experience and conclusions.
I never saw the point in accumulating lists of facts just for it’s own sake. I did it once or twice when starting out but after the novelty wore off I lost interest. My main interest is acquiring a core body of facts for whatever subject I am studying. The multiplication table is useful to me in another project - I am always working with numbers. I need to know PI among other things, but 4 digits is more than enough for my purposes.
Yes, mnemonics are not enduring without drill and the practise is a significant effort over time, even more so if one wants fluent access.
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I have been tempted to return to some of these. The poetry I use fairly often, simply because I’ve had a lot of dental work recently, so reciting them in my head helps pass the time. I watched some Nelson Dellis videos on YT, and he was talking about how he memorised a set of data. Can’t remember what it was, but I thought I could use this for the countries and populations. First memorise the countries in a memory palace, then layer on the population, then layer on the flags, or whatever. I think I was struggling because I was trying to do it all at once. So I might revisit that.
I had thought about learning the list of mental fallacies (List of cognitive biases) before stopping this exercise, and I still want to know those.
One of the problems I had before was reviews and remembering to do them, but also having time for it. These thoughts have been churning away in the back of my mind, and it occurred to me that I brush my teeth twice a day, so why not just do the reviews then? Make it a habit. I just need to remember what to review. But I thought, just use your teeth! Start at a molar in the back and assign a review to it. For example top, back, right molar = Shakespeare’s plays in order of writing, move forward one tooth and review Gnu Screen commands, etc. So, about a month’s worth of reviews in my mouth.
So I’m going to pick this experiment back up, and try again.
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Using teeth brushing as a prompt for doing a memory review does work. Although I probably need a better way to randomise the reviews. If I just start trying to do them all one after the other starting with the back molar (Shakespeare’s plays) then I’m doing with my teeth before I’m done with the reviews. I need to put some more thought into this, maybe just assigning a day. Monday for plays, Tuesday for poetry, etc.
I have now memorised a list of 30 cognitive biases, and it is useful since I can often see the logic errors cropping up in people’s arguments on a forum I run. 
I have also returned to the countries and populations, starting with just putting all the countries into a big palace, then I’ll work on the population numbers, etc. later.
Some things simply didn’t past the test of time. Things I have forgotten (or partially forgotten) were:
- Chinese Zodiac
- GNU Screen commands
- Countries in the UN
- 20 times table & squares
- Information about my family
- Resistor band colours
Some things I didn’t forget:
- PI to 50 digits
- Robert Frost Poems
- Shakespeare’s plays
Things I wanted to learn but never got around to:
- Memorise the AWK programming language cheat sheet values.
- All the keywords & system functions in the programming languages C, Rust.
- Major world religions and their basic beliefs in alphabetical order
- Types of trees in UK
- Some language islands in Korean (RE: Book by Boris Shekhtman)
- Some poetry in Italian
- World Heritage Sites
- Gods and goddesses from Norse mythology
- Gods and goddesses in Greek mythology
- The 21 Noble Truths of Buddhism
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A swift update on how things are going. Spolier: Not well, I caught covid and I’ve been feeling rough.
But I have been doing reviews of
I’ve been using a combination of SRS and memory palaces to help with my Korean vocabulary.
I downloaded all the pre-made Korean anki decks I could find, striped out the Hangul, English and audio and put them all into one CSV. I created a list of 80+ verbs I need to memorise, and then I wrote a python script to pull out any of those 80 words (or conjugations of the verbs) from the huge sentence CSV. The python script turned these into a CSV file of Cloze deletion cards, which I imported into anki.
The reason I say both is that I’m using mnemonic techniques to memorise the 80 verbs, and then using anki to constantly quiz me on them. I have found that trying to create an enormous Korean vocabulary city sized memory palace wasn’t working for me. But I could just do small blocks of words in a smaller memory palace, and use anki until I had them down solid, and move on to different words. I’ve been cycling through 5 memory palaces, so the first one is pretty well cleared out before I put a new set of words into it. Plus, anki just keeps quizzing me and reminding me.
I’ve also decided to learn more poetry. I want to try:
I’m still working on my UN nations, and I’ve got most of the countries down in order. Next I want to layer on the population of each country and the flag.
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I hope you recover quickly!
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Long time since my last post. I’ve not been very successful at incorporating memory reviews into my daily life. So I am struggling. However, some of the things I put in have stayed, like the poetry and Shakespeare’s plays. The list of countries I have reviewed, and I’ve now managed to get a place for them all in a long memory walk. I still forget some on occasion and have to go back to the spreadsheet for a reminder. But I’m OK with that. Since I’ve mostly got the countries locked in, I’ve decided that I can start on the population numbers again. But before that I thought I would try to lock in things which I think would probably be more useful information for me.
Originally, memorisation of the countries and their populations was more of an exercise in using the Dominic number system, so I could use it more effectively. But recently I decided that before I revert to the population numbers, I would add information which I’m more likely to have a need for. So I’ve decided to include with the country name the following.
- Capital
- Currency
- Language (primary)
- Government type (Republic, monarchy, etc…)
- Flag
- Population.
I did consider exchange rates with the currency, but I figure name is probably enough for now.
I think that I’ll probably add the first three at the same time before moving on to the next three. If anyone has any suggestions about how I could anchor these things well to the location in my memory walk and create better associations, I’d be happy to hear them!
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Thank you so much for sharing the experiment.
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Given that currency exchange rates can vary wildly from one month to the next. I’d skip this one. (Don’t exchange euros to much in advance for your next holidays is all I’m going to say 
)
Do you intend to hook all this secondary information on the country name itself or simply to put it in the location where the country is?
I tried stacking up words on in an alphabetic memory palace (because my niece wants to play “the petit bac” in german and I kept losing), wanting to see after how many added information the system would “break”, more than 4 items per station doesn’t work well for me if I don’t organise it in some way (maybe a munx? I haven’t exprimented that much more, it’s not really a project high on my priority list…).