I’ve been interested in memory techniques for years (decades!) on and off, but unlike most regular people here I’ve not really seen things through. E.g. over the years I’ve had regular goes at creating PAO systems but never fully finished.
E.g. I recently decided to have a go at a 2-digit PAO with categories to help me remember, so 00-09 might be from James Bond films - but when it came to it I often found it hard thinking up 10 good characters (without going more obscure), let alone actions. And when I did it was hard deciding where to place them as many would start with the same letter or just didn’t fit a digit in a memorable way. It could be done - but I’d have a lot of work trying to remember that a character/action/object was 05 instead of 08, say.
So filling out a 2-digit PAO meant learning to associate 300 things with specific digits - that takes lots of work/time (which is why I never finished) and is also overkill for me as I don’t want to learn vast amounts of numbers, so a system to create unique images for each 6-digit number was excessive for me.
So, I’ve decided to have another go and am starting with a PAO system to help with memorising numbers. BUT - I’m going to try a new way (for me at least) and I wondered what people here thought.
Before I tell you the technique, here are a few points I’m keeping in mind or trying to achieve:
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I want a way that is dead easy to set up and learn.
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It’s not designed for competitions. While I’d ultimately like to remember a lot of facts, the amount of information is going to be a lot less than for those of you that do impressive feats where you have to worry more about repetition of images or memorise long strings of numbers.
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I preferably want to chunk digits into 3’s, just because that’s the way we remember/say/write them. I.e. the hundreds, thousands, millions, etc.
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I’ve got young children and I’d like this method to actually be easy enough to teach them.
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I do not expect this to be as good as more advanced methods - I’m wanting a method to reliably and quickly remember ‘normal’ numbers (dates, phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc). So this could be a technique for people that want to quickly gain good memory of numbers in day-to-day use, or to teach children.
The technique that I’m going to be trying out is basically a 1-digit PAO, and in my case I’m going to base it on films as they’re rich in characters and imagery.
I have seen 1-digit PAO systems before, where you come up with 10 people, 10 actions and 10 objects - that gives 1,000 images. That could work, but the problem I see with that is that images will be reused so many times.
So the way I’m planning on extending it is to have multiple people, actions and objects for each digit. That’s making it similar to a 2-digit PAO but you have total freedom in the number of people/actions/objects to come up with (doesn’t matter if you can’t think up 10) and don’t have to remember a specific digit for each.
All you would need to do is associate a film for each digit 0-9 - so you only need to remember 10 associations. Far fewer than the 300 associations you need with a 2-digit PAO. Then say Harry Potter was associated with ‘9’, all I would need to do to remember the number 999 would be to create an image with any Harry Potter character, doing an action associated with the films to an object associated with the films. So I could actually have hundreds/thousands of images to choose from if I wanted - Snape could be casting a spell on a golden snitch, or Dumbledore could be drinking polyjuice from the Goblet of Fire, etc.
Basically - you assocaite 10 films with the digits 0-9 and then have huge flexibility in creating images of a person doing something to an object from the films associated with the numbers to store a 3-digit number.
The main disadvantage is that if you wanted to remember, say, a 12-digit number you would need 4 of these images, vs 2 in a 2-digit PAO. But given the ease of learning I think for many this could be worth doing, if you’re wanting a more casual system that’s not for competition.
One good advantage of it (other than being far, far easier to learn) is that while each person/action/object may only store 1 digit, you get huge flexibility in which person/action/object you use. You can use whichever one you want, depending on what you think makes the best image and whether you’ve remembered a similar one before and so want one that’s totally different.
What could be useful is jotting down a few good characters, actions and objects for each film so that when you need to memorise a number you’ve already thought up a few good ones. That’s probably more worthwhile for actions, so you can ensure that you’ve got a few unique actions for each one that you know are associated with that film. But you could start with just a few of each and if you find you use the system a lot, or use a specific number a lot, you could add a few more later.
I know that 1-digit PAO systems have been mentioned before, and that categories have been used by people to make learning 2-digit PAOs easier - but I’d not seen mention of a 1-digit PAO that used categories before, giving huge flexibility in the person/action/object chosen, and think it has a lot going for it.
So do you think it’s a useful method, for those not wanting to do competitions?
