What is your training schedule like? how do you make it interesting and not boring/redundant?
What systems do you use for each? (i.e. what do you use to memorize words? numbers? face? cards)
Do you know what the “professional” memory athletes do to get those insane memorization times for their competition? How are their practices/drills different from mine/yours, and how can I improve my routine to get results as good as theirs?
What were your stats/scores when you first started and how long did it take to significantly improve those times? (just feeling a little insecure because my progress has been extremely slow.)
What is your thought process like when creating the image/association/location? How do you practice to make it more memorable/visual?
What is a good practice to quickly come up with key images for abstract words?
Thank you in advance!! I appreciate any kind of feedback.
Can you elaborate on that? also which question are you answering? I am assuming its question 3 and in that case, I want to get results close to that of memory athlete champions like Alex Mullen(Ex: I want to be able to memorize 80 digits in sub 20 seconds).
Is that a possible goal or do I have to be naturally talented or something of that sort.
But yeah his record shows what the brain is capable of if we take the time to stop and figure things out. He is a problem solver and that’s the mindset you should be in. How are you going to successfully solve the problem of beating his record. Perhaps even instantly
I’ve found that we all have stored billions and trillions of numbers in our memories.
@alexvu, first of all, there’s several paths that you can go down just like in any professional sport. One is the competitive athlete. That’s the one most people think they have to take and aspire to. Most of the advice on the forum tends to be directed towards that goal. Then, there’s the armchair quarterback.
Another tactic is to not be competitive and be more of an artist. We, including me, have a vision for why we use mnemonics, which usually is for lengthy texts or heaps of permanent information. It could be for demonstrations or just personal enrichment. And of course, there are the art critics there as well.
Now on to your questions. I train every day in some respect. Mixing it up is always a good thing since I’m in general, increasing my visual imagery no matter if it’s digits or words. If I get tired of drills on my keywords, I switch to foreign languages for a while. New ideas pop in my head and I try exercises with those.
My numbers are Major system conversions to keywords. Words are six or so ways of doing substitute words. Faces are several different ways of doing feature conversions to name substitute words. Cards are still in limbo since I don’t much care for them but have attemped two or three different systems.
How do the memory athletes get insane times? That’s easy. They practice more than I do. I can practice for a half-hour a day and improve incrementally so I know if I put in hours a day like some, I would go faster. The Memory League training functions are great for drills and really help you be realistic about how you stand against everyone else. I started at the bottom and have gotten better over several months but no where near a competitive athlete. How do you define slow?
The thought process is one of free association and exaggeration combined with a set of rules. The best visual improvement I’ve seen from psychology research is to make sure that your link has plenty of action to it.
The best practice to come up with key images to abstract words is to practice on abstract words using as many techniques as you can. Some people (like me) create dictionaries of common abstract words and their substitutes.
What is your training schedule like? how do you make it interesting and not boring/redundant?- half hour before work, half hour after work.
What systems do you use for each? (i.e. what do you use to memorize words? numbers? face? cards) 2 digit for numbers and pao for cards. Words, I don’t use systems I react.
Do you know what the “professional” memory athletes do to get those insane memorization times for their competition? How are their practices/drills different from mine/yours, and how can I improve my routine to get results as good as theirs?- By training above my limits. Accept that failure will occur. If you are doing a deck of cards in 2 minutes for example, try 90 seconds.
What were your stats/scores when you first started and how long did it take to significantly improve those times? (just feeling a little insecure because my progress has been extremely slow.)- The first deck of cards took me 10 minutes.
What is your thought process like when creating the image/association/location? How do you practice to make it more memorable/visual?
What is a good practice to quickly come up with key images for abstract words?- I memorize 2 words at a time so I create something on the spot. You can also turn them into similar words. Would-> wood
Through past experiences i found that traditional education systems in general, apart from a few subjects, tend to put greater emphasise on logic than creativity, thus it dulls that part of the nrain, but its never lost, just requires that much more effort to kick start it.
I find day dreaming helps and meditation.
With the above said, i found integrating memory techniques in everyday life helps, by not relying on your mobile device to find someones phone number for instance.
Also techniqus i tend to use 2 or more, the pdf on memory techniques would give you a heads up.
I have no schedule and I almost not practice at all.
But a good schedule would be each day practicing for one hour. Firstly drill image recognition, then try some record speed and record accuracy attempts, and then do usual attempts, like you would do in competition, on new slow memory palaces to develop their speed.
Do one or two weeks of this every day practice only for numbers. Then do two weeks only for cards and so on. I have tried this schedule only for 2 days for numbers. In result I dropped my record time for 80 numbers from 49 seconds to 38 seconds! (I think it was only because of beginning of good practice. There will not be such time drops again.)
For numbers and historical dates I use 2 digits system and developing 2 digit PAO.
For cards I use 1 card system.
For binary I use 4digit PAO.
For words I don’t use any system, just put on location. But I want to use different types of images for nouns, verbs and adjectives to distinguish them.
I don’t know, what method do I use for names . I just create image for name and memorise somehow.
For all disciplines except names and historical dates I use memory palaces with 1 image per location.
No, I don’t know.
I think I have very high speed of progress for my small amount of practice(A year ago, when I had been practicing for 20 minutes every day). When I first started to memorise with the visual associations I did:
50 cards in 5 minutes 32 seconds,
200 binary in 5 minutes,
100 digits in 4 minutes,
10 names in 40 seconds,
40 names in 9 minutes,
40 words in 4 minutes,
20 spoken digits (1 digits in 2 seconds).
In half a year I got my current level of results and stopped practicing for some reason.
52 cards in 1 minute 44 seconds,
200 binary in 2 minutes,
100 digits in 68 seconds,
80 digits in 38 seconds,
10 names in 7 seconds,
50 names in 4 minutes,
37 words in 60 seconds,
46 spoken numbers (1 digits in 1 second).
Some memory books tell, that images have to be bright, 3-dimensional and interesting, but I think that any image is memorable enough. I think mistakes appear only when you have not imagined an image or a location or when you have changed the image or the location too much.
When I create an image for any system I try to use animation characters, just because it will be fun to memorise with it.
When I create locations I use all objects that are different enough from previous objects. For this reasone I have 226 location in 1 room instead of 5 or 10 locations in 1 room, as many memory athletes prefer. These 226 locations work pretty fine.
When I create an association between the image and the location I often just put the image on location or in location. But some my specific locations always have specific association. For example the bike always has image riding on it and the keys always have image as an keychain.
I think usual advice is just to practice more words, international names, international words and scientific terms. Maybe just creating images without memorising.
But you can also try “patterns” technique. It is much more effective in theory.
For training some skill you should devide it to many small skills and practice each small skill separately. For words you should train adverbs, adjectives, nouns and abstract nouns(like ‘love’, ‘friendship’, ‘something’) separately. For international names you should train for example Chinese, German, Slavic and Italian names separately. For international words you can train short words, long words, words with hard pronunciation separately or nouns, adjectives and adverbs separately. (I don’t know any memory software for that).
But also you should be able to switch fastly between these small skills. So do mixed skills memorisation sometimes(All types of international names together or all types of words together).
. I just create image for name and memorise somehow.