After reading Moonwalking with Einstein (as I imagine with so many others also was their initial exposure to mnemonics) i decided that i wanted to learn 10 bullets points from each chapter- and sub-chapter on a book on political philosophy.
So far I’ve gotten about 200 down; which isn’tvery impressive considering I’ve been at this for several months.
The problem is that it feels somewhat unnatural? Like using the wrong software. I think maybe I’m making my loci too elaborate? I often want, off of the loci, to construct an entire sentences, and so they are often elaborate, maybe more than is good.
I just need some guidance I think. Im going to bd studying engineering next summer, and really hope to get good at this.
I enrolled in a humanities course this June,and political theory is one of the core subjects.
During the term end exams,I’m required to answer descriptive questions about the subject material.You must understand my use case here.
I have taken a similar approach in memorising the material,but instead of trying to reconstruct entire sentences,I try to partition my units into paragraphs,each marked by a main ideas. I find keywords to attach for each idea and create a story,linking the start of the story to a loci in my palace.
A modification of this method to your needs will help you arrange the points in any given locus of your palace into a sequence,which I think is the main issue here.It would be nice to see how others deal with this,however I think a good approach would be to push objects into a loci such that they form a logical sequence.
*I have experienced that creating these stories almost always leads to a theme being formed around it.When I was memorising the list of rights and their corresponding article number in the constitution of my country,all the actions somehow ended up forming the scene of a crazy battlefield.
This has been very advantageous to me,as traversing through points in the story becomes very convenient for me.
I recommend reading Adler’s book “How to Read a Book” If you don’t want to waste time reading everything, just read the “inspection reading” section.
I use that method for pre-reading (creating outlines in my mind before reading the book).
Then when I study the text, creating images of main points or loci is very easy for me.
I’m 100% sure it will help you. It saves me a lot of time.
I create mental images or mini-stories for lists of between 5 and 10 points (just the list) and I never forget them even if I stop reviewing the book.
For example, I read the 48 laws of power two months ago. I found it tedious and boring, but in one minute I created a mental image of the first 10 laws and I haven’t forgotten them since.
Going back to my first paragraph, don’t waste your time selecting points you think are important. When I read my economics books, I underlined anything I thought was correct. First do the pre-reading I recommended, and once you have that structure in your brain, you’ll know which points to memorize.
Sometimes I would memorize the same points, but when I analyzed them, they meant the same thing.
Ever since I started reading books using the method I recommended, learning has become incredibly easy for me. Before, I’d read linearly and forget everything within a few hours.
I recommend you start with the section “Reading levels” there’s a brief summary of the reading levels and then you move on to inspection reading
Another technique I use is that after 10 or 15 minutes of reading I have a timer and when the timer goes off during the 5-minute break I explain out loud to no one that I understood.
I get distracted easily, and time allows me to stay focused.
I don’t use notes from the books I read and remember. Obviously, I review out loud every day what I remember so I don’t forget.
I’m currently reading three books a day: Richest Man in Babylon, The Power of Habit, and Thank You for Discussing, and I’ve never learned so much.
That would have been impossible for me to do before. I highly recommend it, guys.
I mention this because I used to use that technique of creating huge palaces, and every idea I thought was important I would add there and spend hours doing that.
With pre-reading, in a maximum of 1 hour or less, you will already have almost the entire structure of the book.
Can you walk us through a paragragh/short chapter and how you’d memorize it? It is somewhat unusual to memorize actual sentences as opposed to the concepts themselves (if that is what you mean). For example, most of us wouldn’t memorize quotes from, say, Hobbes (since we’re talking political philosophy). If I wanted to craft (one of) the core themes of the Leviathan into an image I’d probably do it somewhat like this:
Two werewolfes (from old german “wer” meaning “man”, literally “man-wolves”;Homo homini lupus) tear at each other ferally (war of all against all) until the Burger King mascot (King) drives them apart with a beatstick (state power/violence).
I mean, the way you would go about it id about the same way i would. It just seems like mine get so convoluted? Maybe im trying to compress too much into s single loci.
I saw this post the other day and I wanted to cross check what you wrote in another memory book I have been reading called Mind and Memory Training, by Ernest Wood.
Ernest Wood was a writer that was recommended in a podcast I heard:
It is a very nice book and while it covers a lot of details, a key suggestion when it comes to reading:
Think first, and read afterwards. If you have 30 mins for reading, spend 10 mins reviewing what you know first, your own thought, and then read for twenty minutes. If 15 mins, review for 5 mins first, read for 10. ‘The expectancy engendered by thinking before reading provides the mind with hooks to take up many points which otherwise would scarcely be noticed, and the arrangement of your old knowledge offers a place into which each piece of new knowledge will fit.’
Another point from Ernest Wood’s book is in relation to making connection / using locations. The connection doesnt need to be crazy or visual or out of life like proportions. You just compare the information with the location, and form some kind of rational connection of comparison. Like many people I suppose, I sort of did this myself at school without someone telling me to do so - where if I needed to remember something I would think about the letters in some kind of relative way (eg if LaXYZ was something before LiABC, I would think okay La is earlier in the alphabet).
An amazing little book, even talked about category systems as well (having 10 things for different animals, places, food etc). This blog is obviously amazing as well. I like the way it is written, very classic.
Hi. I have the book. Has interest things like beniowski story . Of Simonides . But I think the man don’t explain well. His method of interpolations I see it complicated and unpractical. Yes was good in that year. There was not books like that I guess. Today we have tons of books and internet resources.