I want to see what memory goals you all are setting for yourselves in the coming year! Please respond to this topic with yours and we can encourage each other to stick to it. Hopefully we’ll look back and see how awesome we did this time again next year.
Here’s my new years memory resolution, folks… I’m gonna learn the Shadow System and get to a point where I can memorize a full deck in under 1 minute!
I’ve never really gone for pure speed with memorizing… been more interested in longer term, no-rush kinds of topics, but I think it would be so cool to be able to rip through a deck that quick. I never officially timed myself on memory league or anything, but my fastest approximate time using my PAO is definitely in the multiple minutes range, so this will be a huge jump for me.
build and fill a total of 500 new memory palaces in the year of 2023.
turn notable places in Madrid, Dublin and Athens (which I will visit) into memory palaces.
study the subject of minor religions around the world and build a mental map of how they came to be. I would love to see how the minor religions have influenced local traditions, cultures and values, and how it connects to the ancient ways of life in said areas.
Aside from that, I mainly want to live healthy, exercise more, do more things I enjoy and spend more time with my kids. Just like I planned in 2018, tried in 2019, postponed in 2020, failed in 2021, and prepared for in 2022.
I kept last year’s resolution very modest - to finally clean my room.
This year I am going to finish two ongoing projects in mental math. I’d like to start relearning my Spanish. Also, clean my room. This year, definitely.
52 Top5 scores overall (which means on average 1 per week)
increase my vocabulary in English, French, Spanish and Italian by 500 words each
learn my first 500 words in a new language
reach 50.000 active Anki entries
It’s always possible that I add more goals mid year though, so these might not be all. Last year I only started with one memory related goal into 22 and ended up with 4 goals.
Last year I aimed for 52 Top5 scores and I succeeded with 59 Top5 scores in total. My second goal was to start and finish a Duolingo course in Italian. I didn’t completely finish it, but that’s actually due to how Duolingo works. I’m lacking the lingots and I didn’t want to waste my money on them so it’s alright that I didn’t quite finish the course. My third goal was to increase my Italian vocabulary by 500 which also didn’t work out. I only increased it by 335. The goal of 500 wasn’t too high though I believe. I’ve analyzed what went wrong and I feel better prepared for next year. My fourth goal was a geography learning project as I wanted to finish learning the divisions of all the countries in the world. I’m still shaky and I keep forgetting stuff, when I don’t review often enough, but all in all I consider this goal accomplished. Overall I was satisfied even though I didn’t accomplish everything. Let’s see how 23 goes along.
My outcome is very different depending on the very goal. I will comment them in the very order I mentioned them at the end of last year:
I didn’t achieve my Top5 scores goal. I was on track until the end of August with 31 Top 5 scores until that point. Then however I finally got a job after a long time being unemployed and my priorities shifted. I had less time and less motivation to train. That’s how it started. I still trained regularly, but it often was more like something I wanted to get out of the way, so I just did the bare minimum while often being very unfocused and thinking about work etc. And also I mostly trained solo, because I didn’t have the time to wait for someone else to be available. Hence much less opportunities to get more Top 5. As a consequence also my shape suffered. I made even more unnecessary mistakes than usual. But I also enjoyed the memory community gradually less this year which also contributed to less fun and therefore less motivation. So I got stuck with those 31 Top 5 results I already had in August.
Regarding my vocabulary increases my priorities changed too. This led to different outcomes. Already in January I added Latin to the list of languages where I wanted to increase my image vocabulary by 500. Then in spring however I changed priorities. I came to the conclusion that I was working on too many languages at the same time and switched to focussing on French and English. As a consequence I ended up with an increase of my image vocabulary by around 2300 items for both English and French. So I hugely overfulfilled my original goals there. On the other hand however I only learnt around 200 more words in Italian, 250 more words in Latin and around 300 more words in Spanish and therefore didn’t reach my goals there.
I succeeded in learning my first 500 words in Turkish, but I stopped after that for the same reason I didn’t collect more French, Latin and Spanish vocabulary. Just with the difference that in this case I actually achieved my full goal first. The reason why I treated Turkish differently was simple. It was simply that I already had achieved this goal before I decided to change priorities.
I overachieved my Anki goal. By a lot. I recently even broke the 60.000 entries threshold. Aside from my huge increases in my vocabulary database in English and French etc I have a lot of more decks I keep adding to from time to time. But most of all there were a lot of spontaneous learning projects going on. For example I recently learnt the international licence plate letter codes for all the countries in the world (unless I accidentally forgot some). It all started when the boyfriend of my sister asked me during a family vacation what country L stands for. My guess was Luxembourg and I was right. It felt good to guess right, but I also thought, why guess when you can know. After all I do practice memory techniques. And that’s how that little project was born.
All in all I’m happy with my progress. My overfulfillments of goals definitily compensate for the unfulfilled goals. Still it’s a bitter pill with my memory sports downswing and loss of motivation these days. I wish I could simply go back to enjoying Memory Sports as I used to. I hope my current break will bring it back.
Let’s see how 23 goes along.
It all started when the boyfriend of my sister asked me during a family vacation what country L stands for. My guess was Luxembourg and I was right. It felt good to guess right, but I also thought, why guess when you can know. After all I do practice memory techniques. And that’s how that little project was born.