In an effort to come up with the actions for my Action groups memory palace I started think about all kinds of sports. To my disappointment, I had to conclude that most sports are not that useful for my system. Let’s take tennis as an example, with possible actions like a forehand a backhand and a smash, you get this “more of the same stuff” kind of vibe.
ninja obstacle course
The sport of obstacle running is quite diffferent from just about any other sport as it is has endless variations of obstacles. So after a couple of seconds focussing on this sport, I figured that I might as well construct a 52 (52 for a deck of cards or 50 for a 100 digits) obstacles course as an alternative memory palace. To memorise the objects (representing the cards or numbers) you can simply make them go over the obstacles in a memorable fashion.
example
first 5 obstacles:
water slide;
skateboard ramp (going up);
(falling into) safety net;
(crawling onto) wheel of death;
crazy fast running track.
random number sequence: 38 27 33 94 41 (= water melon, a bucket, a bed, a wheelbarrow and a piano in my number to object system), gives:
I think your Ninja Obstacles Palace is a Genius Method!
Great Job! Will you be improving this further with more obstacle challenges? with perhaps more palaces? What do you have in mind?
This is very interesting! Thanks a lot for sharing this! Do you have any pointers or videos from which you generated 100 action lists from ninja obstacles?
3 obstacles sequences per location in my 13 location memory palace. So the first object is connected to the location in a normal way, the next 3 will be going over the 3 obstacles. Thus 13 * (1 + 3) = 52
I think both variations would work since you are only using one card at a time.
With Variation 2, you have the option to attach the first card without the obstacle, so that may be a better idea as that gives you 39 obstacles to place in your palace rather than 52.
have you constructed a palace wit it so far?
let us know your progress. It’s an interesting method.
As always I start writing about a new system as soon as i think of it. But i think I will have the 39 obstacle variation ready this evening. There are more than enough ready to use options available.
Last evening I completed the 13 locations with 3 obstacles each variation and I realised it was difficult to memorise the new memory palace and there wasn’t a flow like feeling when I moved through it.
So I changed my strategy and focussed on simply transforming my memory palace into an obstacle course suited for memorising objects. After some 30 minutes i was finished and much to my relief I didn’t have to memorise it since it was already fixated in my brain and the flow is very much improved.
example: part of the actual memory palace
In the warehouse were I have been working for more than 15 years is a pallet assembly unit. Part of this unit is a rollertack on which a pallet is assembled. After the pallet is assembled a handle is pulled so that he pallet rolls to the end of the track (to be picked up by a forklift). I put the following virtual obstacles behind this rollertrack:
a super fast running track (as used by runners to train at home);
a horizontal glass tube/pipe;
an aquarium filled with M&M’s;
a carousel with hanging seats.
The carousel allows one to swing to a very long table/desk (which exist in the actual warehouse). On this table I put the following virtual obstacles:
a looping;
a laser grid (slicing every object in tiny pieces);
a giant sawblade (like on a saw table but bigger).
I spend a couple of days speed navigating in the obstacle course and it felt very promising. So today I decided to give the actual memorisation a try. It became very obvious that when I do this the number to object translating is a lot worse than when I only focus on translating. The whole purpose of the obstacle cousrse was to create a flow that is superior to that of a normal memory palace, but that flow only happens in combination with speed translation of numbers.
some thought on number to object translating:
It has been my experience, that when it takes a lot of training to get this translating speed to a high level, the aquired level will drops really fast after you stop with or decrease your training. And on top of that, I must admit that training this translation part of the memory system is something I just don’t like doing very much.
Obviously it is not as fast as I hoped it would be, but there is more “wrong” with this system; let’s take a long random number sequence: 33 54 89 87 23 45 12 97 42.
This is pronounced as: moe sak fag fat nam kas in gat kan. I don’t think that many people can even pronounce these sounds at the world record speed of a deck of cards memorisation.
and finally about tha obstacle course:
When you have a unused warehouse (allow me to remind you that my memory palace consists largely of the warehouse I work) and can’t find a new customer (the warehouse I work is partly empty and the search for a new customer has been going on for quite some time) it might be a good idea to change it into an obstacle course. So because my memory palace wasn’t used much, I turned it into exactly that. And I realised that:
the original memory palace doesn’t have much value as a frame for the obstacle course; the faster you go, the more you focus on the obstacles and the less you are aware of where you are in the original memory palace;
Having made a memory palace/obstacle course hybrid I can safely say, that if were to make a new virtual obstacle course without using a memory palace as a frame it would be much better.