Overorganizing?

General Memory Chat
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This is my first post here and English isn’t my first language so please bear with me.

I’ve come up with an idea on how to index my memory palaces and at the same time the different “topics” on which I plan to apply these techniques.

Metivier talks a lot about creating alphabet peglists for your palaces and this is basically just talking that a couple steps further.

The idea is to devide all the different categories of topics in to 10 (0-9) “parts”. Pretty much like the subjects we have in School, plus some other that I found necessary to have.

Then give each digit a color. This part isn’t really that necessary even though I could think of a couple of occasions where it could be useful. I don’t know, I just really enjoy color organizing.

And lastly assign 3 letters to each digit, in alphabetical order (which almost works since we have 29 letters in the Swedish alphabet).

So something like this:
0 = Black = A, B, C = Important/Real life stuff
1 = White = D, E, F = Memory techniques
2 = Yellow = G, H, I = Languages
3 = Orange = J, K, L = Social studies
4 = Red = M, N, O = Science
5 = Pink = P, Q, R = Technology
6 = Purple = S, T = Mathematics
7 = Blue = U, V, W = Practical skills
8 = Teal = X, Y, Z= Creative skills
9 = Green = Å, Ä, Ö = Other

Each letter have a specific type of Mind Palace connected to it, most of which won’t make any sense in English so I came up with some new ones just to give an example:

A = Apartments
B = Bookshelves
C = Cities
H = Hospitals
P = Parks
S = Schools

My goal with this kind of “extreme” structure is to be able to spend less time making desicions on where to store information (since I need it to make some kind of sense) and more time just gathering it. And also not having to search for as long to find where I put it later.

I’d really like to hear your opinions since I’m new to all of this and lack the experience needed to decide whether this is a good idea or not.

Could a system like that actually be useful or would it just be limiting? Can you think of any disadvantages I might haven’t considered?

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@counterdictionary, welcome to the site! Your English is outstanding!

Indexing is a popular way to arrange your mnemonic structures. I don’t think you are overdesigning at all. I’m not a color person so that doesn’t interest me but everything else seems like a good idea.

Are you familiar with the Swedish memory champion, Johannes von Essen? He promotes memory palaces as topical rooms with objects that look like a video game on his web site. You don’t really need his imagination as you can come up with your own and remember it better. Just write it down so you can review it because with so many palaces, you will want to review.

You’ll probably run across many versions of this kind of indexing on the forum as you read more. But yours seems simple and usable. Good luck to you.

Doug

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I don’t do indexing for most part, but as for listing memory palaces I have a memory palace that gathers other memory palaces that gather specific types of memory palaces.

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I do separate A-Z networks of named palaces each with a specific project purpose. Most networks I only end up filling out A-H.

A-Z Competitive Numbers palaces
A-H Competitive Images
A-H Competitive Words
A-H Competitive Cards
A-M group of related chess openings

It has 2 main use cases for me. First I don’t preference any favorites because I rotate through them in strict alphabetical order and 2nd I can chain them together in order for long-form events.

The only complete A-Z is my competitive numbers and the new networks I am getting a bit less strict with always filling each letter. My latest chess network I go A-G then M-N-P all are tabias in the Nimzo chess opening.

Later when I do Sicilian it will get a fresh A-Z network.

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Thank you very much for your reply and kind words!

The colors I guess has more of an aesthetical purpose. I’ve always liked to arrange things that way so it just felt like a “natural” thing to add.

I’m glad to hear that! I really like this idea but I figured it’d be rather stupid not to consult people with more knowledge, understanding and experience before committing to something as time consuming as creating a system like this.

Von Essen was one of the first memory champions I came across. He’s a great inspiration and I’ve found a bunch of useful resources in his books and on his website.

I’m currently trying to draw/write down all of my palaces in a notebook that I carry with me everywhere. Might not be a sustainable solution in the long run but I think that it’s a good way to practice using/viewing spaces that way and besides that it’s quite relaxing (and I get to practice drawing).

I find it really fascinating how many different approaches there’s to each and every aspect of the art of memory. Everyone seems to have found what works best for them based on the way their brain operates and I find that pretty amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this many mind-blowing minds in one place. I’m truly honored to be here.

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IMO this is an important consideration that is often neglected in the enthusiasm to acquire information. Careful thought needs to be given as to how the information will be queried. Computer scientists and data base designers put a lot of effort into this. One can memorize the phone book but still not be able to find the name that belongs to a phone number, even though one has all the information.

Categories such as you have suggested need to be chosen carefully. There’s a lot of potential overlap. Did that trick with the cellphone go in Practical Skills, Real Life Stuff or Technology?

I find drawing memory palaces a very powerful tool. The physical engagement creates strong attachment and it also makes it easy to construct imaginary palaces.

You might browse this thread where others have done this sort of thing:
https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/miniature-memory-palaces-including-your-palm/28864

Your English is grammatical, idiomatic and almost flawless. I have an ear for that sort of thing and would not have identified you as a non native speaker had you not given that away. Just one spelling mistake “divide”. English is damn tricky and most native speakers struggle when they don’t have spell checker support.

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Don’t know why I haven’t thought of that. It could probably be really useful to have a mind palace for my mind palaces in addition to the alphabet peglist. Thank you!

Do you use different kinds of palaces depending on what you’re using them for?

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I’m trying my best to get this somewhat right from the start. Or at least not completely wrong. I understand the importance of just doing it, to make mistakes and learn from them as you go but I also know just how discouraging having to start over can be.

That’s a great point and definitely a potential issue. I’ve thought about merging Tech and Practical Skills since I have a feeling that that’s where most of the overlapping will occur. Even trying to find suitible, distinctive titles for those were sort of problematic.

The main reason why I’m hesitating and would prefer to keep them separated is that those two are the areas in which I’ll probably want to store the most information.

I’ll definitely check out that thread. The amount of great ideas and advice on this site is almost overwhelming. And I’ve probably barely scratched the surface.

That makes me so happy to hear! Thank you so much, I really appreciate your feedback!
I must admit that being a front-end (hopefully soon to be full-stack) developer, working with divs every single day, makes that spelling mistake sort of embarrassing.

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I don’t know if you recall the days when software was designed by the “Water Fall” process where everything was thought through and designed upfront before any code was written. It was a spectacular failure. Despite endless meeting and documentation, when people actually sat down to write code some problem would reveal itself that rendered assumptions invalid and the design had to be changed. The modern practice is iterative. Get something going, consider the problems you find and then think again. I recommend you embrace this process with your memory work. Start on a small, useful project see how that goes and think from there. Knowledge itself is a dynamic thing and you cannot entirely predict upfront how you are going to use it in the future. Also, generating, organizing and retrieving mnemonics is a skill that develops with practice, just like coding. Finally, there isn’t one recipe that suits everyone the same. You need to explore yourself, what kind of memories form strong attachments, what kinds of images do you want in your head and so on. This again comes with experience.

I wish you all success in your projects. I think you will find it very rewarding.

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You’re absolutely right and I really needed that reminder. The waterfall model can be useful at times but with something as complex as basically relearning how to learn, that approach is probably a bit too simplistic.

I’ll definitely try to find some smaller yet useful projects to experiment with.

Thank you, again. I’m truly grateful for your time and help!

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