# Preparing for my switch from PAO to the Shadow System **URL:** https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/preparing-for-my-switch-from-pao-to-the-shadow-system/80291 **Category:** General Memory Chat **Created:** [January 30, 2023, 2:27am UTC](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/preparing-for-my-switch-from-pao-to-the-shadow-system/80291 "2023-01-30T02:27:59Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 4
### Author: ![TheHumanTim](https://forum.artofmemory.com/user_avatar/forum.artofmemory.com/thehumantim/32/17301_2.png) [@TheHumanTim](https://forum.artofmemory.com/u/TheHumanTim) #### Post date: [February 1, 2023, 7:30pm UTC](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/preparing-for-my-switch-from-pao-to-the-shadow-system/80291/4 "2023-02-01T19:30:37Z")
Welcome to the fun! I just embarked on the same project at the start of the year! Shadow is based on Major, so if you have unique 3-digit major images they can work in Shadow, with a couple caveats. You need to make sure the 000-099 words do NOT have s-consonant blends to start, so nothing like SLiMer or STaN, because some of the court-card combos use these S-blends and they will conflict. Also, try to avoid words that start with H sounds, as some of the King pairs start specifically with H’s. The original post by Lance lays it out, but it does take a few read-throughs to really sink in. @BradenExplosion is incredibly skilled with Shadow and has written quite a few awesome posts about it. It’d be worth browsing through his contributions for sure. I also made a couple resources to help with building Shadow words out, check out this post, it has a link to a Google sheets file with a re-worded explanation of the system, along with blank grids that show every card pair and their phonetics: > [@Shadow System details and document](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/shadow-system-details-and-document/78956): > > I recently found some posts about the Shadow System here on the forum. I was fascinated by it, and knowing that a lot of you top mem folks use it, I wanted to check it out. Like many others have found, it was a lot to take in. I tried to synthesize and break down the info in @LociInTheSky’s original post and reword it to where it made sense to me. I wanted to share it here and get some feedback on it. It lives in an excel / google sheets doc for me, link here: Below is a copy/paste of the mai… Lastly, I’ve also shared a zip file with small images of all 2704 card pairs to make building in Anki easier and more visual. Feel free to use them if you’d like once you’re ready to start associating! > [@Resource: ZIP File containing all 2704 Card Pair Images as .jpg's](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/zip-file-containing-all-2704-card-pair-images-as-jpgs/79808): > > Hi All! I’ve been working on learning the Shadow System and part of that process has been using digital flashcards via Anki to learn the associations. It was easy to find images of single cards on the web, but not so much for pairs. I know you can put two individual card images in a card in Anki, but I didn’t like how that looked and wanted something that more closely resembles what would be seen looking through a real deck. So I created them myself and wanted to share the results with this co… I’ve got a thread going for my project, I’ve found it helpful and motivating to jot down thoughts about the process as I go. [Efforts to learn the Shadow System and memorize a deck of cards in under one minute - #44 by TheHumanTim](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/efforts-to-apply-the-shadow-system-and-achieve-a-sub-1-minute-deck-of-cards/79239/44) If you feel up to it, it would be cool to see how you progress, maybe make a thread to document your efforts in the “memory training journals” section of the forum too? I’d love to see how someone else is handling the craziness of learning this along with me! It is a daunting task, the word building takes a LONG time to make sure they’re unique and vivid, and then you have to associate them to a consisten image and to their appropriate card pairs, which is a whole other process, haha. I’m about 1/3 of the way in to the image association process and it’s going well, but it’s not something that can be rushed, especially if you’re new to the process. (I’ve only been doing memory stuff for a short time as well, about 10 months.) Best of luck! --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/preparing-for-my-switch-from-pao-to-the-shadow-system/80291)._