Some of the goals I mentioned I’ll be working on here:
Birthdays - I want to make this two-way, Name → Cay & Day → Name, or in other words having my brain say both:
“Hey, it’s John Doe over there! Their birthday is Jan 1st, 1980.”
“Hey, today is Jan 1st. it is both John Doe’s and Jane Doe’s birthdays today!”
Names - probably go with Lynne Kelly’s Name Bestiary here, I had to ask a guy’s name for the third time this week (facepalm, and I can’t even tell you what it is this moment )
General Purpose PAO - I’ll judge the success of this on Memory League number speed/length, I think. Mostly I want it for dumb but useful things. For example, the gate code for my Utah suburb is phasing out gate codes for passkeys, so they didn’t give me a pin code. But that’s annoying when I’m carpooling and don’t bring a key (yeah I should build a cloner easy peasy whatever), but they still have a bunch of pin codes in use by people who moved here before me. I regularly try new codes and would get a kick out of quickly memorizing those 4 digits if they work (esp. since I need lots, as the ones I used to use were recently disabled!) Also nice for quickly telling friends/delivery drivers over the phone.
Other directions I may go - programming trick memorization (I always love a new python library or VIM shortcut!), language learning, scripture verse references, also personal history meditation (love the personal calendar and winter count projects discussed on here!), creating lecture-walks for my kids, maybe some poetry (learning Rudyard Kipling’s 'If-" as a young man was, for me, pivotal!), and of course trivia for contemplation (history of invention trivia is my weakness. Did you know we Discovered AND THEN LOST the cure for Scurvy?? Or that the first trans-Atlantic Telegraph line broke after only a few terrible messages barely made it across?), the list goes on!
Thanks for joining me on the ride. Perspectives and tips welcome, hope we can learn from each other
It took me 10 hours total (so far!). Roughly one 6 hour sprint to go from blank list to full list I don’t love (I am glad I chose to make it Major-compliant, but it does narrow your options!), and another 4 hours spread out to a full list I’m okay with (I’m picky!)
Still not 100% happy with it, but I think we’re 85% there, and any future tweaking will be as I try to use it extensively and see what just still isn’t sticking/working/feeling right. Time to move on to Actions and Objects!
I think it’d be cool/save people some time to gathering other peoples’ Number → Image lists in one place / under one tag (sort of like the Number Image tag, but for lists, not just individual numbers), so it’s not just a few that surface in posts like this here and there.
The most helpful resources for me were these aggregation posts Josh made:
It’s been a while since we last checked in, but we’ve been chipping away at the PAO.
3 Thoughts
The hardest part of creating and learning my PAO is organizing them in Anki the way I wanted (especially since I did a lot of Yak shaving to find the right images). But really, that took almost as long as creating the entire list, and I’m not done yet.
I am always amazed at how easily we forget how useful something is until it is needed. “We don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of preparation” etc. I keep thinking about how useless this hobby is, reminding myself that “yeah, but it has its uses and it’s still fun and helps me feel fulfilled” and then suddenly I have to memorize a random number and I realize that memorizing that number is faster than writing it down. As Bryan Caplan says says, convenience is so underrated!
On the second point, I think what is underestimated in memory art is the joy of being completely independent. Are you sure you will never need to store valuable information about your life or others that you can’t write, type, or otherwise record? That’s where memory comes in! The Art of Memory At the end of the day, as my username reminds me:
“Nothing [is] your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
― George Orwell, 1984
Currently focusing on Names & Faces as I’m meeting a lot of new people. Definitely various levels from “Normal & forgetful” to “Not doing anything special but paying attention so I learn a few more” to “Employing basic mnemonic tricks to grab a few more”, but I want to move to “Specific system for complete mastery and socially mind blowing in my capabilities”!
I have been interested in the idea of being able to associate certain facial patterns with certain mnemonic images, but I realized I am really bad at trying to describe faces! Luckily this forum has so many great historical tidbits, and I’m working on combining the advice in these various posts. I’ll make note here if anything I especially like comes together!
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Names and Faces - #30 by LynneKelly (the whole thread is good, but esp I think I’ll be trying to adapt Lynn’s bestiary here for facial features from the mug shots book… or maybe not! we’ll see)
Okay, this is random and not connected to my other efforts journalled above, but I was trying to figure out how to learn number groups that aren’t multiples of 6 and came across a few good posts, like this one:
tl;dr decided to add an extra 1-Digit P, and just for fun decided to theme it on robots, and honestly it was almost too easy to learn, given how many robots have #s in their names! Here are mine
ROBOT 0-9 P extra number padding 0 Roomba - Circle Shaped, Has O’s in the name 1 Optimus Prime - Transformer - Numbah 1 Leader, “Prime”, etc. 2 R2D2 - Star Wars - 2 in the name! 3 C3PO - Star Wars - 3 in the name! 4 Curiousity Rover - NASA - Mars is the 4th planet from the sun, has 4 leters in the name 5 Iron Giant - Eponymous Movie - 5 finger fist->Iron Fist->Iron Giant & his iconic superman pose with FIST out 6 Baymax - Big Hero Six - 6 in the (movie) name! 7 WALL-E - Eponymous Movie - Uh 7 is perfection and this guy is my favorite robot 8 BB8 - Star Wars - 8 in the name! 9 K-9 - Dr. Who - 9 in the name!
I really enjoy the intersection of memory and behavior, things like Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen notes, or Alex Guzey’s usage of Anki to build habits here:
I recently came across the concept of “micro-transitions”, also known as “adjust focus when switching tasks” from Adam Fraser’s “The Thirdplace” (Goodreads link ; Blog Summary) and I think these pair well with the (somewhat debunked in its specifics but still useful in general) Checklist Manifesto (Goodreads link ; threeshorterexplanations) to create a sort of reverse memory palace, or even landscape-reminder system similar to the stuff Lynne Kelly studies. I, for example, have been using it to try to remember some specific, questions, emotions, and desires that I want to have every time I arrive home from work, e.g.:
The tree by the driveway has monks meditating under it, a place of calming meditation to forget my professional worries
The nook under the stairs to my condo has a ginormous grinning bobble-head reminding me to be upbeat in the face of whatever craziness the kids have wrought
The doorhandle has dancing ants on it reminding me to have fun with the “antsy” little ones awaiting my arrival, even if I’m tired
Thinking of other places I can stash these useful reminders/checklists!
This week I memorized a deck of cards for the first time!
I’m still not happy with many of my actions and objects, hence no posted PAO, but decided I could refine it more in active use to see what I really don’t like using and what does(n’t)/stick, so cards it is.
I am really indebted to these posts explaining @TheHumanTim 's Major system for what was, to me, a really intuitive conversion of the 0-99 PAO to the 52 card deck (although I moved my 10s to be with the royals):
I have made very little progress on finishing my PAO or otherwise practicing mnemonics, except for the occasional anki deck for studying for a test (I am long past formal education but I’ll take a class of some sort here and there). Just wanted to post this update to fight survivorship bias
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At the end of the day, as my username reminds me: