[Speed cards] Improved PAO for more than 3 cards per image?

General Memory Chat
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Hi all,

I just recently discovered mnemonics, and decided to give speed cards a try (using the PAO system). I was shocked when I saw I could memorise an entire deck of cards in about ten minutes first try. I’d like to improve my times, and I think more advanced memory athletes don’t use the PAO system, but I don’t think I’m ready to give it up just yet. I’m only interested in this casually, and as a party trick, so I am not trying to break any records here (though ideally I’d like to get down to 3-4 minutes!)

My questions for people with more experience are:

  1. How fast can one get with the PAO system, assuming I am not to quit my job over this?
  2. Is it reasonable to try to create more complex images to get faster? I was thinking of a PAPO system: my actions could always require two people, so I could have the person of the first card doing the action of the second, assisted by the person of the third card, using the object of the fourth (e.g. “Albert Einstein benchpressing a broom while Marie Curie spots him”). That would reduce the numer of images from 18 to 13, which I think would save quite a bit of time, but I am sure there’s a reason such a system is not widely used (harder to recall?)

Cheers.

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People have achieved very fast times with many different systems. I believe the current world record of just over 12 seconds for a deck was done via PAO. The best way to get faster is, surprise, practice!

Adding complexity is usually not the answer to improving speed and accuracy unless that complexity allows you to compress your information into less imagery. When you talk about encoding more things per scene like adding an element with a PAPO, the thing to realize is that you aren’t really gaining anything in terms of better compression, simpler images, etc.

Think about the ELEMENTS of a mental image or scene. These elements are the smallest piece of an image that encodes information. These are the P’s A’s and O’s.

No matter how you encode a scene, if each element represents a single card, you’ve still got a 1 to 1 encoding compression. You could build a scene out of people, actions, objects, emotions, colors, adjectives, tastes, and textures, all combined into a scene containing 8 distinct elements, but you still have to accurately encode and decode each element individually. You still need 52 elements to get through a deck. Plus you’d have to spend a lot of time learning the associations for each of those element categories to their designated card.

Rather than adding more types of encoding elements, maybe try to just push your speed and fluency. Set a metronome and try to push through each card at a pace thats just a little bit faster than what you can manage right now. Once that gets easier, keep increasing the speed. Force yourself to go quick and soon that speed will feel normal. Incremental progress is your friend! You can do this both for practicing the speed at which you can see a card and visualize its element, and the speed which you go through a deck and actually try to memorize the sequence.

At your current success speed of lets say 10 minutes for a deck, that means you’re working on each card for about 11.5 seconds. About 34 seconds for each PAO scene.

In order to memorize a deck in 4 minutes your pace needs to improve to about 4.6 seconds per card, about 13 seconds per PAO scene.

Break that down further and figure you’ll need about 2 seconds to see the card and recognize its associated element, then another 2.5 to integrate it into a visualized scene.

If you work your way towards those benchmarks and set a realistic timetable for improvement, you can try to set some reasonable goals for yourself and watch it progress.

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I am wondering whether a PAP system using 17 loci = 51 cards wouldn’t get you there quicker. If you are given one deck in NDO (New Deck Order, that is how the playing cards come when sealed brand new inside their box) and another deck randomly shuffled to remember its order by rearranging your NDO stack into the order to be recalled, you would not need to remember the 52nd card as it’s the one left over by default.

I think all cards could be given ACTIONS encoded by using the Major System, so a 5 of Spades might be LaSSo-ing (throwing a rope rodeo-style around ‘someone’, remember I’m advocating for a PAP (Person/Action/Person System). The playing cards themselves must all quickly be discernable as PEOPLE, so a for instance the order of playing cards of: Jack of Clubs - 5 of Spades - King of Clubs could be the scene (or story) of Jackie Chan - Lasso-ing - a King Cobra.

Put that scene in your 1st loci and repeat 16 more times. If you know the playing cards images extremely well, times of 1 - 2 minutes for a deck should be quiet achievable??

Note: A King Cobra qualifies as a person as it has a face and eyes but if you prefer something more person looking for the King of Clubs it could be King Kong or even Tiger Woods (who possibly is the greatest “King of Clubs” (Golf) of all time?? so image for the order may be Jackie Chan rather LaSSo-ing Tiger Woods!

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Thanks for all the helpful input, Tim!

The reason that I came up with this idea was that I don’t look at cards individually in a sequence; instead, I take three cards out, look at them, create the image, dwell on it for a bit and then move on. I’d say my recall is basically perfect, no doubt because I take my sweet time on each image, and normally do a re-run through all the images a couple of times mid-memorisation, which contributes to the high times.

Because of that, I thought that having fewer images would be helpful, since my impression is that there is a sort of fixed overhead per image which is what is making me so slow (along with the re-running and improvable recognition speed).

What you said makes total sense: each card still translates to an element that I need to recall. However, I suspect speed may not only be related to individual elements but to the number of pictures (I think PAO with 18 images is more popular than PA with 26, which itself is more popular than P with 52). Undoubtedly, after some point, cramming a single image is counterproductive, but I was wondering if PAO’s three elements per image is the sweet spot or if there is margin for complicating images a bit.

The metronome advice makes tons of sense, I knew about it from Moonwalking with Einstein, but I hadn’t applied it because I don’t really go card by card but in groups of three and sometimes decide to do a re-run to ensure nothing is missing. But I realise I can simply set the metronome to tick per image, not per card, I’ll give that a go :slight_smile:

In order to get to faster times I think I need to improve my recognition time quite a bit. Some cards are instantaneous (“Ace of clubs: Tiger Woods”), while for others I still need to go through the “It is a 7, hence a male superhero; it is a hearts club, so it is someone I think as good; ah, Superman”. Do you reckon it makes sense to practice that by itself without compositing images? And later composing images as fast as possible without necessarily commiting them to memory? Or do you think it’s best to practice the exercise as a whole each time?

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Thanks for the advice, Fred. I don’t intend to compete, so I always recall orally (I have always done it in front of other people, never by myself; might need to buy a second deck to be able to practice by myself!). The 52nd card has never been an issue for me, I just imagine the person waving at me and have no problem recalling them later on, and barely takes any time (in the grand scheme of things, a couple of seconds for an extra image at the end is nothing since I am taking over 10 minutes now!).

I have considered the major system, but English is not my first language, and most of what I have found about it is for English. I could try to use it in English, but was hoping to sticking to free associations for a bit, since I already went through the boring part of assigning a person-action-object to each card :slight_smile:

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Yes, all of these!

Its important to practice independently associating the cards with their People, and then their Actions, and then their Objects. You should strive towards instantaneous recognition of each, without having any extra conversion steps.

More on this here (note that it references PAO for numbers, but it equally applies to cards):

Try not doing this. Its really really tempting, but if you can not do re-runs it will help you tremendously. You’ll see your accuracy take a hit initially, bit you’ll be learning to trust your first look visualizations and you may learn what cards give you consistent trouble so you can work on reviewing those.

I’d be willing to bet this means that you flip over 3 cards at once and read them one by one as a scene, right? If thats the case, the single card metronome approach would still work fine because on every click you need to move on to reading the next element. Person “click” does Action “click” with/to Object “click”, visualize it “click” next set…

As a sidenote, this thread gets sort of into semantics about elements, images, and scenes but you might find it interesting and helpful when it comes to thinking about data compression and the efficiency of a system: Reason for deleting 10 digit system post - #6 by TheHumanTim