Suggestions for my Remebering every week (not every day) experiment?

General Memory Chat
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I was impressed with the coolness of these “Remembering every day” projects (like this one), and considered trying myself, but IMO the system has some important shortcomings:

1- The amount of data slowly but surely gets out of control. Reviewing all that information gets very tricky.

2- There’s no mnemonics to help. The original idea (visualizing a pic of a meaningful event pinned to the corresponding day of a wall monthly calendar, and reviewing those as often as possible) to me just looks like rote memory, which is so inefficient and I would say unmanageable long term.

3- The system seems to work to store the present days as they go by, but what about including past stuff from journals, pictures, etc?

So my first thought was, what about memorizing weeks rather than days? That would divide by 7 the amount of data to memorize and review. And then I realized something else: A year has 52 weeks, just as the cards in a deck.

This led to the system I’m currently trying, combining my number system with my card system as a peg for the experiences of a given week (The peg for week 45 of the current year would be my person for number 21, doing the action for the card in the 45th position, according to the order in which I encoded cards which was S-H-C-D, that’s the 6 of diamonds)

I cannot think of any other situation in which I personally would combine my numbers and cards systems, which means these peg images will only be used for this project, so I think I’m safe not using memory palaces.

Oh, and in order to make sure I’m reviewing properly I’m just using SRS software (RemNote) as I do with my other mnemonics.

Where I need help:

For now the system is working as intended, but I overlooked something that I would like to figure out before I start “loading” past events. I now remember that on the 45th week of 2021 I did so and so, but when is that? September? October? November? And what if I want to remember what I did on, say, March? What week numbers is that?

So my question is this: How would you link, calculate, or figure out week numbers to regular dates, even if approximately?

Maybe I could just add to my card system a clue of what time of the year is every card/week of the year? Maybe there is an easy way to calculate dates? Maybe I should just check a calendar in my phone? :rofl:
(For me a simple, even if vague, system that I know I will use is better than an accurate and detailed system that is too complex and might probably end up abandoning)

Even though I posed a specific question about a particular aspect of this system any input is appreciated, thanks.

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You could memorize the week number that corresponds to the first day of each month, e.g.:
January: 1
February: 5
March: 9

This wouldn’t be perfectly accurate but would give you a good idea! So you’d know that the 7th week would be mid-February. You could also calculate this and learn it very quickly, in less time than it took to your post.

And as you said, if you need to know accurately, you could use a calendar; this is just for convenience.

If you learned to calculate the day of the week for any date, you could combine that to know that e.g. in 2021, the 16th February (arbitrary date in the “middle of February”) was a Tuesday, so therefore the 7th week was from 15–21 February.

One complication with all this is that for 2021, was your 1st week Jan 01–03? Jan 04–10? Jan 01–06? I don’t need the answer, but you’ll need to adjust any system to accommodate how you’re calculating this as they change every year.

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Thanks Daniel, good food for thought in your reply.
About your last point I’m using the number of the week and dates as they appear in my iPad, but I should really do some research on how that’s decided, I mean, whether there is a defined standard or I could find that different calendars have different criteria for what’s week #1.

Edit: Actually, learning one of those Calculate-the-weekday systems has crossed my mind several times in the past. I’ll have to look into that as well, now that I have a proper system to review what I memorize. Maybe combining these two ideas might solve my little problem.

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FWIW, my calendar method involves knowing all the dates in a (non-leap) year that fall on the same day of the week as Jan 1st. It is an ideal system to use in conjunction with week numbers.

Here is the list of that I would match up.

Week 01 Jan 01
Week 02 Jan 08
Week 03 Jan 15
Week 04 Jan 22
Week 05 Jan 29

Week 06 Feb 05
Week 07 Feb 12
Week 08 Feb 19
Week 09 Feb 26

Week 10 Mar 05
Week 11 Mar 12
Week 12 Mar 19
Week 13 Mar 26

Week 14 Apr 02
Week 15 Apr 09
Week 16 Apr 16
Week 17 Apr 23
Week 18 Apr 30

Week 19 May 07
Week 20 May 14
Week 21 May 21
Week 22 May 28

Week 23 Jun 04
Week 24 Jun 11
Week 25 Jun 18
Week 26 Jun 25

Week 27 Jul 02
Week 28 Jul 09
Week 29 Jul 16
Week 30 Jul 23
Week 31 Jul 30

Week 32 Aug 06
Week 33 Aug 13
Week 34 Aug 20
Week 35 Aug 27

Week 36 Sep 03
Week 37 Sep 10
Week 38 Sep 17
Week 39 Sep 24

Week 40 Oct 01
Week 41 Oct 08
Week 42 Oct 15
Week 43 Oct 22
Week 44 Oct 29

Week 45 Nov 05
Week 46 Nov 12
Week 47 Nov 19
Week 48 Nov 26

Week 49 Dec 03
Week 50 Dec 10
Week 51 Dec 17
Week 52 Dec 24
Week 53 Dec 31 (This is bogus, not a real week)

I hadn’t gotten around to memorizing week numbers yet, but it has been on my todo list for awhile, so your post inspired me.

Since I want to make it maximally easy on myself, I will just associate each month with a week number and work out the rest in my head.

So, I will learn:
Jan, week 01
Feb, week 06
Mar, week 10
Apr, week 14
May, week 19
Jun, week 23
Jul, week 27
Aug, week 32
Sep, week 36
Oct, week 40
Nov, week 45
Dec, week 49

…And the rest are easy to work out.

Darn

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Thank you for sharing your system, I’ll try it and see how it works for me and my system.
I have one concern about it, “officially” Jan 01 is not always week 1, that’s because if Jan 01 is a Friday, Saturday or Sunday then the next week is considered to be the first week of the year, and that week is considered the last week of previous year. How you deal with this? Or you ignore the official / standard week numbering system and go with yours?

Edit: BTW I found out that a guy that works 9 to 5 at a 7-Eleven has discovered that the following dates always share the same week day:
9/5
5/9
7/11
11/7
4/4
6/6
8/8
10/10
12/12

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Regarding the standard/official week numbering system…I was not aware of it as a global standard. Perhaps it is somebody’s idea of a fiscal standard favoured by some businesses and institutions, That said, since I simply want efficient ways to perform common tasks, it is not an issue for me.

The second system you mention is a kind of simplified version of my system. It would be quick to learn. I actually considered using that method way back when, but decided to go with my own method. At any rate, they are completely compatible. For our shared purpose, though, I think my approach would likely mesh most easily with a week numbering system. That was actually a consideration when I first decided on my approach…I just hadn’t gotten around to integrating the week numbers until I saw your post.

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Well, I’m not too concerned about standardization, the problem for me is that is the week numbers that my tablet shows when I need to check a date. But knowing the difference between your system and the “standard” one I might be able to work something out.
Regarding the 9-5 7-11 thing, I shared it as something interesting I found, but your system is definitely more robust and dependable.
Thank you so much for your input!

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An update:

I made a small change. Now I will think of my week numbering schema as follows:

Jan 01 => Week 00 + 1 day
Jan 08 => Week 01 + 1 day
Jan 15 => Week 02 + 1 day
Jan 22 => Week 03 + 1 day
Jan 29 => Week 04 + 1 day

Feb 05 => Week 05 + 1 day
Feb 12 => Week 06 + 1 day
Feb 19 => Week 07 + 1 day
Feb 26 => Week 08 + 1 day

Mar 05 => Week 09 + 1 day
Mar 12 => Week 10 + 1 day
Mar 19 => Week 11 + 1 day
Mar 26 => Week 12 + 1 day

Apr 02 => Week 13 + 1 day
Apr 09 => Week 14 + 1 day
Apr 16 => Week 15 + 1 day
Apr 23 => Week 16 + 1 day
Apr 30 => Week 17 + 1 day

May 07 => Week 18 + 1 day
May 14 => Week 19 + 1 day
May 21 => Week 20 + 1 day
May 28 => Week 21 + 1 day

Jun 04 => Week 22 + 1 day
Jun 11 => Week 23 + 1 day
Jun 18 => Week 24 + 1 day
Jun 25 => Week 25 + 1 day

Jul 02 => Week 26 + 1 day
Jul 09 => Week 27 + 1 day
Jul 16 => Week 28 + 1 day
Jul 23 => Week 29 + 1 day
Jul 30 => Week 30 + 1 day

Aug 06 => Week 31 + 1 day
Aug 13 => Week 32 + 1 day
Aug 20 => Week 33 + 1 day
Aug 27 => Week 34 + 1 day

Sep 03 => Week 35 + 1 day
Sep 10 => Week 36 + 1 day
Sep 17 => Week 37 + 1 day
Sep 24 => Week 38 + 1 day

Oct 01 => Week 39 + 1 day
Oct 08 => Week 40 + 1 day
Oct 15 => Week 41 + 1 day
Oct 22 => Week 42 + 1 day
Oct 29 => Week 43 + 1 day

Nov 05 => Week 44 + 1 day
Nov 12 => Week 45 + 1 day
Nov 19 => Week 46 + 1 day
Nov 26 => Week 47 + 1 day

Dec 03 => Week 48 + 1 day
Dec 10 => Week 49 + 1 day
Dec 17 => Week 50 + 1 day
Dec 24 => Week 51 + 1 day
Dec 31 => Week 52 + 1 day

The reason I changed it was to reduce the cognitive load. Now think of the current week in progress as the number of previous completed weeks so far in the year + the number of days in the current (unfinished) week.

Since today is 27 December, I now think of it as week 51 + 3 days. July 20th would be Week 28 + 4 days. To me, this seems clear and simple.

Anyway, this applies to ordinary years. Leap years would require a slight adjustment.

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