At first I really liked the Major System as it allowed me to RECALL stuff really quickly. But the problem was that I had trouble linking numbers to images in the first place.
I moved over to the Dominic-like System, associating some numbers to people and situations. That gave me some great numbers.
I then found the Shaper system and that gave me some more numbers to play with to get to my 99 goal.
But even with those 2 systems some numbers have been stubborn. For these I’ve gone back to the Major system.
The thing is, I wonder if I just should have stuck with the Major the whole time because while it’s harder to make the stories at first, I think my mind is starting to associate the consonants to the single numbers now. I think if I use enough example words from a Major system dictionary, I might start to be able to find new, longer words without using the dictionary.
Shall I persevere with this mix system or start training myself harder with the Major System? Longer terms the Major system seems more much flexible as it can allow for longer words and be upgraded to encode any word to numbers too.
The most important thing for any of these systems is that the numbers from 00-99 are encoded with a clear image. I’m a Major system user and have actually found 88 the most challenging to encode - English doesn’t give a lot of options!
There’s nothing wrong with using a mix of systems as long as you can easily recall the correct associations with each number from 00-99. I know of one system where 93 encoded “Earth” as of the nine (9) known planets at the time (RIP Pluto) it was the 3rd, so 93. As for me, I use “beam” for 93 due to the Major system.
An advantage of the Major system is that it is easily extendable. 420? Uranus. 131? Tomato. A disadvantage is that not all numbers are easily possible. 106? I’ve resorted to “wood sage”.
Are those words coming easily to mind for you now and how long did that take? Or does it still take a while to create those new associations?
88? I see what you mean. Fluffy would be 858.
‘Faff’ is what a family does when they’re trying to get ready for the beach but just can’t seem to leave the house.
Viv is short for Vivian.
Fav is short for favorite.
Not at all - I’ve resorted to “fife”, a type of flute, for 88.
For longer numbers I usually use single-digit adjectives, like hot, new, my, your, etc. combined with the 2-digit number as a last resort. For example, 364 is “my chair” or “my jar”.
For some combinations you may need to ‘cheat’ a bit.
For 106, as you mentioned above, I use “Disc Jockey”, like a DJ type of guy with turntables. I read it as “Diss Jockey” and it works. Some people are really militant about having it be perfect but I am not (I used to be but I had to learn to be okay with it). Same with 368 and 768. I used “Mischief” (really would be M.Chief aka Loki from Marvel) and Kerchief (really would be K.chief) but I just learn to read it incorrectly and and you get used to it. 509 I use Licence Plate but read it as Lice Plate (or I guess technically Lice P. haha).
In my case I probably go out of my way to encode things 1-to-1, so maybe I will in the future need to cheat if I want to expand it to a 000-999 system.
Hi
I can suggest a slightly different approach. I use PAO but I encoded all my images in a memory palace. My childhood home is a 3 floors house with two small gardens, one in front one in the back of the house. This is to say that I could encode all the 100 scenes starting from the front garden. I have exactly 5 or 10 images for each area, exactly that number, and this was of great help at the beginning, and it is still, in order to link the image to the correct number quicker. I have 5 numbers in the front garden, 5 in the garage, 10 in the main hall, 5 in the kitchen and so on. I can say that the mix of memory palace with the PAO, and the multiple of five objects per area worked very well for me. And I’m very proud today because I’ve been able to encode cards in the same system. So now I can easily memorize deck of cards using the same scenes in the same memory palace of numbers. I just had to encode Jack’s, Queens and Kings with different images, but it’s just 12 cards out of 52
So, just to confirm, you’re able to think of the words now without a Major System dictionary? I find it very hard to think of them and I’m wondering if I’ll ever get better
Yes, my scenes have no clue with major system. It took me 3 to 4 days to put all of them in the loci of my memory palace. Then I used (and still use) Anki to review them and still (after 1 month, I’m still new to this) sometimes I have to apply some corrections to the scenes when I find that there is some incoherence, which can eventually happen when you have 100 person - action - object in place.
In Portuguese, instead of using the Major System in the original form, I modified it to be easier. You can see it in this link: Major System Diferente
Google translate it if you want.
I assign a number for each syllabus, instead of using the phonetics in the original form. It doesn’t matter if you have many consonantal sounds in the same syllabus, because the only thing that matter is the first letter of each syllabus.
So my Major System is like this:
0- Z or V (Z is the first letter of Zero)
1- T (The number 1 looks like the letter T)
2- N (Two legs)
3- M (Three legs)
4- R (Looks like an R)
5- C (In Portuguese, the oral form of the number five begins with C)
6- S (Same as before)
7- F (If you invert the number 7, it looks like an F)
8- B or P (Looks like the letter B to me, and if you remove the below half of the B you have a P)
9- g (Looks like a g)
So for two numbers, you would have to create a two syllabus word, a syllabus for each number. As an example, 7775 would be: 77-FF and 75-FC. You would create 2 images using two words with two syllabus each.
I use the Major System plus everything else, acronyms etc, and sometimes all at once. I’ll draw a graphic with PAO and include some number memorization, but also hit it from another angle with a different story and technique using entirely different images as a reinforcement and double check.
The more different ways I have the better and faster. Sometimes the Major System alone runs into a roadblock the others shoot right past.
NOTE: I’m not overly familiar with every system but I’m flexible enough to take what I need when handy. The Major took the most concentration, time, and effort to learn and speed up in fluency though, and I’m really glad I learned it.
Yes, it does! It’s like learning a new language, your brain gets used to it. You can also make it a quicker recall if you create pre-images for each number. One image for each number from 0-9, 00-99 or 000-999. It’s faster than creating on the spot.