I wanted to take a second to share an epiphany that someone may find useful. I was brainstorming about how to be able to memorize more. I practice using the method of loci for hours everyday, and though I am now faster at cards and digits than I used to be, I honestly don’t think I’ve gotten any better at it in the past six months. I’m just memorizing 2 cards instead of 1 or 3 digits instead of 2, so more information is memorized in the same period of time. This is kind of a long post, even for me, so I apologize ahead of time.
So I had to turn off the lights, lay down in the shower, and ask just how that can be, that a person can practice a thing often and not improve at it. And I don’t think that can be. So I have gotten better at what I have practiced, but what I have practiced is not memorizing better. Three remarks, one made by Ben, another by Nelson (both on these forums), and a third by Dominic O’Brien in one of his books (I don’t remember which) all came together at once.
One of those things was Ben’s response to one of my questions in the “Ask a Memory Champion” thread. It has been on my mind recently. I have 50 loci in my little apartment. Many of them are jammed together (ten loci are in one small bathroom), and there’s just no place to put a full size Ferris Wheel. So I “miniaturize” all of the objects as much as is needed to fit three of them in a sink, for example. Ben says the relative sizes of his objects are constant, which surely makes them more distinct, and that somehow putting a “full size ocean liner” In a small location is “not a problem.” That was a big indicator that what he does and what I do while memorizing are totally different processes, though on the surface it might appear that “using the method of loci” could describe only one kind of thought process.
Why was I miniaturizing everything? Because I believed that the name of the game was “translate the images as quickly as possible, and view them as clearly as possible in their respective loci.” And I have gotten better at this. But the name of the game is actually “remember these digits/cards/words in order.” And that is an independent task. Seeing something clearly is no guarantee that it will be remembered. There is more to the art of memorization than this.
Nelson said in one thread that he puts his PAO image together and then drops it in a loci. This too seemed foreign, after all, wasn’t the point supposed to be to walk down a path that is believably real, and note the strange happenings along the way, all looking so real that it could be mistaken for an actual memory? No, the point was always “to remember,” and though strong visualization is helpful, it is means to an end, and should be mastered only to the extent that it serves its purpose. Ben too describes his palaces as “dreamy” and sometimes warped or indistinct. As “backgrounds.”
Wanting to see what memorization feels like, rather than what visualization feels like, I went through the cards with no intent to visualize them with any effort and with no palace in mind. I told myself “memorize these images/words in order.” No tricks - just try to do it how I would have done it if unfamiliar with mnemonics. The first cards that came up were assassin, lipstick, vat. Assassin has a sniper rifle on a tripod, and when memorizing decks, he always shoots whatever object is next in line, and usually that explodes into the object following it. In this case it would be the assassin shooting the lipstick which explodes all over the “Suspension vat” that the Avatar is grown in in the movie of that name. That’s a nice, clean way to visualize all 3 objects next to eachother. But when I merely intended to “remember” these words, I began to make them into a story inevitably, and in the story, the assassin put on the lipstick and then floated in the vat himself.
Hey now, that isn’t the same thing! If that is what’s memorable, then what have I been practicing instead?
This continued to happen, over and over. When I merely tried to “remember” the objects, they would be used in completely different ways than how they are used when I clearly visualize them in loci. I didn’t have to find a physical way to connect the “fruit cup” with the adjacent “Pearly Gates” of heaven. It was enough to note that the fruit cup “tasted like heaven.”
In one of Dominic O’Brien’s books, when teaching how to link objects, he emphasizes: the key is to connect the words in a way that is “already there.” Not the biggest, not the wildest, but the path of least resistance. If the words are “peanut butter” and “knife,” you probably won’t imagine someone trying to pry open a peanut butter jar with a knife. Let the path of least resistance surface. That’s Dominic’s advice anyway.
And here when I tried to just “remember,” I was following Dominic’s advice to a tee, without even noticing at the time. And as I followed his advice, I saw that it was inconsistent with the way that I practice, which I had already convinced myself was flawed in some way.
However, it was perfectly conducive to a style of memorization with the journey method that would allow one to “drop images into a loci” like Nelson or visualize full sized ocean liners while going along a journey inside a building that is too small for the object to actually fit in, like Ben.
So, those are a couple points of agreement that suggest I have stumbled upon something good here in terms of form. If you care to, try to do what I did - look through numbers or cards and just “try to remember” them. If you get a result that is different from the way you usually view objects, then you have uncovered a line that you may benefit from pursuing.