Absolutely! I mesh all my techniques. So PA with the Dominic System gives me dates in the History Walk if I want accurate dates. Most stuff is fine just in the location because it gives me within a decade or two for the last few centuries and within larger ranges further back.
I use the Bestiary for all sorts of things now if I need a prompt for the word. When I wrote Memory Craft I was only using it for names. Sometimes I seem to use my French bestiary as well even for English words - not sure why my brain does that, but again I have the first two letters, except the beasts are in French. The Chinese bestiary works much more like the Visual Alphabet plus an action encoded in the rest of the syllable. It’s very different and doesn’t cross over.
I use the Visual alphabet for keeping bird lists when we are out in the field, and write them down later. Sometimes I’ll use the Visual Alphabet with the Bestiary if I want a list. Say it was a shopping list (which I don’t tend to bother memorising), and I wanted milk (mi- millipede) as my third item (cat) then I will have the cat tormenting a millipede, or being tormented by it!
I am involved in new research with a geneticist/evolutionary biologist linking the origin of mnemonic methods to the origin of the supergene, NF1. She has found a mutation which hadn’t been noticed before differentiating the human allele from that of the chimps and apes. She’s taking my ideas back 500,000 years! I am on a steep learning curve of genetics and evolution guided by her. Naturally, the first thing I did was set up a memory palace. I then use the bestiary for technical terms I place within it.
As with languages, I only need the bestiary when the idea is new. Then the word enters my family vocabulary brain bit, and I no longer use the beastly image. So it does tend to be temporary compared with the palaces themselves.
I love hearing how other people do these things - we all seem to be using similar techniques but in idiosyncratic ways.
Interesting! I’ll have to try the bestiary. I’ve been using a body memory palace for “taking mental notes” - specifically, using my fingers - but I only have 10 fingers, so it would be nice to get a bigger one. Even a visual alphabet wasn’t really enough when I needed to memorize a long list - for example, the main points of “Memory Craft” - so I think I need more pegs than that.
(Though now that I think about it, I could probably get a pretty long list of body parts on which to hang information if I tried - I might try that as well).
Indeed, we are all drinking from the same well, and we all have the same general brain capabilities! Of course, each one will have their unique strengths and history, so the idiosyncratic ways must differ, and that’s great, which is also an never ending source for inspiration
That’s really amazing and I would love to hear more about it!
So, what happens when you are familiar with the idea? I mean, what happens in that location when the beastly image is gone? In my “permanent” memory palaces I replace the temporary images (made with the visual alphabet) with fixed ones (with my character technique), so I’m curious. Do you relay in your new understanding and stop using the memory palace at some point for those technical terms?
I’ve always been fascinated by all things memory but have given it much less attention then I should. This thread has inspired me to get back on track.
Quick question - you meniton dual N-back which is a game I have not heard of. Do you have a preferred app or link? I definately want to give that a go.
Dual N Back is the only brian trainer with scientific backing i believe. It is listed as that on the Play store.
I found it hard so it must be working.
So, my “unstupiding” has mostly been astronomy-based lately. I got myself a little puzzle game where you have to put the constellations in their right places, and I’m getting much faster at it. I’m definitely finding it much easier to remember the older constellations that have stories attached - Perseus and Andromeda, or Orion and all the animals he’s hunted - than the newer constellations that do not have stories.
Also, I found out that this month’s full moon is known as the “worm moon” - the last full moon of winter, which is when worms are supposed to come out. The worms were almost exactly on schedule this year - a couple of days ago on our morning walk, we noticed a whole bunch of worms and baby snails and slugs on the sidewalk.
Which reminds me of the story I read in “The First Astronomers” about how when a particular constellation touched the surface of the ocean, the sharks were supposed to come out. And I can easily see why the mnemonics attached to that particular constellation should be as strong and reliable as possible.
I found Dual N-Back to be hard as well, though I am kinda thinking that focused meditation would probably have the same effect. I’m thinking most of the training here is training focused attention, with immediate feedback if you lose focus.
I had some long and complicated dental work done today, and really understood the value of all the memorized poetry I now have in my head. It was great for keeping my mind occupied and distracted while the dentist worked on my mouth - I had plenty of material in my head to keep myself busy. I think I will return to this project and add some more poems to my mental anthology.
I think I’m ready to take my “mental bullet journal” project to the next level - tomorrow, I plan to use my fingers to memorize my day’s to-do list. For some reason, a finger-based “memory palace” seems to work very well for me. I used it today for random mental notes, and they all stuck.
Each location has a stack of words in it, so the location is still there and in use. The beastly image isn’t gone, I am just not relying on it. In French, I may never call it up again. With Chinese, I might know the word in pinyin but need to use the location again to add the character(s).
I never stop using the memory palace because just knowing the terms is only the beginning. I layer more and more complexity in the palace as I learn more.
You ask about the research taking my ideas back 500,000 years - let’s go conservative make that over 300,000 years to be safe - which is what Dr Andrea Alveshere is doing in the American Association of Biological Anthropologists conference presentation next week. We think it is longer, but the dating is all future work.
Andrea has posted a video of the presentation on YouTube. It is aimed at evolutionary biologists and geneticists, so has a lot of technical stuff in it. I am still working on all of that, so can’t answer anything about the heavy NF1 technicalities. I’m good on the primary orality bit, though!
After feedback from this conference and another at an NF1 conference in a few months, we’ll know where the research stands with initial peer review. We will then work on an academic paper for publication, having addressed the feedback and then we’ll be writing it for a mainstream audience. But the first stage with such a big idea is to get feedback.
Pity all three of us are scientists - if not we could just go out there and make rash claims!
LOL Dr Rhonda Patrick’s podcast is like that. She is really good and on other people’s podcast she dumbs it down however on hers she goes fill tilt and it requires frequent pausing.
I saw something on a UK program called “The secret life of pets” and they had a dog that the owner had given a voice to via buttons it could press. It sounds odd for this however there is a big question of awareness so they are studying it and I believe setting up an actual study. I was a little disappointed we did not get a squirrels. I just want them to include Ravens or Crows in the study.
This is fascinating stuff! A lot of the technical stuff is going way over my head, but the implications do sound very interesting. I’d love to read more on that once you get to the mainstream-audience level.
So, I’m thinking that my “mental bullet journal” could really be reduced to three ongoing lists:
monthly calendar;
list of projects and the next action item for each project;
a daily to-do list, with mental notes or additional action items being added throughout the day.
The monthly calendar pretty much lives in my head already, and is pegged to the calendar dates. The daily to-do list seems to be doing OK on my fingers (I think the action of counting off items on my fingers helps me remember). I’m thinking that the list of projects and associated action items should live in my office, since that is where I refer to it.
I’ll play around with this system for a bit and see how it feels.
I didn’t look at my “daily to-do index card” today at all. All of the to-do items were on my fingers. Admittedly, today wasn’t a complicated day, but I did manage to get everything done that I needed to do. I think this is a workable idea. I found myself counting to-do items off on my fingers multiple times throughout the day, which reinforced the memory of them.
The next project is to stick my ongoing project list and associated action items on various objects in my office. I think my desk and its immediate environs are going to be the memory palace for this one.
Finding myself struggling a bit with the “mental to-do list”. Wondering if this just needs more practice/effort, or if I actually need to change my approach.
I’ve been away from all things memory for a while due to all sorts of things. The only thing I held on to was the mental diary, and recent events have reinforced to me just how important it was to keep that going, and not just for sentimental reasons.
The other day, I had to put together a timeline for a particular aspect of my life for the past few months. Prior to the day-memorizing project, this would have filled me with dread. I would have been absolutely unable to do it and would have had only a few very vague memories to put on the timeline. Because of this project, however, I was able to put together a detailed and accurate timeline with exact dates attached to each event. I could remember everything, and it was very vivid and clear. It’s amazing just how different I feel and how much confidence this is giving me. I’m terribly grateful to Lembran Sar for inspiring me to do this, and I hope to keep this going for a lifetime (though who knows how long this will last).
I’m still pondering about exactly how to return to memory training and what kind of memory training to return to. I do want to return, because right now, I see a very clear benefit to me from doing this kind of memory training. I do, actually and truly, feel “un-stupided”.
So, I passed the one-year mark in this journal. It hasn’t been as successful a memory experiment as I’d hoped - there were many things I tried and abandoned, due to various life concerns - but overall, I’m still highly pleased. As mentioned above, the mental diary (currently at 300 days) is a life-changing experience just by itself, even if I hadn’t done anything else. So is the mental calendar and the Magic Appointment Ring. (I stopped that for a few days, promptly forgot an appointment, and now I’m right back to that experiment).
Another life-changing thing is the PAO system. I deal a lot with numbers in my job, and it’s wonderful to be able to memorize them quickly. I use this daily.
I loved doing the History Walk, though I think I’ll have to relocate it - I no longer walk that route daily. Though I still remember every single tree I’d assigned to historical figures when I do walk there.
I still have a detailed recollection of Hamlet and remember the relevant bits of it when I walk past the related trees and other objects.
I’m playing a bit with constellations, and it’s nice to learn them, though I haven’t done much with this.
I’m pondering the next experiment, and I think I’m arriving at one. I’d like to have a better short-term retention of the things I read, just to be able to summarize an article or a short story and be confident about my accuracy. I haven’t really experimented a lot with the peg method for short-term memorization/retention, and I’d like to try that. This is actually one major way in which I’ve felt stupid - I’d like to read an article or watch a lecture and actually have the relevant points stick in my mind without having to read it again and again. It would be nice to “un-stupid” that part of my life.
Congratulations for having come this far and having stuck with the journal! It’s so cool being able to read your memory story – it is definitely inspiring for me ^^
All the best for your current experiments and those yet to come
Even a visual alphabet wasn’t really enough when I needed to memorize a long list - for example, the main points of “Memory Craft” 
