@meepster As someone who has been lurking on here for ages, I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this inspiring journal. I also really appreciate the contributions from others in this tread - I gained many an insight that helped me with my own memory journey.
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Ditto the above. You are keeping me on the start of my memory journey so many thanks for your posts.
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Thanks, all. 
So, I’ve started the peg-list experiment. It does actually help me retain information as I read, though I think I need a bit more practice in making these peg associations automatically and quickly. I am hoping this improves with practice.
The other experiment I want to try is to use my house as a memory palace for the long-term retention of information, and do it as a “songline” by actually walking through the place in question as I’m memorizing. I haven’t decided what information I want to encode yet.
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Do you have a more in depth explanation of how you are using the peg system to memorize text? I’m most interested in this area of memorization and wanted to know which method you are using
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I’m still kinda experimenting. To be clear, this is not verbatim memorization - mostly, what I want to do is to have a clear and detailed recollection of the contents as I read, after one reading. What I’m doing so far is just to stick in mental pegs as I read - each point gets attached to an animal from my alphabetic bestiary with some sort of vivid association. Eventually, I want to do this for everything I read. For now, I’m picking one passage a day from whatever it is that I’m reading and practicing on that.
It’s been nice to dust off the alphabetic bestiary - I haven’t done anything with that for a while. I couldn’t even remember what a lot of the animals were.
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And when using the alphabetic bestiary for reading, is that whatever the first letter of the sentence is, or…? And how do you keep everything straight?
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The way I’ve been doing it is just to associate the first idea with the A animal, the second idea with the B animal, the third idea with the C animal, and so on. I’m not trying to memorize verbatim, so I don’t really care about the individual sentences. I guess I could do the same thing with my PAO characters, and maybe I’ll try that next.
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Ah. Would I be bothering you if I asked you to provide an example?
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Actually, I’d love to, because I’m not at all sure if I’m doing this right. Could some of the more experienced memory athletes comment on the below and tell me if this is really the best way to use the peg method to memorize ideas/concepts? What I want to be able to do is “take mental notes” as I read so that I don’t need to go back and re-read it again. I am not necessarily going for longterm retention here, just short-term.
Here’s a sample text:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [I imagine an Alien creating heaven and earth by waving its tentacles]
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. [I imagine a Bee that is shapeless and flying around in the dark, and splashing its face in the water]
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. [I imagine a Cactus with a lightbulb on it, lighting up]
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. [I imagine a Dog doing a division problem in intermittent periods of light and darkness]
For those of you who “take mental notes” as you read - is this the way to do it?
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@meepster, I’m not the most experienced but I can suggest a few things. If you want to use a peg list, you are doing what I would do. But then what happens when you get to verse 27? Does the Alien return?
A method I would use in preference because psychology tells me that relevant images make for better retention is a story. I would become the director of an animated film in my head letting a cloaked figure of light toss out the angels and a ball of mud into the darkness. And then he breathes on the mud ball and the oceans appear. He turns back and like a wizard forms a ball of light and smiles as it grows. He throws it out in to the heavens and the darkness becomes only shadows where the light doesn’t reach on the mud ball.
I review the story several times and play it back and forth increasing the speed of playback until it seems good before I move on to more.
Using pegs forces you into odd images but letting your imagination run wild as a story where each scene connects with the next, can be much more fulfilling and even reveal some possible new insights.
You baited me in to this one by using Scripture. 
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Seems solid to me. I gotta work on my PAO still, but I would figure person action object for number and then- well, mental notes on just concepts mean you’re already understanding and abstracting the ideas, so all that’s left is to exaggerate the idea and nail it to a locus. God saw the light- a recently resurrected Christ sitting on a wooden bench and sawing at a solid glowing cylinder of light with vigor, blood dripping from his wounds and water spilling from his side, crown of thorns and all. I think you’re doing well, maybe just try to get a little more exaggerated
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Yeah, I need to get better at really exaggerating the mental images and making them weirder. I’m not very good at that, and it’s been slowing me down with loci-based memorization as well. Thanks for the advice.
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Ha - I figured you’d weigh in on that one, @thinkaboutthebible . I’m actually not sure what I’d do if I had more than 26 pegs - as mentioned, I’ve only been using this for very short-term memorization of short passages. I kinda think that I could cycle through the alphabet again - no reason why the Alien couldn’t appear twice.
As for the animated film you describe - I wish my aphantasic brain could do that.
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I do that all the time with bird lists in the field. I often memorise more than 26. The second A feels very different from the first because it is happening later. A linking story for parts of the list also seems to emerge naturally. Try it and see if it works for you.
If not, you can add your image for 2 (a swan?) into the second set and your image for 3 into the third … but I suspect that you won’t need that.
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Check out one of the very first Magnetic memory method podcasts. It is about language learning. Luca something.
He talks about reusing his journey of ten rooms with 10 pegs or places in each room. It kind of annoying because he explains the first four pegs and then moves on.
He has a process or system that he always follows and something about gold for 5, 10, etc.
He basically changes something about the journey the second use so same place except it is an ice palace the second time. Really interesting and frustrating podcast episode.
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Hmm, interesting! I wonder if I can change the color - have a red Alien the first time, a yellow Alien the second time, and so on. In any event, at this point I’m still building up to a 26-item peg list, so this is academic. The goal here is to be able to populate the peg list as I read and retain it all, accurately, after one reading without going back. I can’t do a very long list that way yet.
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This is a very interesting type of peg system that I have been exploring. I call it an abstract peg. You take a well-known peg list of subjects for instance, say a bestiary, to start with as long as it’s very generic. It could be items just as well from your Major system keywords. But people/animals/characters have more personality and do better at associating to another item.
Next, you pick a type of mutation. I like to either put them in a specific terrain and see why they are there, or put them in a certain role and see what they do. I don’t remember colors so that didn’t work for me.
Let’s take the third peg of an alphabetic list - C. It could just as well be a numeric list and I’d use ammo from my Major system keywords. I have alphabetic peg lists of animals, food, and people. I’ll choose the chicken from my animals/bestiary. You like chickens.
Now you overlay the peg list with a terrain or a role for the first, second, third, or whatever iterations of that list. The first iteration using a terrain could be a US city (01 in the Major system). The second could be in Zion/Jerusalem or a sauna. (02 - Now you know why I like my Major system toolkit in categories.)
If you decided to use the role-based abstract peg you could have it play the part of many different types of roles. Let’s use the theatre as a source for several roles. You like plays. There’s the back stage crew, the actor, the audience member, or the staff in the lobby. We could equate them to a sweaty (01) worker alien/bee/chicken, zany (02) alien/bee/chicken actors, polite aliens/bees/poultry audience members drinking Assam (03) tea, or rude customer service aliens/bees/chickens in the lobby who swear (04) at the patrons.
So, back to the chicken (3rd peg) in the US city (1st iteration of the abstract peg list). Now you need some narrative logic. Where is the chicken in the city? What’s the chicken doing there? it looks like he’s crossing a busy street. Why did the chicken cross the road? (I had to do that.)
Now you hook it on to the item to remember -
And now you have the chicken crossing the road to take a look at the light coming out of a synagogue window (stay relevant to the source as much as possible, just being bizarre isn’t as good).
It’s a fun exercise for me so I can reuse my simple peg lists by making them abstract pegs with different overlays. We just explored 26 times two terrains or four roles but the permutations are endless. Maybe that will help you.
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Hmm, I love that! I think I will try that with regards to location - a chicken in the city for the first go-around, a chicken in the water for the second go-around, or something. That’s definitely a fascinating thing to try.
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Have you heard that song Bloody Chickentown
According to the Russians from GMS
Of course images are connected in pairs, with no stories, that’s why a variation in color is not good. If you add stories to connect, I guess the different colors are details.
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