My daughter has a speech coming up for her social science class. She had trouble remembering the dates in her speech, so I taught her the Major System. She instantly came up with silly nonsense words for the dates in question and it seemed to help her remember. I don’t use the Major System myself, but I figured that teaching the poor kid a complete PAO system for 100 different characters would be a bit too much. Now that I see the Major System in action, I’m kinda regretting not having tried it earlier. By now I’m too invested in my PAO to change it.
I’m also planning to have her use a memory palace to remember the main points of her speech, based on the layout of her classroom.
Today, the kid and I used the Major System to remember the dates of the Revolutionary War - 1775-1783. Translated into the Major System, we got “tick cough” and “tick foam”, and imagined the Revolutionary War being fought between two ticks - one that coughs and one that foams. The kid retained the information at least for the duration of a few hours. We’ll see how that makes it into long-term memory. It’s definitely made it into MY memory.
The Chinese pair their animals with an element. Water, fire, metal, air, wood. This year is water rabbit. I was born water rat (72). So you should have a good 60 years. But the calculations are weird. It’s not 12 years of water followed by 12 years of wood etc.
I feel like I want to try PAO and don’t like major but I KNOW that you just don’t know how these systems feel to use until you actually use them. My prediction of how I will like it is just not accurate in either positive or negative direction. I still have to deal with my brain though.
I want to create PAO for myself, but I want to teach a quick method to my students who are doing a learning project and some chose history dates.
They are Chinese kids, I wonder if anyone has done Major with Chinese…
I met a ‘mentalist’ on the weekend doing a performance with hypnotherapy and mind reading at a party. First time I’ve met someone (IRL) more into mnemonic systems than me! So cool. He said I really should try the object type systems. He hasn’t done PAO. (I also haven’t done PAO, but it’s on the list).
Thanks. Russian is fun. Even though I’m half Latvian etc. and we have ‘history’. I want to create the Metevier alphabet-set of palaces as a kind of mobile notebook. When I hear a new word, I can stuff it in there and access it until it’s integrated into my familiar words that I don’t have to think about. But I still haven’t committed so I’ll document it when I do.
I found the alphabet set of palaces useful for languages for two things.
Learn a limited serie of words that you know is going to be very useful. For example I made a memory palace to learn all the affixes to build words in esperanto, which gave me a boost for vocabulary in general.
Otherwise, I only put in a memory palace (a “disseminated” one, not a “real” one) words that I failed at remembering several times. It’s done on the fly and gives you an anchor for a while until you’ve learned it well. I don’t think I’ll take care of “maintaining” it, that is going through it again just for the sake of revising. I only go to a word I need to know when I need it. I don’t think it’s meant for the long term. (But then my experiments with Metivier’s methods are quite recent so…)
@meepster
I’m brand new to the forum and stumbled upon your journal. Once I started reading, I was hooked. I took me 2 days to read all 500 and some entries but I learned sooo much along the way.
I became interested in memory systems in order to try to retain information I pick up from books, videos, etc. My memory is like a closet with a screen door—I can put info in for safekeeping but it seems to diffuse through the screen door into nothingness in short order.
I’ve read several books on memory “methods” but they mostly seemed to dwell on the mechanics and not so much on the application. Then I read Dr. Lynne’s Memory Craft and she opened my eyes to a whole new world of applications (world history, language, bird lists, etc). I also read Dr. Metivier’s The Victorious Mind which tied in meditation to improve focus and concentration. All the tools finally started to fit together.
But still, how to actually start? That’s where your journey has been most instructive. I realize I’ve been waiting for the “perfect” system to be developed before I actually dove in. Your way of simply jumping in and trying stuff to see what worked and what didn’t, keeping the former and replacing the later, then repeating the process until you found what worked for you has finally turned on the light in my brain!
I finally realized that I don’t need to read another book on “learning how to swim” or watch another video on how someone else swims. I actually need to get into the pool and start splashing around. I know I’m going to swallow a lot of water but I’m confident now that I’ll eventually find a system that works for me.
I know numerous people have expressed their thanks to you for deciding to make your journey—warts and all—public. Let me add my name to that growing list.
Thank you so much for your kind comments! I’m glad that all these meanderings have been helpful. I hope your journey is as instructive and enlightening as mine has been.
I’ve just read this now, what improvements have you seen two years later? If you already answered this I’d love to know where to find the post.
Thanks in advance,
Juan
You might want to read the “4 Hour Chef” (TIm Ferriss learning how to cook however it a learning and memory book) and the earliest Dominic O’Brien book.
Memory books remind me a lot of Martial Arts books in that it very hard to find a book about combat however there lots of books about the sport.
I love Dr Kelly’s book basically for the same reason as you, she is the first person I have read who talks about long term remembering rather than a deck of cards or pi.
Well, as can be seen from the absence of postings here, I’ve rather fallen off the wagon with most of the memory training. There are two things I’ve kept: the memorized diary (getting close to two years now) and the PAO system for numbers. I use the number memorization nearly daily for work; it’s such a useful thing. As for the memorized diary, it’s really been wonderful. Sometimes the twice-daily ritual feels like a chore (I’ll be honest - it often does). But I am still very happy to have all of these daily moments in my memory - some good, some bad, some important for whatever reason. Due to my deficiency in “natural” autobiographical memory, they’d have been long gone by now. And this way they aren’t.
I think that some of the other improvements in “unstupiding” have been mostly in knowing that memory techniques exist. I now know that I can use a peg list or a memory palace if I need to remember a shopping list or the contents of a client conversation, and I know what to do to encode the information. I know how to encode a person’s name if I need to. That sort of thing. I’m not going to win any memory contests, but I am definitely feeling “unstupided”.
Can you share the “mechanics” of yout daily dairy? Do you encode a daily event into a memory palace or do you use some art of peg list maybe tied to the calendar date? @LynneKelly mentions keeping a similar type of dairy in her book which is a great idea but I never understood exactly how she did hers either.
I would think just the act of asking yourself what about today do I want to remember would be enough to force your “monkey mind” to stop long enough to actually be present and notice what’s going on around you.
I know what you mean! Lots of “what to do” but few details on exactly how to do it! Haha. However, I think the main reason is because you have to find your own way, starting with where you are right now, and using what you currently have. As you gain more knowledge and experience, your “path” (your mnemonic system or systems) is going to grow as you discover new meanings in previous techniques and teachings.
Your martial arts example is on the money. I studied Combat Hapkido for close to 20 years (3rd degree BB). I read quite a few of the important books from some of the founders of various systems including “The book of 5 rings” by Musashi. His biggest piece of advice is that to destroy your enemy, you have to first destroy yourself. But what the hell does that mean?
It wasn’t until I studied Buddhism that I finally understood what Musashi meant. He was talking about the concept we all have of “the self”— that little voice that whispers in your ear in the middle of a sparring match, what if I get hit, what if I get hurt, what if I can’t block his punch, what if he’s faster than me…. And as soon as that little voice begins to sow doubt, you’ve lost. That’s what Musashi was talking about when he wrote that back in the mid 1600’s. That’s the “self” he was talking about.
I never understood because I was missing a critical part of the puzzle. Once I got it, everything became clear. Memory systems seem to follow a similar path. To learn them, you have to jump in first. THEN the knowledge and understanding begins to grow. The books and blog posts you read begin to make sense on a whole new level.
I know I said way too much but I hope you find a nugget or two in my rambling!
Mine isn’t similar - I do an annual link like the Native American Winter counts. Nowhere near as ambitious as a daily one that meepster is doing.
All worthwhile, though!
I have similar had to reduce the number of things I was maintaining in memory systems because of time. I have chosen thirty or so to try to maintain and leave the others go as experiments which have now served their purpose. But even out of those, I am focussing on a few, especially developing a memory system for learning Chinese. Depth or breadth? The common challenge to decide!
