By the way, Lynne, I wanted to ask about the bird lukasa - what kind of information do you encode in it? The genus and species and appearance, I’m assuming, but what else? How much detail do you go into?
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I started with the families and their scientific names - each linked to a bead/shell or group of beads. I then added all the species in the families using stories. I sing it too.
I haven’t added all the scientific names because the birders don’t tend to use them a lot. I added some genus names. The stories include reference to the genus, because species in the same genus become brothers in my stories. That helps with looking at the species and relationship to others in the family.
For some, I do remember the scientific names, but more important are the identification features and behaviour. I put in any the distinguishing features which would help in the field, such as the brown treecreeper is often on the ground while the white-throated treecreeper is usually on the tree trunk itself. I add details about feeding, migration, distribution and other such stuff.
I am now doing calls, which I do using words and song but I am starting to try using calligraphy to represent calls. I wish I had time to do more, but I am doing too many different experiments and want to do them all!
Lynne
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I’m highly tempted to repeat this experiment, though I think I’d need to know a lot more about birds first. 
My daughter and I are learning different bird calls as part of our “homeschool science” class, and maybe we will end up making a lukasa once we learn more.
I was walking my normal walking path today, and as I walked past the section where I put Act 2 of Hamlet, each tree reminded me of the corresponding event in the play. I’m sure this is why songlines are so much more powerful than purely imagined memory palaces - there’s a lot more incidental contact when you’re physically there, and that incidental contact helps solidify the memories.
I’d fallen off a bit on my Dual N-back practicing, and I can tell. My ability to concentrate on recalling the memorized content, especially walking a memory palace, is reduced when I don’t do the Dual N-back. I guess this part of the mental fitness regimen is important.
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Not that anyone cares even slightly: I want to say that I am incredibly happy about your life journey, who you’ve forged yourself to be, that you’re such a strong and positive representation of your demographic, that you own up to your country and its identity and that you support its indigenous people, that you’ve put so much effort into being a good daughter and a good role model, and so much effort into honoring your ancestors. I am so filled with some kind of emotion when I consider the joy you’ve been experiencing engaging with your environment and with other curious people and the fulfillment you’ve been experiencing pursuing what you’ve wanted to. You’re a shining example of humanity as a positive influence on the universe. I don’t mean to deify you. Something I’ve learned/was raised to consider is that if you’ve got something good to say, say it and don’t wait. I’ve been called fake sometimes because of it, but I’d rather be called fake than people think I didn’t care. Lynne- thank you. Just… thank you.
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Thank you. I really appreciate your enthusiasm for my work.
Lynne
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What an interesting way of putting it. You are right - that’s exactly what happens.
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My mum used to put her wedding ring on the wrong hand to remember something important, then put it back when it was done. She didn’t know about encoding though. I lose all rings so I wouldn’t try that.
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I don’t know Hamlet well, but i know that there are frequently sonnet structures embedded into Shakespeare plays. For example the meeting scene between Romeo and Juliet. That could be a fun breakdown. Hunting them down.
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It reminds me a little of Andi Bell’s mnemonic beanbag technique.
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I lose rings and jewelry too, and it’s a miracle I haven’t lost my wedding ring yet - this is why my Magic Appointment Ring is a simple cheap ring with nothing special about it whatsoever.
It works great, btw - I haven’t looked at my external calendar for days, and I’m staying on track. I recite / ritually recall my upcoming appointments and to-do items each morning, and that appears to be all it takes.
The beanbag idea sounds great for someone who does not have kids. My kid scatters stuff all over the house without any mnemonic context to it.
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Oh, one more thing - my 5-year-old daughter is pretty much done memorizing her multiplication tables. We followed Lynne’s method exactly, with slight differences in mnemonic words to account for the differences in accent (my daughter said that “twenty” rhymes with “honey”, so we went with that). I tested her today, and there wasn’t a single wrong answer.
She actually has a pretty strong natural memory - much better than mine - and I’m very curious as to what will happen if she trains it with memory techniques from day 1.
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Aw that’s adorable
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My guess is memory god.
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I’ve lost my wedding ring but i haven’t lost my husband.
This ritual is impressive. I’m calendar dependent.
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95 Dominic Numbers now. It’s such a struggle coming up with the remaining 5 that I’ve basically abandoned all my other memory training stuff for now - I just want to be done with these. Still, the poetry appears to be still there, I can still recite the “To be or not to be” soliloquy and a couple of other speeches from Hamlet, and I can name the 12 Labors of Hercules and the 9 muses. But for now, what’s mostly occupying my brain is 67, 87, 89, 93, 94. I don’t know why this is so hard.
After I am done, I want to give the Dominic numbers a workout by memorizing pi.
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I would like to know more about poems. I can see storing content, but not the exact wording. How much is jsut rote, and how does it interact with mnemonics? I learnt Jabberwocky and a few others when I was a kid no problem, cause kids have too many braincells anyway. I use it to time a 1 minute plank (the core-muscle type). But now I want to learn past the first verse of Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock as well as some Latvian Dainas (4 line folk poems that can be recombined into infinite number of poems of songs and there are thousands of them). Part of the problem is my Latvian is crappy. But they’re short and pretty visual (bucolic and practical) so they’d be a good candidate.
Anyway, how do you do blocks of other people’s text?
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I wonder if it’s anything like workouts. The last chunk or piece always the hardest. You would swear if you had set your goal for 105 and not 100 reps, you would have made the 100 just fine.
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Good job, Meepster. You are almost there. You will be glad to have the number list once you get it nailed down.
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So the way I’m doing it, which may not be the best way to do it (I’m a beginner and I’m not sure I should be giving advice of any kind) is by doing short sections by rote and using mnemonic techniques to “place” those short sections. Something like 3-4 lines at a time. For Swinburne, with 8-line stanzas, I did two images per stanza. I find that for the rest of it, the rhyme scheme and rote memory is enough to keep it in memory.
I found that for the “To be or not to be” monologue, though, I didn’t need any mnemonic techniques - it just stuck. Whether or not it stays stuck remains to be determined.
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@meepster, that sounds pretty close to what I’m doing. Hearing other people’s experiences is a great way to learn so don’t feel shy. My verbatim text to memorize does not rhyme so I’m at a further disadvantage since you could sing your Swinburne. I was reading through ‘The Triumph of Time’:
Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
and I started singing The Gambler by Kenny Rogers with its simple 2/4 rhythm. It fit rather nicely. But I have to make keyword memory images every two or three words because my natural memory isn’t as good as yours it sounds like. Those keywords get tied together in a story which are part of a larger system and I find I can fill in the missing words after getting more familiar with the text.
I’m guessing you have more of a literature background than I do. “To be or not to be” tends to get me bogged down at “'tis nobler duh duh slings and arrows duh duh duh…” It’s a very important rule to spend time to read and reflect on the verbatim text and its meaning to help fill in those holes so you don’t have to keep adding more memory images to your story while memorizing. And it will stay stuck if you revisit it occasionally. You’ll have to see when the images start to decay and set your schedule based on that.
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