Visualising

General Memory Chat
1

Hi all, I have been practicing memory techniques after reading dominic obriens How to develop a perfect memory. I have put a lot of time and effort in and I am loving the results as these techniques have shown me a different way of learning and absorbing new information - but it has been a slow process. I have loads of questions to ask but do not have time at the moment to ask all of them, but I have a couple of questions that really bothers me.

I have never been able to close my eyes and ‘see’ images clearly in my minds eye. I cannot visualise anything whatsoever clearly. The images I do produce are extremely vague and seem more like a passing thought, all fuzzy and grainey. When I am using the journey method I ‘sense’ things hapening rather than see, but I try to use other senses like sound and smell to try and make the person and action stick properly in the location.

I really want to take this memory training to a higher level but I cant help the feeling that I am going to hit a brick wall because of visualising problems.

Over the years i have tried learning how to visualise for other reasons other than memory training but I have never been able to visualise even the simplest of objects.

Are there any other people out there who have the same problem as me and have successfully trained their memory to a high level?

2

I find using people I know or famous people who stand out for doing something gives me a good image to work with
They must be 2 + 2 = 4 instant…So, if I am trying to memorize a line of poem that just will not solidify, I use this person holding a placard as a “cheat sheet,” because I seem to be able to hold one or so words in my visuals…I find Google and Bing images an excellent resource…I like often to go there and just look at images of the neuron, because I see what I am doing as moving short term memory into long term memory via neuron increasing and connecting, and this, after all, is the whole point of a good memory…Understanding the neuron is my North Star
Becoming comfortable with the metric system I now see a meter (3 feet) as the length of a guitar I found on Google Image…A mm is the width of a credit card, and so on…If a doctor says I have a 1 cm growth, I would now instantly know the size is the diameter of AAA battery–2 + 2 = 4 remembering again, instant and natural

3

How far are you in your training? Are you memorizing numbers or cards yet?

I don’t think that it will be a problem. After you practice for a bit, you’ll see what works for you and what doesn’t. There are different “hooks” for each image that you might figure out through trial and error. You won’t need to visualize each image perfectly, but will just have an impression.

Example: for me, 64 is a guy with a sacrificial knife. I don’t visualize the whole person, but just see light glinting off a curved, bronze knife.

I’m sure that people who memorize very quickly don’t visualize entire scenes. If they are memorizing 52 images in 30 seconds, there isn’t time to really visualize things in detail.

Does Dominic O’Brien have visualization exercises in that book? In one of his books he mentions the idea of looking at an object and then closing your eyes and trying to reconstruct as much of it as possible. Then looking at it again and trying to absorb more. He might have recommended trying to draw it from memory too.

4

Thank you very much for the replies. I have my 100 people with props but I keep swapping and changing a few of them as they dont seem to stick. I have managed to memorise 50 numbers in order and the countries and capitals in the US and south America along with the EU countries. The remarkable point for me is the different way of learning new facts and being able to recal them easily - I am really impressed with myself.

I have now just started to remember a pack of cards and yesterday I attempted my first pack and timed myself. It took me 21 minutes with 2 errors. When I tried to repeat the test for a faster time I found that although I managed 18 minutes I recalled 2 cards from the first attempt and completely forgot 1 card.

I looked online for photos of playing cards and copied them into a folder and am using a slideshow to display them randomly to help me practice, I also use an online random rumber generator.

When I am memorising I have my eyes open as the image I get is the same if I closed my eyes, it is not very clear at all and its not there for long - just enough for me to remember. I will probably only know how good I will get with practice and time, and the reason for my earlier question was that I am worried that because I cannot get a clear image I will reach a limit to my capabillities early.

I am really glad that I stumbled across this site as there are loads of help available if needed. I dont want to fill my head with loads of stuff so I am am just going to get on with it and see what I can do for mysyelf first and will come back and report my findings.

I will try some visualisation techniques though as it can only help. just think though…if I am able to memerise a pack of cards with blurred images what could be achieved if the images were clear as a bell? probably transform my life…

Steve

5

Your speed sounds good for the first attempts. Everyone’s brain works differently, so I wouldn’t worry too much about whether your brain works in the “right way”. :slight_smile:

If you haven’t already seen it, there are random number generators in the memory training section.

6

Thanks very much for reply Josh. I have got my time down to 14 minutes after 3 days. When I try to go faster I miss about 3 cards completely or I skip a location or 2! I will keep practicing…

I am also going to start using different journeys, as my single journey for cards gets me frustrated when I repeat a card from a previous attempt!

I may need to review a couple of my person/actions from Dominic system.

7

Using different journeys should help. If you miss locations, you can still practice your locations without placing images.

If you miss a few images, don’t worry too much. Going a little faster than you are comfortable with should help with improvement. :slight_smile:

You can also practice recognition of your images without placing them in a journey. That should speed things up too.

8

Hi again, just thought i would give an update on my memory training. For the past 10 days I have been practicing memorising a deck of cards. I started usng the Dominic method by using a single person and action using 52 locations but I was struggling to memorise a deck in less than 10 minutes. As I stated in an earlier post I cannot visualise at all and I just manage to get a impression of a image which is not very clear. After many attempts trying to break 10 minutes and failing either because I was using 1 journey over and over again, or I could not visualise a good image. I therfore created another journey to alternate between the 2 but i still could not do a deck in less than 10 minutes. I then decided I would change the technique by having a person do another persons action and use just 26 locations to remember 2 cards in one location. This really did help and I was able to do a deck in under 10 minutes. I have also had to change a few people and actions as I was struggling to recal some boring action etc.

I have now managed to get a time of 6.35 but my main issue at the moment is I have to stop and review the cards 2 or 3 times to reiforce earlier cards, does anyone else need to do this?

Some of my locations are a bit boring like a roundabout or a trafic light and I really struggle with some person/action to make them stick, do some of you ‘invent’ new props to say sit on the roundabout or trafic light?

Steve

9

you might have to make a connection between some of the new cards on a journey
and the ones at the start of the journey.i am haveing a similiar problem lately
but i’m not making the images big enough. and there
is not enough communication between the cards at the start and at the end.
remember to review when going through the deck
this might only take 1 or 2 secs for like 3 cards
but you can take longer if you want and still inprove your time.
also i like to link the images together in 4’s so the first 4 are connected
to each other maybe by on’y just talking to each other or
making a rude remark maybe.but it works. make sure to try
doing ten card and 15 as well this can halp to shave off unnessary
time.

can i just say wow! your doing great.
that is amazing 6 mins it took me ages to get down
to that like a month or 2 maybe longer i forget.
guess i need to practise more.haha
also doing ten cards slowly and quickly can
really help because you can get abetter idea of the problems
much faster so maybe you not making an images but you think you
are. or maybe you didn’t but an image in the place it ment to be
or you didn’t make it big,colourful,scary enough or what ever.

also work on your card images by going through the deck this
will dorp your time to like 3 mins in no time at all.
don’t worry about mistakes happens to everyone
i did a deck in an hour in college during a lecture
i still made mistakes i look at the cards loads of times
i made verbal mistakes,cards mistakes,images mistakes
everthing. my record for a deck a few months before was 2mins 48secs
hope this helps.

also ya sure add al the fetures to a journey you want
if a place is dark but in a light or a reindeer with a glowing red nose or a clown
or a giant star.
you can edit a journey all you want.
yo can even give a stage an emotion for every tenth stage.

you never know you might break new ground and think of something
no-one else did. and make a bigger advancement in memory.

10

sorry i meant to thank you for the update.it’s great to see how people improve so fast.
and it can help to get an idea of what to expect if someone new takes up
learning mnemonics.and it so handy to have a reference
like
‘this guy practises twice a day and in a month he could do
50 digits in a minute so why can’t you’.

gets people more involved if you have a real life example that is closer to home
unlike world memory champions. people think they can’t relate to others
if they are at a higher level on some imaginary scale.

people think i could do that if you could do it.
but they don’t think they can be as good as a person who
practises every day and wins competions.

11

Firstly I would like to thank you all for your comments.

Wow, talk about hitting a brick wall! the time of 6.35 that I managed was a complete fluke - I cannot get nowhere near that time and I have not stopped practicing. Over the last few days I have been absolutely hopeless, forgetting people, actions and locations. Sometimes I have looked at a card and struggle to remember who the hell it is, even though the week before it was allmost instant. Its as if my brain went all foggy for a while, even though I am reviewing locations, just reviewing cards etc I even tried it really slow and still got loads wrong. I think/hope it is because I am trying to run when I have just learned how to crawl, so now I am slowing myself down in the hope that I can find where I have gone wrong.

I am changing some people and some actions to try and make things easier to get a clearer picture and see if this helps. For instance, I have Simon Cowell as one of my face cards and his action is pulling his pants up. When another person is doing this action at a roundabout I struggle to picture it. Another example is Nigel Havers for the 9 of Hearts and his action is stealing a wallet. In some locations I am struggling to tie the person to the wallet to the location.

I have even tried (dominic system) to use person action person at each location in the hope that is sticks but its just the same.

Could someone please try to explain how the brain improves? for example - at the beginning, I sat, thought about the person doing his/her action at a particular location and making it as imaginative as possible making up strange senarios all this taking up time. How does the brain work over time to process these images faster? because when you are memorising cards at 30 second a pack you cant sit there dreaming about a scene. Is it a snap shot like a photo without action? because surely there cant be any action involved at these speeds?

Say you are at a particular location like a table with cups and saucers, salt pepper etc, do each of your person/action use the same prop on the table all the time? say all 52 people just interact with the cup? or do you use some people for cup and some for saucer etc?

Years ago, I played a PC game called Tomb Raider and I saw on this forum that some people use video games to make up locations. Well I must say that it is a fantastic idea because this game is a virtual world with thousands of ideas for locations and the beauty of this is you can view these locations any time you want in real time. You can even download a demo of any tombraider from 1-8 so you would never be stuck for locations, you dont even have to know how to play the game because all you are doing is observing while walking round. Also you can download the save games so you can jump from world to world easilly. I have just done this today and must say I am quite excited!

I am not going to give this memory training up but I really do need some help convincing myself that I am on the right track. I want to move on at some point to storing Geography and history facts but these damb cards have got me obsessed :>) It is a hell of a lot easier to store permanent facts at locations as all I need to do is review the same information.

Steve

12

Hi Scocker626,
For better visualization you can use exercise which is focused on your events through days. For instance you were at work and there were people which you were talking to…so try to play the act of these scenes over and over and try to remember on the biggest amount of details…
Basically visualization is a process and it can’t be learned…It must be understood…But it also depends on many factors…like attention, concentration, education…So try to think about which events you can visually imagine and then do it with mnemotechniques…

13

i read somewhere on this website that if you take 3-6 sec to think of an image you should just check your list to remind yourself because your training your brain to become slower at recalling that piece of infomation.
also i know what you mean last week i did 20 cards in under 50 seconds about 5 times. the next day i could’t even do ten correctly i made a mistake or a few mistakes every time. i had to start again.by that i mean i took my time to memorise and make a story with each card. took just under 2mins for 20 cards.

try practising with 5 cards then change there order and memorise them again on till your get your time real low. then get five more cards and memorize them with strong connections between each card.do that a few times and then add the two sets of 5 cards together and change the order and memorize them this is how i recovered. in one day i went from 20 cards in 2mins to 15 in one minute. to ten in 22 secs. not to bad. play around with how you practise and you will find a way that will give you the best improvement.

also remember speed comes with practise but i think accuracy is more important for cards.also try number and other things i find i get better at the memory palace when i have to remember information that has mostly words.try to get your image/actions times down for 5 or 6 cards then do 5 or 6 more.this means you have more time to think of other things like how there all connected. also do speed drills with like 2-8 cards and see how fast you can do them.then if you do 10 multiply this by 5 or whatever to get you total time this is the fastest possible time you can do a deck at this moment,if you did a deck super fast.

i bet your gonna kick ass at card memorising in no time.
mostly i think it just lots of regular practise try to do at least a few cards a day.

14

Thanks very much Martin for all you tips - I have done some of your recomendations and must say thank you, because your tips have worked a treat. I find it much easier to recal say 20 cards fast than 52 as the memories are still quite fresh. If I really slow myself down and imagine large scenes at a location I find that it is of no help at all as by the time I have done a certain amount of cards, too much time has gone by and I struggle to recal. I am finding a balance between speed and accuracy at moment and I am going to start your other bit of advice in linking cards together.
When I am practicing, sometimes I know instantly if cards are going to stick when I am going through the deck as I get strong feelings with certain actions and people - if only I could apply this to all of them…I am not doing too bad though as I am building up speed, I am tying to stop timing myself at moment as I think early last week I was putting too much pressure on myself to do a deck in under 5 minutes, although now I think it is possible (unlike a couple of weeks ago)

one of my biggest mistakes I did make was having only 2 Journeys to practice cards, I could not sit and practice for an hour using only 2, I therefore made an extra 2 and now I find I can practice longer without remembering past cards in locations. Also, another useful tip I found was to just look at cards and use my imagination on each character for more enhanced action, or to just visit a location and imagine other wierd and wonderful thoughts.

I say ‘thoughts’ and not ‘visualising’ as I cannot visualise anything whatsoever and no amount of practicing helps…I am alittle confused about an earlier bit of advice from Carbenium about visualisation is a process and cannot be learned?

15

Hi, just another update on memorising cards. Thanks for all the tips on improving speed and accuracy.

My best time is now 4.46 for a deck and i feel confident that I will beat ths time within the next few weeks as memorising is improving daily. I have found (as Josh said in earlier post) that certain people and actions have ‘hooks’ that help in remembering and through trial and error these are becoming more apparant. For instance, One of my cards is david hasselhoff and he is allways wearing a gold medalion round his neck (this is not his action, its just something he wears) - this medalion is a ‘hook’ that I look for in a location if I cant picture his face and it does really help. I am still making plenty of single mistakes like maybe forgetting a person or an action in a deck but I am just living with this at the moment and hopefully with more practice I can improve on this. my images are all still fuzzy and vague but it just goes to show that you can still improve even if you cant get a clear picture. How far I can take this only time will tell…

16

Can’t stress enough how youtube and other video search engines have helped. I had “fuzzy” pictures of certain P’s in my Dominic System but a 15 second video of O.J Simpson (07) or Alice Cooper(13) and I can imagine them just fine now…

JW

17

Thanks for that tip, i will spend some time doing this and get back and update the thread with results.

18

Just a quick update on the card memorising. The times vary on a day to day basis where sometimes I go through the pack without any problems and the cards are easilly recalled. My best time is just under 4 minutes one day and the next I cannot recal a full deck at all - i wonder what is going on here? I am doing my best to analyze how sometimes its good and other times it’s crap - very frustrating! if only I could bloody visualise…the cards and actions are always a ‘fleeting’ shadow and nothing more no matter what visualisation practices I try to do. Is there anyone out there who has the same issues as me??? surely i cant be alone?

19

I would definitely take a hard look at any medications you might be on for any reason. Even if you’re just popping a sleeping pill to get some rest every night, that might do it. I know from personal experience that drinking too much causes me to fog up the next day. Even just having one glass can change my ability to focus on cards slightly, a sort of “mini-hangover”. It’s something you wouldn’t notice unless you were trying to do something like this.

Also, I know that some people are face-blind so maybe you can find something to replace people. Try it and see.

I’m sure you’ll narrow in on the problem eventually. You’ve got good times for just starting out, just have to work on consistency

20

Hi Chris, I never take nothing more than an ibruphen for a headache and I dont drink alcohol at all, so I can rule them out…yesterday I managed to do 3 decks in under 4 minutes each without error so maybe it is just a matter of practicing to hold these vague images for longer? I think it could be a matter of concentration as my mind does tend to wander now and again while memorising. I will keep at it and keep analysing stuff and see what happens.