M2M — Week 1–Card Memorisation
This month my aim is to complete the first two challenges of my Month to Mastery (M2M) accelerated learning program. These are:
- memorise the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in under four minutes
- complete one continuous set of 100 push ups
In this post, I’ll be breaking down my methodology, learnings and attempts from Week 1 of the card memorisation challenge. If you’re interested in my progress for the 100 pushups challenge, that can be found here.
Introduction — Why memorise cards?
In short, I aim to use this challenge as an exercise to develop techniques to improve my memory and creativity. Also, although I have very few vivid memories up to my teenage years (sorry Mum), I am often able to rapidly commit to memory instances in which I spot sequences or patterns (passport number, debit card etc.). I’m intrigued to see how this translates to card memorisation.
For card memorisation, the two most important techniques for improving your memory and learning capabilities are being used, namely visual markers and memory palaces.
- Visual Markers are short, memorable visual images that you create in order to remember something.
example: let’s say you need to remember to buy water, matches and chicken from the shops. In this case you may create a visual marker of the pan in which the chicken is being cooked being on fire, before water is thrown at it, extinguishing the flames. That’s an image that is pretty hard to forget!
- Memory Palace is a place you are very familiar with, allowing you to travel through it and clearly visualise rooms and objects. (e.g. childhood home)
01.12.19 — Day 1 — Starting Point
This was a challenge I first started to look into in August while I was backpacking in India. However, I did not get very far. After all, I was visiting a fascinating country with mates and celebrating the end of our university studies. I am grateful for their support, asking me impatiently “When will you be able to do this?” within a day of starting…
Nevertheless, my methodology at this point consists of the following steps:
1. Assigning a person to each card
The first step in my memory system is to assign a person to each card. To facilitate recall, suits are assigned the following themes:
- Hearts = Love (Family members, close friends etc.)
- Clubs = Entertainment (Actors, Models etc.)
- Diamonds = Sports (Athletes)
- Spades = Historical Figures (Presidents, Artists, Royalty etc.)
For example, in my system, the Queen of Hearts is my mum (self-explanatory), 5 of Clubs is Coco Chanel (chanel no5), 10 of Diamonds is Lionel Messi (he wears the no10 kit for Barcelona) and the 2 of Spades is Winston Churchill (for his role in WW2).
2. Creating my Mind Palace
The next step is to take a walk through a place that you are very familiar with. This will act as your Mind Palace, which for me, is my parent’s house. While walking though the house, I select 52 objects (10 in each room + 1 for both the front porch and garden). It’s important to avoid choosing the same object in different rooms. Also, keep in mind that larger items are easier to remember than smaller ones (e.g. a bookcase instead of a specific book)
My list went like this:
- Glass doors (living room)
- Armchair (living room)
- Sofa (living room)
- Christmas tree (living room) — don’t worry this was not up all year.
- TV (living room)
- Flower Vase (living room)
- Coffee Table (living room)
- Speaker (living room)
- Dining Table (living room)
- Sliding cupboard for glasses (living room)
- Knives stand (kitchen)
- Stove (kitchen)
etc….
3. Combining steps 1 & 2
When flipping through the deck of cards, I create a sequential story where each person is assigned to the position at which they are drawn. So should I draw a sequence of Jack of Hearts, 9 of Diamonds & Queen of Spades as my first three cards, I would imagine my brother kicking through the glass doors, Usain Bolt taking off his running shoes while sitting in the armchair and the Queen of England making tea on the sofa. The brain remembers the extraordinary and forgets the mundane — so it’s important to associate as much action and emotion into the mental map as possible.
When it’s time to recall the deck, I travel through my story, going through the mental map I created. At each stop, I convert the person back into the cards they correspond to.
Does it work?
At this point you might be expecting me to tell you that this works great. Not quite…
Although I can clearly recall certain images, combining 52 locations and people is simply too much for my brain to handle. Using this system, I’m unable to even consistently remember the order of 20 cards, let alone 52. There must be a better way.
That’s it for Day 1 — Tomorrow I’ll work on improving my system.
02.12.19 — Day 2— PAO system
Yesterday, I realised my memorisation system needed to be overhauled. So today, I created my own Person-Action-Object (PAO) System. This is the system that the majority of Grand Masters of Memory (yes, it’s a real thing) use when competing. If it’s good enough for them, it’s definitely good enough for me as a foundation. Here’s how it works:
Each card is converted into a series of three visual images: a person, an action, and an object. For easier recall, the action and object should be inherent to the person. For example, in my system, Lionel Messi (10 of diamonds) has action dribbling and object a football. Winston Churchill (2 or Spades) has action smoking and object a cigar.
Crucially, when memorising, the PAO system allows us to convert three consecutive cards into a single image. Let’s say the first three cards of the deck are: Ace of Spades (Martin Luther King — MLK), King of Diamonds (LeBron James)and Three of Clubs (Frodo Baggins). In this case, I would imagine MLK (Person) slam dunking (Action) through the living room glass doors (Location) while wearing a ring (Object) on his hand.
Completing the PAO matrix for each card took me about one hour. After a couple of run throughs, I called it a day.
03.12.19 — Day 3 — Flying Around
Today, my girlfriend and I had to get up at 3am to travel from Nicaragua to Lima over 3 flights, landing at 8pm. Travel and poor sleep are the perfect cocktail for a distracted mind so, after flicking through the deck to consolidate my PAO system, I gave my brain the day off.
04.12.19 — Day 4 — Timed experiments
Two days ago, I introduced the PAO memory system. Today, eager to test my PAO system I conducted some timed experiments.
1. Flipping through the deck
I began by simply flipping through the deck as quickly as possible, while ensuring I consciously saw every card. This only took me 21 seconds.
In theory, this should be my fastest possible time for memorisation. Of course however, at that speed my brain remembered exactly 0% of the deck.
2. Mentally reciting all the cards
This time, while flipping through the deck I subvocalised the card number (i.e. 3 of Spades). This took me 40 seconds.
3. Mentally reciting all the people
Next, while flipping through the deck I subvocalised the name of the corresponding person for each card. This took me 1:40 minutes, meaning that my card-person association is far from automated.
4. Mentally visualising all the people
This took me 2:02 minutes, which means that I struggle to visualise certain people. For example, although I know that the 5 of Spades corresponds to Marcus Aurelius (the last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’), I don’t have an image of him engrained in my brain. This is something I’ll need to rectify.
5. Mentally visualising all the actions
Time to test the new PAO. Visualising the actions took me 3:05.67 minutes. I attribute the increase in time to the need to first visualise the person and then recall the action. Hopefully as I practice more I’ll be able to look at a card and visualise the action without this additional step.
6. Mentally visualising all the objects
PAO testing part 2… It took me 03:09.11 minutes. Similar to Test 5, I first visualised the person and then recall the associated object.
Although these times are below my aim of four minutes, as I wasn’t yet creating 3-card images nor placing them in my Mind Palace, I suspect such speeds would lead to very low recall.
Next time, I’ll be thoroughly testing my PAO system and updating my Mind Palace.
05.12.19 — Day 5 — Flying Back To London
Rest day today, as I’m flying back home to London from Lima via Madrid.
This brings to an end my 6-week trip to Peru and Nicaragua. It’s been really great, packed with fresh ceviches, trekking, sightseeing, learning to surf and 25oC+ weather. Although I’ll definitely miss the warmer climates, I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed again.
06.12.19 — Day 6— Updating the PAO system
Today I rectified a few problems with my PAO system.
1. Too many footballers (I know… I’m basic)
Having played football throughout my teenage years and university, several of the cards of the diamond suit (athletes) were naturally associated with footballers. The problem is that during memorisation this led to the creation of similar PAO instances, and consequently poor recall.
To solve this problem, I changed the person (as well as action & object) associated with the following cards:
- 4 of Diamonds (Steven Gerrard) → Chris Froome (cyclist)
- 5 of Diamonds (Zinedine Zidane) → Jonny Wilkinson (rugby player)
- 8 of Diamonds (Frank Lampard) → Adam Peaty (swimmer)
- Jack of Diamonds (Kylian Mbappé) → Jack Nicklaus (golfer)
2. I should be very specific about the objects and actions.
When creating the 3-card images, I find that I am forced to spend extra time visualising them due to actions or objects that have not been defined clearly enough in my PAO matrix.
For example:
- 8 of Diamonds (Adam Peaty)
Adam Peaty’s associated action is swimming. Simple enough. However, as this is not very specific, I have to choose in the moment what type of swim stroke the person is doing. From now the action will be swimming breaststroke
- 2 of Hearts (Nick Dudler — a cousin of mine)
Nick’s associated object is a plant. Instead of keeping it generic however, I need to define which type of plant to avoid using my focus on making this decision while memorising. Therefore, I chose a bonsai tree.
To solve these two problems , I changed approximately 15% of my PAO system. Although it‘s not ideal to make these changes six days in, it’s much better to do this now rather than two weeks down the line.
I spent the rest of my time for the day running through my updated PAO
07.12.19 — Day 7— Updating my Mind Palace
As discussed previously, when memorising, the PAO system allows us to convert three consecutive cards into a single image. As a result, I was able to cut down the number of locations in my Mind Palace from 52 to 17.
My previous list:
- Glass double doors (living room)
- Armchair (living room)
- Sofa (living room)
- Christmas tree (living room) — don’t worry this was not up all year.
- TV (living room)
- Flower Vase (living room)
etc.
My new list
- Front gate (External)
- Entrance Hallway (Entrance)
- Glass double door (Living Room)
- White sofa (Living Room)
- Glass cupboard (Living Room)
- Cooker (Kitchen)
etc.
As well as reducing the number of locations overall, I’ve also reduced the number of locations per room. Instead of choosing 10 locations within one room, I’ve spread them out throughout the house more evenly, with a maximum of 3 locations per hallway/room. I believe this will create more ‘separation’ between sequential PAO instances, allowing me to recall instances more clearly and reduce conflicts. However, will I find it takes more time to travel across longer distances in my Mind Palace? I’ll get back to you on that one…
With this updated Mind Palace, I feel ready to record my first full deck memorisation attempt tomorrow. Time to get some rest ahead of the big day…
08.12.19 — Day 8— First Full Deck Memorisation Attempt
Here’s a video of my first attempt, which I’ve trimmed down because the original video is excruciatingly long…
If you want to waste 30 minutes click here for the full video..
The attempt can be separated into 3 parts. Timings refer to full-length video
1. Memorisation
starts at 00:30 and finishes at 13:19
It took me 12:49 minutes to memorise the deck. Although this is over 3x more than the 4 minute success metric I’m aiming for, it’s still encouraging, particularly considering the a few days ago I was struggling to remember 20 cards. I’ve got the PAO system to thank for that.
2. Recall
starts at 13.19 and finishes at 32:56 +(approx 2 minutes when camera froze)
Worryingly though, it took me 21:37 minutes to recall the order of the deck… Although this criteria wasn’t defined at the start of the challenge, I’m aiming for a time closer to 5 minutes.
All hope is not lost however. Recalling the first half of the deck (26 cards) only took me 3:28 minutes (13:39–17:07), meaning it took me approximately 6x longer to recall the second half of the deck — which had begun to fade in my memory. Next time, in an attempt to cut this down, I’ll begin by recalling the second half of the deck before moving on to the first half.
P.S. The video (recorded through my computer webcam) cut for what I believe to have been two minutes towards the end of the recall. I’m not sure why. Maybe it got bored…
3. Simultaneously flipping both decks
starts at 34:56 and finishes at 38:47
Time to see how I fared… I managed nearly perfect recall, getting 50/52 cards correct! The only two cards I swapped the order of were the Ace of Clubs and the 10 of Diamonds. Solid start.
That’s a wrap for this week! In truth, I’m surprised by the progress I made — bring on next week! I now know I’m able to memorise a deck of cards. Time to turn my attention to shaving those seconds off my time…
Next Post (Week 2)
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