M2M Day 13: My brain is demanding a completely new recall strategy
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For November, my goal is to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than 2 minutes.
Yesterday, I stopped using the metronome while memorizing, and the results have been decently promising.
When only memorizing 26 cards (half the deck), I’m basically already performing at Grand Master level. However, when I attempt to recall all 52 cards, I’m really struggling.
For 52 cards, by the time I get to the end of my memorization, the beginning of the deck has faded in my mind. Then, during recall, by the time I fight my way through the beginning of the deck, enough time has passed where the latter half of the deck has also faded.
As a result, I basically don’t remember any of the cards.
My new strategy
To address this problem, I’ve decided to start recalling the deck in reverse order. This way, I’ll be able to easily recall the second half of the deck before it fades. Then, when I get to the first half of the deck, I’ll have already eliminated 50% of the deck, so ‘first half recall’ becomes a much more contained problem.
Additionally, I’ve found that if I can remember the first card of the deck, then everything else falls into place. With that said, for some reason, I seem to always forget the first card.
So, with my new strategy, at the end of memorization, I will quickly look at the first card before attempting recall.
Once I start recall, I’ll immediately pull out the first card, put it aside, and then get started on the second half of the deck. When I’m ready for the first half, I’ll take a look at card #1, and hopefully that will provide enough momentum to get the other mental dominos to fall.
Later today, on video, I’ll attempt using this new strategy. However it goes, I’ll share the video tomorrow.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
