M2M Day 17: I figured out why my recall isn’t so good…
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.
I tried something new today, and it made huge difference.
Previously, I was visualizing 3-card PAO groups sitting on top of locations in my Mind Palace. For example, if the location was the glass desk in my room, and the cards were the 2s, KH, 9C, I would image Ben Stiller swinging a tennis rack on fire and place that image on top of my desk.
That worked okay, but today, I realize that, if I can make the PAO image interact with the environment, it becomes way easier to recall.
So now, I would imagine Ben Stiller swinging a fiery tennis rack, hitting the glass desk, shattering it, and everything on the desk bursting into flames.
During recall, when I mentally return to the desk, even if I can’t remember any of the PAO images, I can probably remember that the desk is shattered and on fire. Trying to figure why the desk is shattered and on fire, I would eventually remember Ben Still and his flaming racket.
This approach, of course, requires that I spend more time visualizing the scene. So, to compensate, I spend less time focusing on the PAO images, and more time visualizing how the PAO images will affect the location in which they’re being stored.
In this way, my memorization time has stay virtually the same, but my recall is improved greatly.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
