M2M Day 7: I can’t remember anything anymore, and it’s starting to freak me out
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’m having a problem…
For the past week, I’ve been very confident that I would complete this month’s challenge. Now, I’m not so sure.
I tried to memorize three decks today, and I honestly couldn’t remember any of the cards in any of the decks. Actually, the problem isn’t that I couldn’t remember, the problem is that I remember everything.
Every deck I’ve memorized in the past week has left visual traces in my Mind Palace. As a result, during recall, as I mentally travel through my childhood home (i.e. my Mind Palace), at every location, I see a dozen different images. I have no clue which is the image I just memorized and which are the images I previously memorized.
In other cases, the noise of all the images combine, creating this unrecognizable cloud of visual traces.
In either case, I’m completely crippled right now.
I don’t have time to forget
Most memory competitors stop practicing a week or two before competitions, in order to ensure that all the images inside their Mind Palaces have completely faded, preventing any confusion or problems.
Unfortunately, I only have three weeks left to break the 2-minute mark, and so, I can’t wait around until my Mind Palace has cleared.
Instead, I must create many more Mind Palaces, which will let me spread my practice out, giving each Mind Palace more time to clear between memorization sessions.
I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s the only idea I have right now, so if it doesn’t, I’m not sure what I’ll do. My confidence level is now around 65%.
Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully be able to conclude if this approach works.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
