Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0293: Reprise: How do I memorize scripts?

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to memorize scripts, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode. When we release this episode, it's going to be during my sabbatical for some extended overseas travel. So basically, we're representing an old Master of Memory episode that I think is worth a refresher, but also with some new commentary from me based on my more experienced perspective. Today we're doing episode 11, which was about memorizing scripts. And some things that I liked about this episode was that I focused on memorizing points in the script rather than trying to memorize the script word by word. And then we placed all of those points, those main points that you're talking about, in a palace so that you go through the memory palace. It's a linear memory palace. You go through from beginning to end, you see the points

that you're going to talk about, and you deliver them one by one. I also think it's kind of cool that I actually delivered the whole episode from memory using the same methods that I talked about in the podcast. Something I would change about this episode at this point is I would add the importance of practicing improvising from points. So improvisation around those main points is a skill that can be practiced. The point is that just memorizing these points isn't going to make you a good deliverer of the scripts. You also want to practice taking points and being able to talk around them.

Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Today's question is from Jacques. Hey Timothy, this is Jacques Hopkins, and my question today is about memorizing scripts. So I teach piano lessons on YouTube, I put these videos out there, and I have a script before, and I do my best to memorize it so that it doesn't look like I'm just reading it when I'm on the camera, but I've struggled with that, so what do you recommend in terms of memorizing a script? Thanks. Thank you, Jacques,

for the question. And that's a great question. I think it's really applicable to pretty much everyone, whether you're, you know, giving a speech for a lot of people or in front of a camera, or if you just want to remember things for conversations based on, you know, if you want to remember a long quote or even something like a business pitch. I think we've all been in those situations where we're trying to remember what we were wanting to say, but we fumble and can't remember exactly it is that we were trying to say. And then most of us have had to speak in front of other people from a script, from memory. I think most of us, whether in education or whatever, we've had to speak in front of other people from memory, and most of us have spent quite a bit of time trying to memorize those scripts. Now, of course, the normal way to remember things

like that is simply to repeat them over and over to ourselves until they stick. But I'm not a big fan of that practice, as my regular listeners will know, for more than one reason. First of all, it's a lot more time and effort than it's worth, and it's really not fun just to repeat something over and over until you remember it. And then secondly, it's not very reliable. Because even if you remember a script perfectly, if you memorize it perfectly, when you get up there, when it's time to recite, if you space out, what are you going to do? How are you going to remember what comes next? So what I recommend instead is whether you're trying to memorize something that's just 30 seconds long or something that's two hours long, whatever it is, just break your script down into small pieces and

then use the method of Loki or the memory palace method to remember every single one of those points. In order to do this I'm going to give you a series of three steps and you can follow these steps either after you've been giving something that's predetermined or you know you can just do it while you're writing the script in the first place and that's what I tend to do these days if I'm writing a script that I'll have to memorize I just go ahead and write it using the memorization method that I'm going to describe So first of all you're going to need to choose a memory palace that you're familiar with that has enough locations to cover all of your points. Now, if you're not familiar with how to use memory palaces, you can go back to episode 1 and hear what I have

to say about using memory palaces. But of course, if you have a normal memory palace that you use that's only five locations long, that's not probably going to be adequate for a really long speech. So you just want to know how many things you're going to be placing along it. Now of course it actually could work for a long speech if you're actually planning to have just a few major points and then extemporize around those points. So, you know, I mean a good rule of thumb in general is to use about one or two sentences per location, but it all depends on what your method of recitation is going to be, and it kind of takes some practice to get the hang of, you know, figuring out how many locations you're going to need.

But anyway, so you're going to choose a memory palace and then second, you're going to break your script down point by point and write in into the script what locations go with which points. So you can underline or bold your keywords and then write down the locations that go with each of those points throughout the script. And then while you're doing this, try to associate each of those points with those locations. So for example, let's say that the ninth location in your memory palace is a car sitting on a driveway, and your ninth point has to do with positive views of the economy among US citizens. And I just pulled that out of a recent Gallup poll.

But let's just assume that your ninth point was something about U.S. citizens looking positively at the economic situation, and your ninth location is a car sitting on a driveway. How in the world do you relate those two? Well, you could picture a bunch of little people standing around a car looking at it and talking about how big it is and how nice it is and how promising that is. Whatever it is, just make it so that when you think of the car sitting on the driveway, you'll remember your point about the economy and people's positive view of the economy. Once you've gone through your script and done that, the last thing to do is just to practice and get progressively independent of the script as you practice. So start by

reading through the script but trying to anticipate what points are coming up based on what locations are coming next in the memory palace. So focus on those bold and underlined keywords but just as you go through the script try to anticipate what's coming next in the memory palace. So focus on those bold and underlined keywords, but just as you go through the script, try to anticipate what's coming next. And then once you've done that a little bit, get away from the script and think through your memory palace trying to recite, but don't worry too much if it doesn't sound great or if you don't get all the words right. Just make sure that you remember all the points that go with those locations. Make sure to try to hit all those keywords

and then that'll make the last part of practicing easier. And that's just refining it, making it sound better, whether that means trying to conform to the script better by reciting and checking it against your script or just talking around your points, talking around your keywords in such a way that it's effective and it sounds good. Maybe it's even better than the script that you memorized. So you may be somewhat dubious about this method, but believe me, it is the quickest and most reliable way to remember a script.

Using this, you can memorize really quickly and it'll be so reliable. You know, you can space out at some point during your recitation, but you'll remember where you were because you can always remember where you were in the memory palace and remember what comes next. It's just something nice to fall back on. is two and a half thousand years old and orators for that much time have been delivering their speeches from memory without notes using this method. So I think that its track record really speaks for itself. Now here's your inspiration for today and it's actually fairly simple. Today's episode was delivered from memory. In preparing the episode I wrote my script out and went through the exact process that I described in this episode. I just used the first 11 points of a memory palace that I've used dozens of times before, maybe even hundreds of times before. And it only took me a little bit

longer than the time that I spent writing the script in the first place, maybe another 15 or 20 minutes just to memorize this whole episode. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be,

you can do that at timothymoser.com.