Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0305: Reprise: Should I start over if I already memorized something without mnemonics?

Episode Date: May 8, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on starting over if you’ve already memorized something without mnemonics, 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's episode is episode 32, which was about re-memorizing material you've already memorized, but this time using mnemonics. I think the tips in this episode are good for if you have memorized something, but you want to memorize more using a mnemonic system, and you'd like the stuff you've already memorized to fit into that system. Now, something I would slightly amend about this episode is I'd place more emphasis on the fact that you're actually not re-memorizing the material.

So if you've memorized a passage of text, and now you want to learn mnemonics to associate the numbers with that text, like if it's a scripture passage, you're memorizing the verse reference with that text. What you're really doing is you're laying a mnemonic prompt on top of the existing text. So you're laying prompts on what you've already memorized. You're not memorizing anything new per se, except the existing text. So you're laying prompts on what you've already memorized. You're not memorizing anything new per se, except the references themselves. So you're not re-memorizing the text. You already have the text memorized. You're just memorizing the prompts and the verse references that you're putting on top of that. 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. Josiah asked in an email, I've already memorized the first chapter of Acts without using mnemonic tactics. Now I want to memorize more of the book with mnemonics. But do you recommend going back and re-memorizing chapter 1 using mnemonics? Well, Josiah, the short answer is yes. I do think it would be good to go back and use mnemonics even for something you've already memorized. But the fact is, those verses should be easy for you to re-memorize because, you know, I think, in fact, the whole work will be just coming up with the mnemonics in the first place. Create mnemonics like those that I talked about in episode 10 for scripture memory. And use a memory palace location for each different verse.

And memorize based on the keywords and all that. So, you know, I talked about all that back in episode 10. You'll find that you can recite the chapter even more easily after this practice. So you already have it memorized. This will just make it easier. And although you will be tempted to recite it without thinking about the memory palace at first, making an effort to use it a few times is going to help you in the long run. So I'll tell a story about what happened to me when I made the shift that you're making from rote memorization to using mnemonics. A long time ago, I was working on

memorizing the topics of each book of the Bible, or at least each chapter in the New Testament, by chapter. So basically, I would take a book of the Bible, and I'd look at what topics are covered in each chapter, usually with about four topics per chapter, and I'd just memorize which topics are covered by which chapters, so that if it said something like Romans 15, I would tell, you know, I would just respond to the quiz question with what topics are in Romans 15. After discovering the benefits of, you know, really good mnemonic tactics, I eventually tried to apply some sort of mnemonic system to this memorization. And what ended up happening was I memorized, you know, all the rest of the chapters of the New Testament or the topics

covered by those chapters. Sorry, I didn't memorize all the chapters, but I memorized the topics of each of those chapters using mnemonics really quickly, actually. So the first two that I memorized, Romans and 1 Corinthians, went pretty slowly, but all the rest of the books of the New Testament, the 25 remaining books, went pretty fast. Now here's the interesting thing. Later, after a couple of weeks of not quizzing on either one, I returned to quiz on everything, and to my surprise, I found that I could easily remember the answers to the questions for which I had devised mnemonics which I'd only reviewed a few times before

but the ones I'd memorized by rote the Romans and first Corinthians facts were much harder for me to remember even though I thought they were in my long-term memory because I'd learned them much earlier in the end, I decided to memorize mnemonics for these chapters as well, and I'm glad I did because now I can remember what's in those chapters reliably. So yes, Josiah, make sure that you have mnemonics for any facts or passages that you want in your memory, even if you've already memorized them, just to make sure they stay there long term. 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. © transcript Emily Beynon