Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0338: How effective are mnemonics for memorizing Scripture?

Episode Date: June 24, 2015

Patti has memorized Scripture before through repetition, and now she’s using mnemonics. She asks whether the memory palace method will be as effective as her previous method, which allowed her to recite smoothly and without hesitation. I give my thoughts on this. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String […]

Master of Memory 338. 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. Patty asked a question in an email about passage memorization. Patty says, I've already been using the Memory Palace method and have memorized two chapters using the method. It has blown my mind. It's like writing in your brain.

I used my childhood home and another house. I memorized both in a very short period of time. I review my verses on my drive to and from work every day. So it was fast. But I have some problems. One, I was concerned that I will always have to travel my trail to recall the verses. Before I found out about the memory palace method, I had memorized two other passages. One of them, it's like hitting a play button.

I can recite the passage without consciously thinking the words. Will the ones I memorized using the memory palace method be like that? If not, I realized I would not be able to use those houses again. So I've been researching, trying to come up with a more efficient way to do this. I believe your method will take care of that problem, and I've even toyed with the idea of visual props to solidify the images in my mind. So what Patty is asking is two things. First of all, will memorizing things using a memory palace enable her to hit play and just start reciting without having to think about every single little point along the way?

And then second, will it be such that she doesn't have to use the memory palace anymore and can just use the palace for other things as well? So first of all, Patty, yes, the passages that you memorize using a memory palace will be the same way eventually. You'll have to do quite a bit of listening and reciting over time to get to that point, which is beyond simply having the passage memorized, you know, not just memorizing it to the point where you can think and say the next verse. You're actually at a point where you can just hit play and start reciting. But the memory palace method will speed even that process up, because you're going to be able to think about these different points, and if you ever get stuck at any given point, you'll always

know where to go back to, because you can think about where you are and think about what the next verse is going to be. This is different from what a lot of other mnemonists and people who use memory palaces teach, because for me, you shouldn't really have a mnemonic for every single word, or that just takes way too many thought processes for every verse. You know, if you have a memory palace for every word, you have imagery that you're thinking through, and that's a whole lot of imagery. Instead, I would just restrict it to a couple of images per verse or just a few keywords, and then use listening and reciting to bring you up to full speed on the whole passage. Now, that said, in order to be able to have these verses always in mind so that you can always go from one to the next one. I would recommend keeping them in long-term storage,

keeping these mnemonics and all these images in your palace, which means that you probably aren't going to want to reuse the palaces. So you're not going to want to reuse them by even what you're talking about, using visual props like we used to do with the James course and so on. I would use separate palaces for separate things. Instead, you might just make your palaces smaller so you could take your whole house, but then make an entire palace out of just one room in your house. And that way you can get more bang for your buck that way instead of reusing, you know, locations because that's just not as effective and you're storing too many things in one place if you do that. But ultimately, yes, when you memorize things this way,

ultimately it should be like hitting a play button, and so you can think through these prompts and just keep going. So you're reciting based on your auditory memory and your muscle memory of having said the passage several times, but you're also thinking about each point as it comes up. So thanks for the question, Patty. I hope that helps you, and I'd be happy to collaborate with you on any scripture memory project that you have

going on. For anyone listening, what do you want to learn? Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon. Thank you.