Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0367: Memorize “First Aid for the USMLE”

Episode Date: August 4, 2015

Joe asks about memorizing the popular medical school board exam book “First Aid for the USMLE Step 1”. I talk about the advantages of memorizing this type of book from cover to cover and describe the techniques to use to memorize the material of all 600 pages. BONUS: Here’s a quizzing set you can use to […]

Master of Memory 367. 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. Joe submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Joe says, I'm studying for the first med school board exam using a popular review book called First Aid for the USMLE Step 1. It's close to 600 pages of incredibly dense material. What are the chances

that I can memorize it in one year using mnemonics? I would not hope to memorize it word for word, of course, but with enough detail to answer nitpicky questions. So, Joe, I've included information about taking a topic, boiling it down to its essentials, and memorize it based on a memory palace organization in other episodes, but I thought that in this episode it would be good to talk about the technique for memorizing a book page by page. It sounds like the book is dense enough with information that there's not going to be much repeated information and there isn't going to be much stuff that you can actually eliminate except for extra words. So you're just wanting to take all that information

and memorize every bit of it. So it may be that the organization of the book itself is strong enough that it's best just to eliminate the question of choice of which memory palace to use and how to organize it and all of that. And instead just go through the book and memorize it one page for one page. I think that there is some benefit to eliminating the aspect of choice. Because the paradox of choice holds us back from doing anything if we're not sure how to start a project. With this you can just basically get started by finding 600 locations but just finding them one start a project. With this, you can just basically get started by choosing, by finding 600 locations, but just finding them one at a time and just starting to memorize from the beginning to the end. So the way that you'll do this is you'll find a location for each page, a location

that's just big enough that you can store the information in it. For example, a blank table, you might think is too simple to store a bunch of information on it, but if you're able to think of that table, and every time you think of that table, you could remember what was on it, then you actually can store quite a bit of information on that table. For example, if that page was about cellular structure, you might just store the different parts of the cell at different parts of the table, and to an extent, you can remember them all in relation to each other,

not just in relation to the table. As you go along, you'll find a sort of shorthand approach to creating your own basically standard mnemonics for certain things, like for places where, let's say, blood pressure goes up, you might just keep using the same mnemonic in all of those cases, and then something else for all cases when blood pressure goes down. So if you take this approach, your two big tasks besides just creating all those mnemonics as you go through are going to be to find all those 600 locations as you go along and to keep all of the information in your head by referencing it using a sort of retention schedule or some sort of review schedule that'll make sure that before a certain amount of time goes by, you review what you need to review.

One strong suggestion I have is that you start with a little bit of information from each of the, I think there are about 10 sections or subsections in section three, which is about high yield organ systems. So start with a little bit of information from each of those, maybe one page from each of those, perhaps the first informational page from each of those. And that way, you'll have an easier time navigating topics after that, because you've memorized those sort of landmark pages throughout the book, and now you know a little bit of information from each of those subsections. So in answer to your question, I think that the answer is that yes, you probably can memorize it in one year using mnemonics if you set yourself some goals with a good retention schedule

to keep yourself consistently moving forward and reviewing everything that you have and creating all those new mnemonics as you go along. I hope that gives you something that you can just pick up and run with, Joe, and I would appreciate an iTunes review. For anyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.