Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0381: Do mnemonics make the real meaning confusing?

Episode Date: August 24, 2015

Sasha asks about whether mnemonics can make the real meaning of a script confusing. For example, if she needs to memorize the lines of a serious play, would funny mnemonics make it too silly? 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.

Master of Memory 381. 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. Sasha submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Sasha says, In creating mnemonics, I worry about a confusion of meaning. For example, what if I wanted to memorize a very sad play, but did so with comical jokes?

I feel this would make me misinterpret the play around the distracting jokes. If I made them very dour and melancholy instead, this might also haze my understanding by confusing the plethora of meanings behind what I'm trying to remember because they're all sad or negative. So Sasha, this is a common argument levied against mnemonics, and some people will say this against things that are very serious, both things like plays, which just for practical purposes have to be very serious, and also for scripture and things like that. It is a legitimate concern,

but remember that the purpose of mnemonics is as a tool for remembering something, but the mnemonics themselves are not supposed to interfere with the information itself. So think of mnemonics the same way that you would think about writing. The text itself represents something very different from itself. You've written down a letter that says A-N-D, but what does A-N-D have to do with the idea of joining two things together? It's just a way of storing the information that it actually represents. Now, Sasha, in your particular situation, you can use funny mnemonics to remember your scripts and to memorize them very quickly,

but then what you'll want to do is rehearse them enough that you don't have to focus on the mnemonics at all. Instead, you can just focus on the play itself. You'll remember your script mostly through other forms of memory. If necessary, the memory palace locations are still going to be there for you to rely on, so you can always think back to them when you need them. And believe me, I know through experience that their funniness will have worn off by that point. So when you remember your mnemonics, you're not going to break out laughing in the middle of a funny play. You'll just kind of remember that that's the case, but it won't be funny anymore. It'll just help you to remember what you're going on. So I think that you only have them as information at that point, although they're still so memorable. And so it shouldn't be a problem that'll actually interfere with your acting. Applying this more broadly, just with the same sort of principle, the same sort of concept,

if you're applying mnemonics to scripture memory or to anything that's serious, like, I don't know, I just came up with the idea of somebody using mnemonics to memorize a eulogy at a funeral, the mnemonics simply aren't what you're saying at the funeral. In fact, they have nothing to do with it except that they're prompts. So you're not saying anything funny about the person who just died. You're saying very serious things, but the mnemonics are helping you to remember those things, even though they don't really have anything to do with what you're saying. Kind of like if you made all your notes on index cards, you're not going to show your index cards to your audience because that would be silly that there'd be no point in doing that. And so it's not the index cards that you're presenting. That's just your

notes, just like your mnemonics would be your notes. I hope that makes sense, Sasha. And for everyone 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.