Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0391: Making memorization a habit

Episode Date: September 7, 2015

Praful wants to have an easier time remembering things that regularly happen, both in his personal life and at work. I describe a process whereby a daily routine can be turned into a memory palace so that memorization becomes a habit. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, […]

Master of Memory 391. 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. Profil submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Profil says, I'm working in a manufacturing company. I'm into imports, and there are about 150 consignments daily to be done and their work to be finished. Ruffles says, their questions and if they don't get the right answers you get bad impressions and they're saying that you don't work properly this is creating problems in my promotion this happens daily and

also in my daily routine i know it has to be done but my friends my relatives have to remind me and again and again for the daily things to be done so profile there are some things that i don't exactly understand about this question but i decided to take it because I have some ideas about incorporating the theme of a daily routine into memory tactics. So what I would say you want to do is make memorization a real strong part of your life. And so you want to make it a habit. And what I would do is I would take some sort of daily routine, something that is really strongly embedded in your mind, and then peg all of your other stuff that is it comes down to it, mnemonics are all about taking the things that our brains don't like to remember and then tying them to things that our brains do like to remember. And we can remember things more easily that way because we're associating them with things that are easier to remember.

Now, I know personally that in my own life, since I travel quite a bit, I tend to spend a couple of months in one city and then move to another one and establish my routine again. Getting that routine in place can be difficult, but if I try to make things into a checklist, for example, my daily routine, I just now moved to Buenos Aires for a second time, and I'm looking around right now. So I have things in different places that belong in different places. So there are certain parts of my daily routine that I'll do in the bathroom and some things that I'll do here in the bedroom, but I have to go up and down the stairs and I don't want to do that too many times. So when I can reduce it to a checklist by putting the things that happen in

the bathroom in one place and the things that happen in my room in another place, it makes it a lot easier and I can get things done more efficiently just doing them one at a time. The purpose of that example is to show you that if you can turn your routine into something that's just done as a checklist, you can then make that in turn as a memory palace that you can then peg other things to as well.

So let's try to reduce your day and I don't know exactly what your day is, obviously. You want to reduce your day into some sort of journey from your bed to your work. That's just an idea. Maybe it'll be something else for you, but I'm just assuming that the first thing will be your bed. And then there'll be several things around your house just happening in order. And then you'll eventually get to work. I would make that journey into a palace that you can use. Now, if you can make it 15 different stations, the first one is your bed, the second one may be your room itself, the third one may be

the bathroom or one of the parts of your bathroom. You know, if you can make it into 15 different stations, then I would place then five substations into each of those stations. So divide each of those items into 10 different things. And then since you have 150 consignments each day at work, you can peg one of those to each substation in your daily routine. So you'll have 10 in each of the 15 locations or general locations in your memory palace. That way, instead of just having 150 things floating around in your head, there's actually a specific place for each one. So you can just think of the location and you can remember the object. A couple other benefits to this are you'll remember each day's work at the end of the day so you can remember everything that

you've done and you can also review basically things that are relevant to your work while doing your daily routine. So when you do your whole routine from the bed from getting out of bed to getting to work you're actually reviewing these stations that will be relevant to you in your work. So make memorization a habit and make basically turning anything into a process that will be relevant to you in your work. So make memorization a habit and make basically turning anything into a process that can be followed and relating things to things that are more interesting than themselves. Make that into a habit, make it a part of your life,

and I think that things will be much easier for you. 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.