Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0397: Adding colors to the Major System?

Episode Date: September 15, 2015

Niclas wonders if it makes sense to add colors as a new aspect to the Major System. I give my thoughts on this idea. 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 397. 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. Nicholas asked a question in an email. Nicholas says, I'm about to expand my major system to cover more areas. I'm thinking of applying visual and audio meaning to each number instead of just one or two consonants. My plan is to color code each number based on

the sound of the first letter, like this. Zero is S for silver. One is TRD for turquoise. Two is N for neon, which would be green. Three is M for magenta. 4 is R for red. 5 is L for some color. 6 is Z for yellow. 7 is G for green. 8 is V for violet. And 9 is P for blue. Nicholas's original question is, what should he pick for the 10th color and what I think of this system? So, Nicholas, what I would suggest for the 10th color would be either brown or white, probably white, because that's kind of clearly missing from this whole situation. How you relate that to L, I'm not entirely sure. But actually, I myself have moved away from including colors in things like the major system or really in mnemonics in general because it turns out that colors are not really as memorable as people think they are.

You can do some personal tests for yourself and discover this for yourself. Just quickly use your town as a memory palace and imagine different buildings and lawns as different colors. You can try this in just a few minutes. You'll get many of the colors confused, I guarantee it. And why is that? It's because while coloring something a bizarre color is strikingly memorable, we actually don't end up remembering which bizarre color that was. I might see someone with blue skin and then tomorrow not remember if he had blue skin, green skin, or purple skin. Or I might see a lawn that's painted bright orange or maybe dark blue and I won't remember if it was painted purple or red or what. So I clearly remember that the skin was a weird color or that the lawn was painted, but I don't actually remember which color.

Similarly, you might remember a room in a friend's house from your childhood, and you might remember that the bed had a blanket on it that was a bright color, but you won't actually remember specifically what color it was, whether it was magenta, purple, light blue. Colors really aren't that memorable. Of course, these are observations from my own experience, and of course, there may be somebody out there who would want to contest this with me or to prove me wrong. And that's totally fine. I'd love to hear from you. If anybody out there is using colors as mnemonics effectively and it's actually providing concrete results, then I would like to hear from you because I think that colors could be really powerful if they worked. I just really haven't seen them working nearly as well as things like textures and memorable objects. So feel free to shoot me a message at timothy at masterofmemory.com if you've had success

using colors as mnemonics, or just leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question. As always, the world's knowledge can be yours. This has been Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'll talk to you again soon.