Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0415: Memorizing strings of numbers, letters, and special characters

Episode Date: October 9, 2015

Rhett asks about memorizing strings of letters, numbers, and special characters. I talk about expanding a PAO system to include letters and other characters, not just numbers. 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 415. 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. Rhett submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Rhett says, I'm very interested in the PAO system for memorizing numbers. I think 100 people, actions, and objects would be quite manageable. However, I'm also interested in memorizing alphanumeric information such as license plates and model numbers. Is there a similar system that

would produce both consistent imagery and not require that I memorize well over a thousand people, a thousand actions, and a thousand objects. Lastly, how would I handle special characters? So first of all, Rhett, the answer to not having to do over a thousand of each of those is answered kind of in episode 216, because what you're going to do is, in order to combine letters with numbers, you're going to add to your PAO system. So you'll have a PAO system for those 100 numbers, but anytime you're memorizing combinations of letters and numbers, you also have 26 separate objects that basically, you know, you're just for each letter in the alphabet, you'll have a certain category of objects that is not used in your object mnemonics in your PAO system. So for example, for the 100 objects in your PAO system,

perhaps none of them are animals. And so all of the 26 letters are animals. That way, anytime you run across a letter, you'll just turn that into an animal. And when you're recalling the information, anytime you run into an animal, you'll just turn that back into a letter. Or maybe for you, it wouldn't be animals, it might be foods, although for me I've used a lot of different foods in my PAO system, so that wouldn't work for me. Now special characters add yet another category, so you'll have to choose a category of object that is not in your PAO system and is not in your alphabet system. When you get down to details like this, it could be something very

personal to you. So I would suggest finding some sort of field where, you know, you can create a standard PAO system using persons, actions, and physical objects. And then you can create, you know, an alphabetical system for maybe these would be animals or foods, something separate from that. But this next step, this next category might be something that is even less standard that for you might be, I don't know, do you play chess? It could be chess pieces. You could have a pawn for exclamation points. And for underscores, you could have a bishop. And for number signs, you could use a queen. I don't know.

It could be something that's completely off the wall and different from the PAO system, different from the letter system. You want it to be in an entirely different category, so it's going to take some imagination and some creativity. Just make sure that it's something that you can represent fairly visually and physically. Maybe if you're using chess pieces, for example, you could, let's say that the number sign is following a D, and a D for you is a duck. So you would have the duck being annoyed by a chess piece, a queen, who both jumps from the head of the duck to the tail and then ducks under the wing,

representing that it is indeed a queen because it's making multiple types of moves, unlike other chess pieces. So bottom line is you have different categories, one for numbers, one for letters, and one for the special characters, so that any time you run across any of those, you know which one you're dealing with, and you have them quite separate by being in those different categories. Again, you'll want to go back and review episode 216, episode 216, for exactly how I treated it with numbers versus letters. We're just expanding that in this episode to include special characters as well. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn or memorize the world's knowledge can be yours leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com question and i'll talk to you again soon