Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0448: Anatomy memory tricks for memorizing structural relationships

Episode Date: November 25, 2015

Taylor is a student of anatomy and finds it straightforward to create mnemonics for vocabulary and terms, but difficult to create memory devices for the connections between those terms, such as structural relationships. I talk about using existing vocabulary mnemonics in multiple memory palaces to create these connections. What do you want to learn? Leave your […]

Master of Memory 448. 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. Taylor wrote a question in an email. Hello, I'm a first-year medical student in anatomy. I'm sure you get sick of questions on this topic. I've listened to many of your podcasts

and read your website. I find your techniques extremely valuable in memorizing vocabulary and lists. However, I don't understand a way to use them in more complex ways. In anatomy, for instance, I've created mnemonics for each term, but I'm unsure how to relate these with all the details we have to know about each structure's relationships components that make up a complete structure, origins of the structure, how it attaches, crosses over another structure, and so on, or subsets of a structure more complex than a simple list, like branches of an artery that come off at the same time and have multiple branches of their own. I'm tired of endlessly re-reading power, only not to remember everything in full,

but I'm not sure how best to go about changing my learning style as I'm limited on free time. Am I trying to remember too much? My goal is to memorize as much as I can about anatomy in detail to further my career and to be able quickly to diagnose non-functional or abnormal anatomy later on. If I can learn these things now, it would greatly help me for many years to come. So, Taylor, I find interesting your question, am I trying to remember too much? And this goes to the heart of a problem

that I find happens a lot of the time where people try to memorize too much information up front instead of starting with the most essential information and then letting everything else be essentially structured around that essential information. Now, letting everything else be essentially structured around that essential information. Now, this is what I would recommend as far as the way that you memorize this information goes. You've memorized a lot of terms, and I imagine that you have used some sort of imagery to memorize those terms, since you talked about having read the website and using imagery

and mnemonics to memorize lists. Now, what I would recommend is that you only about having read the website and using imagery and mnemonics to memorize lists. Now, what I would recommend is that you only use images for the terms themselves rather than for the systems and for the relationships. So you've already done a good amount of that, I imagine. But then as far as relationships goes, you should use multiple palaces for single terms. So let's say that you have a specific term that you have a particular image for, and let's say your image is, I don't know, a cardboard box that's wet. I don't know why I thought of that, that that's just the first thing that came to my mind,

but let's say you have a wet cardboard box. That wet cardboard box doesn't just exist in one sort of entity. It isn't just one single idea. It's related to multiple systems and multiple complex situations. So you'll actually store that cardboard box in one memory palace for one anatomical system and another memory palace for a different system. The connection between those systems is immediately seen by the fact that that cardboard box is in two places, and you can think of it in either context separately. If that isn't sufficient to help you remember the relationship, or if you need some more complex information regarding those relationships and those

systems, you can create a separate palace that's specifically dedicated to these sort of relationships using the types of imagery that we talk about on the website that you've read about. But the main point here is that you create multiple palaces and you do think in terms of location in order to be able to think of the same thing in multiple contexts. Because just like you can think of the same person in two contexts, maybe you know somebody both from work and from school and you think of him differently in each of those contexts, but you know that both from work and from school, and you think of him differently

in each of those contexts, but you know that he's the same person. You're thinking of a particular fact, but in a different location. Let's say one of your palaces is your house, and one of your palaces is a building at school. It's still the same object, but you're seeing it in two different locations based on its different functions or the connection that it's bringing to those two different locations. Again, you can create a separate palace to create those relationships and to memorize those relationships, but it's my guess that you'll actually remember those relationships in your mind automatically with the foundation of facts down as long as you learn them based on locations. Now, I know that that's fairly abstract, Taylor, but if you want to give me any more specific examples of the types of relationships that you're looking for or the types of things that you're trying to remember that aren't translating into mnemonics, I'd be happy to help you out with that.

Just shoot me another question at masterofmemory.com slash question or shoot me an email at timothyatmasterofmemory.com and I'll help you out. So thanks for the question, Taylor. And for all Master of Memory listeners, if you want to support the show, please go to masterofmemory.com slash vote to check out our Mandarin Kickstarter project. Even $1 toward this project helps to show people that it's a serious Kickstarter project and encourage more people to keep the momentum going and to help us reach our goal by December 18, and it's the best possible way that you can support the show, keep our projects moving forward, and help us to accelerate the course building process so that we can create more courses, not just for language learning, but for other academic subjects as well. Again, that's masterofmemory.com slash vote. Meanwhile, 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.