Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0461: Re-using mnemonic items to mean numbers, months, and other things

Episode Date: December 14, 2015

Andy asks about using mnemonic pegs for the 12 months. I talk about the value of re-using number pegs in various categories of information. 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 461. 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. Andy asked a question about creating pegs for the months of the year. So we talk a lot of the time about creating pegs for something that you have to remember all the time. For example, let's say some numbers. Instead of trying to remember numbers, you turn those numbers into memorable objects.

And then any time you want to remember that number, you can simply remember the peg that it's associated with and store that somewhere. And then when you go and you access that in whatever memory policy you've stored it in, you can remember what number it was that you were trying to remember. Well, actually, Andy, the answer that I have for you is actually to use the same 12 number pegs that you use for your same first 12 numbers. And if you don't have them yet, then you can just create some, you know, just a memorable object that represents for you each of those numbers. And for those of you who have PAO systems

and your numbers can be represented by more than one thing, I would recommend using just objects for the months of the year, probably for most purposes, as I demonstrated back in episode 438 where I had objects for the 12 months of the year. Now, the thing is, reusing these object pegs, both for numbers and for the months of the year, 1 to 12, is not going to hurt you at all. And in fact, you're going to use these number pegs for many, many things, and not just the months of the year, but several other things. For example, I use them to remember longitude, the object pegs for whatever number, with persons for latitude. So I use my object persons for latitudes of cities, for example, 78 is the person for New York City, and that's a cheetah

named Coffee. So the number 78 is a cheetah named Coffee for me. And then the object for 51, for the longitude, is a wallet. And so if you just imagine this cheetah named Coffee going and buying things in New York City, that helps me remember that the coordinates of New York City are 78 and 51. It's pretty easy. The thing is that this actually ends up not diminishing the value of your number mnemonics because you're reusing the pegs, but it actually enhances the meaning of these number mnemonics because you're using them very frequently. You're using them for memorable things, and it just kind of enriches the whole experience of using these pegs. So quite simply, that's what I would do, Andy, is just if you have object mnemonics for the numbers 0 to 99, then use your object mnemonics for 1 to 12

for the months. Or if you don't, well, you can just go ahead and start by creating your object mnemonics for 1 through 12, and you're on your way to creating mnemonics for many more things beyond that. Thanks for the question Andy, and for everyone listening, please check out masterofmemory.com slash mandarin to see our new Kickstarter project. This project, our Mandarin course, is not just to create a free course for learning Mandarin, which is something that's fairly lacking online, but it's also a way to get the ball rolling for further projects at Master of Memory so that we can create more and more free courses for history, geography,

our poetry memorization course, and our biblical Greek course. Getting the word out about the Mandarin project and getting it funded by Friday, December 18 is the best way that we can get the ball rolling quickly on these other projects. And so just go to masterofmemory.com slash mandarin to find out about that. 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.