Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0470: Memorize the US Presidents with mnemonics

Episode Date: December 25, 2015

Brian wants to memorize the names of the US presidents using mnemonics. I present a system and sample mnemonics for the project. 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 works. 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. Today's question is from Brian. Hey team, this is Brian. I'd like to learn how to memorize the names of all the presidents of the United States. If that's a possibility, I appreciate all you do.

Your podcast is great, and I'll continue to be an avid listener. Thank you. Well, Brian, I appreciate the great words about the podcast. It was very kind of you. And it's actually kind of interesting. I was just addressing the same issue with a student of mine, a coaching student who's working on mnemonics for the U.S. presidents. And the fact is that there's a lot of info that you could include about the presidents as you're memorizing them, including the year into office, the year out of office,

the number of years in office, who the vice president was at the time, the first names, the last names, and all of that. Now, my recommendation is that you start by only memorizing the last name of the president and the year that the president entered office, because that way you know who it is and you basically have all the information that you need about who was president when, if you've memorized the year that the president entered office. The reason for this is the principle of exclusivity. Basically, you want to learn as little info as possible to give you the best results. It's like building a wall. You don't put up the paint and the structure at the same time. You construct the wall first, which is the last names, and getting all those last names in order. And then it's easy to paint that wall with more info and hang decorations on it, like the vice

presidents and all of that. So we want to focus on constructing the wall first and doing one essential thing first and then letting the other stuff kind of hang on that because it's sort of a foundation. I shouldn't mix my metaphors that way. All right, so actually before building that wall, I would go into further exclusivity. So we're building pillars for those walls. And so that for me would be every 10th president. You might just start by memorizing Washington, Polk, Arthur, Hoover, and the first Bush, who are every 10th president. Number one, number 11, number 21, number 31, and number 41.

If you do that, you've built a structure, and then you can't paint that yet, but you can do the wall in between by memorizing the nine presidents in between each of those and the few presidents that came after the first Bush. So yeah, that's the exclusivity principle. Now, how do we actually put that stuff into memory? Well, I would suggest taking their last names and taking the stress syllable of each of those last names and turning it into a visual object. So we're starting with Washington. The stress syllable is wash. And I

might choose, let's see, it might be an action. It might be the action of washing. Or it might just be a laundry basket or something like that. Something that when you think of it, you'll immediately think of wash, and then you'll think Washington. Now, you want to associate that with the year that he went into office, which was 1789. And my mnemonic object for the number 89 is a fob. So if you imagine a fob being washed in a laundry basket, and then you make that the first location in a memory palace, then you're going to remember that the first president was Washington. And that should be pretty easy. And then you can remember his year as well, you know, 1789.

After that, we have Polk. And you could do a couple of different things with this name. It doesn't really mean anything by itself, but it could be Polka, so you could have an accordion, or it could be poke, the action of poking. It's up to you. But basically, you'll associate that with the object for 45 because he went into office in 1845, and that would be a rail. So you might imagine a disembodied railway track section and somebody is poking it or playing it as a you know an accordion or something like that and you'll make that you'll associate that with the location that is 11th in your memory palace and there you have Washington in 1789 and you have Polk in 1845. The next one you have is Arthur.

And that's a bit tricky to turn that into a visual object. But I think that I would just take the stress syllable arth and make that art. And then imagine a painting frame with a bunch of paint spilled all over the canvas. And so that is just art. And associate that with a videotape for the year 1881 because my object or the object that you might associate with 81 based on the major system, 81 is a video. So you imagine a videotape being rubbed against a canvas. And so you'll associate Arthur with 81. So Arthur went into office in 1881. The next one we have is Hoover, and I would just imagine a dam for that because of the Hoover Dam.

It might be something else for you based on the syllable who, but one way or another, we have to associate that with a knob for the year 29, 1929. So he went into office in 29. Associate the dam with a knob and maybe just imagine that somebody turns a doorknob that's in the middle of a big piece of concrete, and when they turn it, a bunch of water comes out. So that'll associate Hoover with 2-9 if you have those object pegs. And then finally we have 89, which is another fob, by the way, 1989, and our person is Bush. It's pretty easy to come up with a visual idea for Bush relating to a fob. Now, how do you make sure that you're not going to confuse, you know, the Bush

89 with the Washington 89? Well, they're in different places in your memory palace. You have the timeline going from the beginning of, let's say, a library that you know, going from the entrance of the library out to the opposite end of the library. Throughout the library, you're spreading these presidents. And so if you can divide your library into about 45 different locations, then you're going to remember that the presidents go in that order. And even though the fob is in more than one place, you'll remember that the one at the beginning is 1789,

and the one near the end is 1989 for Bush. So yeah, turning the facts that you're trying to memorize into these visual ideas and associating them with locations is the best way to memorize this stuff quickly and permanently. And if you're not familiar, anyone listening, with the terminology that I'm using, like memory palace or number pegs, or if you don't even, you know, if you just want to memorize these number pegs that I'm mentioning to associate the year 89 with a fob and the year 29 with a knob and things like that, just go to masterofmemory.com slash start and it explains all of that and gives you an intro on how to memorize this stuff quickly and how to understand my obscure episodes. Thanks for the question, Braun. And 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.