Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0551: Reprise: What to do with your mnemonic tools

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

Reprise: What to do with your mnemonic tools 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.

Hey guys, this is Timothy, and I'm publishing a book. Now, this may not be new news to all of you, but I bring it up because it's temporarily changing some things here on the show. We're going to be running a series of reprise episodes for the next few weeks due to my need to focus exclusively on this writing project. The book is going to cover absolutely everything about language hacking that I've learned from years of working directly with fluency coaching students and native speaking coaches to see what truly works and gets amazing results. It's going to be a high-end book with the hardcover copy priced at around $40, and that's if I can keep it as short as I'd like to keep it.

But as podcast listeners, you can actually get a free digital copy of the book if you sign up early. Just go to Spanishin1month.com, and you'll be on the early bird list to get access to the book the day that it's released. Meanwhile, for now, enjoy this rerun of one of my favorite episodes from the last few months. 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. Kayla submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Kayla says, I've have four pieces of data for each number, 0 to 99, which are the location, character, action verb, and noun or object. My question is, what other uses can I use this memorized information for, more so the numbers

rather than just the palace? I feel like there must be tons of applicable uses for this, but I can't seem to apply it easily. I'm currently studying for the Critical Care RN exam, and in about a month, I'll begin memorizing GRE vocabulary for the GRE. Any tips would be appreciated. So Kayla, you're right. There are many uses for number mnemonics. Once you've developed your characters, actions, and objects for 0 to 99, that's a huge accomplishment, and it's interesting to think about all the uses. For example, you could have all these 100 characters with their 100 different personalities represent different synonyms for a certain word. So you might be in a conversation and you might want to

find different ways to say thing rather than that thing over there. You might memorize a bunch of different synonyms for that and just think of one of your characters from 0 to 99, and you have a synonym. Like one of your characters always says Duvalaki, like they say in Australia. And one of your other characters says Situation. Can you go pick up that Situation over there? So, you know, you can give them all different personalities.

That's something fun to do with them. And the materials at masterofmemory.com, as another example, are designed to fit into a particular 0 to 99 system that we're developing. For example, Joel, the bee, is number 65 in our system for JL. And then Loeb, the pig, represents the number 59. Although, just as sort of some spoiler information, we're going to be switching him out for a female pig named Libby because all prime numbers are going to be female. But I think that more specific to what you're asking about is just how to apply this to one particular learning project. And I think what you need to do is just get started, have some success

with the project, and move on from there. Now the thing is, I would actually start with, I know you're emphasizing those number mnemonics, but I would start with the locations first, and then use the number mnemonics once you're comfortable using location-based memory tactics. Use those number mnemonics in those locations in some way. So I would say really the most valuable thing you can do is actually put those characters, actions, and objects in locations because then you're storing information in a place. So location is all about creating a sort of library of information, a palace of information, and the objects are just how you store that information. So here's the first thing that I would do.

I know you're talking about both the Critical Care RN exam and the GRE, and it seems like you're studying for the Critical Care RN exam before the GRE, but I would suggest starting with just some simple vocabulary, a simple vocabulary project. And so you might just actually start with a few of your GRE vocabulary terms. So in this case, you're not going to use your number objects. You're just going to create your number objects. You're just going to create custom objects for the vocabulary. As I've described at masterofmemory.com slash vocabulary, you're using images of things that are doing things in certain places. So you might

store nouns in one of the 100 locations you've come up with, verbs in another one of those locations, adjectives in another one, and so on, so that you're just, you're practicing storing things in locations and organizing them by function geographically. Once you've done that with just a few of these simple vocabulary terms, now it's time to start integrating your number mnemonics into your learning, and with this, I would start working on some facts from the critical care RN exam. So first of all, it was pretty easy to store these vocabulary words in different places based on function. But now you'll want to think about how you can store these

facts in the Critical RN exam in different places based on something that makes logical sense to you. So you'll be able to think of the best way to organize these things in different palace locations. Now you're going to store terms the same way to organize these things in different palace locations. Now you're going to store terms the same way that you stored those vocabulary terms by coming up with custom objects and stories based on just the way that the terms themselves sound, the stressed syllables of those terms as described in again masterofmemory.com vocabulary. But then when a number is involved in one of these

situations and one of these things you're trying to learn, then you want to involve your characters and your objects. So if it's a number that's two digits or shorter, you can use one of your characters or one of your objects. And when a number is longer, or when more numbers are involved in one of these factor terms, you can use both a character and an object, or a character and action and an object to represent those parts of the information in the fact. But what you're going to do is you're

going to place the different, I don't know what they are, how you want to categorize them, but little packets of information in different places. So let's say that in a corner of a park somewhere, you have one of your characters doing something interesting with one of your objects, but what they're doing is on top of something that's related to the term that you're describing. So you're storing these facts about this information that you're studying in places, and you're using your number mnemonics, but only in the context of what you're learning. But again, I do recommend, Kayla, that you start with some of these vocabulary terms from the GRE just to get some practice storing information in places that you can access

them in your mind. Move on from there to work with your number mnemonics as well. I hope that gives you a good starting point, and I hope more than that that you actually do take action on this. And for anyone 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.