The Aspen Grove

Core Memory Principles

Note Planted:
7 min read

The Big Idea

As I continue to learn and experiment with memory methods here are core principles that have started to surface for me.

Related Notes: Personal Memory Method
Memorizing the Psalms
Memorizing the Lords Prayer Memorizing the Ten Commandments Memory, the Things We Keep with Us
Jack and the Magic Cellar

Reference: 1—Index- Memory and Remembering - Loose Resources

Three Main Purposes of Memory Strategies/Methods

  1. Strap things in
  2. Ease and organized access
  3. Mentally manipulation of it
    1. Basically allowing you to traverse up and down the tree of chucks to work with all of them at once or down to an individual pair of digits. Allowing for many more individual pieces of information to be handled than possible in an unassisted digit span.
    2. Slicing across psalms

Basic Concept of Memorization

  1. Attend - You have to first attend to something. If you ignore it or are distracted, you will remember much less than if you are fully focused on something.
  2. Hold in Short-Term - In order to start memorizing something, you first need to pull it into your short term memory.
    1. Short-term/Working Memory is a limited resource. Everyone has a limit to what can be held in short term memory at once. Ideas that talk about this are: your mental load, or digit span.
      1. Classical Psych research says the average digit span of an individual is about 7 to 9 digits that can be held in short term memory. Beyond that things start dropping off. This applies to words, images and any “item” you might want to hold in short term memory.
      2. Online digit span test: https://www.memorylosstest.com/digit-span/ I have lower digit span and start struggling at 6.
    2. This is why chunking is so effective. It takes what would otherwise be way too many individual items to hold in working memory and groups them into manageable sections. Strategies that help you do this quickly and effectively are way better than ones that just keep piling things on.
      1. An Example of this is a PAO system. It takes three things (a Person, Action, and Object) and attaches a pair of digits to each. You can then make 1 image by imagining the person doing the action with the object. Each part of the image is hooked to two digits. So right off the bat you are reducing the working memory load by half. Going from 6 individual digits to three “things.” You then reduce the load even more when you put them all together into a single image. Now you have one item in working memory that allows you to hold on to 6 individual digits! Memory athletes use strategies like this to make long numbers or decks of cards manageable.
  3. Save to Long Term memory
    1. Once you can “fit” something into your working memory then you can actually work on recalling it and pushing it into long-term memory.
    2. Reading and reviewing engages a related but not the same part of your brain as recalling something from memory. Cited: Verbatim Memory Tool for Memorizing Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians
      1. The fastest way to cement something in long term memory is to practice recalling from your own mind not just reading or interacting with it. Strategies that get you recalling right away will be way more effective than the “read it 20 times” or “listen to it 100 times” stuff.
      2. You do interact with the material with those strategies but it does not build the exact neural pathways you need for direct recall while actually recalling the content does.
      3. You can think about it like the difference between a first person and second person story. If you are familiar with a story and can get the gist of it it is like telling a story with “have you heard about…” in the second person. If you can recall it directly it is more like telling someone a story about something that happened to you directly in the first person.
    3. Actually recalling something to mind from what is already there is how you cement it into long term memory. If you are always checking the original or just trying to read and reread it. You will become more familiar with it but you will not be pushing it verbatim into long term memory.
    4. Once something is truly in long term memory there is unlimited space to add more. Your long term memory does not run out of space the same way a hard drive does. It is more a questions of if you have indeed put it into long term or only had it in short term.
    5. Additionally if you just shove something into long term memory with no plan or strategy for how to retrieve it you will eventually run into trouble accessing things reliably.
  4. Recall or Recollection
    1. Different from just the way memories randomly pop into your mind recall is the intentional process of bringing something to mind when you need it.
    2. Also after calling something to mind how is it stored in a way that makes using it effective?

General Principles

  1. Memory is all about associations.
    1. For example, Cow makes you think of moo makes you think of milk, etc.
    2. Aristotle categorized the main types of associations as similarity, contrast and contiguity. Not sure I am locked into that but worth keeping in mind.
  2. Associations work best from old to new
    1. Associations only “hook” in new information when they connect to something already in your mind. If you try to remember a bunch of new things and associate them all together you will get overwhelmed and nothing is really connected into your mind as it is now.
  3. Lower mental load makes any strategy more effective and easier to use.
    1. If you have to spend all your attention trying to figure out a method or mnemonic it will not actually be helpful. The only way to fix that is find a less mentally taxing method or focus on memorizing the method itself before using it. The best methods help to lower how hard it is to work with things you are trying to memorize.
  4. Every memory, or set of things memorized, has an entry point(s)
    1. Be intention about where you work to place these points so you can access what you remember easily and well. If you have to go through a bunch of stuff to get to the phrase or part of what you want you need more entry points.
  5. Every memory, or set of things memorized, has certain paths of travel. The minimum is one (start to finish) but there are ways to think about different paths of travel through memories, front to back, back to front, leap frog (or odds evens), random access, slicing across similar line numbers, etc.
  6. If there is no structure to memorization projects they will get out of hand quickly.
    1. Need a peg system or a Memory Palace or something to allow you to traverse the project at a high level in your mind and then access specific things. Otherwise you end up with having to start at the beginning of a huge book or something and not being able to access things that are near the end well which then makes them easy to forget.
    2. There are various ways to “place things in memory”
      1. Spatially like in a memory palace
      2. Logically like in a Ramist tree, or flow chart
      3. Sequentially like in lines for a play or speech

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