The Aspen Grove

Personal Learning Method

Note Planted:
updated : 2026-05-07T09:47:45.022-07:00
14 min read

The Big Idea

A collection of notes as my personal memory method evolves.

Related Notes: Core Memory Principles Memorizing the Psalms Memory, the Things We Keep with Us Jack and the Magic Cellar Types of Pedagogy
Basic Philosophies of Community Rhythm and Project Lifecycle
Bible Study Structures
Embodiment of Community
Failure Based Learning
Faith Formation
Gerhard Method of Theological Study
Grounded Learning
Personal Tool Load Out
Models of Human Rhythms
Pedagogical Feedback Loop
Pedagogy Research
The Iterative Nature of Learning
Visual Teaching
Ways to Engage Scripture
Zone of Proximal Development
Pedagogy of Space
Living Process for LCOS
Rhythm and Group Culture
Boredom
Notes - AI and the Problem of Knowledge Collapse
Topological Navigation
Attention

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

Books and Articles: Learn the Art of Memory A. Magnetic Memory Method Mini Class Unlock Your Amazing Memory Verbatim Memory Tool for Memorizing Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians

Overall Approach to Any Subject

Get a Handle on a Subjects Scope

  • Start with an anchor (like the book of Psalms or a specific goal surrounding it like memorizing the whole thing or maybe something smaller). The idea is to use this anchor as something to keep you from diving completely off into a million rabbit holes that will present themselves as you go.
  • Then find the overall shape and syntax. Basically you are drawing the fence you want to work within.
    • Shape is the big picture overall sketch of something. How big is it in pages, lines, words, etc.? How is it laid out? What are specific aspects that make the subject hold together?
    • Syntax is the small picture nitty gritty details of a thing.
    • When you have a very basic idea of both sides (big picture and small picture) you will be able to see many avenues to begin learning more about the subject. Then you can alternate between both angles to kind of inch your way toward the middle to have a fuller understanding of the thing.

Thinking of the Tools of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

Each category can help you identify where you might need to focus in order to engage a subject better. For example if all the vocabulary and background ideas are hard to understand you may need to slow down and focus on learning some basic grammar in that subject or field so that you can then move on to actually understand the logic and not just be lost.

More notes on these tools can be found here: Trivium Learning

The “Big Five” of Learning

An alternative and I think complementary model of learning is the Big Five of Learning. Based on the idea of Levels of processing. This approach looks at engaging a text or subject using these distinct but related skills to have a deep and engaged understanding.

  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Speaking
  • Listening
  • Memorizing Each one helps you engage the subject from a slightly different angle.

I am sure there are others but this is one Source.

Cycle of a Christian Life

Luther’s Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio framework for a Christian Life is also helpful here. It reminds us of the cycle and that it needs to start with prayer and be driven into scripture.

Applying this to Learning and Memory

With these as a general background we can move into specifics for how I have come to use memory techniques up to this point. I am by no means an expert but have started to learn what works better and worse. What follows is where I am as of 4.16.26

Practices for Familiarity

Resource note: Reading Scripture for Familiarity

  • Write Things Out by Hand. It forces you to slow down and attend to each word.
  • Read Out-Loud. Engages your ear as well as your mouth. Luther was a big proponent of this.
  • Listen to Audio Recording. Allows a text to kind of wash over you throughout your day.
  • Note Taking. - See: Note-Taking Methods

Practices for Conversation and Meditation

Resource note: Reading Scripture Devotionally

  • Reflective Questions. Helps you ask and seek intentional answers about yourself and the text.
  • Journaling and Writing. Gets things out of your head and onto paper for later processing or to work with in a different way. A way to voyage the cranial seas.
  • Focused Reading and Listening - See: Lectio Divina

Note

The practices above are very good at forcing you to encounter a text or subject. But they all lack direct intentionality for storing particular things in memory. Doing all the things above will no doubt help you remember many things but it does not engage any kind of organized strategy or technique.

Memory Tools

See: Core Memory Principles

Common Things We Want to Memorize

Memory Architecture

The power of more structured memory methods is that they allow you to build a predictable, expandable and usable structure to things in your mind. Rather than hoping you will one day be able to remember something you put in some work in order to “file” it in a way that will be easily retrievable.

Lutheran examples of this kind of mental architecture can be found in places like the Loci communes from Philip Melanchthon (1521) or Johann Gerhard’s Theological Common Places. There are certain current groups advocating a resurgence of commonplace books as a way to build an intentional mental architecture. Like in Loci Communes, A Theologian’s Best Friend-Or, How to Make the Theological Tool of Your Dreams

A lot of helpful ideas in that kind of architecture but it is very category focused and can be tedious. I have not pursued a strict category based system like this because I think it is too reductionistic.

My Architecture (Always In Progress)

A this point I am working to implement layered approach generally following this setup:

  1. High Level Lists. Create Associative imagery that is stored in nice lists like an animal for each letter of the alphabet, a person for each number from 01-99, etc. The idea is that these ready made sets help as ingredient lists for later as well as ways to keep memory palaces organized.
  2. Memory Palaces. Harnessing your normal spatial memory of the places you naturally go to “place” pieces of information. See: A. Magnetic Memory Method Mini Class
  3. Associative Imagery. This is where you use your imagination to connect images to things you want to remember so that they pop back out of you mind when you need them.

A basic walk through for remembering something would go like this.

  • First I identify the thing. Is it a number, work, phrase etc.
  • Get a sense of how much information this will be. Count the lines in the Psalm, etc.
  • Then Identify a memory palace or palaces that will be big enough for the stuff.
  • Next start building an image for each piece of information to store (more on that later).
  • Then place the image in the palace and move on to the next station and repeat until all of the information is associated and stored.

General Memory Tools

Draw images and associations

Associative Imagery (Picturing things to help it stick)

  • Pictures stick far better in memory than words, numbers, or phrases alone. Trying to come up with an image association can follow these questions.
    • Can you picture it? Then visualize a mental picture of the thing.
    • What does it sound like? If not then does it sound like anything?
    • What does it Remind you of? If you still can’t think of anything then what does it remind you of? - From Unlock Your Amazing Memory
  • E.S.C.A.P.E a boring image
    • Add Exaggeration, Silliness, Color, Action, People, Emotion to an image to help it stick better and be more memorable.
    • In other words, make it interesting and your mind will hold onto it - From Unlock Your Amazing Memory
    • Additional things to help make things more memorable:
      • Engage as many senses as possible - Sounds, Physical sensations, taste, smells, hand motions, music, etc.
      • Texture making things tactile and vivid.

Chunking

  • Many things are too big to deal with all at once. That is okay and important to realize. That makes breaking things into manageable sizes important.
  • This is especially true because we can only hold so much in our working memory (once it is in long term memory there is lots and lots of space) but before that while it is in the front of our mind, we only have so much space to work with. Meaning you need to make things manageable to hold in working memory until you can fully story it in long term memory.
  • chunking memory strategy

Spaced Repetition

  • Need to review things in order to beat the forgetting curve - Unlock Your Amazing Memory
  • Spaced repetition is a systematic way to do this. Overview of Spaced Repetition
  • For me I have not found exactly how I want to do this yet. I end up just running through things in the morning and evening usually.

Alphabet, Number, and other Peg List Systems

Rhyming, meaning, alphabet and look-alike peg systems: Peg Systems overview

Note

I have found that peg systems are not very fun or memorable on their own but when paired with other methods can help add that little pop to make things easier to remember and work with in your mind. They also help front load some of the work of making interesting associations so that when you need it you don’t have to go through the whole process every single time.

Number Peg System

  • Right now I basically use the first section of a PAO system for a person to create a peg list from 00 to the end line of a text/section. I am up to 35 right now and will keep adding as I go.
    • I use the major system to narrow the letters sounds used for the peg and give it some structure. Then I think of a person or character that uses those letters.
      • 01 - major system sounds S and T - Stew (a bunny I know well)
      • 02 - major system sounds S and N - Sandy (someone I used to work with)
      • Major System Overview
    • Make sure they are people you can picture well. Characters work well for this also as long as you can easily picture them in your mind (I.e. micky mouse, etc. ).
    • PAO System Overview
      • Create a Person, action and Object for each number 00-99
      • Then you can combine a person, action, and object as a way to get a 6 digit (or three pairs of two numbers) into a single image.
      • I do not use a full PAO system because it is mostly designed for memorizing long numbers or decks of cards quickly. For text memorization it is not immediately helpful without modification.

Acronyms

Memory Palace

A good introduction to what a memory Palace is and how to use it: A. Magnetic Memory Method Mini Class

Story Method

Tools for Numbers

Tools for Sentences/Longer quotes and big projects

  • Picture Patterns System
    • Built off of the idea of placing words at the edges or corners of simple shapes as a way to hold on to them in memory.
    • Simple shapes are easy to draw so you are not wasting time trying to draw a picture in a notebook or for a review card.
    • Each shape holds as many words as line strokes needed to draw it.
      • Circle - 1 word
      • Half Circle - 2 words
      • Triangle - 3 words
      • Square or Rectangle - 4 words
      • Star - 5 words
    • With these shapes you can then split up a line or sentence into up to three simple shapes.
      • Save O God, for the godly one is gone.
      • Splits into triangle, square, and half circle
    • Now is where the magic happens. Stack the shapes and imagine what kind of object, animal, or “thing” you can make with those shapes.
      • For the line above I made a boat with a triangle roof, a square window and a half circle hull.
    • Restrict yourself to only putting the shaped together from top to bottom, or left to right so that you can easily remember which shape comes first. That way you won’t get mixed up later.

Psalm Specific Considerations

  • Paratactic text - Each line like an ornament - from Saleska’s commentary
    • This has influenced my development of the Picture pattern system.
  • Parallelism - doubled lines - how can I use that in the memory process
  • Enveloping - how can I use that as kind of a big start and end to something
  • Chiasm - how can that help set up the structure of a psalm in my mind.
  • Acrostics - actually use the peg system that is in the psalm itself. Need to think through how I can use these other structures to help develop a system

Level 1 - Words and Lines

As a basic rule we are going to make one dynamic image for each line of text we are memorizing.

  1. Use the number peg system. Create a number peg list (I usually do this as I go but you can do them all up front if you want). This helps create a hook for each line to hang on.
    1. Whole Psalm as an object
      1. I hide the object in every line image as a kind of easter egg in the image to help me remember where it belongs. That way if I am working with a later section of a psalm I can still remember which Psalm I am in.
        1. Psalm 3 - Mustache
        2. Psalm 12 - Tin
    2. Line number as person or Character
      1. This is the first line of Psalm 17: Hear a just cause, O Lord, attend to my cry!
      2. Line number 01 - Stew the bunny
  2. Use Sentence Sketch system to make an item that encodes the length of the line.
    1. Example: Hear a just cause, O Lord, attend to my cry!
    2. I broke this line into a rectangle, half circle and rectangle.
    3. Since it kind of sounds like a courtroom scene, I imagine the first rectangle as a long handle, with the half circle as a gavel head, and the last rectangle as the fancy knob on the top of the gavel.
    4. Line sketch item - court gavel.
  3. It is helpful to also put something in the image that helps you find the first word or phrase of a line. As well as any tricky transitions or harder to remember words.
    1. For the example line I imagine a big letter H and A to help remember the first part of the subclauses.
  4. Put it all together. I imagine Stew the bunny sitting behind a desk furiously hammering a gavel with one of those colonial wigs on. On the left side of the desk is the big letter A and the right side has the big letter H.
  5. To decode the image I just think of the gavel and can follow along the outline of each shape. If I am missing a word or mix things up it becomes clear because the shapes do not match smoothly. Usually that is enough to snap back the original words.
  6. If a section/phrase or word are hard to remember, you can keep strengthening the image with the ESCAPE principle. You can even break a single word into syllables if you need more ways to hook it into your mind.
  7. Level 1 is enough to get a text into your head. For me this is the base line of memorization but is not always as easy to jump around a text as I would like.

Level 2 - Section, Chapters and Whole Psalms

Image off of chapter or Psalm number

image for superscription or any metadata

group line images into sections

probably put them in a memory palace

Level 3 - Book Structure and Psalm Chains

the big picture structure of how a group of psalms sit together or how a book is outlined

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