The Aspen Grove

Page Palace

Note Planted:
3 min read

The Big Idea

I have been experimenting and slowly creating a memorization style that sees attending the the text and memory as a deeply connected cycle.

Basic Memory Principles

  1. Memory is all about associating one thing with another.
  2. Associations are what “hold” information in your memory. You will forget things with weak associations.
  3. Associations only work if they start with something known to something unknown. Or old connecting to new. Remembering a whole bunch of new on its own will not stick.
  4. Therefore, the goal of getting things into long-term memory is to have densely packed and vivid associations “hooking in” the thing you are trying to remember.
  5. Strong associations to a new thing need to be made from a collection of different types:
    1. Spatial Placement. Can be memory of tangible space or abstract space.
    2. Connection to an Image. Can be person, object, character, etc.
    3. Action and Movement. Imagining the associated images moving and interacting helps layer in more associations.
    4. Audio and Visual associations. Can be that something sounds similar, or that the shape of a letter or number look similar.
  6. Memory is directional you have to travel from place to place to remember things. Be intentional about how you want to travel.
    1. Where are your entry points into a text? How can you make them clear and vivid? How can you place them intentionally in relation to the rest of the text?
    2. What are the boundaries, shape, or rails of the text?
    3. Practice working the text in as many directions as possible not just liner word to word. This again makes more associations and anchors things more firmly. I.e. Up and down first words, Up and down last words, Up and down center words, leap frog words, middle to out, middle to back, back to front. But if a direction mixes you up try a different one. I think back to front is the least helpful for text. But is very helpful for numbers or “loose” information.
  7. Approach things from Shape and Syntax (Big picture and Small picture). Think of working from each side toward the middle.

Pass 1 

Hand write the section and read it out loud as you do. Read it out loud a few more times after if you really want to.

Pass 2 

Go line by line and find the center word. Then find the center of the first half (quarter point) and then find the back quarter point.

Pass 3 

Line up the center and quarter points line over line. Then start grouping short small groupings of words. Like connecting “the” or “in the” to its referent. 

Pass 4 

Come up with a striking image for each grouping of words. Then think of how the images can interact with each other across the lines and even up and down lines. 

Pass 5 

Draw shapes around patterns that stick out within and across lines

Graph View