Memory like a fish

I heard this said a couple of days ago while listening to commentators on Wimbledon. It was in respect of a player who was having a bad session. The balls just were not going where they should. At which point the comment was made, what defined a good player was the need to have a memory like a fish.  They were talking about being in the moment, or being in the zone as it is otherwise known.  When you shouldn't think and just act.  At this time, a memory like a fish is needed, but especially needed when having a bad run.  The reason for this, if you are dwelling on the lost point from a previous ball and how you should of improved or done better this takes the player out of the zone.  Hence having a memory like a fish.  It is in effect a comment made about the context of a situation.  Having a memory like a fish wouldn't be much good if sitting an interview or an exam, just when it was necessary to pull out of memory all those important things you need to mention. However, in the context of a sport such as tennis it seems appropriate.  But, and a big but even having a memory like a fish is no good if a game has an element of strategy.  For example, if a football team keeps playing in the same formation and strategy as it has from the start of a game to the end of the game they could well be duped into losing.  Especially if their opposition is prone to adapt and change their method of play.  Which could of course be helped by substitutions coming onto the pitch.  In a similar way if your errors mean you are losing at something, then repeating those same errors time and again will mean you fail.  It is necessary to understand this.  If memory like a fish means not dwelling on a mistake will result in better play then this could be valuable advice. However, equally it could be argued if you know what your error was, then the value is in putting in an effort not to repeat it, and having a memory like a fish would be counter-intuitive.

The only thing which should have a memory like a fish, is a fish, end of story.

A quick method of loci demonstration

I took my nephew for a walk and decided to talk to him about the method of loci.  In doing so the best way was to demonstrate it in use. So at the beginning of the journey I started marking significant spots and I would then add an object to the significant spot which was the item to be remembered.  Keeping it to a list of ten items and then I would test him to see what he would remember. Rather than just sit back and test him straight away, we carried on walking and talking for another 20 to 30 minutes.  Then I asked him to recite the ten items he'd been asked to remember, to his astonishment he was able to recall 9 out of the 10. He thought it was amazing he was able to do this.

This goes to show even in a short lesson it is possible to demonstrate a memory technique and it is possible to understand how it works. It has been a week since I have last seen him, but I will again ask him to see if he can remember the listing, and whatever he can remember I am sure it will be a lot more than if he did it by rote.

Memorising names and faces will take a time to get warmed up

I saw an impressive clip on Youtube of Ron White recalling the names of the audience. He is an impressive speaker and it was like watching a comedian as well as learning something.  He emphasized how it is a skill anyone can learn to do, nothing about it being supernatural, but it requires perseverance.  It's about effort, if you are willing to put the effort in you will get the results.  It seems when Ron was young he had an awful memory and even failed at University. I suppose it shows, you don't have to be brilliant or ranked brilliant through your life to be brilliant.  Brilliance like memory is something which can be worked on. Ron White discussed how when he began to train his memory for names and faces, he spent months associating a picture to every name and then associating this to the face.  Only after many months of preparation did he then get to the point of being able to remember the number of names and faces he could.  There are five aspects Ron lists in this exercise.

1. Focus
2. File
3. Picture
4. Glue
5. Review

Of these five tips, Ron emphasised how the first point, focusing just by itself, would dramatically improve your memory.  As I try to develop my imagery in the method of loci it amazes me how I am being forced to look at objects on my journeys.  I see and observe something new about them and realise as I stare and try to imprint more what I have seen on the journey it would be like sitting down and trying to sketch the object.  It's only when you sit and draw something, you really get a chance to actually look at it. Ron's focus comes up in other people's tips in learning names and faces.  Higbee's list is similar, where his point 1 is to make sure you get the name then point 2 make the name
meaningful.  I think Ron is saying a similar thing, his focus does mean getting the individual's name, it means paying attention to the person and their face, as though the face looking at is the only thing worthy of your attention.  Full and completely undivided attention.  To a point it sounds a little like  being in love.  When you stare for a while into your partner's face only for them to then cross their eyes and contort it.  Oh how love sees beyond what is on the surface.
Higbee's point 3. is focus on a distinctive feature of the person's appearance and 4. associate the name with the distinctive feature, lastly point 5 is the same as Ron's.

As I go through other exercises, it seems reviewing what I have already put to memory is an important thing. It ensures the memory is still there and is strengthened.  Just as I constantly shuffle a pack of cards and try and recall the characters I've already put on those cards.  I've spent some hours on this and still forget what card is who.  In a similar way now I am imprinting the faces of the people to each card and while watching TV today I heard the name Putin and immediately said the five of Jacks, because this is the card he represents in my card set.  With the cards as with faces there is an important triad of Person-Action-Object.  Where each individual has not just their face, but an action or verb representing something they do and an object.  It seems to me imprinting faces into my memory is actively engaging several methods of mnemonic at the same time.  To tell the truth no single mnemonic method is used in isolation and when putting them to use you are actually learning two or three at the same time.  Of course it's the practice bit, or the review bit which glues it altogether and hopefully sets images and faces more concretely into memory.

As I don't get to meet too many new people in my life, I try and practice memorising faces and names while watching TV. I see a face, look at it, dwell hard on the name to see if it will summon up a picture and then look for a feature on the face to glue it together.  As the program goes on I am then invited to review the original image and closely work out whether I got it right or not.  It's odd but my attention and focusing is really narrowing down more than ever before.  I'm sure to get there if I keep on practicing and give it a few months as I am with the other mnemonic methods.

Funny how I forgot my keys when return home later today.  Now to fix a mnemonic on keys in pockets

Memorising a deck of cards

The last week or so I've began to dip my toes into the waters of memorising a deck of cards.  Each card is now represented by a person, whether they are real or fictional and it is now a matter of automatically associating the card with the person.  I carry about with me a deck of cards, shuffle it and then test myself to see if I can remember which person the random card happens to be. It's difficult going, some characters were automatically chosen, it was like I had made no effort in making them who they were, but others had to be thought about. Sometimes I even changed the characters because they didn't quite match and even now I'm not entirely happy with the odd one here or there.  But the more I shuffle those cards and the more I test myself the easier it gets, at some point it will become more fluent and I'll not sit there looking at a card and searching my mind of who it is suppose to be.  Sometimes I try to elaborate the individual when this happens. For example the two of diamonds.  Diamonds represents wealthy people and twos are fictional female characters.  I've picked this card to be Trinity from the Matrix movies. Then I think about it Trinity used to wear a black leather tight suit, so perhaps she should of been a bad ass from the Clubs suit.  However, she played a good character and the wealthy bit relates to her style, she pulls it off.  Lets just say she's not as common as shite.  So there I sat looking at the two of diamonds wondering who the hell I allocated to this card and eventually had to refer to my notes. Now I try to see Trinity with diamond ear rings, except these are red diamonds, and she has one on each ear.  The image has stuck a little better since this happened. I've wondered it may be necessary to do a little more research into each of the 52 characters I've used and this interest will in itself cement the card face to the character.  This is of course the first part of the exercise.

The next part of the exercise may be to create 52 points via the method of loci.  So today I've been out on a long walk, a walk I have taken many times before, but this time as I walked along I took photos with my camera phone.  The battery lost a lot of power and I didn't finish the walk but did take about 300 pictures.  This doesn't mean I have 300 significant loci points, it does mean I have 300 images to source from my walk. Some pictures are of the same places from different angles.  This is going to pose a dilemma.  If the final walk ends up with more than 52 loci points then it will be excessive to me needs but could be useful at some other time. The walk is not redundant, it's just the need for a specific journey which has only 52 data points to reference.  There is also the addition of creating markers which are significant points in the journey.  How often are these put in place? As I'm dealing with a pack of cards should there just be 4 sets of 13, or should they be more frequent? I got no idea.  There's a bit of guess work going on here. So the walk is unfinished, I still don't have a set 52 point journey although I do have an earlier 26 point journey which helped me learn the Phonetic alphabet. But what does this all mean as well?

I am hoping this research can be used in some other way, by using mnemonic methods I am able to generalise them to other stuff. Especially work related, even for instance ingraining the days of the week for a number of years would be useful.  All what's needed is to know the Sunday each month falls on see Higbee's book (Your memory how it works and  how to improve it). Knowing Monday dates just happens to be important to my work at the Fish Factory.  Remembering official and important circulars would be of particular use as well, but it's not a matter of just knowing stuff it is also being able to interpret and understand the stuff I know.  This is where having a sound knowledge and use of mnemonics comes into play, because you can then go over items you've remembered and analyse them without of actually having the material in front of you.  It is just there in your head

Taking the day off, taking a long walk, enjoying the sun did me no end of good today. Now if only I could recall a deck of cards.  It's going to happen, it's just a matter of time now.

Early days as a mnemonist

Although the subject of memory has come up throughout my life, I've never really properly dipped my toes into the waters. To in effect make the effort and really work out what is going on with this mnemonic thing and see if it works. It works but it also fails, the failures though I put down to my own understanding. It's early days and like a muscle being used it has to be exercised, the more I exercise it the better it gets. Except of course for my left arm and should which really are screwed up while I await an appointment with an MRI machine, courtesy of the NHS.  There are times when creating mnemonic images are difficult, when I do get an image then it is necessary to glue the thing together because it is a paired associate task.  For example, I learnt in one exercise that the capital of the Bahamas was Nassau.  The image I set in my mind was of lots of little bananas dropping out of a nose and it worked.  However, in trying to think of a mnemonic for the capital of Fiji which is Suva, I kept thinking of a fig on a tree and of it dropping onto a Sofa.  However, when testing myself there was contamination with another item.  In recall I came up with Sofia, which is the capital of Bulgaria.  The image of a fig falling on a sofa was not working, and meant I needed to unlearn this and use an alternative, but it's not quite working.  I just changed the image and now try to think of a fig falling ontop of the head of someone called Sue who was saying the word "go" and in French go is the word "va."  It's still not working and I need to scrap the image and start again.

There is no doubt now as I  practice exercises from a book by Dominic O'Brien the important ingredient is effort and continuous practice. Mnemonics I've found are composed of multiple techniques and each set of techniques is used to help remember a different subject. Be in numbers, faces or capital cities.  They do in instances overlap each other however they are not always easy.  Patience and a quite room helps, as does good concentration. It is early days, very early and it's been several evenings trying to conjure up personalities for a deck of cards.  This is another of my ongoing exercises to try and achieve, i.e. learning the order of a deck of cards, the goal being once able, to try and do it under a minute.  The world record is 21 seconds, which is mind blowingly fast. 

I have tried to explain to others these feats are not by super human beings they are the use of methods which are thousands of years old, but it may appear the individual is very smart.  My memory is a rusty tool because my imagination has not had such demands on it before and now it is getting a bit of work out.  It's good. What is good though is getting it right and reinforcing this over and over again.  I also have at hand some useless facts which have stuck in my head from the earlier part of O'Brien's book, such as an ant having 5 noses, Australia 7 states and recently the capital of Estonia being Tallinn, which I have tried to make as the image of a stone ear being thrown at the tall doors of an inn.  There sure are some weird images floating around in my head right now that's for sure.