A new technique for memorizing loads of information faster than you thought possible!

 Hi everyone, this kind of falls under Bible memorization but I though that it might be useful to all of you Bible Bee contestants. I'd like to explain to all of you about a memory method I have been using for the last 5 months. This method is extremely powerful and is really fun, too! The technique I will be showing you is called the Method of Loci and it comes from something called elaborative encoding which is the idea that your brain remembers some stuff better than other stuff. It was actually discovered by the Greeks about 2000 years ago and was used by politicians to memorize speeches which lasted hours. I'm also pretty sure that Augustine used this too.  For those of you who have been using the rote method of memorization, repeating something 10 times, saying it 10 times..., this may seem very weird but I encourage you to actually try it, because it DOES WORK! If you really are skeptical, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbinQ6GdOVk
 

 Let's start with a small example of elaborative encoding. Try to memorize this number: 2.992123450987321155326670011213345882902. How easy was it? And how long do you think it will stick in your memory? If you're anything like the average person, that number is meaningless; there's not life to it, no meaning, nothing special about that number. Now try to remember the story line and the scenes from your favorite movie. How easy was that compared to the number? A normal person would be able to remember the movie much easier than the number, even though they saw the movie maybe years ago. Okay, why do you think you remembered the movie? Well, as I said earlier, your brain remembers some things better than other things. That's just how it works.  

One more example of elaborative encoding is  the Baker baker paradox. If I told one person to remember that there is a guy named Baker, and if I told another person to remember that some guy is a baker, the person who I told "some guy is a baker" has a much higher chance of remembering later. Once again, in your mind's eye, you can see "baker" but you can't see "Baker".Now the Greeks discovered that they could turn the stuff that they didn't remember into things that they did remember. In particular, they used their visual and spatial memory. Now the reason you remembered the movie and not the number (hopefully!) was because the movie is a bunch of pictures and action. Pictures, color, action, fun, detail, all that kind of stuff is what our brain naturally remembers.


Try to memorize this list of words in under two minutes: catfish, dog, sarcasm, milk, garlic, calculator, map, hidden, free, computer, apple, goat, desk, basketball, swing, ruler, pencil, chair, pizza. Now do something else for 10 minutes and come back after that. Can you remember them in order? What is the 7th word in the list? What is the 16 word on this list. If you can pass all these tests, either you know this method or your're a natural. If you couldn't, don't worry at all! With the Method of Loci (and lots of practice!) you'll be able to do this as easily as you drink a glass of water! Okay, now we are going to use the the three ingredients necessary to developing your memory. According to Dominic O' Brien, they are: Association, location, and imagination. Before you start, let me tell you that you MUST use all three of them for this to work. Exaggerate all the images, use color, and use lots of action.  Make them memorable by making the scenes unlikely and funny. Smell, hear, and taste them, use all you got. Let's start!

Step 1: Walk around your house and number 20 areas or pieces of furniture in a logical order. For me, I start at my front door, walk into my study, my bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, and so on. If you decide you don't want to use your house for some reason, use another place such as a park, library, church, or any place you know very well. Now make sure you number all the places that are multiples of 5.
Step 2: Now we are going to memorize the list. Start with the first word, catfish. Imagine a gigantic, smelly catfish on the first step of your journey. Now imagine him wiggling around (action) and staring at you. On one of his wiggles he accidentally smacks a dog, which is sitting on your___. Maybe it's your dog or your favorite breed. Then the dog walks over to the next place, maybe your study or bathroom starts yelling at the catfish about how good he smells (sarcasm). The dog walks away very angry and for some reason spills a huge container of milk. The milk spills over the whole room or furniture and you dip your finger in and taste it. Are you getting the hang of this? Continue this for the rest of the words.
Now when you have finished, walk through your house and visualize the whole story unfolding. If you can't see an image, use more color, action or your senses. When you want to recall the words, walk through again and speak what you see. If I asked you what was the 7th item, you would go to the 5th piece of furniture or the 5th room that you numbered and go forward to more stages, simply tell me the word that was on it. So how did you do? I am confident that if you used this method exactly as I said to, you were able to recall all of the words. You may be thinking, "Oh, this is cool. But it took me 20 min!". That is normal because this is something new that your brain must get used to. Speed will come with practice. Practice this technique until you have mastered it.

 Let's do a Bible Bee related example. "Agape" is Greek for "love". Now we want to memorize this. Okay, let's try to make an association. Come up with your own first. For me, "agape" sounds like "agave", you know, the nectar. To connect that with love, I'd imagine on my front porch (don't forget location!) agave nectar spilling all over a heart (love). To make this more memorable, I'd smell the nectar. What does it smell like to you? Sweet? Rich? I might even taste it to make it even more memorable!
  How about a cross-reference example? Let's say that John 3:16 is a cross-reference to love. Okay, what do you do? First, I'd create a summary for the verse. How about "God loved the world and sent Jesus". You can make it more detailed if you like. Now pick out the key words. For me they are: God, love, world, sent, Jesus. Now turn it into a picture and connect it with a picture of love. Don't forget location! 

 So I hope that you actually tried this method. Tell me how it went! Since this is already pretty long I'll show you how to memorize text word for word in a separate post. Feel free to ask questions!

Thanks Everett! It looks really neat! I will try it and tell you how it works for me. I would very much like to hear how to memorize text word for word using this method! :)

Yeah, it takes a lot of practice to master, but it works really well. Here are a few things you should do before trying to memorize text, because it's a little trickier.

1. Practice association. Turn everyday things into images. Try to memorize the presidents of the USA by turning their names into images. Example: George Washington turns into a washing machine, and John Adams turns into an apple (Adam's apple).

2. Create journeys. You really can use anything. I have 40 loci in my house. So I could store 40 words in it or 40 lines of a poem. If you can't think of a journey, think harder, go through your week and use places that you go to often. I use pretty much any location that I visit. If I add everything up I have about 25 journeys and 750 loci. So yeah, I can hold a lot of information.

3. Practice! This technique requires lots of practice. But it is time well spent!

Thanks so much, Everett! I've memorized all the presidents using the book "Yo, Millard Fillmore!" which was using a similar method to what you described, so I'm already kind of familiar with that trick for memorization.

But I'll have to try it soon for memorizing other things! Could you please go ahead and post about how to use the method for memorizing the body of a verse, though? That'd be great. :)

WOW

Yes…

 So here is how I memorize text. I suggest that you have a decent amount of loci before you start (at least 100 stops and 5 journeys).  It's the same idea as memorizing words, you turn everything into an image and store it along a journey. However, we're trying to memorize text and we'll need a slightly different method to get word for word.

Here's an easy example. Acts 9:1a "But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord". The first step is to repeat it to yourself 2-3 times and just get familiar with it. Now turn it into a picture. You don't need to memorize each word separately, just the main idea in the verse. I picture a guy named Saul (I don't really know what Saul looks like but you can make something up) breathing. Out of his mouth comes thread and blood. The thread and blood spill on Peter (one of the disciples). Now I place it on my front porch. Weird, right? Let's try another one.

Psalm 119:103 "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" First repeat it to yourself a few times. Turn it into a picture and store it on a journey. I imagine walking up to my door and seeing a bunch of words floating in the air. One of the words is sweet. I put it in my mouth and it tastes like honey. Great! The good part about this method is that if you walk through the journey enough the verse gets stuck in your head and you won't need the images anymore.

I hope this helps. If you're really serious about using this method, you may want to find a list of words that are hard to visualize. This will help get it even more perfect. Have fun!

Thanks! I'll have to try it sometime ;)

This sounds really cool! How long did it take you to get the hang of it?

About a few minutes to memorize words :) and a few days to memorize binary digits. I'm still working on memorizing text and I haven't fully got the hang of it because it takes a lot of practice and I haven't finished my preset images. If you practice, you could probably be pretty good at the system when the Bible Bee starts.

We are probably going to be moving sometime in the next few months; do you think it would be hard if I established journeys now and then moved somewhere where the journeys would be totally different (obviously)? Haven't signed up for BB yet because of this. : )

Just tried your method, and it worked really well! :D

No, it wouldn't be harder. Actually, if you establish the journey before you move, you'll have more of them and that's obviously better. Get as many journeys as you can and fit as much as you can into them. Don't put the stops too close to each other though. I have about 25 journeys and 700 stops total.

That's great! Keep practicing!

Is it okay to re-use your journeys?

Thanks Everett this method is really helpful!!

Yes, but the more journeys you have the better. When you use this method correctly, the images should stay for a while. The stronger you created the image the longer it will stay. If you walk through the journey enough the information will be in your long term memory. So yes, you can use the same journey again if you want, but it's better to alternate through all of them.

Okay everyone, if you can remember a bunch of words with this method, if you're having some success memorizing text, and if you're serious about using it I think it's time to learn some more. If you can past the next few tests I think you're ready to move on.

Test 1 - Memorize this list of words in under two minutes

Food
Can
Car
Happy
Dog
Piano
Hyper
Speakers
Fraud
Pencil

Score 1 point for every correct word.

Test 2 - Memorize these verses in under 5 minutes.

John 3:1-3
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Perfect score is 73. Minus 1 point for every incorrect word. Add up your total points.

Perfect score is 83.
83 points. You're a master! Move on!
60-82 points. Move on and keep practicing!
Below 60 points. You need to practice more!

Here are some more advanced techniques.

Association, location, and imagination

You need to make more journeys. 10-20 journeys and 300-500 stops is ideal. Anything can be a journey really. As you go through your week try to find and create more journeys. Also, as you make more journeys and get more advanced, you'll find that you don't NEED to know them like the back of your hand. You can still use this method effectively even though your journeys aren't very well known to you. But you do need to number all the stops. The last thing you want to be thinking about when memorizing is where to put everything.

You also need to find links really fast. Whenever you hear or see something, an image should pop up in your head right away. The more you practice, the quicker you'll be.

And finally, you need to use your imagination. Add movement, use all your senses, and use emotion. It's hard to get fast at it but trust me, speed will come.

Systems

You can have lots of systems to memorize all sorts of stuff. I have created a binary system which turns every 5 digit binary combination into an image. I have a person, action and object assigned to each combination. There are 2^5 or 32 possible combinations. Now memorizing 010100101001100111 is pretty useless but it is excellent training to help you get faster at everything else. I'm also making a number system which turns every 3 digit number into an image. The Major System is a 2 digit system and is very effective!

The Major system is pretty cool and I'm pretty sure you'll like it. Also, it's good for your vocabulary :). It's a phonetic code so each number is assigned a consonant sound. Here's the code:

0 = s, z, soft c
1 = t, d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, sh, soft g, soft "ch"
7 = k, hard c, hard g, hard "ch", q, qu
8 = f, v
9 = p, b
Vowel sounds, w, h, y, and x can be used anywhere without changing a number's value. I suggest you find a creative way to remember this code. So every 2 digit number is assigned two consonants, any vowels, and w, h, y, x. Take the number 85. This turns into f and l which can turn into FaLL, FeLL, FiLL… I know I'm explaining this really badly, so I highly recommend that you read this page: http://www.memory-sports.com/the-major-system/. What you can do if you're really serious is to prememorize an image for every 2 digit number from 00 to 99 using the major system. It takes some time, but you can do it!

, I hoped you learned something and I hope that you're improving quickly! Have fun and make a system!

BTW I like your profile pic:)

Thanks so much for this tip Everett. BTW, I got 81 on the John 3:1-3 test.

I've seen this idea before and I'd thought about trying it, but I wasn't sure how to go about memorizing Bible Bee passages. So I'm wondering - when memorizing Bible passages, how do you link the image that you created to the reference?

Hi Esther! Welcome to the Memverse forums. I've just approved your post; all future posts will be automatically approved.

Welcome Esther! :)

Welcome to the forums :) Memorizing text, especially the Bible, is a little more difficult than just words because there are a bunch of other words which can sometimes distract you from the key words, and of course there's all the references. To memorize the verse, just pick out the key words, turn them into pictures and put the pictures in the location…

There are basically two ways you can do the references.

1) You can use the major system which is described on the first page. The main disadvantages at this point is that you have to make 100 images before you can use the system effectively, and you'll have to do a lot more linking which could make your stories to complicated. If you do this way you turn the reference numbers and the book into images and you can have them interact with the first few words of the passage. When you have the reference interacting with the text, you create more links so it's easier to remember. If the world record holder for memorizing 501 digits in 5 minutes needed to memorize Bible verses, he'd probably use this way.

2) You can learn them as you memorize the verses. I personally like this way, just learning the reference as you memorize. If I read the reference a few times it gets stuck in my head and I don't need any extra images. I do link the first few words to the book, but I don't need the numbers because I'll learn them anyways.

Finally, remember that once the information has entered you long-term memory, the links will kind of fade. So find the best way for you but remember that both are good.

Thanks, Alex and Sarah!
And thanks Everett! That makes sense.