hello!
I am trying to make sense of this. You explained it very well and to me it seems like you are creating an association with something already familiar to you so that you may remember certain things?
yes that's a part of it. I didn't invent mnemonics but I wanted to describe what it's like to use them.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic
The general idea (which is hard to find a guide for) is to use to link to . That might include full sensory perceptions (smells, sounds, moods, location maps), or anything you know really well. If you knew all the pokemon and wanted to learn to connect them with the elements, that would be doable.
As I said to lifelonglearner the Trigger Action Plan looks like:
(notice good info --> ask, "will I be able to remember this later?" if not --> make a mnemonic)
The general pattern in the techniques I've looked in to seems to be to separate out the desired remembered chunk from the source of noise by switching sensory modalities you store it in. Verbal loop, visio-spatial scratchpad, felt senses. There seem to be some useful subdivisions in each one as well (like musical notes having a different storage mechanism than words).
This appears to be a useful thing on the inner workings of your mind when you try to figure out how to create mnemonics. I will keep this at the back of my mind as a trigger (notice good info --> make a mnemonic), but I'm unsure if I'll get to it in the next few weeks. If you really want to see how other people fare w/ this, feel free to ping me at some point and I can get back to you.
(notice good info --> make a mnemonic)
Don't forget the crucial mid-step of:
(notice good info --> ask, "will I be able to remember this later?" if not --> make a mnemonic)
Ah, right. Thanks for the additional heads-up. Although, as a general rule, I try to give my brain as little agency as possible. Which is to say, I really don't trust it to do things if I haven't taken adequate steps to commit to them.
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/worked-example-of-a-mnemonic-memory-technique/
In 2015 I wrote a list of techniques to help you remember names.
Today I was working through trying to remember a specific theory and I noticed a pattern I have been using for a few days now. When trying to remember theories or ideas. The inspiration for this concept came to me because I have been using an app called FBreader, and a Text-to-speech plugin. Using the two I now listen to ebooks in robot-voice while I drive or concentrate on other tasks. The trouble is that sometimes a book will present (verbally because it's being read out to me) some model or list of ideas that I need to hold in my head for the book to make any sense over the next few minutes or pages. So I needed a way to generate a picture (possibly a system 1 visceral image) of the ideas so that I could play around with them as the chapter continued or also just; as I needed to recall the information a few days later.
I hope this post describes what it feels like from the inside to be performing this skill.
The process
This is what I have been doing in my head:
0. (regular check on the trigger: this seems like useful information/this list seems important) Do I feel like I will remember it? If yes, end here. (if unknown - practice via trial and error, intuitively knowing what you are likely to forget is powerful and useful information to hold)
1. Think about the concept and how I am going to remember it.
2. Build a visual/spatial/sensory model that feels right to me about the model.
3. double check that it feels right, hone it till it does. (Maybe it only has 5 pieces but 3 of them are already circles of hell. Can I make a new version of hell for my purposes of remembering these details - and why not?)
Examples
example 1: reading models of therapy around extramarital affairs. (from the paper - an intergrative intervention for promoting recovery from extramarial affairs (paywalled))
This model has 3 stages:
my visual/spatial model (because it works for me) is like this:
My model tells a story, and all I need to do is remember parts of the story and the rest comes back. I have checked with myself that it sounds like I will recall the model, so I am safe to hold onto it in this way.
Example 2: From the book Difficult conversations.
There are 4 types of conversations, the important take away from the book is to square with the participants what type of conversation this is, so as to lay the grounds of understanding what will happen next. The 4 types are:
To remember these on the fly the best I could do (which works better than the names) is to imagine a circle, an arrow and a dot. For each of the above, the picture of the type of conversation looks like:
For this set of information I have recently also been looking into Non-Violent Communication (NVC) (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tUVqsjQ2I watch in double speed), Which has a 4 step model of communicating needs in a non-judgemental way (Observation, Feeling, Need, Request) - the 3 major conversations are so similar that I have no need to build a picture to recall this information.
At the top of this post I mentioned my post about how to remember names. One of the strongest techniques for names is the mnemonic technique. Where you build a sensory model of this person which connects them to their name (like the name Rose, imagine a rose on their head). I mentioned it in 2015; as it's basically the accepted strong model of how to remember people's names like a champion. What really hit me across the face like a wet fish today was that the mnemonic system is exactly what I was doing here. But I never used it on names, I adamantly swear by the fact that I just did everything else on the list to remember names and didn't need the mnemonics, I only just started using this technique now as I was needing it - as I was encountering information that was not staying in my head, I had to set up a system 2 loop in my head to remind me to check if I am likely to remember it. And work out how to remember it. Mnemonics are how to remember things.
I can't tell you how to use this system exactly, nor can I make up the models that work for your memory. But hopefully this description helps with feeling out the need and ability to build pictures of recalling information you need to store in your head.
Meta: this took 1.5hrs to write and sprung up accidentally as I realised what was going on in my head.
Feedback appreciated.