Key numbers was the first real memory method Anna explained to me. It is generalization of story method for more complex structures. It is recommended to train this method with lists of linked items.
The idea is very simple. We keep each story between 5 and 20 items connected by some sort of funny animation. Now we need to increase our capacity to 200 and beyond. If we can easily remember 10 anchors, we can easily remember 10 chains or 20 items. Instead of generating anchors from text, we take anchors that are already there. For example, we can take the first 10 number. For each number we memorize a dictionary like
0 = ball
1 = magic wand
2 = swan
3 = fork
4 = sailboat
5 = seahorse
6 = bomb
7 = crowbar
8 = hourglass
9 = balloon
Now each story has a known beginning. Once we want to add several stories we imagine an anchor of a tree with an object in its root to remember the number of branches the tree will have.
The resulting associations sounded like:
house-dog-cry: ball knock over a house, the house falls on dog, and the dog cries because of pain
empty-havoc-stretch: magic wand empties the room of air, and havoc comes in, stretching windows and doors under its pressure
etc.
By replacing numbers with 1-3 letter syllables, we get hundreds of prearrange anchors, which is very convenient if we have to remember still more stuff…
This method is very easy to learn, but unfortunately it is very slow.
It is very structured and so good if you do not want to forget a bone in human body, or a card in a deck, but not good enough if you need to learn a language.
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Thank you for the post. Can you elaborate on resulting association example you had? I just can’t see where house-dog-cry and empty-havoc-stretch coming from.
That’s exactly the point of this method.
The exercise is build upon taking lists of unconnected stuff from random sources and generating new connections.
When you need to remember 30 faces or 100 numbers – where do you think they come from? Typically they appear pretty random at first, but later we build patterns and understandings…