4 ms·

It's crazy to think at how wildly different memory works. I once went on a 5 day business trip and about 2 days after the trip it was kind of effortless to rec

by nickjj 6y ago

It's crazy to think at how wildly different memory works. I once went on a 5 day business trip and about 2 days after the trip it was kind of effortless to recall pretty much all of the details of everything without taking notes. Enough to write a 7,000 word blog post and string together a story from beginning to end. I purposely left out many details for the sake of not wanting the post to be overly long. I also find it pretty easy to re-trace my day and pick out details, like the orientation of how things were on a table at lunch, or what video game a kid was playing on the train who I happened to be sitting next to from 2 years ago without really trying to recall it. But I'm 100% helpless when it comes to memorizing scripts. I've recorded over 500 technical tutorial videos and most of them were scripted out for a course where I read those words (no webcam so it didn't look weird), but about 100 of them are YouTube videos with a webcam where I just winged it based on prior knowledge with no script or bullets. But now I have a talk coming up next week where I'm giving a 45 minute presentation on something technical that's basically a 45 minute live demo and I can't script it out and it's going to be live streamed. I legit can't even write 15 seconds of words and recall them exactly a minute later. I wish I could find a bullet proof way to do this. I've tried so many things over the years unsuccessfully. Bullets help, but it's super easy to forget critical details with just a few bullets. I hate to draw conclusions but I think I'm very far on the spectrum of being a visual learner that trying to memorize words alone could be impossible for me. How do you memorize lots of words in a specific order when you suck at memorizing words?

andi999 6y ago
For the second and third paragraph: how do you validate that you really remember these things correctly and not just think you remembered them? For the script remembering: you cant do it. That is basically a profession called acting which takes a few years of training (biggest problem if you try is to do the gestures before the phrasing out, so usually what you do looks and feels unatural). Good advice I got was you make a few 'stars', aka minitopics and you branch out with on words what you want to say, you remember these topics and then you speak naturally. If it is a long talk and you must not miss anything then mayve the ancient greek method might be good. Take any place you know by hear (like your favorite greek temple, or your home) and go mentally systematically through it (like counterclock-wise) and place mentally on each physical object a topic. To recall during talk do the mental walk again.
- nickjj 6y ago
  Validation sometimes comes from external feedback, like "oh yeah, now I remember that but how did you remember that?". Other times it's just trusting I'm not making stuff up based on previous successful recollections. I wouldn't say I have an especially good memory tho. I guess maybe it's pretty good for days after something but most details trickle away after that unless I specifically focus on remembering them. I'm also pretty bad at memorizing mundane things like what I ate for dinner over the last week. That advice sounds good. I Google'd it a bit and it sounds like the Loci method that a few other have also commented with. I'll see what I can do, because when I think about previous memories it's super visual, almost like replaying events. I'm not sure how it'll apply to artificially associating paragraphs to objects but we'll see. Can't hurt to try it out.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Just one more thing: for me the Loci method doesnt work, i somehow cannot remember places low grained (is there a coffee mug on the table or not and did I want to place some speech item at the mug). So for presentations i make sure the hints are all on the slides.
    - nickjj 6y ago
      Yeah, I wonder if I'll have the same outcome. As for slide hints, in this talk there's only about 5 minutes of slides and 40 minutes of live demos where I'm sharing my screen. Basically running and talking about a bunch of different things on the terminal while hopping between the terminal, code editor and browser. It would be very unnatural to try and read extensive notes while doing this. My plan was to put a single page of bullets off to the side on a 2nd monitor and glance at that, but I'm afraid it won't have enough detail.
      - andi999 6y ago
        Do the bullet list. Less detail is usually better since easier for you to process. Are practicing the whole presentation fully at least twice?
flreln 6y ago
Have you tried the method of loci? I do a variation of it when I don't have writing means nearby to keep the idea in my head. In its essence, you visualize a familiar place (ie parent's home) and how you walk through it and drop what you want to remember somewhere. Works perfectly fine for me. I suspect that's because of grid cells and spatial cognition (more here: https://youtu.be/gmc4wEL2aPQ https://youtu.be/gmc4wEL2aPQ).
- nickjj 6y ago
  I haven't, but I'm going to give it a shot. Interesting talk too. I like how she highlighted that the brain finds numbers to be important. When doing grocery shopping I often memorize the list based on the item count. Like if I'm going for Italian bread, tomatoes, green peppers, sausages, milk, water, avocados, chicken and bagels I never try to memorize the items. I'll make a note of the count, which would be 9 in this case. This has a really good success rate for me when it comes to remembering things because during the shopping session I'll think "ok, that's 7 things, what are the last 2 things". Then I'll scan my bag and recall the last 2 things eventually. It also makes it almost impossible to leave the store while forgetting something because 7 != 9.
iandanforth 6y ago
As someone who has had to memorize dozens of scripts, both in plays and speeches I recommend brutal repetition. In addition I recommend making sentence by sentence Anki cards where the prompt is one line and the "answer" is the next. But really if you haven't gone through a speech 50 times you're just getting started.
moltar 6y ago
Check out Learning How to Learn course (free). They talk about how learning and memory works from first principles and also teach various memory techniques. There are ways a visual person can learn too. On the other hand I find memorizing speeches isn’t a good method, because you’ll sounded unnatural. Better to memorize the key points and the sequence of them.

by nickjj 6y ago

andi999 6y ago

For the second and third paragraph: how do you validate that you really remember these things correctly and not just think you remembered them? For the script remembering: you cant do it. That is basically a profession called acting which takes a few years of training (biggest problem if you try is to do the gestures before the phrasing out, so usually what you do looks and feels unatural). Good advice I got was you make a few 'stars', aka minitopics and you branch out with on words what you want to say, you remember these topics and then you speak naturally. If it is a long talk and you must not miss anything then mayve the ancient greek method might be good. Take any place you know by hear (like your favorite greek temple, or your home) and go mentally systematically through it (like counterclock-wise) and place mentally on each physical object a topic. To recall during talk do the mental walk again.

nickjj 6y ago
Validation sometimes comes from external feedback, like "oh yeah, now I remember that but how did you remember that?". Other times it's just trusting I'm not making stuff up based on previous successful recollections. I wouldn't say I have an especially good memory tho. I guess maybe it's pretty good for days after something but most details trickle away after that unless I specifically focus on remembering them. I'm also pretty bad at memorizing mundane things like what I ate for dinner over the last week. That advice sounds good. I Google'd it a bit and it sounds like the Loci method that a few other have also commented with. I'll see what I can do, because when I think about previous memories it's super visual, almost like replaying events. I'm not sure how it'll apply to artificially associating paragraphs to objects but we'll see. Can't hurt to try it out.
- andi999 6y ago
  Just one more thing: for me the Loci method doesnt work, i somehow cannot remember places low grained (is there a coffee mug on the table or not and did I want to place some speech item at the mug). So for presentations i make sure the hints are all on the slides.
  - nickjj 6y ago
    Yeah, I wonder if I'll have the same outcome. As for slide hints, in this talk there's only about 5 minutes of slides and 40 minutes of live demos where I'm sharing my screen. Basically running and talking about a bunch of different things on the terminal while hopping between the terminal, code editor and browser. It would be very unnatural to try and read extensive notes while doing this. My plan was to put a single page of bullets off to the side on a 2nd monitor and glance at that, but I'm afraid it won't have enough detail.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Do the bullet list. Less detail is usually better since easier for you to process. Are practicing the whole presentation fully at least twice?

flreln 6y ago

Have you tried the method of loci? I do a variation of it when I don't have writing means nearby to keep the idea in my head. In its essence, you visualize a familiar place (ie parent's home) and how you walk through it and drop what you want to remember somewhere. Works perfectly fine for me. I suspect that's because of grid cells and spatial cognition (more here: https://youtu.be/gmc4wEL2aPQ https://youtu.be/gmc4wEL2aPQ).

nickjj 6y ago
I haven't, but I'm going to give it a shot. Interesting talk too. I like how she highlighted that the brain finds numbers to be important. When doing grocery shopping I often memorize the list based on the item count. Like if I'm going for Italian bread, tomatoes, green peppers, sausages, milk, water, avocados, chicken and bagels I never try to memorize the items. I'll make a note of the count, which would be 9 in this case. This has a really good success rate for me when it comes to remembering things because during the shopping session I'll think "ok, that's 7 things, what are the last 2 things". Then I'll scan my bag and recall the last 2 things eventually. It also makes it almost impossible to leave the store while forgetting something because 7 != 9.

iandanforth 6y ago

As someone who has had to memorize dozens of scripts, both in plays and speeches I recommend brutal repetition. In addition I recommend making sentence by sentence Anki cards where the prompt is one line and the "answer" is the next. But really if you haven't gone through a speech 50 times you're just getting started.

moltar 6y ago

Check out Learning How to Learn course (free). They talk about how learning and memory works from first principles and also teach various memory techniques. There are ways a visual person can learn too. On the other hand I find memorizing speeches isn’t a good method, because you’ll sounded unnatural. Better to memorize the key points and the sequence of them.