Making up your own methods for Learning

Why would I want to do this

Not infrequently there will be situations that you have in your life where there are memory tasks you have to perform, which are not ones that are well defined in books.

The exciting thing you should do first is work out a way of learning them. There is no sense trying to cut down a set of trees with a blunt saw! Firstly sharpen the saw, then cut down the tree!!

Typically a hybrid of the other methods will be the best thing.
There is no point trying to re-invent the wheel!

Guidelines

How memorable intrinsically, is the information that you are trying to learn?
In order that you might find it later, you will need to link the information into information you already have in your head.
If the material is intrinsically memorable (e.g. a person's name), then you can link it directly into other memories you already have.
e.g. you can link a new person you have just met at work, with the location that he is going to work in at your work... Typically you will instinctively imagine that person doing what he is going to do in the location he is going to do it. To learn his name you will use likely direct links to things you already know.

If on the other hand you are trying to learn a sequence of playing cards, or you are a police officer and have to remember number plates, what you might first do is spend some time pegging the intrinsically non-memorable things to more memorable items and then use the more memorable items to link to things you already know.

Example of memorising using a link from something not memorable to something more memorable, to something you know well!

If you have to learn a list of things which are generally changing in their sequence, but not themselves changing, and they in themselves are not very memorable, suggest you peg each one to something that is memorable.


For example, for learning a sequence of cards, most people do not consider learning cards to be interesting. On the other hand most people would agree that people are more interesting than cards. If you are learning a sequence of cards then, peg each card to a person (you will have to think of 52 people or celebrities that you know), and then if you learn them in sequence, use the journey method as usual, but attach not the card, but the person to locations in that journey.

This is an example of learning very non memorable items (cards) by pegging them first to something more memorable, and then using the strong journey technique to order the more memorable items!

Design your own methods for your particular material along similar lines.

Use RecallPlus to test and modify your method

When you make your items in RecallPlus and then use the testing of them, you can readily see what is working and what is not for you.
Modify your technique, thinking through the common tools (Journey,Story,Peg, Acronyms), to come up with a good hybrid.

Use RecallPlus over a few cycles to find the right tool for the job you are then going to do!!

RecallPlus, the ultimate study software