Mostly final draft of spreadsheet, continued work on Anki

The final spreadsheet is here I've changed my Anki tests to teach me the order of the locations, and where I should jump if I want to skip to a specific year. I did this with two types of cards: 1. Given one location, tell me the next several locations. (Given bed, the next locations are nightstand, robe hanger, chair, bedroom door, piano, chair, desk) 2. Given a year range (1000-1099), which locations are within that range? (Bed, Nightstand) For all the special jump locations (The first location in the 1800s, for example, or 1875-, etc.), I've started to learn the exact date/images. (The first location after 1850 is #70, the front door to Billa, whose exact date/image is Flour/1854)

Anki Deck

Aaaand, the Anki deck has begun.

I'm going to be actually putting this into my head via Anki, my favorite spaced repetition software. It quizzes you daily and sets up a schedule for when you review each card, depending on how hard of a time you had remembering. If the facts are relatively easy to memorize, then you end up spending *very* little time on each fact, so it behooves one to split the data up across a great number of flashcards, and learn a few of them per day.

I'm going to be learning this in a bunch of stages.

Stage 1: Learning my journey in order (Front side of card: #1-2, back side of card: "Bed and Nightstand")

Stage 2: Learning the date image that goes with each stop on the journey (Front side of card: Picture of bed, Back side: Diskette (corresponds to 1071)

Stage 3: Given the date image and the location image (Bed+Diskette), learn the basic composer-related images (Front side: Bed+Diskette, Back Side: William Tell shoots apple off of someone's head, Danish pastry)

Stage 4: Decode the images into useful data (Front side: Bed+Diskette+William Tell+Danish Pastry, Back Side: William IX, Duke of Acquitaine, 1071 - 1126)

(Stage 5/6: Add additional images to each coded image to add more useful data, like important compositions, etc)

The Photos

Aaaand, the photos are done, too.

The Spreadsheet: 189 Important Classical Composers, Their dates and their mnemonics

OK! Most of the framework is now complete! (Nice!)

So I have a list of composers (which has swollen a bit, up to 189), and a list of 134 birth years (lots of composers are born on the same year, which saves me some work). I've made mnemonics for every birth and death year, as well as every composer name. I've plotted a 134 stop journey from my bed to Johannesgasse 4a (I have another whole journey inside of Johannesgasse 4a, out to Singerstraße 22, inside there, and then to Stephansdom. Turns out I don't need it, but I imagine it will come in useful in the future for something)

So now I just need to take all these images and string them together into a story.

Also it wouldn't be bad to learn a little bit about the composers that I have completely forgotten (or never knew in the first place).

Here's the spreadsheet

New Project: Memorize 150 composers in chronological order, along with their birthdates

So now that I'm done with school, I've picked up a new hobby: memorizing stuff. My latest project involves building a list of composers. I'll document and explain how it works and my progress here. You're welcome to join in! It's a great way to learn a bunch of mnemonic techniques at once.

So!

This project takes advantage of 3 mnemonic techniques as well as spaced repetition to get it all into my head. As you'll see, the hard part isn't really memorizing all this data, it's converting it ahead of time into a storable format: pictures and stories.

To memorize names, I will be converting each name into an image. Chopin -> Shopping bag, Mozart -> moats, etc. The images must be as vivid as possible (a paper shopping bag from Trader Joe's, for example)

To memorize dates, I'll be using the Major system (insert wikipedia link here) which converts numbers into consonants. I've been practicing this for a few weeks and now it's coming pretty naturally. For Mozart (1756-1791), I convert 56 into L + Sh, and 91 into B + T. So leash is 56 and bat is 91. So now I link the name to the dates and I get a couple of castles with Moats filled with a bunch of Leashed Bats.

Now to make my chronological list, I'm going to use the method of loci, one of the oldest mnemonic techniques. I need to design a mental journey with 150 stops. I'm going to do this with the help of a camera, and I think I'll be taking the trip from my bed to the conservatory. If I don't get enough loci, I may leave the conservatory and go to the other building on Singerstrasse, and if THAT's not enough, I may go to Stephansdom. But I found 50 locations just on the way from my bed to the front door, so I might be fine. I've never made one this big, so we'll see how it goes. The method of loci involves placing image markers along the route you've picked. So my first location is my bed, my first composer is Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Because so many composers have the same birth years, I'm going to link the location to the date first, then to any composers during that date. Hildegard is alone for this date, so it's a little simpler. Birth Year: 1098: S P F - so we'll go for high SPF sunscreen. I'm in bed, I wake up and grab my high SPF sunscreen. Name: hildegard -> hilt guard (top part of sword handle). I take the sunscreen and smear it on my hilt guard. Death Date: (My main goal is to do birthdates and names, but we'll do a death date here for fun) 1179 - th g p - The Gap - in my substory about my Hilt Guard, I grab my well-oiled Hilt Guard into The Gap and slay the well-attired staff.

Last step, review and decoding. I need to practice going through my route (1-5 would be Bed, nightstand, robe holder on wall, chair with clothes in front of bed, bedroom door), I need to practice the initial hooks (Bed - high SPF sunscreen), each substory (bed - spf - hilt guard - the gap) and decoding back to useful data (#1 - 1098 - Hildegard von Bingen - 1179). I'll do this in my favorite memory tool, Anki, which will quiz me at regular, manageable intervals and figure out how easy or difficult each part is and adjust accordingly. Given that I have a week off, I might get the major body of the work done (150 coded stories like the sunscreen hilt guard one) this week, plug it into Anki, and get that into my head within a month or so. Once that framework is there, I'll be able to add to it without much trouble (if I want to add some facts about Hildegard, I can put them in at The Gap)

Wee!

As I go, I'm going to make an excel file with the data I'm memorizing and the stories it codes into. Here's where you can join in; feel free to grab the file and make your own changes. While I'm going to be publishing a slideshow of my 150 stop journey, if you want to do this too, you'll probably want to make your own journey (though you're welcome to take the same journey, just start from your own bed, not mine!)