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How to remember everything? How to spend like 5-10 mins daily learning?

Memory palace

This is really powerful method ^wikipedia. You have to build a lot of connections in your mind. You create different stories for each piece of information, and then you can easily rewind from your memory the whole story. In this story, you will encode everything you want to remember. Forever.

The main concept is:

Anchor what you are learning to something easy to remember.
Put this anchor in specific context in your mind.
Build a story around it, make it move, grow, glow or explode. ^{mnemonic-link-system}

To build the entire palace, I recommend you creating a space which you can easily imagine. It can be your school, old library that you visited a lot. It has to be easy to recall, and you don’t visit it anymore. You don’t want to create a new vision of this place at this stage. It should be a place as you remembered it. It can be also something you imagined.

For me, such place is a Greek style building. I’m in the garden that is placed inside the house and there is no roof. House is around it. There is a fountain and 4 doors on each wall around. I imagined it, but it’s not something extraordinary. I probably saw this in a film. The most significant part is to know each part of this place.

This place will be our starting point to our memory. It’s using spatial relationship ^{spatial-relation} to arrange information in familiar environment. So you can just walk through the room and recall all anchors.

Putting obsidian into use

Prepare your palace. Your starting point, so we can anchor new things. I use Obsidian ^obsidian to note and review my memory palace.

As you know, my starting point has 4 doors. Each of them is taking me to different context: programming, language learning or general knowledge that I might need.

Decide on your first door and use it for some context. I will use engineering as a context. Behind the door will be all things related to programming, computer science, math, electronics etc. Everything related to engineering.

We need to remember that the door is about engineering. Let’s create a note and use spaced repetition plugin to review this from time to time. I simply make a note in style of:

The door on the south wall is about engineering.

??

I stand close to the fountain. I look behind and I can see a big door. It is made out of gears, that are all moving. They are connected with cables to computer, and on screen there is a lot of numbers appearing.

Here we come to the most powerful technique that is existing. Instead of remembering one thing, we create a lot of connections in our mind.

It might look like you have to remember much more information. But in reality, you just connect new things to existing ones. Instead of having a linear path that you memorized by repeating it dozens of times, you can know that your south door is about engineering any time you recall computer, numbers, looking behind, gears. It makes it much harder to forget.

Also, it’s already connected to your starting point, so you can easily start from this point and move along the way to recall everything you might need. Additionally, you won’t forget as often, as you will have a lot of strong connections moving along the path in your mind.

Practical example – algorithms

Let’s take a look at my notes:

Computer science is the study of ==[[computation]], [[automation]], and [[information]]==.

??

I can see 3 windows. Behind windows, I can see gears that are spinning, then they are taken, passed further and a big machine is printing labels on each one.

Functional programming is a declarative programming paradigm in which [[function]] definitions are trees of expressions that map values to other values.

??

I come closer to one of the trees and I scream: I declare you the ultimate tree. The tree starts to grow and leaves are connecting with each other, passing their values down the line as I get the number: 0.

A function is a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task.

??

The trees are forming out of many gears. They are squishing and dividing numbers into results.

I create such flashcards every time I try to remember something. Firstly, I note what I need to learn. The definition, or something to list. After that, I start in my mind to move from my starting point towards the engineering doors, computer science. I look around and find a programming place and start thinking how to put a definition of functional programming there.

It’s like decorating the house. You have to think about the story for this piece of information. When I finished with the definition, I realized there is something else: function. I decided to put it in the same place and connect with trees that are build there.

Now I have really strong connections in my mind. I have to make a routine to recall the information. I use spaced repetition plugin. It allows me to review the notes from time to time. You shouldn’t just remember the story itself, but always start from the beginning. With time, it is much easier to jump straight to the exact place, but this exercise is to recall not only this particular note, but also all the connections you created along the way. For example, for function, you go from starting point, through computer science, programming to function. Do not recall only function story as it won’t build strong memory palace.

With time, you will create more and more connections. I also try to connect all the relevant notes in obsidian, so I can easily visualize them in the graph view. I can see what path I need to take to recall some parts.

Powerful memory

Every day I sit down and try to memorize few things in specific topic. You don’t have to force learning a lot of stuff. It’s all about quality of learning and memorizing things for life.

This technique forces you to think about what you are learning. Create connections and put your imagination on a different level. It takes some time when you are doing it for the first time, but right now I can easily spend like 5-10 mins for one term and remember it word by word. Even if it is boring in definition, I have a cool story for it in my mind.