Misconception of Memorization

Proper memorization is a healthy part of learning. After all, memory is required to perform seemingly basic tasks. Sadly, today all memorization is portrayed as a mindless, soul-numbing experience that has an adverse effect on creativity and intelligence as a whole. But as the Supermemo method shows us, healthy memorization can help one become more creative and less dependent on antiquated teaching and testing methodology.

Beyond Mascots & Logos

Even if you do not think of yourself as a "visual learner," we humans tend to think in pictures.

Because of this, (just about) every company creates a mascot or logo to represent their company and/or a good or service they offer.

The more you see a picture of a mascot, logo, etc., the more familiar you subconsciously become with the company they represent.

Companies do not do this to exercise your ability of image association, but to make money.

The more familiar you become with a company and their overall brand, the more likely you are to purchase a good or service they offer.

Thus logos, mascots and images in general have a very powerful associative effect on the mind. Everybody knows this; both the companies designing them and the people consuming them.

If it is acceptable to use mascots to link a sometimes abstract corporate identity with a tangible image for the sole purpose of making money, could not this same principle be used to make abstract information more tangible and appealing for the sole purpose of learning?

I personally think so. For the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting with using various images to make subjects more "sticky," and it's working.

As an exercise I have created "mascots" for countries, scientific principles, elements of the periodic table, major and minor wars, large-scale natural disasters, and different translations of various books. While some of these exercises have been fruitless, the great majority of applications are yielding positive results. Having an image associated with something abstract makes it easy to differentiate that information from a similar concept, person, etc.

I am still experimenting with assigning mascots to stuff, and I have a feeling this will be ongoing. Just know that it is working and its application is much more broad than I initially thought.

To conclude, mascots are useful in linking abstract things to tangible things. Spaced repetition software makes forming and maintaining this link very easy. So, the next time you have trouble keeping two similarly related ideas separate, assign two cool-looking characters to represent those ideas, and use Supermemo (Or whatever SRS you use) to make sure those two characters are never confused.

I've found the "pixiv" Japanese artist community and conceptart.org to be an almost bottomless pit of original artwork and characters. "Pixiv" seems to be a Japanese version of Deviantart. While there are many original characters to work with, you have to deal with and skip over the anime tropes that are too wahjah for your tastes.

Making Historical Figures (And Others By Extension) More Exciting

I enjoy learning about history, but often I have a problem with keeping different historical figures separate in my mind. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates are three different philosophers, but for each of them I imagine a guy with a beard reading a book. Once you learn more about their contributions to history, you can help make them a bit more distinct. For example, instead of Plato being a bearded guy, you can say "Plato is the bearded guy that helped establish the teaching of the trinity among those professing Christianity." While this can be "linked" to Plato, it still doesn't give Plato any visual distinction over the other two philosophers, you only get a bit more information about him.


To fix this, you could go to Google Image search and find various paintings, statues and other depictions of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, but you are likely to find pictures of old guys with beards with only a mild amount of variation. While this might do the trick, my goal is to keep them visually separate in my mind. If you wish to remember how Plato, Aristotle and Socrates were depicted, you could create flashcards saying "Who is this piece of art depicting? [...] Socrates." But if the goal is to keep them separate in your mind, there is something (I have found to be) even more effective to do:

About 5 weeks ago, I found a web site called ConceptArt.org. As the name suggests, it is a web site where talented people post concept art to be used in various movies, animated shorts, games, etc. While some of the concept art is used for an actual product, much of the art never goes beyond the conceptual period. Maybe the game or movie never gets enough momentum to see the light of day, or maybe the concept art is just a creative exercise. Regardless, the ConceptArt.org web site is a treasure trove of memorable looking characters, robots, landscapes, etc. Recently I have been going through their forums and saving pictures of anything remotely interesting I've found. I'm trying to organize them into different folders such as "male characters," "female characters," "robots," "villains," etc. As I encounter a historical figure that I don't know very well or cannot visualize easily, I go into one of those folders and find a piece of cool concept art and use it to represent that historical figure.

While it is certainly unrealistic to think of Plato as a cyberpunk samurai or video game protagonist, the purpose is to make him distinct in your mind. Associating some (even bizarre) sort of picture with someone will keep him/her distinct from other similar people. Also, if you prefer your mental image of someone to be more realistic, Flickr is a very good resource for simple pictures of people. Just search for "male" or "female" and organize them by date posted (You are more likely to get candid and "unremarkable" shots of people). Find a picture that you like and create a topic in Supermemo saying "Who is this guy? Plato." and look at it every day until you are sure you have established a solid enough mental "link" with the two. For me, it has taken anywhere from 3 to 7 days for any given picture-person image to successfully "link."

Some might raise to the objection "Shouldn't you imagine your own image of a person? Why do you have to be unoriginal and use someone else's work?" While creating your own image of someone is a possibility, I have recently begun viewing artwork, music, movies, etc. as potential mental "shortcuts" that I can remix as I see fit in my memory. Someone else has already captured a really neat idea (Picture, music, etc.) through many hours of effort and revision. When you're trying to use established concepts as mental anchors, however, the priority shifts; no longer is originality the most important thing. Instead one's focus becomes the efficient remixing of established concepts in the mind; the "cognitive extension" of the "remix culture" we find ourselves in.

Your past experiences and memories are an essential part (Some would argue the most essential) part of who you are. If you're going to efficiently keep information that makes you a better person (Whatever one considers "culture"), you might as well have fun while acquiring and storing that information by using other people's work.

In conclusion: That guy in red? That is my mental image for Plato. Why? Because it's useful and makes thinking more fun.

Making "Unsticky" Information Memorable (Aside From Mnemonics) - Pseudo Context Involving Novelty and Familiarity

I have found that often I will often get frustrated at information that isn't "sticky" enough to last one or two repetitions in Supermemo. If this ever happens, the first step should be to create a mnemonic, however basic or silly. But what if a mnemonic simply is not feasible? For example, what if you are trying to remember a certain point of foreign language grammar that doesn't easily conform to a mnemonic system? I think I found the answer: meaningful (pseudo)context.


When I wasn't studying Chinese very seriously, I had a hard time recalling certain grammar points. This was partly because I wasn't putting much effort into studying the language, but I was also unfamiliar with the language itself (Individual words and the "flow" of conversation). But a certain piece of grammar cemented itself in my head while I was reading the novel "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami. Although I stopped reading After Dark halfway through, I can tell that Murakami does a very good job at capturing a particular atmosphere and drawing you into it. The characters of After Dark felt like they had depth.


Later on in the book, a Japanese girl that speaks Chinese has a brief conversation with a Chinese girl. While many Chinese example sentences have slipped my mind over time, After Dark's brief Chinese conversation stuck with very little effort. In fact, those same sentences could be in a Chinese textbook and be just as forgettable as any other sentences. But once they are part of an interesting novel, those words suddenly stick in my mind. Why is this? Because I was emotionally and mentally invested in the characters that spoke; thus their words had added weight in my mind. They weren't just sentences, they were words spoken by two characters with a back story.


So how can you convert something forgettable and "unsticky" but important? After all, there will not always be a movie or book that directly addresses the thing you are trying to learn. You are left to create your own context. This is what I've been doing (With Chinese grammar or any unsticky information):


Step 1: Have a folder of assorted neat pictures (Photos/ paintings/ digital artwork/ etc.).
Step 2: Select one picture to go with that flashcard.
Step 3: Passively review that flashcard every day until the word-picture pairing feels familiar.
Step 4: Create a flashcard, making sure that you do not see the picture when being asked the question.
Step 5: Give the flashcard a few weeks to be reviewed, evaluate if the memory link is still there or not.


Why wait until you are given the answer to reveal the picture? If you saw the picture before you tried to recall the answer, there is a risk in you associating the picture with the correct answer rather than the context of the flashcard. That is one of the negative aspects of the Rosetta Stone language software. When sentences become complicated, you associate the answer with a picture rather than what you should be learning. While picture-answer flashcards are useful for nouns, for more complicated or abstract material it doesn't appear to be as effective.


What is the goal of repeatedly viewing a (seemingly) unrelated picture alongside unsticky information? Establishing context, "legit" or not. As you repeatedly view the word-picture pair, you might even create a plot surrounding the information in question.

One ancient proverb says "to the making of many books there is no end." Especially today, information is very cheap. But as Einstein said, "information is not knowledge." Having lots of information at your fingertips doesn't mean anything unless it is meaningful to the reader and is applied in one's life. Therefore, instead of procrastinating by saying "I can't learn this language until I buy this awesome "Sentence Pack ABC" that I've been told I must buy" or "I cannot learn about subject ABC until I go and spend money on a book about it," simply use one of the many free resources online and start dissecting it! Using pictures (And no doubt other media such as movies or music, although I have only tried pictures), information can (and should) be as interesting as it is important. If it doesn't seem interesting, brainwash yourself into thinking it is interesting!

(Theory) The Key To Memory Priming - Decontextualized Passive Review

The reason I began to investigate this methodology is mainly for one reason: English is my native language, but I found it very difficult to learn new vocabulary in English. I was able to learn many foreign language words with little trouble, but not so with English. It is not due to a lack of understanding of  the English language, so why would these words not "stick"? I think I've figured out why, and how to make them (Or any other knowledge) more "sticky."


The following is pure theory; but even if I am a bit off base, I think I am onto something.

Regardless of how good you are at remembering numbers, if you are reading this blog (You have a computer, access to the internet, understand a bit of English), you likely know that the first three digits of pi are 3.14. Why do so many people know this? Obviously we are not all as equally adept at remembering numbers.

What is the answer? Through sheer passive repetition our minds have been primed to remember it. Before you had to remember it for a test, you likely encountered the number many, many times at school, among your friends, on TV, etc. By the time you were quizzed on what pi is, because of so many passive encounters with the number, your memory had been perfectly primed to recall it; regardless of how adept you are at remembering numbers.

Thus, if you want to remember something that you typically aren't good at remembering (A historical date, a number, foreign/native language word, etc.), how do you prime your memory to remember it?

Decontextualized Passive Review


What do I mean by decontextualized? Let's say you have a list of information you want to remember; a list of foreign-language vocabulary words or maybe a list of important years in Chinese history. You can scan down the list and look at each item, but the order that you are looking at them will never change. It would be better to write each individual piece of information on an index card and shuffle the index cards and THEN review them. As you review each item, they will not be sequential or in a predictable order. Thus, you cannot mentally "coast" through the information as easily as you might if it were in a sequence. Obviously you do not want to write each piece of information on an index card, but in Supermemo a Topic is a basically a digital index card that is reviewed passively.

Why should it be passive? Because while you might be able to connect two pieces of information and understand the significance of both (In 1912 the Republic of China was established), one aspect of the information is not very "sticky" for your brain (In this case, the year 1912). If you were to try and memorize the information, you will likely fail to recall it a number of times and it might become a "leech" (In Supermemo, a leech is a flashcard that you have failed to remember five times. It is statistically proven that it will drain your time). But as you (daily) passively see the same information over and over again (Without the stress of trying to "get it right"), very quickly the information becomes more "sticky" to your brain. Obviously using mnemonics will hasten this process a great deal.

Review? As opposed to what? Rather than giving the information a cursory glace, information you are priming your brain to remember requires deliberate purposeful concentration. This only requires a few seconds of your time, assuming the information is not exceedingly wordy (Which would be a violation of
the "20 Commandments of Knowledge Formulation").

I am not recommending "brute forcing" information without any forethought (Like writing a Japanese character over and over again as opposed to using the Heisig system of "divide-and-conquer-through-mnemonics"). What I have been trying for the past month or so has been this: after taking difficult information and making the wording as simple as possible (English vocabulary, Russian and Hindi alphabets, creating mnemonic systems themselves, etc.), I simply look at that chunk of information every day until it no longer feels "foreign" to me. Once it feels this way, I turn it into a flashcard and leave the rest to SuperMemo.

Before I began doing this, certain flashcards would be marked as "wrong" repeatedly and never "get off of the ground" in my mind. Some difficult Japanese characters, many English words, and a number of mnemonic systems (Specifically a system for remembering numbers) were easy to understand but couldn't survive the initial few days of the first review. But once I began daily passively reviewing bits of knowledge, I've been able to learn just about anything I've thrown at it (Mnemonic systems, English words, various foreign language alphabets which I am unfamiliar, just about anything I can think of).

How do you do this? I do not know of a solution with other flashcard programs, but Supermemo allows you to create Topics, which are basically digital index cards that are reviewed passively. Simply create a topic for whatever piece of information you want to remember, and when you see it (After first concentrating on the information), reschedule it (CTRL + R) for the next day. Keep doing this until the information no longer feels foreign when you examine it.

Supermemo is designed to help you remember, not necessarily learn. But by daily reviewing certain information in a decontextualized fashion has helped me "weaken" the difficulty of the information enough that I feel that I can "capture" it in a flashcard (Hence the Pokemon picture).

Again, this is an experiment that I've been playing with for the past month, so take it with a grain of salt. But it has worked wonderfully.

Why Pre-Made Flashcards Are Not Useful (For Now)

Perhaps you have heard of the video game crash of 1983 (Here is the Wikipedia article about it). There were many contributing factors to the crash of the video game industry at that time, but one of them was a market lacking organization flooded with bad quality titles. How could you tell the difference between a good game and a bad one? In an age before the internet, this was much more difficult to figure out.

Right now, pre-made flashcards suffer similar problems. There are many flashcards available from many sources, but curation is practically nonexistent. Will there be good sets of flashcards out there? Yes. Are there reliably good sources that consistently publish flashcards that adhere to the "20 commandments of knowledge formulation"? Not as easy to find.

Why is this? While Spaced Repetition Software has advanced greatly, public acceptance has not; traditional and archaic learning methods prevail and show no signs of changing due to the global institutional dysfunction (Among many other things). In other words, people don't really care because they don't understand that SRS is superior to traditional learning. Also, the public as a whole has not been taught how to properly structure a flashcard. Thus, many of the flashcards that do exist are poorly constructed.

So while there might be a few good sets of flashcards out there, I've found making my own much easier than modifying poorly formulated pre-made flashcards and weeding out unnecessary ones (Which you will likely have to do). It is also easier to personalize your flashcards (Add pictures, reference memories, etc.) right from the start, thus making them more memorable.

Supermemo or Anki?

We live in a very critical and divisive world. We are divided and angered by the most insignificant preferences, be they computers, game consoles, shoes, stickers, what TV shows you watch, the list never ends. Granted not everybody plays into this, but in a media landscape that loves to judge, criticize and point out the flaws in others (Reality TV being one big contributor to this, I imagine), it has become much more acceptable to be angry about things that you don't need to be angry about. The anonymity of the internet doesn't help, either.

With the above in mind, at times, the same kind of pointless rivalry can exist within the world of flashcard systems.

There are many different flashcard systems out there, but two of the bigger ones you will likely see (Especially if you are using it for language learning) are Anki and Supermemo. There are many more (Mnemosyne, Skritter, etc.), but Anki and Supermemo seem to jump out as being the most popular.

Here is a quick list of pros and cons that readily come to mind for Supermemo

PROS
-More features
-Most advanced spaced repetition algorithm*
-More data about your memory than you can shake a stick at
-Incremental Reading
-Sleep tracker integration
-Flexible flashcard creation (Multiple images, sounds, etc.), made to encompass more than just languages

(* By "advanced" I mean that Supermemo 15.0 has been in development for a longer period of time than all other SRS programs out there. Put simply, it has the longest track record development-wise).

CONS
-Ugly compared to the simpler UI we have become accustomed to with modern technology
-Most of the features are lost to most users due to poor explanation, lack of simpler tutorial or lack of interest on the part of the user
-Most of the data about one's memory is not cared about by "casual" users
-Difficulty handling non-English fonts (Although this seems to have changed in Supermemo 15, I can write in Hindi, Japanese and Chinese with no problems).
-Must back up manually

While I have not used Anki for any length of time (I'm already committed to using SM every day), these seem to be the pros and cons as I see them. Just keep in mind I don't know this program very well:

PROS
-Simple(r) to use
-Free of features that some users may consider pointless (Sleep tracking, task lists, etc.)
-Made with language learners in mind (Specifically Asian languages)
-No font problems
-Sync your data through the internet
-Using Supermemo algorithm on the backend (SM-2)

CONS
-Algorithm is older than newest SuperMemo algorithm (Right now the algorithm is SM-15)
-No Incremental Reading support
-Fewer features that some users have grown accustomed to (Sleep tracking, task lists, etc.)

Think of it this way: Supermemo is like an apple, and Anki is like a banana. Both offer nutrition. While one person might prefer one fruit over another, it is better to eat a piece of fruit than a candy bar. Regardless of which you choose, keep this in mind. The effective use of ANY kind of SRS flashcard program is better than ANYTHING the modern education system offers by way of information retention. While Supermemo might have a feature that Anki doesn't, or Anki has a simpler and eye-pleasing style, they can BOTH be effective tools for learning (Especially for languages).

My advice? If you want to learn languages, start with Anki (Or any of the other programs offered online). If you find that you enjoy using Anki and want to try out a more advanced flashcard system, give Supermemo a try. If you want to learn something other than a language (Law, medicine, etc.), start with Supermemo.