Do you think you can easily learn to memorize the order of a deck of cards in a few minutes? Well guess what, you can!
I’m sure I am far from the only person to read Moonwalking with Einstein and get inspired to try some memorization. It turned out to be pretty fun and eye-opening! One week after finishing the book I was able to memorize the order of a deck of cards in under 10 minutes.
In honor of len(deck), here are 52 thoughts/takes:
The Book
The author (Joshua Foer) is a journalist who covered the World Memory Championships one year and got hooked enough to train and compete in the US Championships the next year...which he won
My biggest takeaway from the book was that the people who do well in these memory competitions aren’t doing well because they have special brains that can retain a lot of information, but because they use techniques that make it possible for anyone to memorize
There were also some interesting bits on how memory used to be an important thing that was taught in schools and valued highly, and it’s since fallen away perhaps more than it should have
It’s true we can look things up on the internet now, but being able to retain important information without having to Google something or check notes still seems like a very helpful skill to have. A trivial example is that you can code faster if you don’t have to look up syntax of different functions and libraries every time you use them. More significantly, if you are trying to make a decision on the spot (in a game, a job, or in “life”), having a database in your head of similar situations to pull from should be useful.
Even if it wasn’t a helpful skill in adult life, it still is certainly a helpful skill in school where you are often tested on what you can remember
That said, the book wasn’t totally clear on what teaching these techniques would look like, and how to apply techniques used to memorize cards and numbers to more complex information like how a cell works or what happened in World War II.
There was also an interesting, but not really connected to the rest of the book, chapter on a famous “savant” who claimed to have synaesthesia, with numbers under 10,000 having a feeling/color/shape to him. He also was famous for memorizing ~22,000 digits of pi. After interviewing the "savant", Foer suspected he was actually just a somewhat autistic guy that had learned memorization techniques
The memory techniques mentioned in the book are designed to take advantage of the fact that we are better at remembering visual data. The basic building block is a “memory palace”, which is a building or place that you know well.
To memorize a list of items in order, you place those items in the memory palace, and picture yourself traversing through it
The second key memorization concept is chunking. If you had to create a unique image for each thing you wanted to memorize, it would be hard to memorize many things in a short period of time. With chunking, you are able to combine multiple items into one image.
The most common chunking approach for cards is called the Person-Action-Object system. For each card in the deck, you assign a person, action, and object to that card. You take chunks of 3 cards, and create an image using the person from the first, action from the second, and object from the third.
The end result is you only need to remember 17 images (plus 1 card) to memorize a deck of cards.
Making PAOs
Coming up with a PAO system turned out to be the hardest part of this whole process. I tried to pick people that fit with the card (which took a long time and probably wasn’t necessary):
Jack’s are all named Jack or close to Jack
Hearts are mostly women
Spades generally have “smooth hair”/a smooth head (Harry Kane, Toby Alderweireld, Eli Dasa, Ozzie Alonso, Harry Winks), whatever that means
A better approach probably would have been to pick a basic category for each suit (ex. Soccer players for clubs, actors for diamonds). Ultimately, once you have your PAOs memorized, I’m not sure it really matters how they were constructed
I also spent a bunch of time making the action and objects fit with the person or the card for most of them. Best examples:
Haim walking around (cuz they’re famous for walking around in their music videos) a bunch of wires (cuz their song The Wire)
Paige Bueckers crowning (cuz Hopkins Royals) a white husky (cuz UCONN Huskies)
Ike Opara sitting on a bench (cuz he hasn’t played in two years)
Sports players with jersey numbers made it much easier for me to remember the numbers of cards, and I can’t think of another easy way of remembering those besides #17
I also used the number of letters in people’s names for a few cards (HAIM, Khan, Musk, Putin, Grimes, Angela, Swiatek, Lifeline)
Picking 52 actions that were distinct enough that I wouldn’t mix them up and were applicable to all of the objects was very hard.
My favorite action is “see-saw launching”, and I probably should have thought of more like that because it’s easy to remember
I ended up using my parent’s house (and the approach leading up to it) as my memory palace, which seems like a common choice
I never really spent enough time memorizing my PAOs, which meant as I was going through the deck I first had to reach into my memory to remember what the PAO of each trio of cards were, and then I had to focus on memorizing the image. I think this made things extra hard
Practice
I did about 18 cards on the first day I started this, and then over the course of a week gradually added in three new cards and practiced until I could memorize all the existing cards in a reasonable amount of time. In total it only took about 10 hours to have it all down
It was hard to decide how much time to spend on each image, because it seems like you will remember it after a few seconds but then by the end you often don’t
It was also hard to decide if I should:
Go from beginning to end, thinking about each image and then moving on, stopping the clock after the last image
Go through the images until around halfway, then review them before moving onto the second half
Go through all images, and then review some before stopping the clock
One thing that helped me remember images better was to try to link them to the place they were happening. if someone is kicking a chair, if I can picture the chair smashing into the wall of that room it makes it much easier to remember. Or I might picture them standing on a table in the room they are in. When I just thought of them as being generically in a room or a driveway I would often forget it.
This could be too time-consuming sometimes, but making the PAO “make sense” (ie giving it context) basically guaranteed I wouldn’t forget it.
Ex: If the PAO was Lebron James shooting Jaden McDaniels or Messi punching Harry Kane, I would picture the former being worried/enraged about the latter overtaking them as the GOAT.
Ex: If Teddy Bridgewater was hugging Paige Bueckers they would be talking about being Minnesota sports heroes
Ex: For PAOs happening on my front door I would think of them as deliveries or as anti-Semitic hate crimes (Ronaldo is shooting at a ham on my doorstep?!? Someone call the ADL)
Ex: If it was something like boring like Tom Cruise sitting on a cricket ball, it was a lot harder to quickly create a narrative and easy to forget
Images involving anything “risque” were much easier to remember, but unfortunately I felt too embarrassed to do many of these
Similarly, if I could make the images feel shocking they stuck in my mind much more. Vladimir Putin is in my basement?!? And he’s hiding behind a huge cup of coffee?!? Wow didn’t see that coming
Connecting images was usually not easy, but almost guaranteed the second image would stick into my head if I could do it. On the rare occasions where Beyonce was followed by Jay-Z in the next room or Grimes was followed by Elon Musk it was easy to think of them looking at each other or something
If I wanted to do a better job, I should have swapped out PAO’s that I tended to forget/had a hard time picturing and replaced them with ones that are more “risque” or memorable. Chopping Block:
Actions: Ventriloquisting (what does this look like for a paddle or a car?), chipping
People: Jack Black, Jared Diamond, Tom Cruise (all boring)
Objects: Wig, Artichoke, “Child”
It seems like I remembered the women much better than the men, but that could be because there were fewer of them and they were more varied in looks and what they do in real life than the men
I would sometimes mess up people that look somewhat alike or have the same profession (ex. Kanye vs Jay-Z, or any of the many soccer players I used), so those would also be logical candidates to change
Ex: Iga Swiatek vs Sigrid: I realize they look very different but something about how I think of them (both cheerful with European accents?) messed me up
Ex: Davinson Sanchez vs Jaden McDaniels: Again they look pretty different but I would mix them (and their spiky-ish hair) up often
I also had a few objects and actions that were hard to not mix up:
Shovel vs Paddle
Cricket ball vs Golf Ball
Car vs Minivan
Punch vs Shoot vs Caning
Pet vs Hug vs Kiss
More Memorization?
After I was able to memorize the deck, I’ve been spending a few minutes everyday trying to get my time down. The 4-minute barrier is within sight!
Have more people run a 4-minute mile or done a 4-minute card memorization? I think it might be the mile which makes me a pretty big deal
There is such a thing as a Memory Grandmaster title that you can obtain by memorizing a deck of cards in under 2 minutes, memorizing 1,000 random digits in an hour, and memorizing 10 decks of cards in an hour
I’m pretty tempted to try to do that but at the moment the part of me that knows how much of a time-suck that would be is winning out
Memorizing digits of Pi would also be interesting since unlike these other challenges, the order doesn’t change. So you can gradually build your way up to however many digits you want to get to
I haven’t spent too much time reading about it, but the most common approach to memorizing digits is called the Major System. Essentially you can take any two digits and form a noun, adjective, or verb from them and then you combine these into images and can get 6 digits from each image you form. Alternatively, you can memorize 100 PAOs, one for each 2 digit combination (which would also give you 6 digits per image).
Final Takes
This was way more fun for me than it had any right being. It was fun both because it was something that I thought would be much harder (or impossible) to do before reading the book, and because it was really enjoyable to let my imagination run wild with the images.
I don’t know how to describe the imagination stuff better, but it was great
I’m not sure that this will make me more imaginative in my everyday life, but it definitely shows me how fun imagining things can be and makes me want to do more
Trying to memorize faster was somewhat less fun for me, because I really enjoyed creating the images and coming up with fun context for them
I also found it somewhat more difficult to retain the shock factor that was initially helpful. Oh Putin is in my basement again? What a surprise.
I don’t know if I can put any of these techniques to use in my real life but I really would like to. I have a terrible memory when it comes to most things, and rely pretty heavily on notes to remember details of what I’ve read or discussed in meetings
Appendix
Here’s my memory palace:
Sam’s front yard (3 blocks away)
Bredesen Park Parking Lot (2 blocks away)
Holetz’s driveway (corner of our street)
Mailbox/driveway
Front Door
Living Room
Dining Room
Kitchen
Porch
Family Room
Stairs to basement
Workshop
Basement TV room
Basement Office
Basement Closet
Basement Booth
Basement Bathroom
Basement Shower
My Diamonds:
Ace of Diamonds: Kanye West eating fish
King of Diamonds: Michael Jackson petting a wig
Queen of Diamonds: Marina kissing a robot
Jack of Diamonds: Jared Diamond looking through magnifying glass at gold bars
10 of Diamonds: Messi ventriloquisting a goat
9 of Diamonds: Lewandowski skiing with/on/using skis
8 of Diamonds: Jared “Vandy” Vanderbilt jumping to reach a mini mini-van
7 of Diamonds: Michael Vick dodging hot dogs
6 of Diamonds: Grimes vacuuming up slime
5 of Diamonds: Putin launching mortars at statue of libertys
4 of Diamonds: Elon Musk loading spaceship with batteries
3 of Diamonds: Sergio Reguilon carving up a ham
2 of Diamonds: PFT (“PFTwo) blending/drinking paint
My Hearts:
Ace of Hearts: Tom Cruise flying on an artichoke
King of Hearts: Caitlyn Jenner driving/crashing into panes of glass
Queen of Hearts: Sigrid punching Norwegian flag
Jack of Hearts: Joe Hart diving at a cup of coffee
10 of Hearts: Carli Lloyd chipping (like kicking over) a car
9 of Hearts: Mina “Nina” Kimes autographing rice
8 of Hearts: Lifeline (from Apex Legends) doing CPR on a package
7 of Hearts: Iga Swiatek juggling tennis racquets
6 of Hearts: Angela (of The Office) putting in her pants a stick
5 of Hearts: Paige Bueckers crowning a white husky
4 of Hearts: HAIM walking around a clump of wires
3 of Hearts: Danny Rose googling dates (fruit)
2 of Hearts: Kamala Harris tazing drugs
My Clubs:
Ace of Clubs: Gareth Bale kicking a golf ball
King of Clubs: Lebron dunking over a scarecrow
Queen of Clubs: Ronda Rousey see-saw launching mouthguard
Jack of Clubs: Jack Grealish wearing on his head jeans
10 of Clubs: Luka Modric peeing on money
9 of Clubs: Nathan “Ninethan” Fielder balancing on one leg on top of a high wire
8 of Clubs: Jan Gregus hammering a nail
7 of Clubs: Heung Min Son hugging a sun
6 of Clubs: Davinson Sanchez reeling in a boot
5 of Clubs: Teddy Bridgewater throwing teddy bears
4 of Clubs: Rashid Khan bowling a cricket ball
3 of Clubs: Jaden McDaniels Swatting/Rejecting a Big Mac
2 of Clubs: Kyle Walker-Peters using the force to lift up Russian dolls
My Spades:
Ace of Spades: Ivo Karlovic serving (on a platter) beer
King of Spades: Jay-Z shooting at a cross
Queen of Spades: Beyonce pushing a child
Jack of Spades: Jack Black making music with a shovel
10 of Spades: Harry Kane caning a cane
9 of Spades: Ricky Rubio doing crossovers with tacos
8 of Spades: Harry Winks hiding behind corn cobs
7 of Spades: Ronaldo spraying statue of himself
6 of Spades: Ozzie Alonso rafting/paddling with a paddle
5 of Spades: Jan Vertonghen setting on fire bikes
4 of Spades: Toby Alderwiereld pointing at an oil spill
3 of Spades: Ike Opara sitting on a wood bench
2 of Spades: Eli Dasa headering a falafel
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