How I memorised Pi (to 100 decimal places) in less than 2 hours

The alternative title for this could also have been something along the lines of "How I learned to stop hating repetition and come to love the automaticity bomb". It's a bit of a nerdy stretch joke, but dang it, this is my post and I'm playing by my rules.

First, let's set the scene: I have always felt that education SERIOUSLY lacks in the area of memory and study habits. This, of course, stems from my failings as a kid (as if it were somehow my fault as a snot-nosed teen who thought that types of pasta did really grow on trees thanks to a BBC April fools video). My school nor any other schools for that matter, taught kids how to put information correctly or efficiently in the brain, train it, and then use it. What I thought should be the starting blocks of education, was seen as something ethereal and relegated to late night shopping commercials (every seen the late night ad for MEGAMEMORY?) Anyway, I digress. Needless to say, I think encoding memory (putting it in your brain) is fundamental. I tested this out when I went to Argentina and tried to learn Spanish, but that is another article. A very cool article. Filled with meat.

So, as a 2017 goal, I set Pi to 100 digits. Having no expectations nor targets, I just went for it. It took me about 45 minutes to encode it (effectively getting away from paper). Using training methods over the period of January, I trained this memory and refined the process. I would maybe practise 2 or 3 repetitions when I fancied (a total of a whooping 6-8 minutes) and that was not every day. I'm lazy. It was more like 2/3 times per week. The result is that I can now produce the number as a breeze-like performance of approximately 30 seconds. Take a look at the videos and you can see the improvement from 3 minutes for spoken recall all the way down to 30 seconds. That is my version of a humble brag.

How I did this is somewhat secret (I'm selling my secrets to some exclusive people) but most of this knowledge is out there. Very few secrets exist nowadays. It's the recipe, consistency and suitability for the individual that make it work. But on to the secrets!!

Most memory people would use something called 'the major system' to convert groups of numbers into pictures and then use those easily remembered pictures to do the job. I thought this system needed my touch. I searched for the most commonly used letters in English and preferred to use these rather than the complicated major system. Who wants to learn a system just to remember something else. And there isn't a hell of a lot of logic upon perusing the system. Another point is that I left vowels (a,e, i....you know what, if you don't know what vowels are, maybe start there before reading this, wow I sound condescending, it's concern! I promise). Vowels can change a word remarkably more than consonants. P + N could be pin/pen/pan/pun/upon etc. but I+N is IN. Finished.

I successfully encoded it in 45 minutes. I then spent the next month only doing it once or twice, if I had managed to remember it. Hence in total I barely did 2 hours. Let's say I spent a total of 3 hours over the space of a month. Easy peesy.

Things to consider when learning anything:

• you should be trying to forget and failing, rather than trying to remember and failing
• sleep helps memories form. A 50 repetitions one day isn't as useful as 5 per day over 10 days. (think of it like food, give the brain time to digest it instead of getting indigestion)
• focus on quality (video your attempts, go through, check accuracy)
• make it memorable by making it fun, personal, emotional, social or even sexual (the mind remembers exciting things)
• don't work hard, work smart.

This may seem like a waste of time, you might say . Well, I get one of two initial reactions. Number one is "Why would you need that? What the hell was the point of that?". Number two is "That's awesome!". If you said the former, no amount of logic can make you appreciate it. If you would say the latter, then you are my kind of people. Because we can. To set our mind alight with the passion of exploration of mental limits. Along the way, we can map out good practices. I have refined my process even more. To be applied to ANY skill acquisition, be it learning instruments, public speaking or language learning. Until next time.