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10x Your Memory The Easy Way - Memory Chunking

6,188 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 18, 2023
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Slog Reference: Improving memory via Chunking

Description

How to memorize everything? The futureIQ podcast episode featuring Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi is all about improving memory and concentration through the technique of chunking. The episode begins with an introduction to the concept of chunking in memory psychology, explaining how it works and why it is so effective in improving memory power. The hosts provide various memory chunking examples and a memory chunking game to help listeners understand and practice the technique.

Listeners can expect to learn how to remember everything they read and improve their memory power through a range of memory improvement techniques, including how to remember numbers easily using memory chunking psychology. The hosts also share a number remember trick that helps you memorize faster and smarter.

Throughout the episode, Navin and Shrikant provide practical tips and exercises to help listeners improve their memory and concentration. By the end of the episode, listeners will have a deeper understanding of how to chunk memory effectively and will be equipped with the tools they need to remember everything they read and memorize faster and smarter.

Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive guide to improving memory power through chunking, making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to boost their memory and cognitive abilities.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Video referred in the episode:
System 1 vs System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:18 A challenge
02:40 Test 2
04:14 Chunks
06:23 Making chunks
08:38 Real life applications
11:11 Stories
13:44 System 1 & system 2
16:10 Importance of chunking
19:20 Deliberate practice
20:13 Rote learning
22:23 Revision

#futureiq #chunking #memoryskills

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Transcript

the more higher level things you can think about and the more higher level problems you can solve so human brains are built so that stories are more interesting to us take neurons that fire together wire together and okay you're just completely ready oh God look at me all right yeah uh srikant I have a challenge for your brain okay I am going to say 12 random digits and I want you to memorize and repeat them or 12 yes okay seven one three two six four eight three nine zero six five go uh seven one three two six four that's about the extent of my memory eight nine nope so you got until it is correct until eight so
um that is you got seven digits correct in fact this is great because what I was going to say next is that average people remember seven digits so congratulations you are average um what we are going to discuss in this episode is uh you know a concept called chunking which uh plays a big role in our memory and by the end of this episode you'll have better ideas of how to memorize things but not just memorize a random memorization but more about learning Concepts okay why didn't I meet this guy in school it would have been so helpful in fact in school well actually we should be taking some of these techniques to school but okay
so um you know there is a well-known research paper by people who study brain and cognitive processes and memory right people who are not average like me so uh it is about one person called SF okay and this person he was an average person and just like me average you he could also remember about seven digits right but over the course of two years he taught himself to remember 80 digits right so someone could tell him 80 digits one after the other just like I did at the beginning of this episode and he would repeat the entire thing back 80 digits yes and then they studied what he did how he did it and they realize this technique this
technique called chunking right okay so for uh you to understand that let us do uh a different set of 12 digits I am going to do okay uh and I'm also going to say it a little differently and you just have to repeat okay okay and okay you're just completely ready for God look at me all right yeah 370 1947 98220 that's it 370 1947 98220 you remember 12 digits agreed what is different there were three numbers for me they were in 12 digits and I mean so if I if I tell you uh like uh 932 466 and 9822 time three seven two six will you remember that the last one a little difficult but uh yes I will I
will not really right the thing is 370. has some meaning to you 1947 has some meaning to you it does and 98220 does it have meaning to you it is the beginning of some mobile number which is in Pune right exactly so because I mean uh if I were to tell you a random five digit number it would be just as difficult as memorizing five digits yes but nine eight two to zero it doesn't take up five digits worth of space in your brain it takes up just one unit of space in your brain oh this this this reminds me of an episode we did on System One versus system two because now that has gone from system to into system
one that that concept of yes those five digits being a mobile number episode reference yes so the important thing is that our brain and now I'm talking about pretty much almost everyone including probably Einstein right can only process about you know five to nine Concepts at a time that's it okay no matter how smart you are you can only handle five to nine Concepts at a time right okay so uh you let's call them units okay uh uh in the research World these are called chunks okay okay so 370 was a single chunk 1947 was a single chunk yes 98220 was a single chunk yeah so when I asked you to repeat those numbers you just had to
remember three chunks whereas the first time when I asked you to remember 12 digits you had to memorize 12 chunks and that is beyond the five to nine limit that is beyond the limit right so uh I mean if everybody can just handle seven to nine chunks right what makes some people smarter what makes some people's memory better what yeah what what does how basically the number of chunks you can process at any time is limited but the number of things that can be chunks is pretty much Unlimited right yeah actually because so if you told me the number nine eight two two zero eight nine nine two zero I don't know whose number that is but if it is
yours terribly sorry I mean it's something a number I know right and that's why that entire 10 digits is a single chunk for me your phone number is a single chunk for you because it is 10 digits correct um so because at that point I'm not thinking of it as a 10 digit number I'm thinking of it as one phone number which belongs to me exactly and this is true not just with numbers right it is true with words it is true with Concepts it is true with history it is true with sociology it is true with uh physics that actually explains how we are able to remember entire poems but sometimes find it difficult to write like a single
sentence in an essay right the so how does something become a chunk huh how try to think of the previous episode we had system two versus system one right by repetition and doing it constantly or yeah yes so I mean normally if uh you know something new your encounter your system to front of your brain the modern brain right that is the one that has to handle it and that's the one that can only handle nine Concepts at a time correct correct but if you repeat something enough if you revise it again and again and again what happens is that the lower layers of your brain there are neurons there connections form between those neurons to a point where that
entire chunk gets attached to one neuron or one set of neurons and it goes down in memory right so think of it as converting something from software to Firmware right that's one for all the software Engineers out there you will you will be able to understand it immediately yeah so that's what is happening you repeat something enough time so probably that number is around maybe you know 300 in some cases you know 30 40 in some cases that's why you were made to repeat all of that right so because when I ask you 7 times 8 like a calculation yeah 56 is just there in your memory it's instant yeah yes um so chunks go into the lower layers of your brain
through repetition okay and once there is a big thing is a chunk now it can be processed it takes up only one unit in your brain whenever you are doing any thinking or logic or problem solving yeah that's actually what I did I took three seven zero as one chunk I took one nine four seven as another chunk and I took nine eight two to zero as a third chunk so I only had three chunks to work with right no also by the way now I need want to shift Focus away from memorizing random sequences of digits I mean that's a useless thing right nobody uh wants to do that that's not of any use unless you
want to be on TV yeah that's that's essentially what I was going to point out you know for in your regular life I mean you know you want to be a software engineer you want to be a historian whatever you want to be the more chunks you can uh the more chunks you create the more higher level things you can think about and the more higher level problems you can solve so chunks of chunks of chunks of chunks yes that's the other thing I wanted to point out which is that initially single units become one chunk but you can create chunks of chunks right and the chunks of chunks of chunks so that one chunk might
actually be like a big tree this chunk is made up of these three chunks and these three are made up of these five each and so on so that's the secret of this SF guy what how he would remember those 80 digits uh 80 digits yes he did was that he created lots of chunks related to numbers right so uh date of birth of somebody he knows becomes like an entire eight digit chunk eight digit okay huh yeah two two and four degree mm he was a marathon runner right and marathon runners are quite obsessive about their Marathon running times yeah so one one Marathon one running time is typically about six digits right so five
or six digit two hours 12 minutes and 37 seconds so you know that's another so for example a particular sequence if it just happened to match that you know oh this is my sister's birthday and a really fast marathon time so he would imagine his sister running that marathon in that side something like that and now his memories 12 digits as one chunk 14 digits as one chunk right so and he spent two years creating all these chunks in his brain okay right so the chunk creation is a major part of learning yeah that suddenly makes starts making so much sense now uh there is there is there is now A Renewed appreciation for some of the root learning we were made
in school so it's not all of it I still hate a lot of the root of learning so uh uh the thing is that creating chunks is an necessary part of any learning okay now what we do in our schools is that we do the process of creating chunks very badly okay because if you have are just told to memorize the sequence of a random sequence of uh five digits right like four three nine six eight and I just keep repeating right so it's like painful and boring repetition yeah right but if I tell you nine eight two to zero when I first came to Pune from the US I went to the shop and this
was the mobile number I got right now there is a story associated with yes and human brains are built so that stories are more interesting to us we remember stories easily right I mean the same student who cannot uh tell you about write the history essay can spend two hours giving you in detail the story of the movie he saw right so uh stories are important right and that's what we do wrong I mean the repetition the root learning should be associated with stories should there should form a narrative yeah should make sense as a whole right learning is very useful but we don't do that in school we just you know we get rid of the story and just
tell them to memorize the sequence that oh this this event happened at this date and history this event happened in this day this event happened in this state yeah right the same thing if it is in a Bollywood movie you would remember everything because you know there is a Shahrukh Khan or somebody telling you the entire story of why this date is important that's it multiplication tables cannot have stories associated with associated with them those need to be learned as is like you can't really make stories with multiplication tables anyway but yeah I still want to get away from numbers okay this is not just about uh numbers okay I get it yeah about even say video editing
you want to do video editing yeah you have to form chunks of how to understand videos how to do editing how to use that particular software example shortcuts on your keyboards that you use regularly and especially with video editing I'm sure a lot of you video editors out there will uh recognize this and uh the person behind the camera also yeah uh you this the pace the speed of video editing happens only after you have mastered the shortcuts yeah and that is what we know as muscle memory but muscle memory is just when you think about it another form of chunks exactly yeah memory it's just moving to system one right yeah and why is this important I
mean we covered this in system two system one episode but let me give a brief short absolutely please please our brain thread the outer part of our brain which is system two which is what developed later what humans have that you know lizards don't right that is slow and limited right it can handle its only five to nine Concepts and its reaction time is 0.7 seconds okay whereas the lower part of our brain the lizard brain uh right that is so old it is extremely fast it can react in point one second but it doesn't it is not software right it doesn't pick up new Concepts immediately it has only hard-coded things in there and the only way to hard
code new things I mean it's firmware not Hardware only way to hard code new things is when you repeat the same thing again and again it clashes in BIOS it could either be a sequence of items to be memorized or it could be a sequence of actions you take right and that goes into the neurons the neurons get connected neurons that fire together wire together okay I didn't make that up this is like a well-known line from cognitive theory I didn't know that's right it's a novel thing for me I'm going to enjoy it but what happens is oh okay sorry I said 0.1 second but really the speed is 0.03 second that's okay way quicker yeah that's way quicker
and that uh let's fire together wired together no but sorry the 0.03 second is for actual Hardware right as in if there is if I poke through that moves away yeah that can't be changed right correct no amount of learning is going to fix that but the middle system the mammal system limbic system which has about a point two seconds uh response time that is the one that can be trained through uh repetition right okay and two things there one is it is much faster so you can get things done faster yeah also there is really no I mean practically there isn't a limit on how many things you can push down there with enough
repetition right uh let's uh I mean I want to give another example okay uh of why this chunking is important okay try to think back on the first time you learn to drive or ride a cycle or ride a cycle or a scooter right so basically what you had to do uh is that um everything your system to brain had to think about okay I have to hold the wheel if I have to turn it like this oh oh I mean I need to press the accelerator yeah but which one is the accelerator right foot is the accelerator all of that right and each of those is happening at 0.7 seconds yeah response times and that's why you
can't drive right or at least you can drive straight because that doesn't require changing anything but as soon as you need to turn you completely mess up because it handles this as well as the accelerator and the break and you can't do it yeah but then you practice you do it enough times and that whole thing becomes a chunk right a turn becomes a chunk which consists of I turn the wheel this much I let go of the accelerator I press the brake then I let go of the brake I also change the gear right all of these like there are six different actions here that become one chunk yeah right and now you can do the turn easily but
still that that stage two of your driving right stage two you are still having I mean you know you have to focus on the driving you can't do driving and talking at the same time right better not then you continue doing that and then you become chunks of chunks right so you can go over a speed breaker which is a chunk of like five different actions involving changing gear changing speed and all that correct and at the same time you can also be aware of this scooter which is suddenly going to come like this so you can avoid that handling this and so on right so now you're at the text level right because now you have found chunks of
chunks yeah and then if you continue practicing then you will you know become Schumacher sir Lewis Hamilton yeah references can be dated it's okay so the more you practice the higher level chunks you form yeah which means you can do more sophisticated more complicated things right make sense makes sense I want to um so stage one of your driving was being handled by the cortex of your brain the upper part yeah stage two and three are being handled by the limbic system which is what you know all the mammals have okay uh right and the brain stem is things that were hard-coded in us from like the times of the lizards and that handles things like if suddenly
something pops up here you will swerve without even having to think about it so basically uh if I want to get really good at something I have to make sure to practice it so much that it goes from the cortex to the limbic system correct and possibly maybe to the brainstem I don't think anything goes to the brainstem but yes one more thing that is important is a concept called deliberate practice we'll do a separate episode on deliberate practice it's extremely important because becoming an expert in any area requires about you know five to ten thousand hours of deliberate practice so we will talk about that but if if by the time you are hearing this watching this
we've already done that episode then you will find that in the show notes if we haven't then we'll make sure that we put it in the show notes when we have done it so don't worry about it um point is that the first thing that you were practicing which became a chunk then you have to stop practicing that it's already a chunk now you have to practice the next level to make chunks of chunks and when that becomes a chunk now you have to practice the next level so deliberate practice means that what you practice needs to change depending on what chunks have been formed hmm that actually makes sense when you think about it but but
tell me Naveen yeah uh what we've been discussing so far sounds perilously close to the rote learning that schools practice and I remember you began by saying that root learning is not a good practice Yeah so no so you can sell basically there is good road learning and bad Road learning right so let me no say it differently when the practice is bad then we call it root learning when the practice is done properly in the correct sequence with the correct context with the right story around it or maybe part of a fun exercise right then it just becomes practice right then let us call it root learning right yeah I mean I mean rehearsals for you plays
and dances are good practice yes talim right exactly and similarly driving practice no you didn't call it root learning I'm doing root learning of my car today or when learning to ride a cycle wasn't wrote learning to write just learning to write a cycle football I mean see again if it's you learn football by you know you play football with your friends huh and then once in a while you go back and you do some practice drills but then you go back and play football right whereas School Road learning is like from the for the next six years you are only going to kick the ball at that one and then after six years I will let you play
football yeah understand the difference between root learning and practice Yeah massive difference now I get it I get it I agree with you yeah so yeah we there is there is a lot about Road learning that uh I'm sure Naveen has to talk about will probably consider doing another episode on it we've again done it already find it in the show notes and description uh but yeah that's fascinating man improving memory through chunking so I I am actually going to try going back to those 12 digits and see if I can chunk them into meaningful uh bits and see if I can remember all of those 12 again just next episode I will ask you
there's one more concept I want to cover before we close okay which is that when you are practicing or revising it's again one problem in school is that they make you revise you know at the same interval every time but that's not how our memory Works initially Auto revise very quickly and then later on you have to keep increa you can increase the gap between your revisions so that's a different concept called space repetition which is a much more efficient way of memorizing and revising which wow it's a different episode wow so there is chunking there is deliberate practice there is space repetition and we've only covered one of these three we cover the other two in two other
episodes but for now I think my brain needs a break thank you Naveen and I'm already trying to remember what those 20 visits were yes this is future IQ thank you