Memory ramblings

A few months ago I started on a new memory training regimen, which I've stuck with very impressively by my standards - every night I memorise 750 binary digits, 234 decimal digits and three packs of cards, as quickly as possible. The intention is to do 234 spoken digits after that, too, but by the time I get to that point I'm a bit bored with the whole thing, and turning my computer on is too much of a temptation to waste time on the internet. Then the plan is to do hour numbers, hour cards and 30-minute binaries at the weekends.

The logic behind this is that I've previously not done much practice for the five-minute disciplines and need to put a bit more work into them, and that getting faster and more accurate in the short term will improve my performance in the longer disciplines too.

I don't know why, but I've always had the idea that I'm better at the longer disciplines than the shorter one. I think I hold the world record in just about every single five-minute discipline, and neither of the hour-long ones, but my gut beliefs about myself are never based on facts.

Anyway, I've been doing this for quite a while now, and it's going well. I'm certainly faster than I have been before. But I'm letting the longer discipline training slide a bit lately, and when I tried a half-hour binary yesterday, it went pretty terribly. I did a half-hour cards afterwards to make myself feel better, and that went more or less okay (attempting 15 packs, and got eleven or twelve right). But I think I need to work on stamina, so the new plan is to do a half-hour binary, numbers or cards every other night, alternating with the speed training.

This increases the time I spend memorising in a night to 90 minutes, including recall time, which is quite a lot. Not that I spend my evenings doing productive and important things of great benefit to the world, but I do like to spend time staring vacantly at the television for hours on end, or chatting on the internet. Still, while I'm still enjoying the memory stuff, I'm going to keep at it.