Remember everything: the roman room method
“Write everything down!” Says GTD guru David Allen. Create a system for a record that you fully trust, and - write everything down!
The advice is excellent, but there is not always a system at hand that I trust. And I do not always trust her. There are situations when neither writing nor reading the written is impossible. On a run, for example. On the verge of sleep. In the bath. During a storm on the deck of a caravel.
In the end, this wonderful system can be lost somewhere.
')
In such cases, you still have to use the head, but not loading it. And the best known way for me to do this is the method of the Roman room. It is also called the Palace of Memory or the road of Cicero.
When I decided to try this method, I expected to find a ready-made recipe on the Internet, how to do it correctly and conveniently, but I did not find it. Most texts only explain basic principles. And not always explained, many authors obviously write from hearsay. The devil is in the details, but silence about them. I did not find the answers to the questions arising along the way, so I had to write them myself. That's always the case.
Please note that first of all I was interested in the organization of time. Rather, notes and memos intended for entry into the traditional system of organizing affairs as soon as it is available.
First of all, the system should allow you to reliably memorize a list of ideas, cases and questions so that it can later be processed and moved to an external repository. Secondly, we need the opportunity to remember things on time, that is, on the right day, even if I can’t hear any reminders on the phone.
Briefly about the very method of the Roman room. In imagination, a room is created (or a road, or just some place). The concepts to be remembered are associated with the elements of this space, with objects in it. After that, for recalling, it is enough to present this room or mentally walk along the road, recalling the associated information. This is the basis of the method, which I changed a little.
I created six rooms according to the number of days of the week, with one common room for the weekend. You can make seven, if you want. Ideas that arrive at the beginning of the day are put into the room of the same day, I disassemble them day or night. If I can return to thinking about them only tomorrow, then I place them in tomorrow's room.
What you need to remember to do, is placed on the eve of the right room, this is understandable. A weekly horizon is more than enough, deadlines are scheduled for more than a week in SmartProgress and on paper.
After a couple of weeks of operation, based on the accumulated experience, I introduced another room - “evening”. This is a short-lived buffer that is cleared before bedtime. There are things that need to be done in the evening of the current day: call in the bank after work, “expensive, buy milk” and the like. Actually, this is not my room. It is a window sill against the backdrop of a wonderful winter night landscape. The evening is the same. A window sill missing. If not enough, then there are too many cases, you need to thin out.
And now to those particulars that I did not find in other articles that worked for me. For example, I refused the recommended movement of a particular route in the room, my rooms are static. But he introduced the concept of surface, which greatly streamlined the process.
The Roman room itself is a room that you can imagine well and feel yourself being there. Should it be real or can it be invented? It does not matter. As you prefer. But if it exists in reality, then it should not cause strong emotions, and if it is invented, you need to immediately think over all the details, remember them and then not to change them without special reasons. Indoors will need surfaces for placing objects - a wall, a table, a rack, a counter, but there should be no objects themselves. Because everything that is not nailed to the room will be the very memories that you want to save.
Spend some time working on the premises. You need to clearly represent only the surfaces themselves, the rest of the room can be vague, as long as the different rooms are not confused with each other. The number of surfaces, select depending on the estimated number of reminders. Remember that a person simultaneously perceives 7 ± 2 objects; therefore, on one surface I don’t risk placing more than five. Personally, I always have two surfaces on a room: a wall and a table or stand. Sometimes a sign hangs from the ceiling.
Imagine yourself in the right room, remember the basic details of the case that you need to remember, think of a suitable object - from a torn toe to a diadem with diamonds - and place it on the surface. Every time you update the list of items remember all that should be there.
Follow the intuition. And at the stage of creating rooms and operating the system. If something stubbornly wants to look not like you think is right, allow it. Do not invent the subject, and take the one whose image first surfaced. I don’t know why one telephone conversation looks like an iPhone and the other as an ancient wall-mounted device with separate handsets. And the third is like a skein of wool. Apparently, it is necessary, I just do not resist. The subconscious mind clearly knows something. Do not strain yourself, after a few days you will find that the system is working, and you will begin to trust it, and it will make even better from it.
I met recommendations to place a potato and a bottle in the room, so as not to forget to buy potatoes and wine. God forbid. Straightness will ruin you, it’s too boring to remember.
Recently began to experiment with nesting. As an additional temporary surface I represent a tray on which ikebana all sorts of small things are laid out. It turned out to be very convenient to create a list of notes to a readable book in the “hung with deflection” position in the metro.
The system we are talking about is not intended for long-term storage. My rooms are emptied regularly, which is why I use detached objects, not landscape elements. If you intend to spend five years in a hermitage and memorize notes to future memoirs every day, you probably need something else. Or the same, but otherwise organized. I will definitely experiment with this method to memorize the outline of a volumetric instruction or something more fundamental, I hope that it will work, but I have not done it yet. If you have this experience, tell us in the comments.
And of course, remember: this is not a duplicate of the recording system, but a crutch in case of its inaccessibility. “A person should not depend on the length of his sword,” said Miyamoto Musashi. And it should not depend on the availability of a notebook, - we add. But when the book is available, write everything down!
Read more of our articles on our blog: SmartTalks
The advice is excellent, but there is not always a system at hand that I trust. And I do not always trust her. There are situations when neither writing nor reading the written is impossible. On a run, for example. On the verge of sleep. In the bath. During a storm on the deck of a caravel.
In the end, this wonderful system can be lost somewhere.
')
In such cases, you still have to use the head, but not loading it. And the best known way for me to do this is the method of the Roman room. It is also called the Palace of Memory or the road of Cicero.
When I decided to try this method, I expected to find a ready-made recipe on the Internet, how to do it correctly and conveniently, but I did not find it. Most texts only explain basic principles. And not always explained, many authors obviously write from hearsay. The devil is in the details, but silence about them. I did not find the answers to the questions arising along the way, so I had to write them myself. That's always the case.
Please note that first of all I was interested in the organization of time. Rather, notes and memos intended for entry into the traditional system of organizing affairs as soon as it is available.
We formulate the problem
First of all, the system should allow you to reliably memorize a list of ideas, cases and questions so that it can later be processed and moved to an external repository. Secondly, we need the opportunity to remember things on time, that is, on the right day, even if I can’t hear any reminders on the phone.
Briefly about the very method of the Roman room. In imagination, a room is created (or a road, or just some place). The concepts to be remembered are associated with the elements of this space, with objects in it. After that, for recalling, it is enough to present this room or mentally walk along the road, recalling the associated information. This is the basis of the method, which I changed a little.
We implement the system
I created six rooms according to the number of days of the week, with one common room for the weekend. You can make seven, if you want. Ideas that arrive at the beginning of the day are put into the room of the same day, I disassemble them day or night. If I can return to thinking about them only tomorrow, then I place them in tomorrow's room.
What you need to remember to do, is placed on the eve of the right room, this is understandable. A weekly horizon is more than enough, deadlines are scheduled for more than a week in SmartProgress and on paper.
After a couple of weeks of operation, based on the accumulated experience, I introduced another room - “evening”. This is a short-lived buffer that is cleared before bedtime. There are things that need to be done in the evening of the current day: call in the bank after work, “expensive, buy milk” and the like. Actually, this is not my room. It is a window sill against the backdrop of a wonderful winter night landscape. The evening is the same. A window sill missing. If not enough, then there are too many cases, you need to thin out.
Details and subtleties
And now to those particulars that I did not find in other articles that worked for me. For example, I refused the recommended movement of a particular route in the room, my rooms are static. But he introduced the concept of surface, which greatly streamlined the process.
The Roman room itself is a room that you can imagine well and feel yourself being there. Should it be real or can it be invented? It does not matter. As you prefer. But if it exists in reality, then it should not cause strong emotions, and if it is invented, you need to immediately think over all the details, remember them and then not to change them without special reasons. Indoors will need surfaces for placing objects - a wall, a table, a rack, a counter, but there should be no objects themselves. Because everything that is not nailed to the room will be the very memories that you want to save.
Spend some time working on the premises. You need to clearly represent only the surfaces themselves, the rest of the room can be vague, as long as the different rooms are not confused with each other. The number of surfaces, select depending on the estimated number of reminders. Remember that a person simultaneously perceives 7 ± 2 objects; therefore, on one surface I don’t risk placing more than five. Personally, I always have two surfaces on a room: a wall and a table or stand. Sometimes a sign hangs from the ceiling.
How to use
Imagine yourself in the right room, remember the basic details of the case that you need to remember, think of a suitable object - from a torn toe to a diadem with diamonds - and place it on the surface. Every time you update the list of items remember all that should be there.
Follow the intuition. And at the stage of creating rooms and operating the system. If something stubbornly wants to look not like you think is right, allow it. Do not invent the subject, and take the one whose image first surfaced. I don’t know why one telephone conversation looks like an iPhone and the other as an ancient wall-mounted device with separate handsets. And the third is like a skein of wool. Apparently, it is necessary, I just do not resist. The subconscious mind clearly knows something. Do not strain yourself, after a few days you will find that the system is working, and you will begin to trust it, and it will make even better from it.
I met recommendations to place a potato and a bottle in the room, so as not to forget to buy potatoes and wine. God forbid. Straightness will ruin you, it’s too boring to remember.
Recently began to experiment with nesting. As an additional temporary surface I represent a tray on which ikebana all sorts of small things are laid out. It turned out to be very convenient to create a list of notes to a readable book in the “hung with deflection” position in the metro.
The system we are talking about is not intended for long-term storage. My rooms are emptied regularly, which is why I use detached objects, not landscape elements. If you intend to spend five years in a hermitage and memorize notes to future memoirs every day, you probably need something else. Or the same, but otherwise organized. I will definitely experiment with this method to memorize the outline of a volumetric instruction or something more fundamental, I hope that it will work, but I have not done it yet. If you have this experience, tell us in the comments.
And of course, remember: this is not a duplicate of the recording system, but a crutch in case of its inaccessibility. “A person should not depend on the length of his sword,” said Miyamoto Musashi. And it should not depend on the availability of a notebook, - we add. But when the book is available, write everything down!
Read more of our articles on our blog: SmartTalks
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/317464/
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