Mentat Wiki: Peg System

The Peg System is a MemoryTechnique one where you 'hang' things you want to remember onto 'pegs,' sort of like hanging up a coat.

The main thing about pegs is that they are always the same.

For example, if you've pegged 1 to "Tie", 2 to "Noah," and 3 to "Ma," then you always use Tie for 1, Noah for 2, and Ma for 3. That way, if you're trying to remember what came with 2, you always think, "Now, what was up with Noah?" Because "Noah" means a lot more to us than just the abstract "#2."

In the LociSystem the pegs are memorable locations on a journey. The MajorSystem can be used as a peg system, here the pegs are formed from the images formed from the numbers 00 through 99 (or through 999). In SemCubed the pegs are formed from the numbers 0 through 10000 giving a huge set of pegs onto which images can be attached.

When you have your firmly located peg you then need to hang on it the item to remember. The technique here is to use the LinkSystem to form a memorable link from the peg to the item to remember. This link should use as many good link techniques as possible, using senses, exaggeration, color, size, etc. For more details on how to form strong links refer to the LinkQuickly page.

Discussion

Hello - I have a question which relates to Michael Frink's mention of "mind clutter." I read often and I would like to begin memorizing the publication dates of all the books I have read - and the authors, their birthyear/date, death, birthplace, where they lived, etc. My struggle is to find a logical way to organize it all, but not get lost in the clutter. I don't know if I would necessarily need a journey or palace for them; how can I memorize groupings of links like Author-Birthday-Birthplace-Deathday-Deathplace-Life Residence etc...it seems that as soon as I had two authors which shared a birthyear, I would start melding their month, and day, and on down the list. January = jacket, but how would I know that for Virginia Woolf, jacket is linked to "vein", but for Franklin, jacket is linked to "tail?"...how can I avoid this?! Any suggestions? Thanks.

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I recently started thinking about pegging words as well- not just numbers. However, it's a bit harder to formalize, and thus guarantee consistency, because there are more words than numbers. Well, numbers that we use, at any rate.

I don't know if it's a good strategy or not. The use for pegging words would be for language memorization. It seems to be used by the binding-words-to-city-locations, implicitly.

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I have a few questions... In what situations is the PegSystem most useful? The main use I can see for it is to remember things when you are without pen and paper. It seems that you wouldn't want to use the pegs for long term memory because you want to be able to reuse the pegs to hang other things. Does anyone have alternate sets of pegs for different purposes? When you want to hang something else, is there ever a problem quickly remembering which peg was used last? Any trouble with lingering images when you take something off the peg?

I've been toying with the PegSystem for a few days, with only 10 pegs, and I'm pretty amazed at how well it works. But I've only used it to catch random thoughts, German words I need to look up, and to-do items until I can put them on paper. I'm curious to hear how other people implement it.

-- JasonBlevins? [[DateTime?(2005-04-27T03:20:37Z)]]

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I could see this method being used in association with the memory palace concept. Ussually when some child would like to imagine the places he wants to go he takes a map of the world hangs it on his wall and places pegs in the places he would like to go. It seems that someone could do the same thing in their head for memorization. The first things that cam to mind to me was maybe if I was trying to learn about how to talk about things on the road in a foreign language. I would construct a map of specific things in my head then I would place pegs on the map. If I could not remember where the pegs where then I would also use the linking method to recall with a story the where the pegs went. I would then have a)visual mapping clues & b)clues from a story to help my memory recall for foreign language words on this map. Maybe one could make a story or song in the foreign language as well just to parrallel with the regular version. Throwing some Lurian and Vgotskian theory in actions for the objects would help as well just to apply context to the use of the words.

-- Jeremiah Murray Yourbrain48@yahoo.com [[DateTime?(2005-08-30T22:12)]]

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I find the Peg System to be the most useful of the memory techniques I know. For day to day use I have seven different sets of pegs that I use. I use one for each day of the week for whatever comes up. By only using a peg set once a week it gives your mind time to forget the items that you had attached to the pegs.

I have another couple of sets of pegs that I use for school. These I use for information I need to retain for longer periods of time. How I do this is simple, I upload the information into my brain using the pegs, and then as I walk around, watch tv, wait in lines, I simply mentally review my pegs. It is many times faster than studying out of a book or notes, gets the information into your long term memory faster, plus if you forget something for testing purposes you can always refer back to the pegs. Remember to switch up your pegs often though, otherwise you can end up with what I call 'mind clutter'. This is when you have to much stuff associated with the same pegs and you get confused.

Also remember that almost anything can be used as a set of pegs. Your house can be a peg set, your body can be one, scriptures can be one, the alphabet, and so forth. Anything that you both know VERY well, and that each item is different enough can be used as a peg system. I actually have a friend who uses the seven layers of the OSI model as a peg set. This just goes to show you that almost anything can be used as one.

--Michael Frink

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi I use a Peg system based on 12 scenes. Each scene has 24 pegs. It works wonders

---Joe Bloggs

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