Practicing my PAO Table

How to practice a PAO memory system: a simple drill

If you have built a Person–Action–Object (PAO) chart for two-digit numbers, practice the code in both directions before trying to memorize long sequences. A six-digit group uses the person from pair one, the action from pair two and the object from pair three. The goal is accurate and increasingly fluent recognition—not speed at the cost of errors.

1. Practice ten code pairs at a time: look at a number and name its person, action and object.
2. Reverse it: look at each picture or word and recover the original two digits.
3. Shuffle the order so the answers do not depend on the chart’s sequence.
4. Combine three pairs into one six-digit scene, then decode it to check accuracy.
5. Record both errors and time; revisit the codes you confuse most often.
6. Only after this feels automatic, place several scenes in a memory palace.

Example: for 71–39–04 using the author’s PAO chart, picture Catwoman (71) mopping (39) a sarcophagus (04). Decode the person, action and object in that order. This article then shares the author’s original practice diary, including long random-number strings and measured recall times; the results are personal observations, not controlled evidence of how fast everyone will improve.

Original PAO practice diary

Over the past five days, I’ve been memorizing my person-action-object table. I spent the first three days placing each PAO in its own loci. I did about thirty numbers each day.

That process went smoothly. On average, it only took about ten to fifteen minutes to encode and recall thirty PAO. Whenever I had a quiet moment, I’d run through the PAO to reinforce my memory. I’d try to identify them in different ways. Sometimes I’d imagine that I spelled the words with the numbers. Other times, the numbers would pop up as I thought of the words. I’d try to visualize the images as clearly as possible.

Next, it seemed important to recall the numbers out of order. I used a random number generator to make practice sequences of digits, usually 162 at a time. I broke these numbers down into 27 lines. Each line had 6 numbers, which I broke down into pairs. From there, I worked out each PAO, like this:
82 86 52
Fiona Fishing Lincoln (Princess Fiona went fishing for a Lincoln)

I didn’t try to memorize the lines. I’m familiar with placing the scenes in a memory palace, but that wasn’t the point of the practice. The goal of these sessions is to make the PAO table more automatic and help with faster recall. I will worry about the memory palace later.

The first set of numbers that I sorted through were:

Time: 11:55

That time indicates how long it took to recall the numbers, not memorize them. Not very impressive, is it? I followed this with a second-round that took even longer: a whopping 12:55.

I continued to go through random sets, but no more than once per hour. Spaced repetition is the most effective method for memorization. It seemed to work. My times throughout the two days improved.

Time: 10:04

The next one went up to 11:21, then 10:50. After that, I started making better progress.

Time: 9:00

Time: 8:50

Time: 7:16

I’m happy with that, for now. When I get under 5:00, I’ll start placing the numbers in memory palaces. But, for a week’s worth of casual practice, I’d say it was productive.

Next: The Memory Palace Technique

Keep practicing the Person–Action–Object system

Review the PAO explanation, check the original chart and flashcards, and learn to store the resulting scenes in a memory palace.