How I learned 1,000 digits of Pi… and what it taught me!
I always loved memory challenges. As a child, I was already nailing the memory game and I liked to remember my friends’ phone numbers. Not long after, studies gave me plenty of new things to remember.
But that was a long time ago… Today, I no longer remember anything. I don’t need to. My phone is damn good at storing phone numbers. It’s even worse at work. I’ve been trying for years to reduce my mental load by writing down everything that crosses my mind — from flying ideas to meeting notes and todos. It’s amazing how much you can live your adult life without involving your memory!
So one year ago, during a quiet and rainy afternoon, I challenged myself to learn the first 1000 decimals of Pi. I was curious about this memory grail for a long time. Time had come to try.
It’s now checked, and I learned a lot during this experience 🤓
A bit of preparation
First, I had to think about the method. You don’t remember 1000 digits without a bit of organization.
Despite my memory games, I had never used any framework of memorization before: I improvised and that worked fine. Phone numbers, for example, reminded me shapes which made them easier to recall. My mother’s one looks like a spiral cone, it is beautiful. On the other hand, things got trickier when the phone number had no identifiable shape. I remained unable to remember it… My girlfriend’s number is shapeless, I have never been able to remember it — which caused trouble in my relationship!
It was therefore impossible to use this technic for such a long series of digits. No, after some readings, I realized that I needed a Memory Table combined with a Mind Palace.
Below are brief introductions in order to understand the whole organization.
The Memory Table
It consists in assigning numbers to people. People are remembered much better than abstract series of numbers. I went further by also assigning each number an action and an object. Basically, this means that I have assigned a combination of person, action and object to each number, from 0 to 99. For example, the number 10 is (i) Zidane, (ii) who juggles, (iii) with a soccer ball.
This “code” generates small stories for each series of 6 digits. For instance, 660110 would translate into (i) my mother, because she lived in French Department 66 for a long time, (ii) plays tennis, because Federer is world number 1, (iii) with a soccer ball.
Once your Memory Table is encoded, all you have to do is remember 167 stories… It’s already much simpler than 1000 digits! But then… How do you remember these stories in the right order? This is where the Mind Palace pops in.
The Mind Palace
A Mind Palace is a place that you know and where you’ll be able to mentally arrange objects to remember them more easily later.
Coming back to my challenge, I arranged each of my 167 stories in my parents’ house, one after the other, in specific places and rooms. For example, I placed the story about my mother on my bed, in my former bedroom.
Finding out digits of Pi then becomes a decoding game: I mentally walk in the house, observe the stories popping one after the other, and decode the digits on the fly.
I added a few more rules not to mix things up while walking in my Mind Palace. For instance, I always moved from left to right. I also positioned 10 stories in the small rooms, 20 in large ones. It was damn effective to double check my progress.
Learnings
This approach allowed me to remember the first 1000 decimals of Pi in… 3 evenings, or about 7 hours!
I learned a lot about my brain during this experience. Below are some findings.
Our brain doesn’t remember everything with the same efficiency
I never realized it before, but remembering a number or a word is harder than remembering a place. Our brain is almost photographic when it comes to memorizing places. Think of your childhood house. I’m pretty sure you can visualize it with an extreme precision. The Mind Palace precisely leverages this pattern.
Encoding is incredibly efficient
With the previous item in mind, it becomes pretty clear that you should take advantage of this pattern when you want to memorize something. In my experience, the initial encoding phase took a long time, but once the method was in place, I was able to learn up to 250 digits an hour.
At first, it felt very counter-intuitive. I had to remember a specific place in my parents’ house, a character, an action and an object, as well as a relation between these and the digits… to remember only 6 decimals. Hell, this was a lot of information. But it is precisely all these related pieces of information that strengthen the memory process in the end!
I remember better in bright and beloved places
Now, beyond these general considerations, I noticed a very weird pattern. It was easier to remember stories that I stored near a window, where there is a lot of light, and in places that I liked as a child.
For example, I was way better at remembering digits in my child’s room, upstairs, full of light, compared to those stored in the attic, which is dark and where I struggled to visualize the characters and their objects. It’s very strange, because it’s all in my brain, and yet the impact is real: I kept doing mistakes in the attic that I didn’t do in my bedroom. My girlfriend told me: after all it’s in your head, why don’t you turn on the light? Smart idea. I “created” a window in the attic to flood it with light, and… Fiat lux, I remember what’s there much better now!
Another example is that I remember much better the numbers arranged in the rooms and objects that I like. Everything sitting around the piano and the playstation is crystal clear, whereas the shoe closet is much more error prone.
The benefits of it is that it’s all in my brain. I can put in there whatever I want. My future Mind Palaces will therefore part ways with reality. I’ll bring light and fill them with things that I love!
I like this random generation of stories
Another big surprise was to be so delighted with the whole process to fill my parents’ house with stories as I progressed through the decimals. I couldn’t wait to see what would be in the next room. I was trying to guess how my characters would evolve and interact one with each other…
I wasn’t simply trying to remember numbers. I was watching a giant story being invented in front of me, digit after digit. I felt exactly as Andy in Toy Story, with his animated toys.
My parents’ bedroom turned out to be a battlefield between USSR and Sponge Bob. Jesus and my brother played in a gig in our kitchen. Elon Musk skied in the fridge… I was going from surprise to surprise.
Memorization can become a way to meditate
In the end, I expected a painful effort, tinged with extreme focus… It was quite the opposite: walking through this crazy house deeply calmed me. I emptied my mind, forgot about the outside world and my problems, to peacefully focus all my attention on my stories. Eyes wide shut, I explored my Mind Palace, happier than ever.
There are still some limits to this whole experience…
First, encoding stories with 3 pairs of 2 digits (character, action, object) means that I need to start at the beginning of a story. Ask me to continue from a random digit and it will prove particularly hard if it’s not the beginning of a given story. My system helped me to optimize my learning time… in a unique and not that dynamic way.
Second, Memory Table and Mind Palace are good at remembering numbers or lists. They are fully inefficient when it comes to memorizing something that doesn’t stick, like a definition or a song. Unfortunately, I’m still as terrible as before to learn poetry! Depending on the use case, you’ll need specific technics of encoding.
Hope that this small story will push you to explore your brain! I’m happy to read about your findings in the comments.
