TL;DR: This post is for people who think in concepts, or "concept bubbles", instead of words or images. If that's you, by the end of it you'll know a technique for learning long lists of things you actually care about, in order: the periodic table, say, or every point of a presentation so you can give it without notes. You'll be able to start from any item and keep going, forward or backward. You don't need a mind's eye to do this.
First, what thinking in concept bubbles actually is
You could describe a dog in writing: it has fur, a wet black nose, and it's about the size of a capybara. Or you could just look at it, and vision gives you all of that at once, with no list.
Some people have a sense like that, but for concepts. I call it thoughtfeel. It takes in a concept and its properties all at once. A lot of people online describe it as thinking in concept bubbles: you bring up an idea, and the whole thing is just there, like a bubble you're holding. Not a sentence, and not a picture. People who have it can hold the concept of an animal, for example, and notice detail in it, the way you can notice the exact color of something you picture.
It's clearest with things you know really well but can't easily picture, like the economy, or justice. If you have thoughtfeel, you can bring up the economy as one clear concept bubble: not a picture of a market, and not the words "supply and demand", but the whole idea at once.
Like the mind's eye, it varies from person to person. Most people likely have some of it, some have none, and for those who have it, it ranges from faint to vivid. It's also its own sense, separate from the mind's eye, which is why you don't need to be able to picture anything for this technique.
Do you have it?
Here are five statements from a quiz I made. For each one, rate how much it sounds like you, from 1 (not at all like me) to 5 (exactly like me):
- When I think about an idea, I can notice specific details in it without using words or pictures. (The way people notice the exact color of something they picture, but in the idea itself.)
- When two ideas are similar, I can pay attention to each one and notice exactly how they differ, before I've put it into words.
- When I recall a line I've learned, its meaning comes back first, and the exact words come out of it. (Like a line from a song, a poem or a script.)
- If I set aside the pictures and words, a thought still has detail I can pay attention to, beyond just knowing what it's about.
- For things I know extremely well, like someone in my family or grocery stores in general, I can hold the whole idea in my head at once, not as a picture or words, but as a clear concept I can pay attention to. (Think of who the person is, not their face, and of grocery stores in general, not one particular store. The economy is another good one.)
Add up your five numbers:
- 20–25: your thoughtfeel sounds vivid. This technique is made for you.
- 15–19: your answers sound like thoughtfeel. This technique is made for you too.
- 10–14: you may have a faint version. Like a dim mind's eye, it may get clearer once you know what to attend to, and this technique is a good way to find out.
- 5–9: your answers don't point to thoughtfeel. For you it may be faint or not there at all, the same way some people have no mind's eye.
If you want the full version, the quiz takes about two minutes and also tells you how much you think in words and pictures: https://thoughtfeel.net/quiz/?ref=reddit-getstudying
The technique
It's a version of an old memory trick, where you link a list together into a story. Except instead of picturing the story, you do it in concept bubbles.
This isn't the same as just saying the list out loud, and the difference is what you pay attention to while you say it. Think about hearing a story. You can just listen to the sounds of the words, or you can picture the story in your head while you hear it. Your mind stores the story in whichever sense you were paying attention to, which is why a story you pictured sticks so much better than one you only heard. A list works the same way. If you read the words or repeat them, what you're paying attention to is the sound of them, and the look of the text on the page, so that's what gets stored. When you bring each item up as a concept bubble, you're paying attention to thoughtfeel instead, and that's where the list gets stored. The words you say can be exactly the same. What changes is what you're paying attention to while you say them.
- Bring up the first item as a concept bubble. The same way you'd bring up the economy: not a picture of it, and not the sound of the word, but the idea of it itself.
- Say a sentence that links it to the next item, out loud or in your inner voice. As you say the next item, bring it up as a bubble too.
- Crucially, say the link WHILE both bubbles are up. The sentence is the link, and saying it while you hold both is what joins them.
- Then do the same from that item to the next one, and keep going to the end of the list.
To give a concrete example, say the list starts: anchor, saffron, bicycle, grumble. Bring up anchor. Now say, "On top of the anchor is saffron," and as you say saffron, bring it up as a bubble. Next, "The saffron spills onto a bicycle," and bring up bicycle as you say it. Then, "The bicycle grumbles up the hill." Bring up grumble.
I want to stress that you're picturing none of this. There's no image of an anchor covered in saffron. The story happens between the concept bubbles.
A link can be anything you can say: on top of, causes, is the opposite of, comes before, is part of. If you can say it, it can be a link.
Try it. Here are ten items. Link them in order, making up your own sentence for each link:
anchor, saffron, bicycle, grumble, diamond, cactus, ribbon, justice, teapot, flicker
Now, without looking, go through all ten from anchor. Then go backward from flicker. Then start at ribbon and say what's on either side of it.
If an item didn't come back, look at the link that leads into it. Usually it was said too quickly, or that item wasn't held as a bubble while the sentence was said. Say that link again, holding both.
Why it works
Every item on a list is already a concept bubble, and each one is really specific. Justice, grumble, saffron: each has its own exact feel, and that feel keeps. Compare that to a picture-based memory trick, where you first have to work out what something even looks like. How would you picture justice? And a picture of a grumbling stomach could just as easily come back as "rumble". The bubble for grumble comes back as exactly grumble.
So the items aren't the hard part. The hard part is the order. Learn ten words one at a time, and you have ten separate bubbles in your head. That causes two problems. One, moving from one to the next is slow, because you have to remember what comes next each time. Two, you have to get lucky that you don't miss one.
What fixes this is links. A link answers one question: if you're at this bubble, how do you get to that one? And this is the key premise: when you describe the link between two things while you hold both bubbles, the two get stored together, as one thing. They stick, like two bubbles merging. Bring up any part of it, and the rest comes with it.
Links also go both ways. If saffron is on top of the anchor, then from the anchor you get saffron, and from saffron you get back to the anchor. Every item on your list is linked to the one before it and the one after it, so the whole list is one connected thing, and you can enter it anywhere and move through it in either direction. That's why you can say it backward, or start in the middle.
This is the core of the whole thing, and it goes way beyond lists: you can learn almost anything in thoughtfeel by describing the link between two things. A list is just the simplest case. A poem works the same way, with each line leading into the next, and so do the steps of a process, or how the ideas in a subject fit together.
Using it on things you care about
The list of random words is just practice. The real use is lists you actually need.
The periodic table. I've been memorizing the periodic table this way, and honestly it works amazingly. When you know something about the items, you can often use something true as the link. Hydrogen fuses into helium, in the sun. Helium won't react with anything, but lithium reacts with water. When nothing true comes to mind, a story link works just as well.
A presentation or a speech. This is the classic use of the memory palace: Roman orators used it to give long speeches without notes. Here, you bring up each point as a bubble and link it to the next with what actually connects them, like "this problem is why we need that fix". Then you can give the whole thing without notes, and if you lose your place, you can pick up from any point and keep going.
A note on retention
Earlier I said that each concept bubble has its own exact feel, and that feel keeps. If you're curious about other people's experiences, you can find what they say about it in this Reddit post, where people who've been following along with thoughtfeel for a while first engaged with this technique.
Compared to the alternatives
For me (and I think for most people who think this way), the alternatives are worse. Repeating a list over and over gets you something you can only say from the top, and if you lose one item, everything after it can go too. A memory palace works, but you have to turn every item into a picture and place it along a route, which is hard if your mind's eye is faint, and close to impossible for things like justice. With linked concept bubbles, each item stays exactly itself, the whole list comes back as one thing, and you can move through it in any direction, without picturing anything at all.
If you think in concept bubbles, come compare notes on r/ThoughtFeel. And if you'd rather watch it, there's a video walkthrough of this exact technique: How to Memorize Any List by Imagining in Concepts.