I know most of you are not into this stuff and don’t get it. That’s ok. Trust me when I tell you that I learned this stuff on my own when I was 17 years old after a year of research. I’ve never looked back or regretted my decision to learn this stuff. I think that if you’re smart, you’ll seriously consider it. I also think that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. 🙂
Memorizing drinks isn’t just memorizing lists of ingredients. It’s also memorizing endless varying amounts. Even “formula” drinks using drink category rules have exceptions, and sometimes it seems that there are just so many exceptions that it’s as if there aren’t any rules at all.
If you want to start learning Mnemonics on my MeWe Page, follow my page on MeWe — MNEMONIC BARTENDING PAGE — https://mewe.com/p/mnemonicbartending
How to Memorize 1½ (can be cups, ounces, gallons, whatever you want.)
This is a simple concept piece using this one focused example. I’ve met other people who’ve learned some mnemonics, but who’ve stopped short of the Major System’s number memorization system because they thought it was way too hard or their attention spans were too short. The reality is though that there ARE only 10 digits: zero through nine. All other numbers are combinations of those ten digits. Enough of that. Let’s get started now on 1 1/2 in all of its wonderful easy complexity (once you learn the system — OR not — my method for the ounces and fractions of ounces will still work even if you don’t learn the whole system.
There’s a mnemonic technique (mnemonotechnique) known as the Major System for numbers. The system represents the number 1 with the T, D, or Th sound. It represents the number 5 with the L sound. So the consonant sounds of the word ToTaL translate to 115. We don’t want 115 though, we want 1.5 (1½). Fortunately the wonderful little “.” if we think of it as a dot instead of a point or a period has the sounds “D” and “T” (DoT) built right in, so I can use the middle “t” sound in ToTaL to represent 1 DoT 5, one point five, or 1.5 (1½).
By the way, so I don’t neglect to inform you, the Major System works phonetically, not strictly by the letters, but by the sounds the letters make. That’s why F and Ph sound the same and both mean “8”, and why “Tattle” even though it has two “t”s in the middle is only 115 and not 1115 – because the middle sound is only one “t”. For “Total” I just imagine a cereal box (Total Cereal) and can put my ingredients that are 1½ oz on the box (or in the box), as many as I need.
That’s great… but what about recipes for which a cereal box is too boring and just doesn’t “pop” out in my recall Maybe it gets too busy in my mnemonic and the box of cereal doesn’t fit the narrative of my elaborative encoding, aka my story that helps encrypt and compress my recipe? Here’s where a person instead of an object can help make things easier.
I can also use a person who is a Tattle-Tale (just the tattle part). Someone I knew and despised for always tattling as a child. I can set that imaginary long lost Tattler loose into my recipe recollection mix and I’m able to remember my elusive recipe ingredient amount in a snap! My little tattle fits the bill for just about all snitch-bitch types who love getting people into trouble snitching. So I can substitute the original tattle tale with anyone else who fits the bill.
One further point here is that in today’s connections to speed and strengthen memorization and recall we use a the Major System along with the PAO System1 (Person, Action, Object). It’s good to build your tools in sets of three as convenient when needed. I built the “Total” box of cereal as a tool “object” but saw a need to add a person or action. That person became the tattle. Tattling is also an action (verb), but I wouldn’t use it because it isn’t visual enough – I couldn’t picture it easily. If I want to run through a large list of words to help me find a suitable memorable “Action” word to represent 115 (1.5) I can go to major-system.info website to give me some help — and indeed, if you head over there, you’ll see both “total” and “tattle” listed. Not much for any action words though, so I’m not going to lose any more sleep over it. Person and object are enough for now.
So let’s welcome Tattle to the tool box for the next time we need to memorize a drink recipe we can’t be sure is 1½ oz and not 1 oz.
THE CURRENT LIST OF RESOURCES I’M USING TO TEACH YOU MNEMONICS — I HAVE BEEN USING AND DEVELOPING MNEMONICS SINCE 1975.
Barbara Oakley PhD “A Mind For Numbers”
Barbara Oakley PhD, Terrence Sejnowski PhD, Alistair McConville “Learning How to Learn”
Scott Young “Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career”
By Dennis Congos “9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory”, University of Central Florida
Manuel Mertens (Brill’s Studies In Intellectual History 283) “Magic And Memory In Giordano Bruno ‘The Art Of A Heroic Spirit’ — Brill (2018)”
James B. Worthen and R. Reed Hunt “Mnemonology ‐ Mnemonics for the 21st Century”
Frances A Yates (Selected Works) “The Art of Memory” — Routledge (1999)
Sjur Midttun “Mnemonics Memory Palace. Book One And Two.: The Forgotten Craft Of Memorizing And Memory Improvement With Total Recall (How To Build a Mnemonics Memory Palace 3)”
M.A. Kohain “The Art of Memorization: The Exclusive Guide to the Development of a Genius-level Memory”
Douglas Griffith “1_4 A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON MEMORY ENHANCEMENT: THE POTENTIAL AND RELEVANCE OF MNEMOTECHNICS FOR MILITARY TRAINING”
Anna Maria Busse Berger “Medieval Music and the Art of Memory”
Howard V. Hendrix “The Art of Memory”
J. A. Hiddleston “Baudelaire and the Art of Memory”
Joan Gibbons “Contemporary Art and Memory”
Jocelyn Harris “Jane Austen’s Art of Memory”
John Burt Foster “Nabokov’s Art of Memory and European Modernism” Princeton University Press
George Johnson “In the Palaces of Memory”
Edward Jones “24 Methods for Improving Your Memory: Simple techniques to improve memory and master the art of remembering things.”
Klein “Major PAO system”
J. Schmidt “Zettelkasten als Uberraschungsgenerator”
Ralph Omholt “MASONIC RITUAL MEMORY TECHNIQUES”
Dr Anthony Metivier “How To Build A Memory Palace Review & Memory Palace Worksheets”
Paolo Rossi “Logic And the Art of Memory”
Anupam Datta, Lorrie Cranor, Saranga Komanduri, Jeremiah Blocki “Spaced Repetition and Mnemonics Enable Recall of Multiple Strong Passwords”
Vera Ella Woloshyn “Using Elaborative Interrogation To Help Students Overcome Their Science Misconceptions”
Foster, Basil “Speed Reading and Memory Training Super Skills”
Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas “The Memory Book”
Harry Lorayne “The Complete Guide to Memory Mastery”
DOMINIC O’BRIEN “How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week: 52 Proven Ways to Enhance Your Memory Skills”
BLAIR KASFELDT “Killer Advantage: The Gambler’s, Magician’s and Mentalists Guide to Easily Memorize Discards and a Deck of 52 Cards in an Hour!”
ADAM BROWN “Memory Palace: How To Remember Everything You Learn; A Guide To Learning With Unlimited Potential”
CHARLES B. JAMEUX “Memory Palaces and Masonic Lodges: Esoteric Secrets of the Art of Memory”
TONY BUZAN “Mind Map Mastery: The Complete Guide to Learning and Using the Most Powerful Thinking Tool in the Universe”
TONY BUZAN “Mind Maps at Work: How to be the best at work and still have time to play”
Sönke Ahrens “How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers”
Lynne Kelly “The Memory Code”
Joshua Foer “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything”
David Thomas “DK Essential Managers: Improving Your Memory”
Fiona McPherson “Effective Notetaking” Study Skills · Book 1
Fiona McPherson “Successful Learning Simplified” Study Skills · Book 4
Fiona McPherson “Planning to Remember: How to remember what you’re doing and what you plan to do”
Phil Chambers “How To Train Your Memory”
Phil Chambers and James Smith “How to Remember Equations and Formulae: The LEAF System”
Fiona McPherson “How to Approach Learning: What teachers and students should know about succeeding in school” Study Skills · Book 0
Fiona McPherson “Mnemonics for Study” (2nd ed.) Study Skills · Book 2
Jimmy Cooper “Accelerated Learning and Unlimited Memory Techniques and Strategies: Real Coaching from a Real Expert. Tips & Tricks for Students and Adults”
Christiane Stenger “A Sheep Falls Out of the Tree: And Other Techniques to Develop an Incredible Memory and Boost Brainpower”
Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski “The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures” University of Pennsylvania Press
Sönke Ahrens “Das Zettelkasten-Prinzip: Erfolgreich wissenschaftlich Schreiben und Studieren mit effektiven Notizen”
Benjamin Branfman “How to Make an Awesome Mind Palace, A Crash Course to a Better Memory”
Bob W. Lingerfelt “Solomon’s Memory Palace. A Freemason’s Guide to the Arncient Art of Memoria Verborum”
NOTE: I also take part in Dr. Anthony Metivier’s “Master Memory Class” and occasionally draw on other sources as well. I’m not going to teach you the science and theory of how and why the things I teach work (that would require that I write a few books of my own). Instead I’ll give instructions on best practices and ways to proceed, and reccomend that you that you follow the procedures I outline.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask questions and I’ll answer as best I can. I am at an advanced level and not all answers will be helpful (or make very much sense) without further study on your part, but my teaching is designed to allow you to skip the technical details and go directly to benefitting from what I’m giving you.
Thank you — and keep coming back!
Site Author, David J. Curtis: David Curtis, a seasoned professional with decades of bartending and bar management experience began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife club scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in iconic Midtown clubs and tended bar briefly in the Wall Street area, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa in Exclusive Platinum Service Awards Clubs, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
Footnotes 👇
- What is POA system? The Person-Action-Object System (or “PAO” System) is a popular method for memorizing long random numbers and decks of playing cards. The PAO system is similar to the person-action Dominic System but it adds an object to the images.[↩]
