Thread: Trying out MILD? This is how you become skilled at it.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I'm...missing many "firsts" and only realizing it like a deja vu moment minutes or hours later. I want to focus on the "the next time you see/hear/whatever an XYZ, do a state test", in LDs time is precious so I want to make sure the "aha!" moment comes as soon as possible.

...When you do this, do you basically "program" yourself to recognize the target at the future time? Or do you keep the list in the mental "foreground' all day long? I'm assuming the former but I thought I'd ask to be sure.

Yeah missing them and only realizing it later was pretty standard for me, for a long time (about a month I think). Progress is slow and seems to come out of nowhere. Actually the "foreground" approach is the only thing that worked for me.

I eventually figured out some tricks to doing it effectively, here was my approach:

- First thing in the morning, I would check out my new list of items for the day and memorize them.

- I found that there are two barriers to success: prospective memory is only the second one. The first is the ability to remember lists! I would often forget which things I was trying to remember that day. To plant them in my memory I would visualize them one at a time using as many senses as possible. For example, if an item was "the next time I see a traffic light" I would close my eyes and imagine a bright red light (visual) and the sound of honking traffic (aural) and the smell of car exhaust and traffic (oral). You can remember things much more easily via synesthesia than via abstract lists in your head.

- During the day it is difficult to remember to do things. When you do remember it seems to come out of nowhere. What eventually made it come easier and more often was to walk around with a mild state of awareness, just paying attention to everything in general without focusing on anything and without having any internal dialogue or daydreams. That way when you see things you will instantly remember what you're supposed to do, due to the general un-distracted context of your conscious experience. Therefore the challenge shifts from remembering to do things to remembering to be in a certain state of expectation.

After a while the concept of remembering to do things just became a larger part of the background process of my thinking. It's like an internal program is running regular checks to see if there's anything you're forgetting to do.

+1 for not remembering lists, i have exactly the same issue right now! It's frustrating because normally I'm quite good at memory stuff, just not this exact type of memory apparently!
Another issue is that I don't just want to become sensitized to traffic lights, vegetables, etc. (building up "dreamsign targets" out of the prospective memory exercise targets), so to really test the prospective memory a constantly changing set of random-ish (but with a good possibility of occuring) goals would be ideal.