Activity from TheMoviegoer§↻

yippee! proof of time well spent.

Thanks, Mrsmoo! It is time certainly well spent! I need to spend more time reciting, however. Despite being able to recall these verses on the site with solid accuracy, I have had a lot more trouble reciting the more recent chapters. One thought I had was to step away from the site for a week and only work on reciting and recalling what I have learned so far. I have developed a routine with site work, but I am wondering if my process is flawed.

Congratulations on the nine million! I too have wondered at times if my work process here is flawed. In a given passage of about 25 verses, I might be able to get half of them to fully learnt, but the other half "get stuck". Once a verse gets into the 90 percent progress range, you have to test at least at 95% to move it toward 100 with any significance. So, I keep a spreadsheet as a record of each passage, and try to rate its strength. The passages which are weaker I repeat more often ... that's my current process ...

The problem for me, ever since I joined this site, is that I always want to add more verses. And then a conflict ensues between dealing properly with memorizing new verses and also maintaining those which are "middle aged" and those which are nearing Fully Learnt. So, once again I'm attempting to slow down and add even none at all, but just to be satisfied with dealing with the ones I have added in some proper way.

Not saying that everyone should do that, no not at all. Just saying it's where I am at the moment.

I also did a total reset back in October 2019, but I don't recommend doing that. I ended up regretting having to start everything from zero again ... now my primary goal is to get each verse up to Fully Learnt. Having said all that, it's a great joy to come to this site, truly.

Congrats, TMG! You are moving so fast!

Are you familiar with the U shaped curved involved with starting any new endeavor?

At the top of left side of the U, you are at the beginning of your goal. In this stage, everything is all exciting. Every day is a new adventure pushing you further and further down your goal.

As the U starts to curve toward the bottom, here you begin to realize the cost involved with your goal. You still have excitement, but it is becoming tempered by the cost. Here is where thoughts of quitting begin.

As the U flattens, here is where your initial energy has been consumed by the cost of the goal. It is no longer new and exciting, but instead a chore to push through. It is here where most people give up on the goal. Instead, they go from new goal to new goal, never accomplishing anything.

For those people who push past the bottom of the U, the U starts to curve up. It is here where you know the cost, but you've made your peace with it. You start thinking about the goal in new ways, which begins to give you a new (but different) kind of excitement.

Eventually, the U straightens entirely. Here, you are starting to see the results of your hard work. You look back on what you've accomplished so far, and how you pushed through the hard times. These accomplishments propel you forward with a new level of excitement that is even better than the initial excitement. These are the people that eventually reach their goal.

It sounds to me like you are either approaching the U, or are hanging at the bottom of it. I'm right there with you. If I am wrong, please forgive my projecting on you.

I do not recommend you give up. In my experience "taking a break" or "trying something a different way" almost always ends with quitting. You've already built up the habit, and you're progressing so far. You're solidifying your understanding of Scripture even if it feels some days like there is no purpose to it. Don't quit! Quitting is only hard the first time. Every time after that, it becomes easier and easier. Instead, perhaps re-evaluate your goals.

Perhaps, instead, you should view your memorization a different way. Perhaps it is unfair to expect yourself to memorize a book with one hundred percent perfection? After all, none of the current translations are memorization friendly (which is odd, honestly, given that the ancient Jewish culture was so focused on oral tradition). Like you, I struggle with reciting the verses with perfection. I do not, however, struggle with understanding the flow of the story enough to get my message across when it comes up. Indeed, I find that I explain the Bible better when I paraphrase the unimportant parts (e.g., "he said" vs. "he answered", etc.) while adding perfection to the dialogue being spoken (i.e., the important parts). Had I not pushed through that pain while re-evaluating my goals, I would have quit a long time ago. But since I persevered (James 1:25), I can now quote half of John when the need arises.

You might also consider slowing down a bit. You are moving quickly, but perhaps you are setting yourself up for burn out. It might be a good idea to take your foot off the pedal a bit to give yourself time to catch your breath with the older material. But please don't leave. We need you here, and you need to be here as well.

Congratulations, TheMoviegoer, on reaching 9M! 👏🏽

Thanks joosep and onfire247 for sharing your experience and wisdom wisdom us all, Your insights are very valuable.

Congrats TheMoviegoer ! Way to go on
Thank you Joosep and onfire247 for your sharing with us your experience and for the valuable advice.

Thanks, everyone! And the deep, deep, insight into the process is super helpful. My goal since the outset was to attempt to memorize an entire Gospel (Mark, in this case). At this point, I am not quite half way to my goal. I hope that I can keep it together mentally as I go. For the record, My highest percentage toward memorization on even my most solid verse is 88%. I am wondering if I’ll finish Mark before Mark 1:1 registers at 100%

You should be at about 88% based upon your start date on the website. Even if you get a verse 100% correct every time, it will still take a year to reach 100% on the verse. My highest verse is at 95%, and my current interval for that verse is five months. But I also started several months before you.

As far as memorizing goes, my most recent process has changed a bit. I've decided to bump my daily total from one verse a day to two verses a day. If I do that, I should be able to memorize the New Testament in 10 years. Right now, I look at my current active chapter in John (10). I begin by starting with verse one no matter what is due. I toggle it to test me, and I test on that chapter until I get to my new verses for the day. I do my two verses, and then I go back to my dashboard and select review again on John 10.

Once my known verses get to 40%, I stop reviewing them every day. So for example, John 10:1-10 are at 40%, so I edited my group to start with verse 11. Because of this, when I review John 10 again, it starts with verse 11. I will constantly adjust my group based upon my percentages. I used to just do the reviews every day until I finished the chapter, but I found that pushed out my interval too far on those early verses. When those verses would come around again, I would have forgotten them. Stopping at 40% seems to be the sweet spot for me.

Back to John 10. After I've clicked Review and started with verse 11, I toggle the chapter to test for each verse. I then go all the way to the review of my two new verses. I repeat this process until those two new verses of the day reaches around 20%. At that point, I go and do my other reviews. I do not touch John 10 again until the next day. Doing it this way strengthens my initial understanding of the new verses without hurting me on future reviews.

My other chapters that are due all sit in my review queue every day because I set the last verse of every chapter to remain under a 24 hour interval. So I look through my review to see which chapters show two or more verses due, and then I do those reviews. At this point, I look at how long I've been reviewing and how many reviews I have done that day. I have set my review maxes to one hour or one hundred reviews, whichever comes first. If I have not reached that goal for the day, or I feel like doing more, then I will pick one of the chapters with one verse due and review that whole chapter. There are some days, however, when I am not really feeling it or my schedule is hectic. On those days, I'll skip all my reviews and just do the new verses. But no matter what, I do my two verses.

With the above process, I typically review between 95% to 100% accuracy. Some verses, however, refuse to stick. For example, John 5:20-31. For these verses, I add these verses in groups of four as a separate set of individual verses. So, for the above example, I have one for John 5:20-23, 24-27, and 28-31. (These have separate timers from the originals, but do not add to your verse total). I then review those sets of four in order every time they come up for review. (If they get out of order, I skip the verses until the correct one is due, then test on it.)

Hopefully something within this wall of text will be useful to you or others on this website.

onfire24, THIS IS ALL HELPFUL! I spend a lot of time just wondering how I am really doing, so this feedback is excellent. Also, a verse a day is amazing. Keep up the good work. I haven't thought about getting beyond Mark, but I think knowing the whole NT would be great. Sadly, in about 10 years, I wonder how great my memory will be. Fortunately, when I have a new body and mind, recall will never be an issue.