It recently came to me that I had encountered a certain issue numerous times throughout my life. It was difficult for me to be able to tell the position and neighbours of letters in the alphabet without having to go through all or parts of the alphabet in my head.
I just had not learnt it in a way in school that I would be able to do so.
I decided to find my own approach to learn this skill using visualization techniques since I knew that that is my preferred method of remembering.
Within a day I was able to apply it almost flawless, I was elated.
This got my thinking; What are other lifelong skills that might seem insignificant in the moment but add up to become a reoccuring issue throughout your lifetime?
Have you encountered something similar before and can you think of any skills in the same vein?
I can't remember exactly how it started, but probably a decade or so ago, I felt like I should learn some knots, I stumbled into animatedknots.com, carried a few feet of para cord in my pocket everywhere I went to practice, and now I feel confident in my ability to rig something up if needed (and I always have enough rope to leash a stray dog or tie something together in a pinch).
What was your method?
I started by imagining the alphabet as a circle, assigning each letter its corresponding number. Then I separated it into 4 quarters, giving each quarter a primary color (red, green blue, yellow).
Having done that I created flash cards showing the letter and it's color so I would associate the number and color with the letter.
At first I got most of them wrong but after just a few runs it got better and better. What helped a lot was to create mnemonic aids for each letter number combination. Like for example, I associate the letter "I" (9) with the Intel i9 Processor.
I felt like the last step was the most helpful, while the colors didn't do much for me.
Arithmetic for me. It was always a struggle in school, as the demand to 'show your work' was painful and slow. I understand that it was to help the teachers see where you were making mistakes, but the numbers did things in my head that didn't conform to that process. Math homework took hours every night, and I learned to hate it with every fiber of my being.
As an adult, I was able to let that reflexive loathing go and just let the numbers do their thing, and it's great! I get correct answers with no stress. Schools, by their very structure, tend to inculcate the idea that there is one correct way to do things. While helpful in certain circumstances, it can make a person neurotic.
Am I understanding correctly that you are talking about the process happening in your head when doing an arithmetic operation?
It almost sounds like you feel the answer or are you just doing calculations in a way that feels right to you?
Yes, there was still a calculation process--it just wasn't the one that needed to be shown for credit on the school worksheets. My particular head-process might be technically 'inefficient', but it is _fast_. I will still do mechanical arithmetic (or grab a calculator) if I need, say, accuracy to three significant digits...but I rarely do in daily life.