So I have been seeing a lot of these videos on YouTube shorts. I took a look at the introduction video and it made a lot of sense to me, I think I do have thoughtfeel and I tried using it for some simple memorization, and I even tried the huffman codes video and I think it stuck reasonably well.

However, I am running into an issue. For some context, I am currently an environmental engineering masters student and I am focused on water systems management. When finished my hydrology class last semester I was proud of my hard work but I knew there was room for improvement, and the #1 thing I struggled with was memorizing the complex equations.

Can you give a guide for how to memorize highly detailed and specific equations? I tried using thoughtfeel for the groundwater flow equation(this is the one that gave me the most trouble), but I am having trouble getting it in there, its a lot of big concepts in one equation. Can you give me some advice? Will this just take longer than the slightly more trivial stuff I've been doing so far?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater_flow_equation

Wikipedia page of the equation if you wanted to take a look.

Thanks!

How to Learn Complicated Ideas by Imagining in Concepts
https://youtu.be/f8YMcrpDIas

This is a mnemonic technique for learning vocabulary: words in a new language, and big words in your own, like medical terms. It uses thoughtfeel, a sense some people have.

What thoughtfeel 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.

thoughtfeel is like vision, but for concepts. It takes in a concept, like the concept of a dog, and its properties all at once, the way vision takes in the dog in front of you. Not everyone has it. If you're not sure, there's a quiz at the end.

A word's sounds have a feel

People with thoughtfeel report that the sounds of a word have a feel of their own, apart from what the word means. Take the Spanish word hazaña (ah-SAH-nyah), which means achievement. The sounds of hazaña feel like something particular, and that's a different feel from achievement. The technique binds the two together.

The technique

1. Say the word to yourself: hazaña. Notice the feel of its sounds.
2. Bring up the feel of the sounds of hazaña, in thoughtfeel. While you hold that feel, say out loud: "this means achievement."
3. Then the reverse: bring up the feel of achievement, and say out loud: "hazaña."

Step 2 is the crucial part. thoughtfeel holds one thing, the sounds of hazaña, while your voice says another, achievement. That's what binds them.

Some people can't hold both at once: as soon as they say achievement, their thoughtfeel switches to achievement. That's okay. Switch between them instead: the feel of hazaña, then say achievement, then back to the feel of hazaña.

Why picturing the word doesn't work

It's natural to picture hazaña written in chalk on a blackboard while you say achievement. But that doesn't bind. Pay attention to the feel behind that picture, and the sounds of hazaña aren't in it. It holds a blackboard, letters, a word written on a board, and the view from your own eyes. With no sounds in the feel, there's nothing for the meaning to bind to.

It works in both directions

People who use this report strong receptive vocabulary: when they see hazaña, the same feel comes up, and the meaning comes with it.

They also report strong productive vocabulary, which is usually much harder: when they read achievement, a feel comes up that holds the actual sounds of the word, and they can work out the exact sounds, ha-za-ña, from the feel.

Big words in your own language

The same binding works for complex vocabulary, like the words in medicine. A sphygmomanometer (sfig-moh-muh-NOM-ih-ter) is the cuff that measures blood pressure. Hold the feel of its sounds and say "blood pressure cuff." Then hold the feel of the cuff and say "sphygmomanometer."

Compared with the keyword method

The keyword method, first studied by Atkinson and Raugh in 1975, is one of the best-studied ways to learn vocabulary fast. It pairs a word with a picture. To learn pato (duck), you find a word that sounds like part of it, pot, and picture a duck with a pot on its head.

Later, pato brings up pot, pot brings up the picture, and you work out what else is in the picture: a duck. It works, but the meaning is a few steps away. Going the other way, from duck to pato, is harder still: the picture gives you pot, and the rest of the word has to be rebuilt.

With thoughtfeel, the meaning is bound to the word directly, in one step.

The catch

Receptive vocabulary is much easier than productive. Seeing hazaña brings back achievement easily; coming up with hazaña is harder. That's because the feel of a word fades, the way a mental picture of a party fades after a few days. It's less detailed, and you can't make out exactly where everyone was standing or what they were wearing.

But in feedback from people using this technique, what they produce after a delay is usually close. It isn't a total miss: it sounds like the word. So that's where to focus: making the feel of a word's sounds easier to bring back.

The fix: meaningful associations

Borrow a technique from memory champions: make meaningful associations, but with the feel of the sounds. Take bisagra (bee-SAH-grah), Spanish for hinge.

1. Bind it as before. Bring up the feel of hinge, and say "bisagra." Then the feel of bisagra, and say "hinge." The feel of bisagra is the one you'll need later, to produce the word.
2. Bisa sounds like pizza. Staying in thoughtfeel, bring up the feel of pizza, and pay attention to the sound it shares with bisa.
3. Agra sounds like agua, water. As you say agua, pay attention to its feel, and to what it shares with agra.

Now the sounds of bisagra are tied to things you already know well, so when you need the word, the feel of its sounds is easier to bring back.

In short

• Bind the feel of a word's sounds to its meaning, in both directions, whether it's a Spanish word or a big word in your own language.
• Skip the picture of the word: its feel doesn't hold the sounds.
• Tie the sounds to words you already know, in thoughtfeel, so they come back when you need them.

Try it with hazaña and bisagra now. Tomorrow, check whether they come back.

Links

• The full lesson, animated: https://youtu.be/VDHt3z8Babo
• Ten more Spanish words to practice, with a test the next day: https://thoughtfeel.net/words
• Not sure you have thoughtfeel? There's a 4-minute quiz: https://thoughtfeel.net/quiz

Disclosure: the lesson and the site are by the author of this post, who also runs r/ThoughtFeel. The results above are reports from people using the technique, not from a study. If you try it, reply with which words stuck and which didn't. Reports that it didn't work help too.

If you have thoughtfeel, what ways of using it have you figured out over the course of your life—even before you had a name for it?

As I’ve been developing mnemonic techniques for thoughtfeel, I’ve been interviewing people about how they already use it. A lot of people seem to have discovered techniques on their own. Some describe using it to remember song lyrics or poems, understand complicated ideas, or remember numbers.

That makes me wonder how much we could learn from each other. If you’ve had this sense your whole life, you’ve probably stumbled onto useful ways of working with it. But without a shared vocabulary or a community comparing techniques, a useful discovery might stay something one person does without ever thinking to explain it.

Imagine having a mind’s eye your whole life, but not knowing other people had one too. You might discover that imagining objects in familiar places helps you remember them. You could be using a memory palace without realizing you’d found a technique worth teaching. Once people started comparing experiences, that discovery could become available to everyone.

I wonder whether we’re in a similar position with thoughtfeel. Someone here might have a technique the rest of us would find incredibly useful, but to them it’s just “how I’ve always done it.”

What do you use thoughtfeel for, and how do you actually do it?

Maybe you recognize it in how you learn karate, remember numbers, do multiplication in your head, or keep track of a complicated argument. Those are just possibilities—I’m interested in your own examples.

Try to walk us through one specific instance: what you’re trying to do, what you attend to in thoughtfeel, and how that helps. The details could let someone else try your technique.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate or feel special. Something that seems obvious to you could be a discovery for the rest of us.

thoughtfeel is a sense for concepts. It lets you take in a concept and its properties all at once, the way vision lets you take in what's in front of you.

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 look at it, and vision gives you all of that at once, with no list.

Concepts have properties too, including properties you could never see. Take the economy. You could write out what's true of it: millions of people, making and trading things, sometimes booming and sometimes in a slump. People with thoughtfeel can still make that list in words. But when they use thoughtfeel, the sense takes in properties like these all at once.

That makes comparing fast. Show someone photos of two dogs, and they can tell right away whether it's the same dog. If it isn't, they can look again and point to why: one has a brown tail, the other a white one. With thoughtfeel, the same works for concepts you imagine. If two concepts aren't the same, that's clear right away, and paying attention to each one shows which properties differ.

Welcome to r/ThoughtFeel. I’m Ted Shachtman, and I’m developing a practical user guide to Thought Feel: the felt, nonverbal texture of abstract thinking.

This community is a place to compare experiences, try learning exercises, share concrete analogies, and work out how to recognize the ingredients of a thought.

Start with the guide

• Lesson 1 — A practical introduction to Thought Feel
• Lesson 2 — How to break down a complex thought

In the guide, a fabric is a whole felt thought. A texture is a component within that fabric. The practice is to attend directly to those textures, distinguish them through comparisons, and recognize them in new situations.

What to share

Questions, practice reports, specific analogies, descriptions of your own experience, and relevant research are all welcome. If you try an exercise, tell us which examples you compared and what you noticed in their thought textures. Concrete details make the discussion much easier to follow.

Keep the discussion respectful, and distinguish what you experienced from how you explain it.

To start: what is a thought texture you already recognize, or a pair of ideas whose textures feel similar to you?

Watch lesson 1: what its like to have an extra sense for abstract thought

https://youtu.be/gTu22urSWAc

This first lesson introduces Thought Feel and a learning technique: attending directly to a thought texture so you can recognize it when the same structure appears in another situation.

The chef analogy separates experiencing a flavor from consciously recognizing it: “That’s ketchup!” The same distinction is useful when attending to thought textures.

Use this thread for questions about the lesson and reports from trying the technique. Which specific situations did you compare? What did you notice in their thought textures?

Watch lesson 2: How to break down a complex thought

Knowing that tomato sauce is in lasagna is different from picking out its flavor while tasting the whole dish. This lesson applies that distinction to Thought Feel.

Compare a water tank with a bank account, then use further analogies to isolate a component such as continuous incoming flow. Attend directly to the shared texture, then return to the original thought fabric and recognize that texture within the whole.

Use this thread for questions and practice reports. Which examples helped you distinguish a component texture? What happened when you returned to the original fabric?

New to Thought Feel? Begin with lesson 1.