PAO·SPEED

Speed Drill

Recall what's asked silently. Space to reveal. 1 instant · 2 slow · 3 missed. U undo · F flag for re-encode. Auto-advances.

Deck Run

The real test: memorize a shuffled deck in groups of three — person of the 1st, action of the 2nd, object of the 3rd, one scene per group — then rebuild the order from memory.

Memorize: 18 groups, self-paced — fuse each scene (place it along a mental journey if you use one), then Space or tap for the next. The clock runs from your first look to your last. Recall: click the 52 cards back in order. You get a deck time, a score, and the exact positions that broke.

Order: a fresh random shuffle is the sport. Pick a magic stack instead to learn it — run it daily until 52/52 is easy, then use the stack quiz to weld in position ↔ card.

Run history

Encoding Builder

Your own images beat any preset. Suit = category. Edit freely; overwrite anything that doesn't stick. Editing a facet restarts that pair's drill schedule — a new image is a new memory.

HeartsMusicians / pop icons
SpadesAction heroes / tough guys
DiamondsTV & movie characters
ClubsCartoons / toys / games
Rank ≈ icon wattage (Ace = biggest). Loose by design — re-rank by whatever recalls fastest for you.
⚠ image collisions

Two cards sharing an image decode ambiguously mid-deck — you'll know the action fired but not which card it was. Make each unique.

Progress

Watch the curve bend down. Latency is render→reveal keypress only.

Daily habit — short and daily beats long and occasional

Scheduling state — where every pair sits

Per suit — is it "done"? (graduated high, p75 low and flat)

Latency trend (per session median, card → image)

median p75 p90

Slowest (card · asked) — where your seconds go

Latency by question type

Deck runs

Start Here

Starting from zero? Read this, then close it and drill. The reps are the teacher — everything here just makes each rep land harder.

The one-line version

Hearts → Diamonds → Spades → Clubs, one suit at a time. Within each suit walk Person → Action → Object → Mixed. 10–15 min daily, honest grading. Don't add a suit until the last one's "slowest cards" list is flat and low.

Jump straight in:

Why Hearts first (not Diamonds)

Lead with your strongest suit, not the first one. As a DJ from '84–'90, the musicians in Hearts are already in your long-term memory — you're not learning "who is Prince," only "Prince lives at King of Hearts." Lightest possible first lift, and your first session becomes a win instead of a slog. That's what builds the daily habit.

Week one, concretely

  1. Sit with the 13 Hearts in Encode for ~10 min. Don't memorize — just react. Any default that makes you hesitate or feel "meh," rewrite it now while it's cheap. Your DJ instinct for who's iconic beats my sorting. Make those 13 feel like yours.
  2. Drill: Hearts filter + Person only. Person first — the face is the anchor the other two facets hang off. You'll be slow and miss some. That's the rep working, not failure. ~8–10 min, then stop while it's still fresh.
  3. Next day, same thing. It'll already be faster — that overnight jump is consolidation. Feeling it is what hooks you.
  4. When Person feels easy, switch to Action only, then Object only — a day or two each.
  5. Then Mixed facet, still Hearts — all three facets, random order. When that runs fast, Hearts is done. Move to Diamonds, repeat the whole arc.

The pathway to mastery — drill by drill

Specific sessions, in order. Each is ~10–15 min. One per day is ideal; never cram two facets of a fresh suit into one sitting. The day numbers are a guide — let the dashboard, not the calendar, tell you when a stage is "done" (slowest-cards list flat and low, p75 falling). Click any session to launch it preset.

PHASE 1 Learn Hearts  ·  ~days 1–6
  1. Drill 1
    Hearts · Person. Your first session. Expect slow, messy reps and a few misses — that's the trace forming. Grade honestly.
  2. Drill 2
    Hearts · Person again (next day). Notice the overnight speed-up. Repeat daily until most Hearts persons feel automatic (dashboard: Person p75 under ~1.5s).
  3. Drill 3
    Hearts · Action. Now the verbs. These lean on the person you just learned.
  4. Drill 4
    Hearts · Object. The props. Usually the easiest facet because objects are concrete.
  5. Drill 5
    Hearts · Mixed. All three facets, random. This is the real test of the suit. Stay here daily until p75 is low and flat.
PHASE 2 Learn Diamonds  ·  ~days 7–11
  1. Drill 6
    Diamonds · Person. Same arc as Hearts. TV/movie faces.
  2. Drill 7
    Diamonds · Action, then · Object on following days.
  3. Drill 8
    Diamonds · Mixed until flat.
  4. Drill 9
    Hearts + Diamonds · Mixed — first cross-suit test. The two-suit blend surfaces any bleed between them. Drill until clean.
PHASE 3 Learn Spades  ·  ~days 12–16
  1. Drill 10
    Spades · Person → Action → Object, one per day. Action heroes.
  2. Drill 11
    Spades · Mixed until flat.
PHASE 4 Learn Clubs  ·  ~days 17–21
  1. Drill 12
    Clubs · Person → Action → Object, one per day. Cartoons/toys — most exaggerated, often the fastest to learn.
  2. Drill 13
    Clubs · Mixed until flat.
PHASE 5 Integrate all 52  ·  ~day 22 onward
  1. Drill 14
    All suits · Person. Now drill one facet across the whole deck — exposes which persons still lag once all four categories compete.
  2. Drill 15
    All suits · Action, then · Object.
  3. Drill 16
    All suits · Mixed — the master drill. All 52 cards, all three facets, fully random. This is your daily driver from here on.
  4. Drill 17
    Reverse: image → card. Recall is decoding — "Madonna" must instantly give you Q♥. Start with Person→card, then Mixed→card. Reverse has its own scheduling track, so expect to feel like a beginner again for a day or two.
  5. Drill 18
    Triplet fusion — the real PAO operation: person of the 1st card + action of the 2nd + object of the 3rd, fused into one scene. This is a different skill from single-card recall; expect 8–12s per scene at first. Under ~4s and you're deck-ready.
  6. Drill 19
    Deck runs. Memorize a full shuffled deck in the Deck tab, then rebuild it. Your first run will be humbling — that's the point: it shows exactly which images and which skill (fusion vs recall) give way under load.
  7. Daily
    Keep running All · Mixed and watch the global p75 fall. When you're reliably under ~1s per facet across the deck, your encoding reflex is built — that's the ~120s-deck capability the trainer was made for. Check the dashboard's slowest list, hit ▶ Drill these, and rewrite persistent laggards (press F mid-drill to flag one).

The rules that matter more than the order

  • Short and daily beats long and occasional. 10–15 min every day crushes an hour once a week — the gaps between sessions are where learning sets. Don't cram a suit in one sitting.
  • Grade the 2 (SLOW) honestly. "Got it after half a second of thinking" is exactly the card that costs you on a full deck. Mark it INSTANT and it graduates out and stops getting drilled. Slow is your most valuable grade — it keeps laggards in rotation. Honest grading lets the app route your time perfectly; flattering yourself wastes it.
  • Don't overlap half-learned suits. Wait until the dashboard's "slowest cards" list looks flat and low before adding the next suit, or the associations bleed into each other.
  • Stop studying, start drilling — even when you feel unready. Forcing a retrieval and failing builds the memory trace harder than re-reading the answer ten times. This is the most robust finding in all of learning science.

What "done" feels like

Early on you'll consciously assemble each card — "MJ… moonwalking… glove." That's scaffolding, and it's fine. The goal is to drill until that assembly wears away and the triplet arrives as a single fused image, not a story. When a card shows sub-500ms latency on the dashboard, it has made that transition. That reflex — card hits your eye, person fires before you can think — is the whole point. No tip shortcuts it; only correct reps under time pressure build it.

For a stubborn card

During encoding only, invent any silly logical hook to get it to stick ("4 of Clubs / G.I. Joe — four-letter Joe, four-star general"). Use it for the first few exposures, then let the drill sand it away. The hook is a ladder you kick out once you're up — recall itself should never be logical, because logic is slower than reflex.

Right now

This is the proper first session — Hearts, Person only. One click starts it. The first session is the only hard one to start.