At the World Memory Championships, top competitors memorize the
order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in an hour and more than 500
random digits in 15 minutes, among other events. Think you have
what it takes? Believe it or not, almost everybody has the
capability to perform such amazing feats. Competitive memorizers
don’t necessarily have “better memories" than the rest of us;
instead, they learn and perfect a variety of mnemonics (memory
aids) to improve their ability to quickly learn and recall just
about anything. One of the most useful and widely used mnemonics is
the memory palace, a place or series of places in your mind where
you can store information that you need to remember. With time and
practice, anyone can build a memory palace, and they are useful for
far more than just memory competitions and trivia. Here’s how to
build your own:
- Decide on a blueprint for your palace. While a memory
palace can be a purely imagined place, it is easier to base it upon
a place that exists in the real world and that you are familiar
with. A basic palace could be your bedroom, for example. Larger
memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to
the corner store, or your whole town. The larger or more detailed
the real place, the more information you can store in the
corresponding mental space.
- Define a route. If you will need to remember things in a
certain order, it is essential that you follow a specific route
through your palace, both in the real world and in your mind. Thus,
once you’ve decided what your memory palace is, decide how you will
travel through it. If you don’t really need to remember things in
order, this step is unnecessary, but still useful, as it makes
memorizing your palace easier.
- Identify specific storage locations in your palace or along
your route. When you use your memory palace you will put
individual things to be remembered (a number, a name, or a part of
a speech that you will be giving, for example), in specific
locations. Thus, you need to identify as many locations as you
think you will need. Walk through your structure or along your
route and really observe it. If your palace is actually a route,
such as your drive to work, the storage locations can be landmarks
along the way: your neighbor’s house, a crossroads, a statue, or a
skyscraper, for example. If the palace is a structure, you can put
things in the different rooms. Within rooms, you can identify
smaller locations, such as paintings, pieces of furniture, and so
on. The key is to make sure the locations you choose are distinct
from each other so that no location can be mistaken for
another.
- Memorize your memory palace. For your memory palace to
be effective, you need to commit it to memory perfectly. The best
way to do this is to actually draw out a blueprint (or a map, if
the palace is a route) which shows the landmarks or storage
locations you have chosen. Try visualizing the palace when you are
not there, and then check your mental image against the map to make
sure you have remembered every location and put them in the correct
order. Picture the landmarks in as much detail as possible: make
sure your mental image includes their colors, sizes, smells, and
any other defining characteristics.
- Place things to be remembered in your palace. Once you
have constructed your palace and have it firmly implanted in your
mind, you are ready to use it. Put a manageable amount of
information in each place. For example, if your palace is your
house, and you are trying to remember a speech, you might place the
first few sentences on your doormat and the next few in the keyhole
of your door. Don’t put too much information in any one place, and
if certain things must be kept separate from others, put them in
different places. Make sure that you place things along your route
in the order in which you need to remember them, if
applicable.
- Use symbols. You don’t necessarily need to put a whole
string of words or numbers in a given location in order to be able
to remember it, and trying to do so can be unwieldy and
counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each
location is something that will jog your memory, something that
will lead you to the actual idea you’re trying to remember. Thus,
if you are trying to remember a ship, picture an anchor on your
couch. If the ship is the U.S.S. Wisconsin, picture the anchor made
out of cheese. Symbols are shorthand and make memories more
manageable, but they also can be more effective than picturing the
actual thing you are trying to remember.
- Be creative. The images you put in your palace should,
obviously, be as memorable as possible. Generally, images will be
more memorable if they are absurd (out of the ordinary)[see
warnings] , or if they are attached to some strong emotion or
personal experience. The number 124 is not particularly memorable,
but an image of a spear shaped like the number 1, going through a
swan (which looks like the number 2), and splitting the swan into 4
pieces is. Yes, it’s disturbing, but that’s part of what makes it
stick in your mind.
- Stock your palace with other mnemonics. There are many
simpler mnemonics that you can use in combination with the memory
palace. As an example, suppose you need to remember a great deal
about music composition. As you enter your kitchen, you could see a
little boy eating a piece of chocolate fudge, which would evoke the
first-letter mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," which would
in turn allow you to recall the order of notes on the lines in
treble clef (EGBDF).
- Explore your palace. Once you have stocked your palace
with evocative images, you need to go through it and look at them.
The more you explore your palace, the more easily you will recall
its contents on demand. In your mind you want to see James Joyce,
for example, sitting on your toilet as if he belonged there and was
really an integral part of your bathroom decor.
- Use your palace. Once you have memorized the contents of
your palace you can recall them simply by mentally walking through
it or looking around it. If you need to give a speech, just follow
your route in order as you do so. If you need to remember that your
girlfriend’s birthday is March 16, simply go into your bedroom and
see the soldiers “marching" on the bed to the tune of the 80s cult
classic “Sixteen Candles." With practice you will be able to start
anywhere in your palace or along your route to recall a specific
piece of information.
- Build new palaces. A memory palace can be reused over
and over again if you need only commit things to memory for a short
time. Just replace the existing contents with new ones, and you’ll
soon remember only the new ones. If you need to remember the
contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace
as it is and create new ones in which to store other information as
needed. If your house contains the phone numbers of everyone you
know, you can walk to your workplace if you need to remember the
order of a deck of cards.
- You will need to prepare each new memory palace as you did the
first, so you may want to develop new ones before you need
them.
- There are many variations of the memory palace, such as the
Roman Room and the Journey. They are all based on the Method of
Loci, which sprang from the recognition that people are very good
at remembering locations, and if you can associate abstract or
unfamiliar ideas with a well-known location, you can more easily
recall the things you want to.
- There are a number of books and memory-enhancement products
available to help you learn how to build a memory palace. They can
be costly, however, and not all are effective for all people.
Practice the steps above, and you may save yourself some
money.
- Be persistent. The memory palace is a very powerful tool, but
it is not necessarily easy to master. If you’re looking for a quick
fix to help you keep track of things, get a pen and paper, but if
you really want to improve your ability to memorize things, take
the time to learn and practice this method.
