One of the most useful memorization techniques was created thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks. The palace of memory, a place in your mind where you can store information to remember, is still used in modern times, not only by world memory champions, but also by the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. With the right planning and a lot of practice, you too can build your own memory palace.
Steps
Method 1 of 3: Plan the Palace
Step 1. As a floor plan of the building, choose a place that you can visualize well
A memory palace must be a place or a path that you know perfectly well, like the house where you grew up or the journey you take every day to get to work. It can be a space as small as your closet or as large as the entire neighborhood you live in. The important thing is that you are able to visualize the place in your head without seeing it in real life.
- Other options for the memorial palace include schools, churches, offices, places you often go on vacation, or a friend's home.
- The larger and more detailed the real place is, the more information you will be able to keep in the corresponding mental space.
Step 2. Walk into your building to define a path
Decide how you will go through the palace in your mind instead of imagining a static place. For example, don't just imagine your house, but think about how you move through the rooms. Are you going in through the front door? What corridor do you walk down? If you have to remember the information in a certain order, follow a specific path inside the palace, in the real world and in your mind.
Start practicing the route now, so that it will be easier to memorize later
Step 3. Identify specific points in the building to store information
Think about exactly what you will put in the memory palace, be it a number, a name, or important dates that you need to remember for an exam. You will keep each information in a different place, so you will need an equal number of places as the data. All points must be unique, so as not to mistakenly confuse them.
- If the building itself is a route, for example the route you take to get to work, choose landmarks along the way. Some examples include your neighbor's house, a traffic light, a statue, or a building.
- If your palace is a building, consider dividing the information into different rooms. Within each room you will then identify smaller elements, such as paintings, furniture or knick-knacks.
Step 4. Practice visualizing the finished building by drawing it
Recreate your palace or path on a sheet of paper. Mark the landmarks or "containers" of information you have chosen. Close your eyes and try to visualize the building in your head, then compare your mental picture with the drawing to make sure you remember all the points in the correct order.
- Imagine the landmarks in as much detail as possible. Make sure your mental image includes colors, sizes, smells and all other characteristics that the real counterpart possesses.
- If your mental image is not the same as the drawing, try to trace it again and try again. Repeat until you can visualize it perfectly.
- Another option for practicing visualizing your palace is to describe it aloud to a friend. Guide him along the path while he looks at the map you drew, for comparison.
Method 2 of 3: Fill the Information Building
Step 1. Break important information into small parts within the building
Put an amount of information that is easy to remember at each point. If you try to store too much data in one place it will be too difficult for your brain to remember. If some elements need to be separated from others, put them in different places.
- If necessary, put the information along the path in the order you need to remember it.
- If your building is your home and you try to remember a speech, put the first few sentences on the doormat and the following in the door lock.
- Put your best friend's address in the mailbox in the garden or on an envelope on the kitchen table. Put his phone number on the sofa, where you always answer his phone calls.
- If you are trying to remember the names of Christopher Columbus' three caravels, imagine that Nina is represented by your Aunt Nina, sitting in the kitchen. Approaching the table you see a glass of beer (a pint) depicting the Pinta and finally on the wall you will find a painting of the Virgin Mary representing the Holy Mary.
Step 2. Use simple images to symbolize complicated phrases or numbers
It is not necessary to put a series of words or numbers in one place to be able to remember them. Just insert something in your building that stimulates your memory and that recalls the idea you are trying to remember. For example, if you are trying to remember a ship, imagine an anchor on your sofa. If the ship's name is Garibaldi, imagine the anchor is wearing a red shirt.
- Symbols are abbreviations that allow you to remember information better than in its original form.
- Don't choose too abstract symbols. If they don't have an obvious connection to the object to remember they won't be useful, because you won't be able to connect them to that information.
Step 3. Add strange people, emotional states or images to remember the data
In your building you should put images that are very easy to remember. In general, it is easier to keep in mind something out of the ordinary, or linked to strong emotions or personal experiences. You can imagine your mom leaving her social security number on the kitchen table, or an adorable puppy eating from a bowl that has the words you need to learn for the next English test written on it.
- As another example, imagine that you need to remember the number 124, which is not memorable. If you visualize a spear in the shape of a number one that pierces a swan (which looks like number 2) and divides it into 4 parts, it will be much easier to remember the image. Obviously it is macabre, but for this reason it is easy to keep it in mind.
- You don't have to use only positive images. Negative emotions or images, for example a politician you hate, are just as easy to remember.
Step 4. Incorporate other mnemonics to remember long strings of information
Create a simple tool by forming an acronym with the first few letters of words in a sentence, or by creating a rhyme that contains the information you are trying to remember. Then enter this compressed information in the memory building, instead of its longer version.
- For example, imagine having to remember the order of the importance of the suits in poker (Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades). You can imagine seeing the rain outside your building window to remember the phrase "Like when it rains outside".
- A rhyming mnemonics is the English "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" (in 1492, Columbus sailed the blue ocean). Imagine Christopher Columbus holding a model of a blue ship in your living room.
Method 3 of 3: Using the Memory Palaces
Step 1. Explore your palace for at least 15 minutes a day
The more you get used to walking around your building, the easier it will be to remember its contents when you need them. Visualization should feel natural and effortless. Try to complete the entire route a couple of times, or spend some time each day viewing the palace from start to finish.
- For example, imagine James Joyce using your bathroom as if it really belonged to that fantasy and was an integral part of the bathroom decor instead of just a picture. This helps you remember that James Joyce was an author famous for his humor about using the bathroom.
- The best part about this exercise is that you can do it anywhere, anytime - just close your eyes.
Step 2. Recall the information by walking around your building or by looking inside
Once you have memorized the contents of the building, remember them by following the path or by viewing a room. With practice you will learn starting from any point of the building or of the path, in order to be able to recall specific information.
If you have to remember your girlfriend's birthday, which is March 15th, go into the bedroom and imagine Julius Caesar being stabbed on the ides day of March (15th, in fact)
Step 3. Clean up your memory building when you need to update your data
You can use the same palace multiple times. Just replace what it currently contains with new information. After a few trials, you will be able to forget the old data and you will only remember the new ones.
If your building is getting too big or contains information you no longer need, remove that data from the path
Step 4. Build new buildings for various topics and types of information
If you have to memorize new concepts, but don't want to delete the building you've already created, just build a new one. "Archive" the old building and start the process from scratch, choosing a different location as a base. Memory palaces last as long as you wish, once you have them fixed in your brain.
- For example, you can use your home to keep all the names of the kings of Rome. The commute you take to work, on the other hand, may contain the phone numbers of friends and relatives. Finally, in your office put the contents of the speech you will make tomorrow.
- There is no limit to the number of memory palaces you can build.
Advice
- Be consistent. The memory palace is a very powerful tool, but it is not easy to learn how to use it.
- Among the events of the World Memory Championships, the best competitors memorize the order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in one hour and more than 500 random digits in 15 minutes. They do not have a "better memory" than normal people, but have simply learned and perfected a series of mnemonics (memorization techniques) to become better at learning and remembering any type of information quickly.
- With the help of a computer there are simple ways to build a virtual palace, or you can choose one of the many already available on the internet and take a virtual tour of those spaces whenever you want. The impact of a three-dimensional representation is greater than a drawing, which makes it very easy to imprint the image in the mind.
- There are many variations of the memory palace, such as the Roman room and the voyage. They are all based on the loci method, which is based on the fact that people are very good at remembering places. As a result, if you associate abstract or unfamiliar ideas with a well-known place, it becomes easier to remember information that interests you.
- There are memory development books and products that can help you learn how to build a memory palace, however they are expensive and don't work for everyone. Practice the previous steps to save.
