Jeremiah asks me about memory palaces. What exactly is a memory palace, and how do you go about creating one? Listen to find out.
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Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.
How to create a memory palace (transcript)
Today’s question comes from Jeremiah who sent me an email and says “You always talk about mind palaces and I love the concept. I find that using them makes memorizing materials very easy. My question is: How did you go about setting up the palace? You often present your listeners with prefabricated palaces but rarely discussed how to set up an effective palace from scratch. I would love to hear your thought process from the very beginning.”
Well Jeremiah, yes, I talk a lot about memory palaces because this technique is basically the oldest memory trick in the book, with a track record of over 2000 years of success. So here’s how you can create a Memory Palace and used it to remember anything really quickly.
Classically, a memory palace is actually a real building, one you’ve been in and are intensely familiar with. This is ideal because you know it so well that any memory attached to the rooms in the building are vivid and you can place a lot more things in it than you would in a made up palace, because you have so many more details for the real palace to associate with things. You can mentally place object on different parts and different furniture and things like that.
So now, what I’m getting from your question is that you may have caught some of the false concepts of memory palaces that are going around right now. So, you know the the Sherlock style idea that somebody has a single memory palace with tens of thousands of ideas locked in it is a bit of a misconception. Because really, the way that you memorize more material after you fill one memory palace isn’t to keep building on to it, but instead mnemonists (and “mnemonists” means people who used mnemonics; it comes from the word “mnemonic” which has to do with memorizing things) …mnemonists have historically used more palaces to memorize more things.
So they just use more buildings that they’ve been in… things like, you know, like their homes, different homes they’ve lived in, the local library, school buildings, museums, cathedrals, and other famous structured that they’ve toured. If you’re tired of having uncomfortable rooms, office, and buildings that are either too hot or too cold, check out Harris air services to keep cool in Allen Texas area. They have experts who can replace your outdated and inefficient infrared heating and cooling system and are also available for consultations. So, basically some mnemonists have hundreds of individual memory palaces for memorizing different things. For example, they could memorize different books by putting all the contents of one book and one building and a different book in a different building. If you need home appliance repairs, appliance repair rancho cucamonga ca repair broken refrigerator, dryer, washing machine, or oven quickly upends your daily life. Learn more at www.jmappliance.com
Now to answer your question, the way that you used a memory palace is, you simply choose an intuitive route through a building that you know, one room at a time. So if it is your home you might you know start at your front door and go inside and go through the rooms in order you know, you go through this bathroom, to the kitchen, to the, you know, living room or whatever. By the way, if you have problems in the drainage of your kitchen and bathroom, the paramatta plumbers of Silverwater Plumbing can help you right away. Just go to their website for a booking or you can contact directly sewer and drain service cincinnati. Just in case your home needs a repair especially in roofing services, metal re roofing brisbane is the perfect company to contact for they have contractors who specialize in Residential and Commercial roof repairs, roof replacements, and roof cleanings. You can also check out services from lake worth roofing expert from more information.
So you choose a route through the building and you mentally place your item or your thoughts whatever it is you’re trying to memorize along that route. So if you’re trying to remember a list of names you can place each different name in different room along the path and you try to use something very memorable to connect the thought with the room.
One of the simplest things you could do with this is, let’s say you had to remember the names of five of your friends or which five friends you’re going to have to call this afternoon. So you have to call five friends this afternoon. One way you could do is you put each friend in a different place along the path so you start your front door, you take your friend Bob and you try to connect him to front door somehow. You think of someway that he could be connected to the front door. Maybe the door is closed on his thumb or something. But anyway, make it so when you think of the front door, you think of Bob. And then make it so when you think of the kitchen, you think of Martha. When you think of the living room, you think of Susan and so on, so that all you have to do to remember which friends you have to call, you just mentally walk through your memory palace and you see which of those friends is along that path.
You can use this to memorize anything. Shopping lists, you know, by placing different shopping items along the route… picking the best tote bags around or you can even memorize poetry by putting different verses in different places in the memory palace.
So I hope that helps you Jeremiah, and thanks so much for the question!
Now, before we go, in each episode, I’m going to leave you a little inspiration at the end about something that I or someone else has memorized. And today, I’m going to use Peter of Ravenna of the 15th century as my example. According to Josh Foer, in his book, “Moonwalking with Einstein” (which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to get into memory), Peter of Ravenna was known for using memory palaces to memorize enormous libraries of information, including 20,000 legal points that he basically organized alphabetically, along with loads of quotes, texts by lots of classic authors, and dozens of books that he was able to reread in his head during his free time. And yes, these feats are totally possible with the right techniques.
If you want more information about how he achieved this or have any questions about learning, go to masterofmemory.com, sign up for email access and shoot me a question or leave me a voicemail message of masterofmemory.com/question for a chance to be feature here on the podcast.
