One of the most useful memory aids was created thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks. A memory palace, where your mind stores the information it needs to remember, is still relevant today. This method is not only used by the memory champion record holder, but also the famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. With planning and practice, you too can build your own memory palace.
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Method 1 of 3: Planning a Memory Palace
Step 1. Choose a place that can be easily visualized as a palace blueprint
A memory palace should be a familiar place or route, such as your childhood home or even your daily commute to work. This palace can be as small as a cupboard or as large as an RT. You should be able to visualize this palace in your mind without seeing it in real life.
- You can also create memory castles based on your school, church, workplace, frequent tourist sites, or friends' homes.
- The bigger or the detail of the palace, the more information that can be stored.
Step 2. Walk through the palace to determine the route
Decide how you will explore the palace instead of just imagining a stationary place. For example, imagine how you would walk through this palace, instead of just visualizing it. Did you enter from the front door? What room are you in? If you need to remember things in a certain order, follow a specific route through the palace, both in the real world and in your mind.
Starting to practice the route now will also make it easier for you to remember it later
Step 3. Identify specific locations within the palace to store information
Think about exactly what you're going to put in the memory palace, whether it's numbers, names, or important dates to remember for exams. Each chunk of data will be stored in a separate location so you need to identify as many locations as the data you have. Each save point should be unique so you don't get confused.
- If your palace is the route itself, for example the road to work, choose markers along the way. For example, you can use a neighbor's house, a red light, a monument, or a building.
- If your palace is a building, try separating the information in separate rooms. Then, in each room, identify a small location, such as a painting, furniture, or decoration.
Step 4. Draw your castle to practice visualizing it
Sketch your memory palace on a piece of paper, or map it out if your castle is a route. Close your eyes and try to visualize your palace in your mind. Then, check your visualization with images to make sure you remember each location and sequence them correctly.
- Imagine the marker in as much detail as possible. Make sure your mental image is complemented by color, size, smell, and other characteristics.
- If your mental image doesn't match the image, review the image a few times and then try again. Repeat until you can visualize it perfectly.
- You can also practice visualizing the castle and retelling it to a friend. Tell your route orally while he compares it to the map you drew.
Method 2 of 3: Filling the Palace with Information
Step 1. Put important information in bits and pieces around the palace
Put a memorable amount of information at each point. Don't put too much information in one place so it doesn't overload your brain to remember everything. If some things need to be separated from others, put them in very different places.
- If needed, put things along the route in order in case they need to be remembered.
- If the related palace is your home, and you're trying to remember a speech, put the first few sentences on the doormat and the first few sentences on the door opening.
- Put your close friend's address in the outside mailbox or in an envelope on the kitchen table. Put his number on the couch where you often receive his calls.
- If you're trying to remember the names of the presidents of the United States in order, make the washing machine George Washington. Walk into the laundry room and look for john trousers, which represent John Adams.
Step 2. Use simple pictures to symbolize difficult phrases or numbers
You don't have to put entire strings of words or numbers in related locations to remember them. You just need to store something that stimulates memory in each location and allows you to recall. For example, if you want to remember a ship, imagine an anchor on a sofa. If you want to remember the ship Yos Sudarso was on in the battle of the Aru Sea, imagine a stuffed leopard.
- Symbols are shortcuts and are more effective at imagining the real thing you're trying to remember.
- Don't make symbols that are too abstract. If there's no clear correlation between what you're trying to remember, your efforts are in vain. You won't be able to associate the symbol with the information you're trying to remember.
Step 3. Add people, emotional triggers, or unfamiliar images to remember the data
Pictures placed in the palace should be very easy to remember. Usually an image is memorable if it stands out or is closely related to an emotion or personal experience. You can imagine your mother putting her ID number on the kitchen table or a cute puppy eating a bowl of words on your vocabulary test.
- Another example is the number 124, which is not very easy to remember. However, imagine a javelin (number 1) piercing a goose (number 2), piercing its wings (number 4). It's a bit scary indeed, but that's what will stick in the mind.
- You don't need to use only positive images. Negative emotions or images, such as a hated politician, are equally strong.
Step 4. Include other mnemonics to remember longer sequences of information
Just create a simple mnemonic by forming an acronym using the first letter and word in a phrase or creating small rhymes with the information you want to remember. Then, put this new, abbreviated chunk of data in the memory palace, instead of storing the long version.
- For example, say you need to remember the treble chord sequence (EGBDF). Imagine a little boy eating french fries, which triggers the first letter mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fries.”
- An example of a rhyming mnemonic is, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean." Imagine Columbus holding a sailboat in the living room.
Method 3 of 3: Using the Memory Palace
Step 1. Spend at least 15 minutes exploring your castle every day
The more you browse and spend time in the palace, the easier it will be for you to remember its contents the way you want. Your visualization should be effortless and feel natural. Try to go through each route several times a day or set aside time each day to visualize the palace from start to finish.
- For example, watch James Joyce sit on the toilet as if he were in a world of his own. This helps you remember that James Joyce is a writer known for his toilet/slobs humor.
- The best part is that you can practice it anywhere, anytime. You just need to close your eyes.
Step 2. Recall the information by browsing the palace or looking around it
Once you've memorized the contents of the palace, remember to simply follow the route or visualize the room. With practice, you'll be able to start anywhere in the castle or along the route to recall certain information.
If you need to remember that your boyfriend's birthday is March 16th, just go into the bedroom and watch the soldiers "line up" on the bed and hum the '80s classic, "Sixteen Candles."
Step 3. Clean the memory palace when you need to update the data
The memory palace can be reused many times. Just replace the old content with new information. After a few practice routines, you will forget the old data and only remember the new data in the palace.
If the palace becomes too large or contains information that is no longer needed, remove the data from the route
Step 4. Build new castles for different topics and information
If you have something new and want to put it in memory, but you don't want to delete the current memory palace, just build a new one. Set aside the old memory palace and choose another place as the palace to restart the whole process from scratch. The memory palace will last as long as you want once it is stored in the brain.
- For example, you might have a house that contains all the names of the presidents of the United States. Then, the path contains the phone numbers of all your friends and family. meanwhile, your office space contains the speech to be delivered tomorrow.
- There is no limit to the number of memory castles that can be built.
Tips
- Fight hard. Memory palaces are powerful weapons, but not easy to master.
- At the World Memory Championship, the top competitors were able to remember a sequence of 20 shuffled cards in an hour, and over 500 random numbers in 15 minutes. They all don't have a “better memory” than us, but they learn and perfect various mnemonics (memory aids) to improve their ability to learn and recall things quickly.
- Using a computer, there's an easy way to build your own memory palace or choose from the many creations already on the internet and explore them virtually whenever you want. The impact is more or less stronger than drawing so it's easier to stick in the mind
- There are many variations of memory castles, such as Roman Room and the Journey. It's all based on the Method of Loci, which says that people remember locations more easily, and if you can associate abstract or unfamiliar ideas with familiar locations, you can recall them more easily, if you want.
- There are books and memory-boosting products that can help you learn how to build memory castles. These books can be quite expensive and are not guaranteed to be effective for everyone. You can try the steps above first before buying this book.
