Building a Memory Palace like Sherlock Holmes
Helping Your Memory with Heuristics
A memory palace, alternatively known as the method of loci or the mind palace, is a theoretical construct where one can envision a fictional location for long-term memory retention, through the use of mnemonic images.
A mnemonic image in this context is:
- A visual data centre that encodes complex data for a long period of time
- An abstract storage tool for retaining specific facts
- A creative metaphor that represents overarching, but complex ideas
As a powerful memory device, it’s quite fun to use, especially if you’re a creative writer, including the content writers who reside on this very website.
Plus, you get to be Sherlock Holmes, retrieving incredible amounts of data from seemingly simplistic visuals.
Creating Your Initial Memory Palace
First, you must choose your palace and how it’s going to look. As a writer, you can envision the memory palace in any way you see fit.
For example, your memory palace can resemble:
- A luxurious but ornate castle surrounded by the stark ocean
- A variation of your childhood home, where cookies are always being baked by Grandma
- A winding philosopher’s trail, embedded deep inside a bustling city park
- A private beach resort where the bar is open 24/7
Other tips for creating your palace include embedding elements of familiar streets, current or old workplaces, your former school, and/or an idealized travel hotspot.
Refining Your Memory Palace
Sometimes, people choose their first memory palace to be their current place of residence. The more details you can add to your space, the better your future memorization will be.
It’s also best to picture yourself walking through said space, instead of just standing there idly.
For example, you can imagine:
- Smell: Do you smell cookies being baked in the kitchen? Can you smell freshly cut grass?
- Sight: What can you see when you look out the window? What are the colours of the walls?
- Touch: Are the walls made out of wood? Is the floor made out of granite?
- Hear: Do you hear children playing in the background? Is there an absence of sound?
- Taste: Can you taste anything? Are you able to taste anything?
Adding Memories into the Palace
If you take time to analyze the room methodically, from left to right, you can assign features to adorn and fill up the room. Each of these potential items will represent empty memory slots where information can be stored at a later time.
For example, you can choose items that are significant to you, such as:
- A fancy gold rotary phone — it could represent the phone number of someone you dearly love but are not in constant contact with, like a grandparent.
- The food on the table — it could represent an obscure recipe that you must prepare every Sunday during the annual family barbeque.
- The scenic view outside — it could represent your childhood inclination to sometimes watch the waves, especially during times of duress.
Imprinting Memories for Storage
For the greatest level of long-term memory retention, it is ideal to have as many details and nuances fleshed out ahead of time. If you need to write out or draw out what you think your palace will look like, go for it.
Other suggestions include physically walking through a similar route and taking note of the sights and sounds you encounter, particularly through active mindfulness, which I covered in another article.
Once you feel confident that your memory palace is detailed enough, you’re more than capable of adding memories onto it, without corrupting the entire enterprise.
Processing Memories for Long-Term Retention
Just like other memory-related devices, you can tie your memory to a specific concept, idea and/or object.
This object is called a memory peg and the association you want to make with the object should tie back to the image in some regard. For example, in the phone example mentioned earlier, the golden rotary phone represented a specific phone number for an older relative, like Grandma.
Now you try it. Imagine yourself walking through the front doors of your memory palace. Can you find a way to tie something silly to it, like a pineapple?
I came up with these silly examples:
- There’s a pineapple in the kitchen, sitting on the kitchen cutting board
- There’s a pineapple sporting glasses on top of a beach towel
- There’s a bowl of plastic pineapples sitting inside the backyard garden
Nonsensical right? Let’s tie these pineapples to something specific:
- The kitchen pineapple could be a reminder to maintain a specific diet while staying hydrated against the hot weather, alongside other specific health benefits.
- The plastic pineapple could be a reminder to feed specific animals that reside in your backyard.
- The beach pineapple could represent how to make a viral video on Youtube, given the nonsensical memes that permeate on there, including fruits with sunglasses.
Visiting Your Palace
Now that you’ve visited your palace a few times, you can continue repurposing and adding items to your memory palace.
After a while, the various parts of your palace will become easier to visually manage and you will surprisingly remember a lot of things across a long period of time.
While this is by no means the only way to conceptualize complicated data, it’s a very creative way of doing so.
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