Memory Palace: Remember Everything you want Easily
Unlock a new Superpower
Recently, I’ve written an article about how you can improve your memory with memory systems, saying I’ll tell you some examples of memory systems.
Most memory systems consist of memory palaces, so I’ll talk about it today.
What is a Memory Palace?
A Memory Palace is an imaginary location in your mind where you can store bits of information.
The location can be everything. Most of the time it’s a journey, but it can also be a home, a car, your body, etc… It doesn’t matter as long as it speaks to you.
Once your Memory Palace is set up, you just have to walk through it to recall the information you’ve stored here. Depending on how you visit it, you can recall the information forwards, backwards, or in any order you want.
A Memory Palace can be as big as you want. Making it bigger doesn’t increase the difficulty of remembering information.
In a nutshell, a Memory Palace allows you to turn “things”, facts, or any abstract information, into something meaningful for you. It creates a multi-sensory experience in your head, making things more impactful than just raw information.
How is Information Stored in a Memory Palace?
Information is stored by association. You associate information with something more impactful. For example, if you want to remember a list of 30 species of plants, you’ll associate each plant with something easier to remember.
As a Memory Palace is mainly a visual representation of a location, information is stored mostly as images. But you can also use other senses to store information, such as the sense of smell or hearing.
The most important thing is to turn information into something impactful. It can be impactful in many ways:
- It speaks to you personally: you feel concerned, it reminds you of a child's memory, an important object, etc...
- It is exaggerated: make it very big, very small, very colorful, strange, etc… For example, instead of remembering a cow, you can remember a BIG pink cow with a cowboy hat.
- It is dynamic: make it vivid. It will be easier to remember the cow from the example above if it is flying like Superman.
How to Build a Memory Palace?
- Choose a place you know well and can visualize easily. A good place to start can be your home, your office, or even your car.
- Plan out the itinerary. Front door -> Hall -> Corner -> Couch -> …
- Take a list of things you want to memorize. For example, it can be 30 country capitals, 20 articles you have to buy at the shop, 20 names of presidents, the first 20 digits of Pi (this last one is not for beginners because you have to turn numbers into meaningful information to use the Memory Palace method), etc...
- Associate each item with something impactful and place them on your itinerary. If you want to associate “eggs” with your front door, you can imagine you opening your door, which triggers some eggs to fall on you and explode on your head. Then you go into your hall and see some big carrots having pierced your ground to grow to the ceiling. Then you go into your salon and smell your wife’s perfume, to remember to buy perfume. Etc…
- Don’t forget to make things the most impactful as possible.
- Have fun while creating your Memory Palace!
Note: the itinerary can be absolutely anything, and can be abstract. For example, if you want to use your body as a Memory Palace, you can start from your feed, then go up in your legs, etc… If you want to use your car, you can start with the hood, then go to the rear-view mirror…
How to Retrieve Information from a Memory Palace?
Once your Memory Palace is set up, you just have to walk through it, and information should get back to you easily.
If the order is important in your list, you can try to walk through your Memory Palace forwards, backwards, or in any direction, depending on your needs.
Spaced Repetition
To be sure you don’t forget your Memory Palace, you can combine it with spaced repetition. Let’s say you’ve just created your Memory Palace now. Even if you don’t need the information now, you can walk through it in 3 hours, then in 1 day, then 3 days, then 10 days, 30 days, 3 months, etc…
After 3 months (sometimes more or less, it depends), the information should be anchored in your mind for your whole life.
Final Note
When you have to remember large bits of information, Memory Palaces are very powerful. They can also be used for small bits of information, but I think they are most useful when used for large amounts of information.
You can remember absolutely everything with Memory Palaces. Suresh Kumar for example remembered the 70 030 first digits of Pi. I’m not sure, but I guess he used Memory Palaces combined with an encoding to turn numbers into images. Other people have learned whole books and can recite them word by word. These are extreme cases, but it shows how Memory Palaces are powerful.
To explore more of my stories, click here!
If you want to be notified every time I publish a new story, subscribe to me via email by clicking here!
If you’re not subscribed to medium yet and wish to support me or get access to all my stories, you can use my link:
