The memory palace is a technique to improve your memory to superhuman levels.
Average people can memorize 10,000+ digits of Pi, recall hundreds of objects, and remember pages of poetry lines using it.
While often used for silly feats like these, I use memory palaces almost every day, in my personal life & work, to keep a virtual notebook inside my head.
On this page I explain the technique, tips to improve your use and many handy ways to apply it.
Basics
If already you're familiar with memory palaces, you can skip ahead.
In a nutshell, a memory palace is about visualizing each thought as an object along a path, as if it were a real experienced memory. our brain is much better at remembering things this way.
Example
- Let's say you want to remember four things to bring to the beach with your friends: (1) a beach ball (2) a tube of sunscreen (3) a pair of sunglasses, and (4) a beach towel.
- Visualize the following in your mind as clearly as possible.
- [1] Imagine the front door of your home. in the doorway you see a 🔴 life-sized giant beach ball.
- [2] Walking in past the door you come across a 🛁 bathtub full of sunscreen in the living room (or whatever room follows in your house).
- [3] Continue to your bedroom, where Justin Bieber stands wearing a pair of cool-looking 🕶️ sunglasses.
- [4] Step in your bathroom, where a naked person stands wrapped in a 🧖 beach towel!
- Now, retrace this path a few times to recall the four items to bring to the beach!
If you visualized these mental images clearly, you should be able to remember these items for a few days.
You may even remember some of the objects if you revisited your memory palace months in the future
In general, you can use memory palaces to store any kind of information in different imagined locations
Tips & tricks
As you use memory palaces, you develop some tricks that help your mind remember better. Here are a few I use:
- Be creative with your images. Images should be detailed, exaggerated, funny, gross, colorful, etc. –– anything memorable –– this will make the thoughts easier to remember
- Images shouldn't be abstract ideas, but concrete. Something like "email", is hard to visualize, instead think of "mailbox", "letter", or "a mailman wearing chainmail armor"
- Personifying objects is a handy tactic. e.g. instead of "celery" imagine a tall, lanky celery dude with arms, legs, and leaves for hair.
- The best locations for memory palaces will be your home, workplace, family & friends houses, etc. If you write all locations you visit down, you are likely familiar with dozens or hundreds of places.
- You can use levels from video games you're familiar with as memory palaces.
- You can come up with imaginary memory palace locations, e.g. a medieval castle with a giant drawbridge & gate out front where the path begins
Applications
Now that you're familiar with memory palaces, I'll give a few examples where you can use them:
- When falling asleep:
- I often have thoughts or obligations that I don't want to forget when lying in bed, but I don't want to get up and write them down as that would wake me up.
- I store the thoughts in a fast, simple memory palace, like the bedroom I'm in
- e.g. "don't forget your doctor's appointment" → 👨⚕️ a doctor performing a surgery in my living room
- In conversation:
- When talking to someone, I like to queue up ideas & talking points that come up when I'm listening to remember without interrupting.
- e.g. you're listening to someone and they remind you of that new game you have to play together, so you imagine Super Mario jumping next to them
- When travelling:
- When getting ready to leave home, like for a trip, I create a mental checklist the night before departing, so I don't forget what to bring or finish before I can leave.
- e.g. a bathtub full of toothpaste, a samurai with a razor-sharp katana, and a giant floating eyeball (for contacts) I imagine around my bathroom
- For remembering what to do next:
- Even when you just want to remember one or two things short-term, a memory palace can help.
- I place things nearby, or even on my head, and check that periodically.
- e.g. "don't forget to turn off the oven/hair straightener" → 🔥 your hair is on fire!
- Shopping lists:
- I store shopping lists, ingredients & instructions for recipes in memory palaces.
- You can write shopping lists down, but then you have to look down at your phone/paper. Memory palaces are more fun anyway.
- e.g. 4 Mr. Potato Heads talking (4 potatoes), two vases full of colorful flowers (2 cups of flour), and a table covered with candy (1 tbsp of sugar)
- At work:
- I use memory palaces for meetings, 1-on-1's, interviews, and presentations.
- You can place any talking points in a memory path so you don't forget to address them all.
- e.g. I visualize my coworker Alex chopping a giant tree log by the meeting room, so I don't forget to ask Alex about debug logging (programming) in an upcoming meeting
- At school:
- When learning new information, you can use memory palaces and similar techniques to try to richly visualize new information.
- e.g. create a hut of evolutionary biology concepts, or a space ship full of physics terms, for example, to help remember questions for a test.
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