Memory Palace
In my work, I constantly need to learn and retain new information, dry, and sometimes boring information. Rote Learning (learning by repetition) just wasn't cutting it: hour after hour of reading, repeating, re-reading, writing down facts until they are so permanently etched into your mind that you can feel them pressing against your skull; the beginning of that familiar headache that will only be cured two whiskies later.
I wanted to know whether there were other methods or ideas out there that could save me time, making learning fun, more entertaining, less life-consuming! And it turns out that there is, and it is aptly named the “Memory Palace”.
As soon as I heard those words, Memory Palace, I couldn’t wait to know more. As quite the Sherlock fan that I am (the TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch, you must watch it if you haven’t), the idea of having my very own mind palace excited me, it thrilled me! The idea of entering a room, and gathering whatever information that I needed, and being able to use it to devastating effect, all without having to leave my mind's-eye, it took me back to childhood - I could see it now, Me as Sherlock Holmes , private detective, all of the knowledge and intelligence in the world, solving unsolved crimes, being able to deduce who D.B Cooper was just by closing my eyes, walking into that room, and only leaving that room with the certainty that no matter how improbable, I knew that I had the answer… I needed to know more!
Now, I must ironically confess that I do not recall when I first learnt of the term Memory Palace; what I do remember is that it lead me on an adventure, and after devouring books on the subject, I learnt the method well enough to employ it into my work studies, saving me time, and improving my exam scores and generally making learning experience fun again!
The method is simple (and I must state here that I owe much to the book “Moonwalking with Einstein” which I couldn’t rate more highly after reading in one sitting), originating from the Ancient Greeks, over 2000 years ago, previously named the “Method of Loci”. The technique exploits spatial memory, that part of your memory that enjoys imagination and visualisation. It is best explained by example: for instance, do you remember a person that you recently met... but can’t quite remember their name... you can picture their face, you can remember shaking their hand, you can remember where you were, and what was around you… Our brains are wired to visual stimulus, and further still, to creating routes and remembering those routes. This method is all about visualising what you want to remember using objects and actions, and visualising it in a familiar place to create the mental associations, making things more difficult to forget than they are to remember.
Now if you have been patient enough to read so far, I would like to challenge you to using the method, and seeing if it may aid you, as it has me:There are 10 random words that follow (plucked from the list of words that were used in the 2015 World Memory Championships), I want you to memorise them. What I would like you to do is to picture a place you know well, such as your home, and when you read each word, you are going to use your imagination and associate that word with something ridiculous, or something funny. It can be a person, an object, a thing, anything, the only criteria is that it is something that you can visualise!! As you go through the list of words, you should place the ‘thing’ that you have visualised into your “palace”. You should go around your palace, in an order that you normally would, as you go through the words. Once you are done placing these objects into your palace it is simply a case of following your route from the start , and the words will come back to you instantly. I will write down how I would memorise these words for an example of how ridiculous the visualisations can be.
- Magpie
- Herb
- Trident
- Ice
- Jockey
- Pen
- Ass
- Mushroom
- Extinguisher
- Chemist
As I walk up to the front door of my house, there is a giant talking Magpie asking what I am doing there, I push him out of the way and enter my home, Snoop Dogg is sat on my stairs and he is smoking Herb, he offers me a joint and I take a drag, I walk to the right into my lounge and there is a Golden Trident smashed through my TV, as I pull it out of the TV, I slip on some Ice, I look down and the entire floor is covered in Ice, it is freezing, all of a sudden a horse smashes through the window and I have to joust the trident at him, the Jockey falls off slipping on the ice and into the wall.
I walk over the jockey through to the kitchen and find the Pen that I keep next to the phone, I draw a picture of a cock on the wall with the Pen, and then Kim Kardashian walks in, naked, with her Ass, she starts trying to rub out my drawing with her Ass - bitch! I look around and open the fridge and it is just full of Mushrooms, I start throwing them at her. She grabs a fire Extinguisher from under the table and sets it off, covering the kitchen until all you can see is foam. I walk out of the kitchen into the utility room, where I find Walter White (Chemist) with his chemistry set on my table. Now all that’s left is to do is simply walk through my house, and the 10 words are remembered, in order, and even in reverse order if I wish to walk the route backwards.
The technique requires a lot of our attention to imagine these settings and new associations but the visualisation makes it easy to remember. It is not difficult to remember 10 words, but this process can be applied to hundreds, and becomes easier with practice. I use this process to remember important concepts in work, where I must remember the order and key points.
I hope this article will give you something to think about, or at least a novel way to memorise simple lists, without fear of forgetting.