One of the most useful memory aids was developed thousands of years ago by ancient Greeks. And the memory palace, a place in the brain where you store info that you wanted to remember, is still pretty much relevant today. It’s utilised not only by the world record-holding memory champions but also by popular detective Sherlock Holmes. With a little planning and practice, you can construct a memory palace, too.
Planning Your Palace
Selecting a place that could be easily visualized as the blueprint for the palace. A memory palace should be a place or route that you are incredibly familiar with, such as the childhood home or even your daily commute to work. It could be as small as your closet or as huge as the entire neighborhood. The significant thing is that you’re able to visualize the place in your mind without actually seeing it in real life.
Walking through the palace to define a route. Decide how you would travel through the palace in your brain rather than just picture a fixed place. For example, instead of just imagining the house, imagine how you’d walk through it. Do you enter through the frontier door? What hallway do you walk down? What rooms do you go to? If you wanted to remember stuff in some order, following a specific route through the palace, both in the real world and in your head.
Identify particular locations in the palace to store the information. Think about exactly what you’re going to put in the memory palace, whether it’s a number, name, or significant dates you wanted to remember for the exam. You would be storing each chunk of data in a separated location so you wanted to identify as numerous locations as you have data. Every storage spot wanted to be unique so that you don’t accidentally mistake one spot to another.
Practicing visualizing your finished palace by physically drawing it. On a chunk of paper, sketching your memory palace or, if it’s a route, mapping it out. Marking the storage and landmarks locations you’ve selected. Close the eyes and try to visualize the palace in the head. Then checking your mental image against the drawing to make certain you are remembering each location and that you’ve put them in the structural order.
Fill up Your Palace with Information
Placing significant information in small pieces around a palace. Putting a manageable amount of information in every spot. Don’t put too much info in any one place or it would be overwhelming for the mind to try to remember it all. If certain stuff should be kept separated from others, putting them in distinctly various places.
Using simple images to symbolize complicated numbers and phrases. You don’t want to put a full string of numbers and words in a give out location to be able to remember it. All you wanted to store in every spot is something that would jog the memory and lead you to the complete idea you are try to remember. For example, if you try to remember a ship, imagine an anchor on the couch.
Add people, bizarre and emotional triggers photos to remembering data. The photos you put in the palace must be as memorable as possible. Generally, images would be more memorable if they are out of the ordinary or connected to some good emotion or personal experience. You might picturised it.
Using Memory Palaces
Spend at least a few minutes exploring the palace every day. The more you walk through and spend time in the palace, the easier you would recall its contents on demand. You need the visualization to feel natural and effortless. Try walking through the complete route a block out and a couple of times a piece of time each day to visualize the palace from beginning to finish.
Recalling information by walking through your palace or looking around it. Once you have memorized the contents of the palace remember them simply by following the visualizing and route of a room. With practice you would be able to begin anywhere in the palace or along your route to recalling a particular chunk of information.
Clean up your memory palace when you want to update data. A memory palace could be reused over and over again. Simply replacing the existing contents with the new information. After a few practice runs, you’ll soon forget the older data and only remember the new data in its place.
Construct new palaces for different information and topics. If you have something newer you’d love to commit to memory, but you don’t need to erase the present memory palace, simply construct a new one. File the older palace away and begin the procedure all over again, selecting a different place to use as palace. Memory palaces would last as long as you need them to once they are stored in your mind.
