Memory palaces

Memory palace/loci is the oldest method available for memorization, and still it feels like we are very far from using its full potential. If you are interested using memory palace for any specific application, I suggest you to try Anthony Metivier’s books.  Anthony has demonstrated how memory palaces can be used virtually for anything with accurate examples of how he uses it.

For me personally, memory palaces have been notoriously difficult to use. I have a genetic tendency to  misorientation.  I do not find things at home, even those that I placed there, even when I used seemingly perfect markers to find them.  So I use memory palaces only if it is the most effective way to remember something. From this viewpoint I will try to explain my understanding of memory palaces.

1. Safe deposit compartments. For me the best advantage of memory palaces is instant visual chunking. When you have to remember a list of 20 images or 20 words, you can do it in many ways. Memory palace is probably the perfect way to do this. You imagine a safe deposit wall with several compartments based on chunking, then you take individual markers and put them into the safe deposit. Done! This is the only method I know, which enables solving the 20 words exercise well below 30 second: 4 seconds to evaluate the exercise, 4 seconds to generate 5 compartments, 3 seconds per compartment [a person trained with multitasking can generate up to 4 markers in parallel]. This is great if you need to assess and catalogue a medium collection of stuff and do not have enough time for other methods.
2. Apartments with compartments.This catchy phrase I learnt from Anthony Metivier. For me it represents the ease with which you can nest markers within each other. You can generate compartments very fast, then you can generate rooms with several apartments, houses with several rooms, villages with several houses, counties with several villages, countries with several counties, continents with several countries, worlds with several continents, constellations with several worlds etc. The capacity of this method is staggering, you can encode millions of pieces of information… more so if you love fantasy/sci-fi/gaming.
3. Open the door. It is easy to embed complex objects within memory palaces. Remember the end of “Men In Black”: the hero opens a safe deposit box and beyond the door a whole universe exists. You can put mindmaps, PAO and any other memory structure beyond a door, always accessible.
4. Read the signs. Major System and its variations enable easy encoding of names and numbers. These encoded details can be placed as signs or labels on various doors in your memory palace. Do try to make each door different: in colour, style, texture, and then put a colourful sign on it. This is my interpretation of what is called Dominic system.This method actually may be very efficient for encoding some legal and anatomical data.
5. I like to move it. Who said that the memory palaces need to be stationary? You can encode a train route, a fantasy world, a voyage abroad basically as memory palaces. You have the main moving object with several multifunctional compartments, and then you have at each stop apartments with various goodies. When I learn words in foreign languages, I put them in context: friend’s home, museum, restaurant, shops etc. I can encode elements of local culture within…. Adding the time dynamics and multiple moving objects it is possible to memorize various chemical cycles and disease progress…. Really useful.

With all the advantages above, there are some disadvantages too:

• The irony of fate. There is an old Russian movie of a person that arrives into a house on a street in Russia, and tries to open his apartment when he realizes that he is actually in the wrong city. I try not to overuse memory palaces, since this effect occasionally happens to me. If you try to be creative in details you introduce ideas that were not in the text, if you are not sufficiently creative your apartments start to look alike. Some people get disoriented faster than others.
• Home improvement. As long as you need to memorize something static, memory palaces work fine. What happens when you need to add apartments or add cities to a small compartment? What if you need to remove an apartment, how do you remember that? Modifying your memory palaces may be tough…
• Colliding universes. When you try to push associations between memory palaces, it is a sort of nightmare. You need to construct some elaborate and not very natural piping or strings within the apartments. It does not feel good, even though I learnt some tricks to do that.

Basically, it is easy to store stuff within memory palaces, but hard to use it either creatively or analytically.
If you need to learn fast and the information you learn is not about to change – memory palaces may be perfect for you. We see this sort of information in legal and medical documents, historical information and language structures.
With the help of memory palaces you will memorize like memory champions.