Speeding up visual thinking: mental palaces

We know that visual thinking can be faster than the regular logical thinking. There is only one issue. We are not used to thinking visually and do not know how to learn. It’s time for me to step in. Here I discuss the visualization which can be done with mental palaces. There will be other articles for other kinds of visualization.

Jump-starting visual thinking

The easiest but not the most effective way of visual thinking is playing a silent movie in our head. We should probably be logical about certain keyframes, but what happens between the keyframes can be left to our imagination. Of cause, your imagination will not work properly if you do not have everything set up.

It is best if all the actions of your mental movie happen within a mental palace and every keyframe contains a PAO: person performing an action with an object. Place the PAO visualization along the walls of your mental palace and let your visualization fill in the itinerary.

Once the basic walk works, try to speed up. Imagine you are ghost and try to fly through the mental palace. Repeat the same palace multiple times, each time going faster.

Losing details

Our visual thinking is built to deal with a certain flow of objects. As we go faster, strange things start happening. Some people experience vertigo, some saccade their eyes, and yet others see everything as a blur.

The solution I use is somewhat counterintuitive. I try to focus my eyes on the opposite side of the room and to notice the visualizations with peripheral vision. Even in an imagined world, the peripheral vision is somewhat blurry, so I try to keep one or two easily noticeable details per person and object keeping the actions as basic as possible.

While reading

Once we mastered basic visual thinking, we start to complicate it. The first thing we do is splitting visual focus. Our visual thinking can handle multiple tasks at the same time. We can look at one thing and visualize another. Try reviewing the text you already know at high speed, while visualizing the relevant mental palace at the same time. For this specific exercise stick with the texts you already memorized before, and simply try to go faster.

Memorization

Creating the memory palaces on the fly is significantly more complex than reviewing the premade visualizations. Before you start you should already be very effective in the two basic skills: creating PAO visualizations for the stuff you read now and revisiting mental palaces for the stuff you read a day before.

This time, each time you enter a room in your mental palace it is “blank” and possibly blurred. As you progress through the rooms you decorate them at your top speed. Each visualization you place in the room should be consistent with the room itself, the other visualizations in the room, and the text you read.

When I say “consistent” I am intentionally foggy. Suppose the text deals with food and you walk through your home. It is easy to eat in the dining room, but not very memorable. When you take out the best china, you might consider visiting celebrities. You can eat in the toilet and use the disgust as a driving force of the visualization. Maybe you want to put food in your bad and deal with crumbs and angry authority figures? Whatever you do, the people and actions in the room should tell a simple story.

Problem-solving

It takes some time simply to decorate the memory palaces. Probably you should not progress to the next stage until you are ready. In this stage, the visualizations themselves become alive. Other than cruising your mental palace at your top speed, you can stop and focus on a single figure or group of figures and make them move.

The basic operations we can do are simple:

• Go with the PAO at a different time, before and after the original visualization. Consider the root causes and future influences of the events.
• Divide the visualization. If we remove the action connecting the person and the object, a different set of rules is activated. Consider opportunities and threats, as well as the original properties of each part of the visualization.
• Change the relative size or materials of the visualization. What if the guests are eating not from your best china but from uranium vessels? There will be all sorts of protections required. How could a protective layer modify the original problem? Maybe apply intensive heat for a short period of time?
• Make several visualizations work together. When the queen of England sees two monkeys checking each other’s hair, what would happen? How can this be integrated into the solution? For example, maybe use hairs made of sugar in your dessert dish?
• Add or remove things. This is something your visualization will do for you. Just let is go wild and notice what associations are activated.

Additional mental exercises with existing PAO

Mental experiments

Testing various assumptions in a readily available environment. You read an article and have a cool idea. Develop it. Try pitching your idea to various visualized people in various locations of the mental palace you just created. What would they say?

Feeling better

You are not feeling the way you want to. Now go to your mental palace and blend in. Try to generate a meaningful experience with the visualization you choose. Modify chosen visualizations from your previous mindset to your desired mindset and notice as your mindset changes accordingly.

Arts

You created some visualization in your head, now recreate them in a different medium. Choose the medium you comfortably use. You can express the visualizations in creative writing, musical pieces or conceptual art. The process is more important than the end result. Notice that your creative juices start to flow.