How to Build a Memory Palace

At the World Memory Championships, top competitors memorize the order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in an hour and more than 500 random digits in 15 minutes, among other events. Think you have what it takes? Believe it or not, almost everybody has the capability to perform such amazing feats. Competitive memorizers dont necessarily have better memories" than the rest of us; instead, they learn and perfect a variety of mnemonics (memory aids) to improve their ability to quickly learn and recall just about anything. One of the most useful and widely used mnemonics is the memory palace, a place or series of places in your mind where you can store information that you need to remember. With time and practice, anyone can build a memory palace, and they are useful for far more than just memory competitions and trivia. Heres how to build your own:

Creating Your Own Memory Palace

Decide on a blueprint for your palace. While a memory palace can be a purely imagined place, it is easier to base it upon a place that exists in the real world and that you are familiar with. A basic palace could be your bedroom, for example. Larger memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to the corner store, or your whole town. The larger or more detailed the real place, the more information you can store in the corresponding mental space.

Define a route. If you will need to remember things in a certain order, it is essential that you follow a specific route through your palace, both in the real world and in your mind. Thus, once youve decided what your memory palace is, decide how you will travel through it. If you dont really need to remember things in order, this step is unnecessary, but still useful, as it makes memorizing your palace easier. Identify specific storage locations in your palace or along your route. When you use your memory palace you will put individual things to be remembered (a number, a name, or a part of a speech that you will be giving, for example), in specific locations. Thus, you need to identify as many locations as you think you will need. Walk through your structure or along your route and really observe it. If your palace is actually a route, such as your drive to work, the storage locations can be landmarks along the way: your neighbors house, a

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crossroads, a statue, or a skyscraper, for example. If the palace is a structure, you can put things in the different rooms. Within rooms, you can identify smaller locations, such as paintings, pieces of furniture, and so on. The key is to make sure the locations you choose are distinct from each other so that no location can be mistaken for another. 4 Memorize your memory palace. For your memory palace to be effective, you need to commit it to memory perfectly. The best way to do this is to actually draw out a blueprint (or a map, if the palace is a route) which shows the landmarks or storage locations you have chosen. Try visualizing the palace when you are not there, and then check your mental image against the map to make sure you have remembered every location and put them in the correct order. Picture the landmarks in as much detail as possible: make sure your mental image includes their colors, sizes, smells, and any other defining characteristics.

Place things to be remembered in your palace. Once you have constructed your palace and have it firmly implanted in your mind, you are ready to use it. Put a manageable amount of information in each place. For example, if your palace is your house, and you are trying to remember a speech, you might place the first few sentences on your doormat and the next few in the keyhole of your door. Dont put too much information in any one place, and if certain things must be kept separate from others, put them in different places. Make sure that you place things along your route in the order in which you need to remember them, if applicable. 6 Use symbols. You dont necessarily need to put a whole string of words or numbers in a given location in order to be able to remember it, and trying to do so can be unwieldy and counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each location is something that will jog your memory, something that will lead you to the actual idea youre trying to remember. Thus, if you are trying to remember a ship, picture an anchor on your couch. If the ship is the U.S.S. Wisconsin, picture the anchor made out of cheese. Symbols are shorthand and make memories more manageable, but they also can be more effective than picturing the actual thing you are trying to remember. 7 Be creative. The images you put in your palace should, obviously, be as memorable as possible. Generally, images will be more memorable if they are absurd (out of the ordinary)[see warnings] , or if they are attached to some strong emotion or personal experience. The number 124 is not particularly memorable, but an image of a spear shaped like the number 1, going through a swan (which looks like the number 2), and splitting the swan into 4 pieces is. Yes, its disturbing, but thats part of what makes it stick in your mind.

Stock your palace with other mnemonics. There are many simpler mnemonics that you can use in combination with the memory palace. As an example, suppose you need to remember a great deal about music composition. As you enter your kitchen, you could see a little boy eating a piece of chocolate fudge, which would evoke the first-letter mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," which would in turn allow you to recall the order of notes on the lines in treble clef (EGBDF).

Explore your palace. Once you have stocked your palace with evocative images, you need to go through it and look at them. The more you explore your palace, the more easily you will recall its contents on demand. In your mind you want to see James Joyce, for example, sitting on your toilet as if he belonged there and was really an integral part of your bathroom decor. 10 Use your palace. Once you have memorized the contents of your palace you can recall them simply by mentally walking through it or looking around it. If you need to give a speech, just follow your route in order as you do so. If you need to remember that your girlfriends birthday is March 16, simply go into your bedroom and see the soldiers marching" on the bed to the tune of the 80s cult classic Sixteen Candles." With practice you will be able to start anywhere in your palace or along your route to recall a specific piece of information.

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Build new palaces. A memory palace can be reused over and over again if you need only commit things to memory for a short time. Just replace the existing contents with new ones, and youll soon remember only the new ones. If you need to remember the contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace as it

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is and create new ones in which to store other information as needed. If your house contains the phone numbers of everyone you know, you can walk to your workplace if you need to remember the order of a deck of cards.

Tips
You will need to prepare each new memory palace as you did the first, so you may want to develop new ones before you need them. There are many variations of the memory palace, such as the Roman Room and the Journey. They are all based on the Method of Loci, which sprang from the recognition that people are very good at remembering locations, and if you can associate abstract or unfamiliar ideas with a well-known location, you can more easily recall the things you want to.

There are a number of books and memory-enhancement products available to help you learn how to build a memory palace. They can be costly, however, and not all are effective for all people. Practice the steps above, and you may save yourself some money. Be persistent. The memory palace is a very powerful tool, but it is not necessarily easy to master. If youre looking for a quick fix to help you keep track of things, get a pen and paper, but if you really want to improve your ability to memorize things, take the time to learn and practice this method. Also, keep in mind that the modern age of computers brings many easy ways to build your own virtual palaces or simply choose from many of the other creations already online and take a virtual tour of them whenever you like. The impact is somewhat stronger than a drawing which makes the imprint into your mind quite effortless.

Sample Memory Palace

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Well move through the palace counterclockwise, starting in the living room, then moving to the dining room, the kitchen, around to the office on the left, through to the master bedroom, through the bathroom, and then end in the second bedroom. The living room has six wrought iron bars over each of the windows that face the street. There is a brown chaise lounge, a hickory coffee table, and two Queen Victoria chairs. The table is lined with bronze, and a tea platter is set upon it. A book on the American Civil War and a book on the transformation of ladies fashion in France are stacked next to the platter, which holds a large chunk of brie and wheat crackers. A fireplace crackles in the corner with several candlesticks lining the mantle. A large portrait of my great-grandfather, Robert E. Traill, hangs above the fireplace. A giant chest is tucked between the lounge and the wall, overflowing with gold coins (symbolizes Ottoman pirate Barbarossa), and a snake with an apple in its mouth is coiled around a chair leg (symbolizes temptation). An ornate little elephant carved out of wood (symbolizes India) and a poisonous tree frog (symbolizes the Amazon Rainforest) made of quartz is perched between the candles on the mantel. The dining room has glossy mahogany floors and purple, green, and gold- (the colors of Mardi Gras) panelled wallpaper. The dining room table is white, rectangular, and marble with gold (represents an altar in church). The eight chairs surrounding the tables are mauve and made of steel. A Leonardo da Vinci painting is hanging at the head of the table along with a painting of the horn of Africa. Pi starts at the kitchen door at the ceiling, and the numbers wrap around the room continuously. A swan is nesting in the chandelier with feathers floating down onto the table. The kitchen has a classic 1940s stove. A pan is over the fire, and liver is cooking in an inch of butter (symbolizes Julia Child). A bunch of azaleas (state flower of Georgia) are stuffed into a glass vase. A magazine on Fortune 500 companies sits by a cutting board near the sink. The tap is running and the drain is clogged, so water is overflowing and gushing onto the ground (symbolizes a tsunami). A large deadbolt and padlock have pinned a shirt with a triangle painted on it to the door (symbolizes the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire). The office has a drafting table with geology notes strewn across it. Theres a snow globe paper weight with Putin standing in the middle of a little flurry (symbolizes KGB) resting on the papers. A charm bracelet with crosses and clovers (St. Patrick) and a black ring made of bone (the Bubonic Plague) rest on the desk. A mug of beer has been spilled on the floor (Oktoberfest) and a tall top hat (The Gettysburg Address) hangs on a hat rack. A child has decorated the windows with light blue plastic snowflakes (Great Blizzard of 1888). A leopard skin lays on the floor like a rug, and a framed photograph of Charles Darwin (evolution) hangs between two windows.

The master bedroom has a comforter printed with hearts on a king size bed (King of Hearts) across from a giant white talking armoire (Beauty and the Beast). A copy of the New York Times (William Safire) and a tube of red lipstick (Revlon) are set on a vanity table. A bottle of Glenlivet whiskey is on the nightstand next to a Rolex watch. A large panda sits alone in bed Building memory Palace Page 4 of 5

(endangered species) while watching National Geographic on TV. A pair of dirty work boots sit under the desk next to a hammer (construction). A clawfoot tub in the bathroom is collecting rain from a leak in the roof. A stained glass lamp (cathedral) hangs from the ceiling. Lavender oil sits by the tub, and the wall is painted with a red cross in a white field (city of Milan). A monkey in a yellow hat (Curious George) plays in the water. The floor is a bright glowing orange that moves about slowly (Mt. Vesuvius). The second bedroom has bunk beds covered with vines that stretch across the ceiling and walls (Jumanji). A wind-up toy car drives into the wall repeatedly (collision), and a little boy a perusing Websters dictionary. The blinds are made of licorice, and the dresser drawers are pulled out like stairs (ascension). A little girl on the top bunk is eating cotton candy (plantation) next to a husky dog. There is a staircase that leads to nowhere and hits the ceiling (Winchester Mystery House).

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