Why use a Memory Palace?

Our brains have a natural, strong ability for spatial memory.  We can take advantage of that fact by converting information into visual material and placing it into spaces that make sense in our mind, such as a memory palace (or even a body part like we did where we converted our own body into a functional memory palace to remember a list).

Well-organized, spatial memory systems are perhaps the most efficient for drilling things into long-term memory, even so that the spatial memory system itself will no longer be necessary for recall with sufficient rehearsal. 

Design it, furnish it, then walk through it

A memory palace should ideally be a place you have been to or are familiar with.  You should be able to mentally walk through that place.

Many memorizers use furniture as stations (or loci) for storing their mental images (such as Peg Words and/or other image-based content).  I find that one of the challenges of associating loci with furniture is that rooms can be cluttered and sometimes it’s not obvious which items in the room were in or out of scope for being stations.  Also, what if your memory palace is your current home and you move the furniture around?  Therefore, it’s important to be very systematic about what is permanent in your memory palace versus what is temporary (or placed).   

If you are storing numbers in your Memory Palace using Peg Words, then you will need to be careful to distinguish your remembered content from your Palace furniture.  You also don’t necessarily want to use Peg Words that are also standard furniture pieces because you could confuse those with the loci themselves.  For instance, some people might use “chair” for their Peg Word for the number 64.  I think that is not the best idea because in a house where there are many chairs then you might confuse chairs in the permanent image with the Peg Words.  It is your mind of course, and so you can make a very unique chair such as a specific rocking chair as your Peg Word if that helps you distinguish it from the permanent furniture.  However, I would also advise being careful in the selection for easily-placeable and hard-to-mistake Peg Words if you are constructing your own.

My memory palace journey

One of the first memory palaces I constructed as my own house when I used to live and work in Malawi.   I created a memory journey where I traced my normal morning routine from waking up, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, then checking on the kids, getting breakfast, etc.  Each room was a locus.  I started with 25 loci, but then I wanted to pack more in, so I started using the four corners of every room as a locus, bringing me to a 100-loci memory palace.  Since I lived in the house, the furniture would keep moving around, so I didn’t want to anchor any memories to my furniture in this case. I made sure to orient myself in each room so that I would face North and start storing or recalling things from the upper right corner, Corner A, then moving clockwise ending with the Corner D in each room.  I would practice recalling things each day as I literally walked the path.  It was really useful.  

Later, I upgraded my memory palace by creating 100 Peg Words and then labeling each locus with the appropriate Peg Word.  You certainly don’t need to numerically encode your Memory Palace loci, but I was interested in using it to store and recall specific item numbers. That way, whenever I needed to recall item #33 (Mummy), I would remember which corner the Mummy was, and any associated memories in the 33rd memory station. 

At the time, I was experimenting with Memory Palaces while taking a wonderful course by a modern day memory Jedi, Anthony Metivier, founder of the Magnetic Memory Method and his work on constructing Memory Palaces is most comprehensive.  I wanted to put in a plug for Anthony, who has exceptional insights for making your Peg Words stickier, or as he might say “more magnetic.” When I had shared my original Peg images with Anthony, he encouraged me to use a fully “Magnetic,” 00-99 Peg list, saying that generic images tend to lead to drab results when a robust set of associations makes everything pop much more profoundly, especially when memorizing in real time.  Anthony’s advice was on the mark.  If you plan to go deep into memory techniques, I definitely recommend his thoughtful approach and resources.