I haven’t thought about writing a book just on the memory journeys, LikeARollingStone, but might think about it after my next book is out. It finally has a title, The Memory Code, and will be out next July here in Australia and then in the UK and US. That book sees the method of loci as the code to unlock the way non-literate cultures memorise so much information and then why that explains the ‘mystery’ of ancient non-literate sites such as Stonehenge and Easter Island. Strange that we know these memory methods are extremely effective, we know these cultures had the same brain as us and we know they were dependent on their memories for all the knowledge that their survival depended on culturally and physically. So it wasn’t a big leap to say that they must have used these memory systems just as non-literate cultures like our Australian Aboriginals do.
I will mention your suggestions to my publisher, LikeARollingStone, and see what comes of it.
mayaangel, because I was a teacher and mix with education people a lot, I am getting lots of interest in how these methods could be used in education. I am really interested in what you try and what works with your children. I wonder if that’s a book that needs to be written as well!
Does anyone know if there are specific books for kids on creating history journeys with specific examples? Sounds like fun to write!
Thank you Lynne Kelly for your explanations on how you’re doing it (and thank you for your other posts on this forum, they have helped me a lot).
I like a lot your way of doing this, but I am concerned about a few things. Suppose you want to know :
what happened around 1640: you start from your 1500 bloc, and then «count» till you’re there? or you know where 1640 is? or you know that it’s near the picnic spot? One you’re there can you do a 360 panorama to see a little bit far away? Do you see all the people/events at once, or do you picture the picnic spot, then the eucalyptus, then…?
what are the events you know about Newton: once again: go you know he is in the 1500 bloc, then walk and see the eucalyptus (birth), then see a “dispute” near 1700 (Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy), then something for the Newton’s Laws of motion, then… to the moment of his death? or you can «see» all the events/loci(eucalyptus…) that he is linked to?
do you “store” precise dates (YYYY/MM/DD) for some events? if so how?
In other posts, other people are rather doing a YYYY/digits to letter conversion and then PAO or new word/sentence to link to the event: for instance 1969 is t-d/p-b/j-sh…/p-b and converted to ToBy SHoP, so when Neil Armstrong goes to the moon, he goes to the ToBy SHoP for souvenir. Then if you want to know the date, you picture the moon, then the Toby shop, then 1969. And I am afraid that with your method, I would have to link an object to be more precise.
But if you want to know what happen in 1969, you have to find all of the possible t/p/j/p combination you can think of… And if you want something near in date… that’s impossible. So that’s why I like your method a lot.
My concern is more important with the last decades. I think I would like to remember a lot of precise dates, and I may have to stretch out my journey near the end, otherwise it will be too crowded…
That’s not the topic, but it’s closely related: I’d like to remember things with orders of magnitude (for instance with mass: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)). I think I can do blocks with several power of tens (like the wikipedia page), and then associate something with the mass of muon, then add later the mass of neutron, but I’m afraid that if they are too close on the journey, I won’t be able to insert correctly proton and hydrogen. (And of course with the correct value!)
How would you do if you suddenly decided to learn the exact year/month/day for relevant events?
Hi Lynne, this has really been a marvelous series of posts to read, but I got a question.
I started years ago a similar (smaller) project, in the vein mentioned by rototo : a memory palace (a big museum in Torino, where I live) containing in its rooms the largest history timeline I could fit into it.
It lacks a regular division as yours 500/1000/1500… block sides, so it needed a careful planning since it’s hard to fit additional images if you forgot that you really need to remember that in 1140 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote Historia Regum Britanniae… in any case, I filled the rooms in sequence with images - coalescing the date (by PAO), the historical fact, and the museum environment where the image sits.
A couple of years ago I stopped - exactly at 1194-1250 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor… since I was overwhelmed by a new, huge project (the Divina Commedia by heart, now just finished Purgatory). The fact is, if I get back to my rooms in that museum, I still see most (not all) of those images and can reconstruct the historical events: this is due to a reasonable application of the basic rules for images formation: beautiful, scary, surprising… but also to the fact that in a typical museum room I had ~ 5 images, no more.
Following your guidelines, I’m worried that I could never obtain such a high density of images - using a single block for 2000 years! - and even if I could, I’m sure that a large part of those images would end up in nondescript locations, leading to a difficulty to memorize them. I doubt that without constant refreshing I could recover my timeline after two years if I made it this way…
So: did you experience these problems? And in case, how did you overcome them???
I’ve been asked in a private message about the book of mems I mentioned.
It was written by the author of “Memo” which according to the blurb on Amazon was “number 1 on the bestseller lists in Norway and Denmark for six consecutive months”. The book of mems containing a thousand of the most used words in German is found here, costing about 30$. It was well worth it, but I’d rather use memorization techniques for trickier languages than German - say Chinese or Japanese.
And I would most definitely have great use of it if it were on topics like geography, history, psychology, anatomy - anything really where you need a framework.
I’ll help keep this thread alive, because it’s just too awesome!
First off, I just want to say
:
I started my History and my Country Palaces after / while reading Lynne Kelly's book : The Memory Code. I find it wonderful that this very thread had a part in the book, which in turned , inspired me for my memorization!
That being out of the way;
I’m (super) slowly building my own history palace / walk. Doing it pretty much the way Lynne does it, but with…
a few differences
It’s less organized. One day, I decided I’d start my timeline by doing the walk I did every day for 2 years, which is a 25 min walk in an Urban area. I have different paths to do it, so I had 25 min one way, and an other 25 min the other. While I walked, I circled through sorted cards from Timeline the game, so I have random spaces between cards and very large spaces between each…
I mixed it with PAO a lot. Training numbers is what I did the most and I love it, so I made the best of that fact. I have PAO markers for every century, then I have a few PAO markers on some specific Loci to mark the exact year.
After the first run to and from my job, I was back at my apartment, and at the year 1700.
From there, I started being more organized, and the dates began being more compressed together.
For the year 1700 onward, instead of placing Locis at the speed at which I walk, I started doing it “the right way”; I’doing a walk around my block, in a different direction than my job is, and I keep my eyes wide open to details. After I have the buildings better memorized, I sit with my list of dates and memorize a bunch of them.
Here's a few examples of what my images look like, and how I mix my PAO with them.
1759 : Invention of shampoo. I see Emma Stone ( My image for 59 ) up in the twisting stairs of an apartment with long hairs like Rapunzel.
1760 : Approximate start of the Industrial revolution : Emma’s hairs get stuck in some gears on the walkway. She gets pulled, and the Machine makes …
1760 : … makes Sandwiches
… (skipping about 5 dates )
1776 : Declaration of Independence : I see my mother ( image for 76) sat at a table, inside the corner’s convenience store, signing the Declaration.
Also, here’s my last trick for memorizing my dates.
I don’t try to make it perfect while constructing it. Instead, I’ll cram up a lot of information messily before a day where I know I’ll get bored.
Then, on the day where I’m bored, wasting my time, I use the wasted time to clean up my images, and make all the dates more memorable and organised.
Oooops, sincere apologies to those I didn’t answer. I am really sorry - they came in just as things heated up with the publication of The Memory Code and I was overwhelmed by the positive response. Lots of other things got lost and it seems that included responses on this board. I will update here once I have answered the posts above.
Sincere apologies for not answering earlier, rototo, I missed this! I wasn’t getting notifications then.
I have further divided up each block. In the prehistory section, there are millions of years in a few steps, but the scaling alters as I get to history, until the 1900-present is every year. From 1000 BCE to 1900, the divisions are 25 years, so I can guess the date from the location to within ten years usually. For those I want the actual dates, I then use the Dominic System (a character for every two digit number) to remember the actual date. Mostly, I don’t bother with actual dates or they aren’t of consequence - I just want things in context.
As for Newton and the events - that is where it gets quite complicated to explain, but very simple in practice. I integrate memory systems much as indigenous cultures do. So Newton happens to be one of my ‘ancestors’ so he has a Tarot card linked to him and most of his personal data is encoded onto the image on the card. His birth and death dates are connected through an associated image using the Dominic System for both. 1642 - 1527. I don’t need the centuries because the History Journey gives me that. So I record 42-27 for him using the Dominic System and put that image into the location on the History Journey. I don’t do months except for a few very specific events, and then I use some kind of link to the month name. But that’s very rare. If the record is for a person who isn’t one of my 130 ‘ancestors’ then I just add that to something at the location. Being open air, I can always find something to hook to.
1969 has its own location, which happens to be in the house. I have what I call my main palace which is the 240+ locations for the countries and independent protectorates of the world in population order. I stack that palace with lots of other stuff. My 100 Dominic System characters are there, as is the periodic table and the 20th Century. So 1969 is the gate up to our veranda. Lots climbing on the trellis next to it and charging through the gate, including me starting university!
Mine too. That’s why I scaled the full journey from 4,500 million years ago until today - with room for expansion for the rest of my life. I messed up that paling a lot initially but think I have it pretty right now. The whole journey is about a kilometre, I think. In fact, when I finish answering here, I am going to trot out and measure it. It is a perfect days to walk a memory palace!
What a great idea. I think I will pinch that one!
Apologies again for the huge delay in replying. I have no idea if you will see this, but I feel bad about missing it.
Hi alexxx, sincere apologies for the massive delay. I didn’t realise there were replies here and got so caught up with the publication of The Memory Code I slacked off on everything else.
I agree with the power of those images. I skipped the History Journey for over a year as I did a whole swag of other memory projects and came back to it with almost everything in tact. A quick check on the few vague ones and they were back in place. Incredible, isn’t it?
I don’t have the problem you suggest. I am in a country town, so the blocks are large and the variation huge. I don’t think I have used a fraction of the possible locations. There are lots of stone walls and every stone will work. There is one stone wall with 200 or so large stones in it, and I have used 3 so far. They stand out wonderfully as the three familiar stones. At any point (any date) I can use things close at my feet, on the fence, on the building or open space or out to the distance. I imagine that I can get many more images in than in a closed room. But maybe I am misunderstanding.
The block itself is only 1800 years, then 1800-1900 is the half block home from the corner, and I use both sides of the road. Then as described in the reply above, 1900 - present is one location for each year.
1194-1250 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
That section of the journey includes a side road, 3.5 houses, gardens, drives, stone gutters, various bits on the roofs on one side of the road, and a church and all its bits and pieces on the other. More locations and details than I could ever use.
I like making up my own mems for French, but would agree with you that I’d like help for Chinese - I’ve only just started on it and am struggling already. If you do find something, then maybe we can have a new thread on languages. I am sure there are some on this forum and I must check them up. There are so many interesting threads!
Thank you for your response to The Memory Code I am really chuffed. The main response to it has been asking about implementing the memory methods in contemporary life, so that is what the new book is about. Most people seem to need more detail on getting started than you did. You seem to have it down to a fine art! Thank you also for reviving this thread. I wouldn’t have seen the posts I had missed if you and Likearollingstone hadn’t done so.
In the new book, I am adding some medieval methods and a few others as well and looking at the implications for education and ageing and how it all relates so perfectly to the neuroscience.
I didn’t do that as much as I should. I am doing it much more now using Dominic System for dates and P[AO] if there are birth and death dates - I only need two.
I love the examples! I will often be messy at first, except for the actual hook. I get those pretty accurate so i can get a date to within a decade or so just from the location. I am only adding specific dates for some cases.
Whether I do lots or just a refinement seems to depend on my mood. Some days I am fired up to stack in lots of new stuff. Other times I want to ponder and refine a location or two. Meditate upon it, as Saint Augustine would have said.
Thanks for sharing this, its a really useful timeline and I appreciate that you’re open to others adding to it as it develops. Seeing the events laid out so clearly is great for memorization, especially when working through long historical periods, and it will be interesting to see how the wars section fills out over time. One thing that might help as the list grows is adding brief context notes or markers for major transitions, since those often make recall much easier later on. I sometimes notice how the mind holds onto neutral reference points almost like remembering a random label or name such as Bnlboston Limo in a dataset which can help certain sections stand out. Do you plan to keep everything in a single linear timeline, or are you thinking about splitting it by regions or themes in future versions?
since I was overwhelmed by a new, huge project (the Divina Commedia by heart, now just finished Purgatory). The fact is, if I get back to my rooms in that museum, I still see most (not all) of those images and can reconstruct the historical events: this is due to a reasonable application of the basic rules for images formation: beautiful, scary, surprising… but also to the fact that in a typical museum room I had ~ 5 images, no more.