How to build a memory palace?

[Brian]

@metivier

Research and personal experimentation is the key, along with speed of implementation.
.

I am facinated by speed memorizing, but just as a question do you feel that in daily use it is a key ? I understand speed is focus for memory competitions, but do you also feel it is key for those who want to use mnemoincs ?

For example if you use PAO getting your people action and objects associated with your numbers or cards probably is not the fastest method. However the method allows you speed for memorization and recall, but in reality it seems it is more time consuming and creates more restrictive mental images. And more restrictive of things that can be recalled.

[Brianma]

Everyone has their own way of using mnemonic techniques. The hardest is learning words.
I know I’ve mentioned De Herrenium before, but one of the passages that stick in my mind is something like . . . .if you can master learning words all the rest is easy.
I’m in the middle of memorizing 770 Latin words. I’ve divided the work into 100 word blocks. I use 100 loci divided into 10 blocks . . . .i can recall 60 percent, on a first pass. The troublesome 40 percent I put into a journey and use SRS. I get 90 percent recall. I then use SRS to embed the words over time. I then begin the next 100.
It sounds complicated but it’s a test bed for my language projects. If I can master Latin, the Romance languages should be variations on a theme, and go much faster.

It’s a hobby.

[Font]

Hi,

I also have a question about memory palaces and loci.

How many loci does a typical memory palace have?

When a memory palace is full, should I then create another, or just reuse it a few times? I have a lot of topics and information I would like to get started on, won’t the amount of memory palaces then become overwhelming?

Is there a particularly useful way of organizing memory palaces after topics? For example:
Anatomy
Physiology
Pathology
Pharmacology
Diseases and so on

Poems
The Old Testament
Scientific Theory

• and endless more …

Should I organize them in some special way in order best to find them afterward? Best to get it (almost) right from the beginning, right? And along these lines, the space problems puzzles me. For example there are hundreds of diseases each with large amount of facts, I’m trying to memorize, and if I only use one house for a couple of disease, the amount of houses I should know, seems quite large.

How do you tackle these problems?

I do apologize if these are simle questions, but I am reading, learning and practizing, and these are my current problems, which my books doesn’t answer.

Kind regards,
Font

PS.
I’m familiar with Anki and have been using it for 6 months, and every image I create, I maintain with spaced repetition.

[content_bot]

yep it is better to have a different journy to store different type of data. and the journey better be related somewhat to the tpye of data you are trying to memorise. For me it is not so much of a problem. i simply take a look at the data, decide the best place to store the data and then simply attach my images to that location.
To store diseases along with their symptoms and facts a hospital could be a best place. remeber to be logical while forming images,you must undestand why the image mean what they mean no matter how ridiculous they may be. if you do not undestand why an image is there and how it can remind of you of the disease, if you do not understand all these details you are probably going to forget that image.
And one more thing, when i am trying to memorise data in details (disease’s names, symptoms, any facts, treatmeant) i do not memorise them in the ordinary way. suppose i want to remeber 5 diseases with all the related facts, first off i will decide on a five stage journy, then i will only place the images of disease’s names on the five stages. review them once and then i may go to stage 4 adding images to remind me of symptoms and then i may jump back to stage 1 to add symptoms so i keep jumping back and forth adding more and more details (it is fun for me). i have to be logical when it comes to creating images and deciding on a jouney but i do not neeed to memorise in order because the journey itself is there to preserve the order and that is the beauty of the journey method.
inshort, i draw a sketch of the data and then keep filling it up
One more thing, you should have two types of journeys.
short temporay ones(use them to remeber data that you only need to keep in mind for a short period of time, shopping lists, a speech, key points of a telephone conversation etc)
long extended permanent one’s(they are often related to the topic journeys and you use them to store data for longer periods of time and you do not use these journeys to add more data that is not relevant to the data already existing)
learn the skill of finding a relevant location to the data you wish to memorise and use it as a permanent journey to store information related to that topic, extend the journey shall the need arise

[polisny]

Hi.

I took Ron White’s memory course and am familiar with how to build a memory palace. But, I used a path on my way to work that I walk over everyday, and even after repeating the encoded images more than twenty times in some cases, after months went by I had forgotten a lot of the information.

Part of the problem with memory palaces that I have observed thus far seems to be that most of them are used for nothing more than a set of maybe 20 or 30 items. But what about a palace or several palaces that require thousands upon thousands of items? The problem with a palace in this case is remembering, as in memorizing and thus being able to recall in the future, the support images in one’s memory palace.

A home or apartment or work place are the first places we think about because we see them so often that we have them memorized in detail. But, no one can encode thousands of images in their home. Maybe fifty or a hundred, usually. Again though, outside one’s home, unless s/he has grown up there and knows it very well, not all the objects are able to be recalled in enough detail to be usable for more than one or two images.

It might seem like that is okay. For example if there is a light pole in one’s journey and is remembered as a light pole, it needn’t be remembered be remembered in detail to recall just a single image or maybe two. However, one image or two has very little mnemonic potential.

If a person is trying to remember four thousand words, say, and for each word he needs on average 6 images, then that will require a minimum of 4,000 support images, plus 4,000 images for the words, plus another 5,000 for their definitions. How can someone come up with a memory palace or route on their way to work with that many images?

I have already tried it and after two hundred, went back to my support files and had forgotten more than 70% of my images. And, those were images I had repeated more than 20 times.

I have found another way to approach the same work, which actually is a dictionary and which is more than 8,000 words, with simply definitions. But I’m not sure I can find buildings or palaces that can be remembered in detail. Also, there is the problem of actually SEEING IN REAL LIFE the building or structure or whatever. If I choose a bank, for example, I cannot go into the bank and start recording with my iphone, they will think I am trying to rob them or something.

I have been trying to use Google maps, but it’s not the same as seeing something and still, one forgets the details of one’s support images after time goes by. Not the support images themselves but their details, which messes up a lot, actually. (That is why memory experts tell us to use our houses and apartments. None so far that I have seen explain how to create memory palaces for thousands of words that stick and don’t need to be repeated all the time if to work.)

Thanks if you can help.

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

@polisny

Also, there is the problem of actually SEEING IN REAL LIFE the building or structure or whatever. If I choose a bank, for example, I cannot go into the bank and start recording with my iphone, they will think I am trying to rob them or something.

I’d go into the building, look around to create the palace, then walk outside and sketch the interior.

I did something like last week when I walked around memorizing the first 400 digits of pi. (10x10 journeys)
I just looked in the window while I was sketching, so it probably looked weird, but it got the job done. One thing I would do differently is to use shops that are all in a row. I used shops that were in different locations and had to later index the journeys with pegs.

If you have a separate set of images from 0-9 you could place those inside the location while you are making the memory palace in order to be sure you didn’t miss any of the locations in your sketch.

[polisny]

I tried paying close attention to things, even describing the images I was using as support images, as in writing out descriptions for them, but I’m not sure I did that with every one. Still, I don’t want to do the same thing and several hundred images and weeks later find out that it is still not working as it should. Hopefully someone will respond who has encoded hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of images and several months have passed since and they are still able to recall every set of images and support images.

If not I will have to go with your advice,. Thank you! By the way, how long have you had these hundreds of images encoded (if indeed there are that many?)

thanks again!

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

@polisny

Hopefully someone will respond who has encoded hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of images and several months have passed since and they are still able to recall every set of images and support images.

If you haven’t done it already, you could try asking a memory champion.

@polisny

If not I will have to go with your advice,. Thank you! By the way, how long have you had these hundreds of images encoded (if indeed there are that many?)

Just a couple of weeks so far.
I think that some review will be necessary, even with memory techniques.

The image below is from my notes. I think that the sketches don’t have to be fancy, though I would recommend at least putting them in a regular notebook rather than scribbled on random pieces of paper with no advance planning…

Edit: there are 201 images in those 100 locations. I’m just finishing up my 3-digit system so that I can do the next part of pi a bit more efficiently – 9 digits per location.

[polisny]

Thank you very much for the link to the memory champ, sir, I really appreciate that! And, also, thank you for taking your time to try to help me! Your suggestion was helpful and I will keep in mind when I work.

All righty, will post back his response here so that others are not forced to redirect for his answer.

Thanks again!

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

However, Dr. Chooi claims to have memorized a 1,700 page dictionary by heart. My skepticism with that is that perhaps he repeats the images often enough that it wasn’t merely done one time, but several times, and even now. Repeating the information time and time again, for months or years is not memorizing the information. Not in the way people think. People obviously think that they will be able to remember entire languages, books or the like by memorizing them (as in, once) and then being done with it. No one thinks, okay so I can memorize a book or language once, and then keep going over it basically forever. What is the point of the method of loci if that is the case…

Even with the method of loci I think that you will still have to use spaced repetition to keep it in memory for the long term. Memory techniques give one superhuman powers but not unlimited powers.

The method of loci allows you to memorize things that would otherwise not be possible. You can memorize a dictionary with memory palaces and repetition, but probably not with repetition alone.

Someone else might have better answers, but as far as I know you will need to use some repetition.

[Brianma]

Josh.

This sums up my experience with mnemonics. This is the way I rationalize the process. If I read material once, it won’t stick in short term memory. Re reading i pin it to a mnemonic structure(mental white board), so I can reexamine it away from the written material (exam and test phase). If it doesn’t hold or there’s something I don’t know, I research that aspect (repeat and layering). If the material is part of larger material, I repeat and try and get it to fit. Usually there’s something that doesn’t fit properly, usually different jargon then research, poor loci, weak images etc repeat and layer.

There’s a lot of repetition. There’s a bottom up and top down examination of the structure as it develops.

If I was a young student, I’d do the whole process in one sitting. As I have to grab snatches of time to do this, the process ends up disjointed and time consuming. The payoff is at the end.

Initial memory structures are crude, and with use, you tinker to make them better. Latter you use these refined structures for other work.

Final word. Memory structures are like your home. They start off as a box, colour schemes, placement of doors, sizing, furniture is up to you - mnemonics just tells you ‘here is a box, go forth and personalise, here are some sample decors you can use’

[Slagathor]

What do you mean by loci #12 is 5x2+2… 5 what and 2 what? plus 2 what? this is incredibly non specific… what does loci 12 even mean? i know i sound very broad, but the initial topic question was just as broad so i think its appropriate for me to ask.

[HelloBrain]

As already stated, real places are best to start with. I started with my own house. It’s quite small, yet I found 1500 loci in it - even using, for example, each book in a bookshelf as a locus.

After a while though, I started to see those mental images even in the ‘real world’ as I walked thorough my house - I don’t know if that happened to someone else or it’s just me. So, when I got tired of seeing St. Peter doing obscene stuff every time I had to pick up my tea cup, I started to build a virtual palace from scratch - it’s still ‘work in progress’ actually, but I already have about 500 loci.

I find it so much helpful to create rooms which are similar to existing ones - for example, my virtual kitchen closely resembles my true kitchen, yet it’s totally painted white and the furniture’s very fantascientific. In this way I can create several more rooms using the same model, but just changing the ‘theme’ - as for the kitchen, I could easily get 500 more loci by creating an identical one, but turning all the furniture into, let’s say, LEGO pieces, and getting an entirely new room which I’m still familiar with.

I’d like to hear some thoughts about this method of mine.

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

@HelloBrain

In this way I can create several more rooms using the same model, but just changing the ‘theme’ - as for the kitchen, I could easily get 500 more loci by creating an identical one, but turning all the furniture into, let’s say, LEGO pieces, and getting an entirely new room which I’m still familiar with.

I’d like to hear some thoughts about this method of mine.

The best way to find out is to try it.
I’ve tried to reuse the same memory journey for two different long term things and it didn’t work well for me, but if you can change the settings enough, maybe it would work.

[ickathu]

@HelloBrain

I find it so much helpful to create rooms which are similar to existing ones - for example, my virtual kitchen closely resembles my true kitchen, yet it’s totally painted white and the furniture’s very fantascientific. In this way I can create several more rooms using the same model, but just changing the ‘theme’ - as for the kitchen, I could easily get 500 more loci by creating an identical one, but turning all the furniture into, let’s say, LEGO pieces, and getting an entirely new room which I’m still familiar with.

I’d like to hear some thoughts about this method of mine.

I quite like this. I’m just getting back into memo after a long break, so I’m finding that I need to re-learn my PAOs for digits (or, in my case, start from scratch again and spend way to much time trying to organize it really well so I can learn it quickly and eventually expand to a 000-999 system instead of a 00-99) and my images for cards. I’m really wanting to memorize long texts (the Bible, or parts of it, in particular) so I might have to experiment with this. That could turn out to be really fun and helpful.

[big_hoppa_cwm]

thank you for giving these tips. made things a lot easier for me. none of the books say to do this for palaces. they just say pick any locations in order without any rhyme or reason.

[big_hoppa_cwm]

How have you gotten along with learning those words?