I currently have around 20 memory palaces, each with 20 to 60 stations, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. I’m working on enhancing my ability to memorize and understand textbooks, but I find myself memorizing 3 to 9 items per page. This amounts to about 600 pieces of information for every 100 pages! How can I create more memory palaces, or could it be that I’m trying to memorize too much?
Lately, I’ve been struggling with motivation to learn new concepts and commit new information to memory. What strategies would you recommend me?
It sounds as if you are placing a single item in each locus. Since you’re talking about pages and chapters, I would suggest memorizing in those chunks as well. Perhaps devote a room for all of the locations for each chapter, so one room equals one chapter. That way, you’re keeping related information in the same room. Then store each section of the book in its own location within that room, meaning you’d now have multiple items interacting together within each individual location. Either that, or you need to find more locations within the spaces you’re already using. Are you placing things on top of furniture, under furniture, along the walls, etc.? If not, that might be helpful. My two-story childhood home currently supports 95 locations and could easily hold 50 more.
Of course, you may also benefit from using larger spaces. All of my palaces are based on real spaces I know, with the largest being my former college campus, used for memorizing the 200+ countries of the world (and their capitals). With a truly large space, you could store multiple books there, assuming it would make sense for those books to be in the same memory palace.
For an endless supply of memory palaces, I go to real estate sites like Zillow and search for homes with 3D tours. Then I virtually explore these houses and fill them with items I need to remember.
Rest is as important as working hard. I see by your journal that you try to do a lot of training in one day.
That can easily deplete you, if you put too much pressure on yourself. You have to to budget your energy. For me, memory training is particularly heavy, and makes me tired/slightly anxious, so I need to train that muscle slowly.
To stay motivated, first take care of your body. Step outside, sleep well, eat well, go to a park, human contact, remove dopamine vices (social media, excessive phone usage).
After you have that in place, I would visit nice places as something that motivates me. Museums, parks, libraries whatever you have access to. They can easily be turned into MPs, but remember to also enjoy the experience.
I also think its important to take note of your own culture. Some countries have a culture that praises infinite hustle, but there’s enough evidence that this is not the most productive way long term. I recently read a book called Feel Good Productivity and I think it might have some useful tips that you could use.
Ah, I’ve just listened to this podcast episode about how @jonaswiberg123 memorized a dictionary, and he uses an interesting compression method of placing a “container object” with 9 places to hold images for words.
Your mileage may vary, but I’m thinking of doing something similar for my own dictionary project.
I agree with cauli: rest is very important. In fact periods of rest are an integral part of learning and you should plan for them too!
When you relax (take a day off, do any tasks/hobbies which allow you to let your mind wander, go for a walk, take a shower, build something with legos, etc.), your brain go into “diffuse mode” and makes connexion between the different things you’ve learnt, reinforcing them and making them fit together. The more intense your learning is, the more important it is to plan time for this!
When you sleep, your brain consolidate your memories, making them from short-term to long-term.
So if you struggle with motivation, or feel you’re not going forward as well as you could be, it may be that you need to take a day off or add more real breaks into your routine.
I very often notice that, when I come back from holidays (during which my learning routine always falls by the wayside), I may have an impressive backlog of anki cards / reviews to do, but they feel easier then before. It’s like my brain continues to do its thing and learns without me consciously putting the effort in.
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