Tips for visiting new places to use as memory palaces

General Memory Chat
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Hello everyone!

To start out I just want to thank everyone who has replied to me in the past as your advice has been invaluable. I try to do the same when I see something on here that I have experience with. I also enjoy giving people a brief explanation of what the mind palace is whenever the topic is relevant to the conversation.

Anyway Id like some advice on my current method of making new memory palaces. I have tried many different ways to collect them, from tv to video games and even entirely fictional ones. However I have decided to try to do it the old fashioned way.

My current practice is to visit one new location a day along my route to work to save gas. I want to make this a permanent habit if possible.

As long as I review them according to the forgetting curve, by the end of two months the first one I made will have truly made it into long term memory. That way I will then have one new memory palace ready to go every day.

In order to do this sustainably I need to find more efficient methods of memorizing the locations while reducing the cognitive load. This is embarrassing to admit, but because of my ADHD I get overwhelmed easily and have issues with focus and working memory. This is not laziness, if it were I would not spend so much time trying to master memory palaces.

Someone suggested moving your head when you are reviewing the information and that really helps. I also either feel or imagine feeling the objects in the room and that also helps.

Does anyone have similar suggestions.

Perhaps walking in place with my eyes closed to simulate distance during a review.

Maybe an order to memorize objects in to give the process structure? Like large furniture first, then small, appliances then knick knacks and finally minute details. I can fit a surprising amount of loci close together and thats easier for me.

I also use each walls and every corner of the room.

Another idea is set a rule for how many second I spend looking at an object before moving onto the next one.

When this gets easier I may start making two palaces a day or visit larger locations. All tips and suggestions are appreciated I would love it if as many people as possible can reply. No suggestion is too small.

Thank you all again.

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I love the dedication, but you’re overthinking it. Just have pics to look back on for reference if you feel you need that, but the loci themselvse will solidify with a lot of practice. the more decks, numbers, whatever, you memorize using the loci, the more familiar they will be. as long as they are specific, unique, and you can imagine what they look and feel like, it’ll work. :slight_smile:

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Are you going to compete that you need empty memory palaces?

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No Im just close to running out.
I have never really felt a strong need to go new places or travel. I still wouldn’t see the need if not for this. When I did go outside apparently I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings. Since most of my old palaces are vague and only start with 4 loci.

Getting out more often is probably better for my health anyway.

The act of memorizing the layout of a room while I’m standing in it just takes a little bit more energy than I think it should.

I have to re create the room in my mind one piece of furniture at a time. I look at the first piece then close my eyes and recall the image clearly in my mind. I do the same with the next object but I then imagine it next to the first and so on. When it’s all done I review it backward and forward one last time.

This is a lot of work but it creates a very strong and high quality palace. I think this method of creating new palaces is more sustainable for me.

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I’m asking because for me empty memory palaces are really hard to remember, and then frustrating, because I always ended up changing things a bit when filling them.

Now I only make new memory palaces when I have the information ready to fill them and I can tailor them to what I learn.

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That makes sense. My current goal is to always have a backlog of available palaces for when I need them. I’m planning on taking a class (not sure what) or getting a certificate in something to find a better job or a career. This could serve as preparation for me and it would be much easier for me to keep up with class mates given the speed at which I learn. I could then spend the extra time developing a deeper understanding of the material.

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Well you seem to have a good system working for you.
As you said, it gets you outside which is certainly a good thing.
And even if you don’t end up using the palaces exactly as is, it still is valuable experience building them. Like everything, it’s a skill you learn, and practicing is good.
I think memory palaces are very simple (the principle is powerful even in the beginning), but not easy. (Or at least it has been my experience. It feels easy now to follow the process I now use for new palaces, but in the beginning it certainly wasn’t that quick and it was very “intense” for the brain)

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Hi ADHDmemory,

You can always go to YouTube and look for first person walking tours of a particular city and probably a smaller section of it too.

This allows you to freely revisit the location and it’s in color for your too and the streets are also probably named.

Stefos

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Interesting never heard of that. Do they have things like that for model homes or museums?

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The forgetting curve is a myth for a mnemonist. On a mnemonist, it will appear as a straight line. You can remember anything at any time and quickly, by looking at a hint (providing an incentive) and getting a picture in your head (providing a reaction). Create a table of locations in Excel or a notebook, and mentally recall them in your head.

The representation is usually quite blurry and unclear, but you understand that it is the same object. This is enough for memorization. Select the object separately, with or without a background. And create a sequence of objects. However, you can also move around the scene by selecting objects.

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Hi,

Go to Youtube and find out :slight_smile:
Stefos

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Museums:

Homes:

Also look at sites like zillow.com. The listings often have a virtual tour or you can walk through them with photos, like this (use the arrow keys to move between pictures).

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Sit down with a notebook and brainstorm all the places you know in your life - from the very first times you can remember as a child - your first school, the school’s backyard,every part of it, then your parent’s home, then your grandparent’s home, etc…

Keep writing and writing, then start moving forward to your recent life writing and writing… workplaces you worked in, friend’s houses, stadiums, restaurants you’ve been to, bars, etc…

Dedicate yourself to spending a few hours to rummage your memory and you will realize that you actually knew tens (if not hundreds) of places that you can use as memory palaces.

After you’re done with this exercise, you would probably have a lot of places in your notebook. Take them one by one and start mentally walking through those places and pick anchor points (loci) along the way. Some places might be fuzzy and not as crisp as your perhaps current home, but you can still use those fuzzy places as palaces, it doesn’t matter!

After you finished that brainstorming exercise, I’m sure you would be having hundreds of freebie loci you never thought you knew!

Try it and let us know your experience!

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I spent several hours racking my brain and only came up with 68 additional locations that I can visualize.

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Are you talking locations, meaning loci? Or 68 memory palaces?

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Palaces. For example Iv been to Buffalo Wild Wings three times in the last 10 years but can only remember the register and the table my brother and I were sitting at. I remember the meal and the events but not the details of the location. Hard to forget the blazing wings incident as it’s one of my favorite story’s with my brother. It was a humbling experience for both of us.

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Restaurants are not great spots usually if they are like generic chain like McDonald’s or KFC.

You may be able to use some place that has distinct spots. But it’s all based on your own wiring.

Some people can use small loci like light switches, painitings, scratches or inconsistencies on the walls etc. In other words finer details are becoming loci for those.

But for example myself, I can only use distinctive loci, like tables, bar stools, chairs etc.. in the sense of a restaurant… or couches, TVs, sinks, fridges etc. Something that I can see bright and big in my mind as I’m not good with tiny anchor points. I’ve tried it and it never worked for my spatial awareness and it’s a no go for me.

So experiment with different approaches. Try to shrink yourself down from the perspective of an ant and see the palaces that way. Try to work with small loci and see if you can do it, that way you can have a lot of loci in a room/sector, but in case you are like me and you can’t you would simply need more palaces with less locations but each location would be big, vivid and distinct so you can easily navigate it in your mind.

Efficiency in remembering information comes not only through the means of creating the mnemonic imagery but also through how easy is for your to navigate your memory palaces in your head. So work your way through the whole process and identify your weak links and find which approach works for you best.

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You can use generic places as long as you make a decision about which objects are there and where they are, and then stay consistent with it.

Nothing said our memory palace have to reflect reality.

You can also add elements to a memory palace that is a bit vague in your memory.

An example I gave in another post:

I can’t go back in time to my grandparents house to see how the living room really looked like.

What I remember: there was a dresser with several knick-nacks on it, among them a little statue of a bird, a fireplace, an armchair where my grand father slept, a little yellow sofa, an upright piano, a little red sofa.

I added more stations/location by imagining things: a small table next to the armchair for my grand father to put his pipe tray (I don’t remember him having one, but logically he would have, since he smoke, and it makes sense for it to be there), a table between the two sofa with a flower vase on it (again I don’t actually remember, but such a piece of furniture would make sense), two other kick-nacks on the dresser on each side of the bird (grouping of 3 objects usually work well for me), etc.

You have to be careful with the placements (ideally the things you add wouldn’t fit as well anywhere else). But if you don’t overdo it, I find that the «real» memories anchor the «fake» ones really well.

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Oh I’m with you guys on the chain restaurants thing. That was the best example I could think of for something I could remember clearly but that had fuzzy or nonexistent furniture. I made a rule for myself that I would only use one restaurant for each franchise to avoid confusion. For example I’ll only use the McDonalds in my town but not anywhere else. You’re right they are too similar in general since they are a franchise.

I am currently following your advice on adding new objects to the places I can barely remember. Things that logically have to have been there even if I can’t remember them. Iv been doing that for a while now but it takes a lot of mental energy to make those objects anchors. Easier if I’m just adding an association to an anchor. Iv started visualization training a few days ago to help with that.

I’m decent at large numbers of loci in a single room so I’m gonna aim for that route. It seems people here are good at large numbers of palaces or large numbers of loci respectively.

If I can find a better way to create new furniture from scratch I can solve the problem of running out of palaces. I can do a lot with a single room even if it’s fuzzy. I have plenty of very vague locations where I can only remember one room or one view/snapshot.

(Incoherent rambling warning)
It seems that the only requirement for me personally to use something as a memory palace is that I “believe” it is a different location. Something that existed at some point somewhere other than in front of me. It’s when I have to try and “convince” myself that it’s a different location that I have to fight. If I could stop falling into the trap of conjuring the same furniture and forcing it to be different from the other furniture Iv added I’d be set.
(Rambling over)

There are so many different ways to build memory palaces efficiently, but the hard part is finding one that works for me without spending too much or too little time experimenting with any one method. It’s the sunk cost fallacy for time management.

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Actually the most efficient thing would be to use them.
The information you learn is anchored by the palace but also strengthens the palace in my experience.
There comes a moment where collecting empty places could be a form of procrastination (also speaking by experience :grimacing:)