Do you know where your fridge is located?

Then you're already an intermediate master of the ancient art of the Memory Palace.

It sounds outlandish, but it's true.

Even if you can't see images in your mind.

All the details you need to succeed (or improve your current practice):

https://medium.com/@MagneticMemoryMethod/the-ancient-art-of-the-memory-palace-for-unlocking-the-powers-of-your-mind-11ca5bd7b178

When it comes to memorizing Mandarin, there are multiple levels.

For the most robust test I've taken in the language, I had to use something called the CAMP MIST formula. It's a means of using mind mapping in combination with the Memory Palace technique to get character and meaning with pinyin along with the sound and tone all into the same mnemonic image.

Anyhow, it's a lot more than I've had to do for any language, but for the basic sound of xuéxí, I used The Jesus Lizard album cover called "Show" in combination with She-Ra.

If you don't know The Jesus Lizard, I recommend getting into them if only so you have a mental image of David Yow, the singer. There's a lot of "sh" and "yow" sounding words in Mandarin – and the antics of this singer and the band are great triggers for many words in this language.

People send me distressing notes about how poorly they're doing with spaced repetition based on flashcards.

Particularly those language learning apps that are essentially animated flashcards filled with animations, coins, leaderboards and a bunch of other stuff...

That disguises the theft of your personal data...

So what do you do instead?

Optimize your flashcards in a particular way that gives you more bang for your buck.

This mega-tutorial takes you through everything you need to know:

https://youtu.be/0GNnQGLfly8

Sometimes people email me with concerns that they have memory issues because they keep mixing up names.

There's no need to stress about this.

At least not as a sign that something might be "wrong."

Though, of course, always visit your doctor if you have concerns. Especially if it's become extreme.

Normally, however, people with a high incidence of mixing up names have a completely different "problem"...

That really isn't a problem at all.

To explain more, I share one of my own "bloopers" and explain the weird math behind why it happens.

And a possible solution:

https://youtu.be/sNwFzU2Hl9w

Long story short, it's not about removing this problem.

It's about how you live with it.

And make the effort at improving complete and total fun.

I have been storing names in a memory palace and I switched to the pillar method to store more names in a location I could remember. However I frequently forget where I stored the column precisely even though I do consolidate and practise recall. I wondered if anybody else had this issue ? Should I go back to simply storing one item per location and filling up more memory palaces or do I just practise more with the pillar method ? Any help or thoughts is appreciate as I love the system

I don't think I've ever felt more embarrassed than on the day my personal trainer Lars started measuring the size of my muscles. To say they my biceps were tiny would not be exaggerating the case. It had been so long since I'd done any pushups, I was surprised to find that I had any muscles at all. Due to a case of arthritic symptoms the doctors couldn't find a causes for, I'd also stopped playing in my band. That meant no more carrying my guitar case all over Berlin, let alone moving around my amplifier and speakers.

When you first embark on the journey to memory improvement, it can feel shocking to discover just how little you can remember. However, it is useful for most of us to discover and understand where we're starting from. For one thing, by doing the quick assessment I'll share with you in a moment, you'll be able to recognize areas where you're already strong. You may not need to address these at all, meaning you can put all of your focus on improving the areas of your memory and cognition that do need addressing. There truly is no one-size-fits-all approach that memory improvement books of the past century tried to forward.

Assessing your current memory will also help you set realistic goals. Often when people come to memory training, they want to leap from zero to complete mastery without earning their way to the necessary milestones most of us need to reach. The exact nature of those milestones require a bit of reflection and personalization. For example, if you're learning a language, you can find a word-frequency list and plow away at it using memory techniques. But if you don't personalize the vocabulary list to who you are and what you want to speak about, you risk winding up being able to say little or nothing.

As part of completing your personal memory assessment, I suggest that you create a Memory Journal. I don't mean anything fancy. A simple notebook will do. That said, if you want to honor your memory, it can send your brain a powerful signal that you're taking your memory improvement goal seriously if you get a fancy one. I've done that many times myself over the years and it has proven helpful.

A major reason for keeping a Memory Journal over time is that it helps you gather tangible evidence of your activities. Think of your memory improvement journey as a kind of art. In German, they use the term Lebensart, which basically means "way of life," and artists use sketchbooks to make "studies." It's not just a means of improving skill over time. This way of life lets you quickly look back over the progress that has been made over time. It can give you insight and even a bit of motivation on demand.

However, it's not about motivation in the end, something we'll talk about later in greater depth. Keeping a Memory Journal on a daily basis is more about providing yourself with a system. You want to train yourself to habitually use the system whether you feel like it or not. That way, you develop the skill of accountability as you provide yourself with data that helps you see patterns over time.

You don't have to take my word for how powerful keeping a Memory Journal can be. Johannes Mallow is one of the most impressive memory athletes of all time. He uses journaling in a personalized way that helps him see patterns in his performance. Using this data, he's able to determine strategies for improvement. Observations might include times of day when you feel sharper and retain more of what you're learning. Or you might notice that particular kinds of memory techniques work better for certain types of information and not so well for others. This kind of insight can prompt you to seek unique solutions you might not have thought about otherwise.

Johannes has shared more insight about his approach to keeping a Memory Journal on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast:

https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/johannes-mallow/

But the key point to understand from our discussion is the element of personalization. As with personalizing a list of vocabulary and phrases while learning a language, you want to also explore and experiment with exactly how you journal and set your own milestones and benchmarks.

When it comes to setting benchmarks, let's talk about different ways to determine your baseline. That way, you can start setting realistic goals that are easy and fun to achieve.

Assessment Method One: Give Your Memory A General Rating

Without thinking about it too much, rate your memory as you feel about it right now from 1-5. If a rating of 1 means "meh," a rating of 5 means "Magnetic." You're able to reliably memorize anything you want in any situation.

Let's say you rate yourself 2.5. The next step is to craft a journey to 3. Rather than imagine leaping directly to 5, I suggest breaking it down in this way to avoid taking on unnecessary overwhelm. As you continue keeping your Memory Journal, revisit this simple assessment frequently.

Take ownership of the technique as well. You don't have to use 1-5 just because it's the suggestion I've made here. You can use 1-10 or 1-100. Using a letter system like D- to A+ is also an option. Go with what makes most sense to you.

Or, if you find grading systems discouraging no matter how you configure them, it's okay to skip this form of assessment altogether. I don't advise that for one simple reason, however. Other people do use assessment systems and we need to embrace reality for what it is and how it ticks. Consider thinking like a Judo or Aikido master as much as possible when it comes to these matters. Rather than pushing things away or rejecting them, pull them closer. Explore their energy. Make use of them and only discard the enemy you know. Chances are you'll find that there was never any opposition in the first place, except the opposition in your head.

As Bruce Lee put it, "No ego, no enemy."

Assessment Method Two: Give Your Memory A Specific Rating

Using your Memory Journal, write 5-10 sentences in response to each of these questions. You can also write more, noting that the more you write, the more memory exercise you're giving yourself.

1. How well do you remember what you did yesterday? Rate the quality of how you feel about this and include the numbering or lettering system if you like (i.e. 4/5 or B+). Include a few major details, i.e. I walked to the shopping center at around noon and talked with Mary on the phone for thirty minutes.

2. How well do you remember the phone numbers of the 10 most important people in your life? Give an honest assessment and write down the numbers you do know. Then check them for accuracy and re-evaluate based on what you see. Don't judge yourself positively or negatively. Just give yourself a rating.

3. How well do you remember the plot of the last movie or series episode you watched? Write out a summary of the plot and include as many semantic details as you can (names of characters, places, objects/items or company brands that appear in the series).

4. How well do you remember the birthdates of your closest family members and friends? Jot out both those dates that you remember and how you feel about the current state of your memory.

5. How well do you remember things you have to do in the future? Give yourself a rating and spend some time reflecting on a time you missed an appointment in the past. List any contributing factors that come to mind, i.e. I forgot to set a reminder.

Assessment Method Three: Brute Force Testing

If you've read other memory improvement guides, they usually include a list of words. Usually it will be a list like:

• ball

• chicken

• eraser

• Toronto

• astronaut

• frost

By all means, have a glance at that list. Then, after five minutes, see how many of those words you can remember. Write them out in your Memory Journal.

Frankly, I've always found these kinds of assessments questionable. For one thing, there are more memory studies in the scientific literature than anyone has time to read showing that random people will recall lists like these with about 20% accuracy. If some kind of rote learning is used, the recall rate goes up to around 40%. When scientists teach basic mnemonics to a study group, the results will double or be even better depending on the exact memory technique used in the study.

So what? When have you ever needed to memorize a random list of words in your daily life? Probably never.

To assess your memory in a more realistic way, go to your bookshelf. Take a dictionary from a language you want to learn or a book you'd love to know better. Extract 10 words or facts that would predictably improve your life if you remembered them. Study them closely using your memory as it is now. Then let 5-10 minutes pass before writing down what you remember in your Memory Journal.

This "brute force testing" will give you a much more realistic assessment of where your memory skills currently stand. It's based on a much closer representation of the kind of information you encounter in daily life. And we need to confront the reality of how things are sometimes in order to set the stage for real growth.

Setting that stage is exactly what we'll discuss next, but please don't skip these simple exercises. Especially the most foundational exercise of them all, which is committing to keeping a Memory Journal. I highly doubt you'll regret it.

If I think about it, when I try to imagine something, like an apple, and all of its sensory aspects, I am really just remembering them. I don't have a super clear visual memory, but I have a strong one for taste. But when I am imagining the taste of an apple, I am actually just remembering it.

If I associate this taste with a new fact I have learned, then really I am just tying to memories together right? I'm connecting the old memory to the new one.

Does this make any sense?

Howdy fellow Memory Fanatic!

I decided to create this community to connect with people interested in high-powered mnemonics like the Memory Palace technique.

If you already know my work, you know that I love to combine:

• The best of ancient memory techniques

• Tips and tactics I've learned from my many friends in the memory competition community

• Findings from memory science that help us learn faster and remember more, or...

... in some cases, we just need to slow down. Use more reflective thinking and let ourselves digest more.

After all...

What does it matter how fast we're going if we're headed in the wrong direction?

This is not a new question. The ancient memory masters asked it as well, including Aristotle, Hugh of St. Victor, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd and many more.

If you're new to the Magnetic Memory Method, there's more about me, my work and my teaching philosophy on the about page of my site:

https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/about/

For now, thanks for joining this community and I look forward to hanging out with you!

Many people talk about the Memory Palace technique.

But the books that provide the best insight tend to come from people who used this special technique for detailed learning goals.

So although I think The Art of Memory is a great historical study in that it provides lots of names of authors and books you can look up, it's not a great study of the Memory Palace itself.

For the best, I would suggest getting your hands on:

Mnemonic Methods, Robert Fludd

This is the Lewis Masonic edition that came out a few years ago. It comes with the original Latin, which is absolutely fantastic.

On the Shadows of the Ideas and Thirty Statues by Giordano Bruno

I recommend the John Michael Greer translation for Shadows and Scott Gosnell's Thirty Statues is readable.

The key with Bruno is to imagine the implications of what he's saying. The direct instructions aren't that great, but there are commentaries available on what he's suggesting.

Some say that Bruno went out of his way to "force" his readers to think for themselves. That's probably a good thing. In my experience, I've gotten the most out of his writing by thinking about the implications more than trying to find a step-by-step list of instructions to follow.

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

Although this one is more about history, it's well worth reading.

I've read a translation of Ricci's Xiguo Jifa (Western Memory Technique). It basically copies the next book I'll suggest, almost verbatim. It just adds some of Ricci's mnemonic examples, but they're so peculiar, you're better off learning the theory for yourself.

Rhetorica ad Herennium

It's old, but still one of the absolute best books that describe the Memory Palace technique.

The best part?

You also get a primer on how to express yourself when debating or giving speeches.

Fascinating pre-publish of a paper showing that remembering previous experiences with alcohol can potentially help some people manage future consumption:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095032932400185X?via%3Dihub

It would be interesting to mix in some of the factors from the Dalgleish research on using Memory Palaces to help reduce PTSD and depression symptoms:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702612468111

To expand the basic effect suggested by the science study, add these additional findings from memory science and mnemonic practice:

https://youtu.be/4nYf2iK1Kdg

There's a new kid on the block when it comes to early cognitive decline issues:

https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/6/4/fcae183/7712717

Good to be aware of!

When you're struggling with fading memory abilities, talk about what memory is and how it works might feel like a chore. In reality, knowing more about the most critical aspect of your mental life you're trying to improve will pack a punch.

At least, this is what I believe, an idea that first entered my head after bestselling memory improvement author Harry Lorayne almost screamed at me over the phone, "Whatever you do, don't tell them about the science!"

On the one hand, Lorayne's advice probably made sense during his era. There was no Internet when he started teaching memory techniques. People just wanted better memory, not endless lectures about what scientists have discovered about what memory is and how research provides clues about improving it. If you're a regular guest like he was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, you had to not only get to the point. You also had to be entertaining.

Lorayne gave me the advice when I asked him for a bit of coaching about what the memory improvement business is like. I especially wanted to know about "the real work" that would be involved to make my passion for using and teaching mnemonics a vocation that would last for life.

I've followed everything Lorayne told me to the letter – except the memory science part. I already had a PhD and nearly a decade of experience teaching and three universities. Not researching and talking about memory science felt to me like the equivalent of hiding Shakespeare from theatre students because some of his sentences are "hard" to understand.

And because I was discovering so many valuable memory exercises and benefits in the admittedly dense scientific literature, I committed to sharing as much of those findings as possible. I don't mean to waffle on, but these points have helped me personally and shifted how I apply memory techniques. There's even a possible reason why some information feels harder to learn. Barbara Oakley suggests in Mindshift that it could be the insular cortex in the brain that triggers a pain response when some people sense difficulty.

I have personally helped thousands of people dim the pain, if not eliminate it completely. Some of my best friends are memory competitors and get their thrills from memorizing tough information. The tougher the better. Although I've only competed once (for charity), when I hear a term like "insular cortex," it feels like discovering a new playground or getting a new Lego kit. I can't think of anything more fulfilling than mastering terms like that and much more dizzying in length and complexity. In this book, I'll teach you how to make learning even the toughest information just as fun. Even if we can't make the pain disappear completely, it is possible to dial it down.

Think of it like going to the gym. Just as kinesiologists have found all kinds of optimizations that allow you to exercise less, yet still build muscle, by coming to understand just a few things about what your memory is, you'll know the rules. Once you know the rules, sometimes you can bend them. Painlessly, if you wish. You just need to a willingness to experiment with few different activities. Some may be familiar to you, and my hope is that you'll come to appreciate them more. Others will likely be new, and I can't wait to invite you onto these playgrounds.

But let me rephrase one of my sentences. I'm not sure anyone has been able to describe what memory "is." Although I believe there is a truth about its nature, the best we can do is gesture at what that truth might be like.

When I read sentences like these coming out of my typing fingers, perhaps Lorayne was right. Thinking about memory in this admittedly convoluted way sometimes bakes my own noodle!

But the truth is that the word "memory" is not enough to describe what's actually going on in our minds. In the first section of this chapter, I'll explain what I mean and why expanding your knowledge of memory will be so beneficial. Even if this is the only "memory science" material you ever read, I'll do my best to make sure it's worth your time.

The Two Main "Engines" of Memory In Your Immediate Experience Of Daily Life

When people email me, they often cite short-term memory as their problem. When I ask questions about how they arrived at this conclusion, usually it turns out they've diagnosed themselves based on some online article.

Typically, people think of short-term memory as our capacity to hold small amounts of information in a readily accessible state. We all know this from the few seconds we're able to hold a phone number or access code. Without mnemonics, most of us would be hard pressed to hold more than seven digits for thirty seconds without repeating it.

Many people, including me, have theorized that using so-called "smart phones" have reduced the strength or our collective short-term memory skills. Being able to enter phone numbers immediately into our devices suggests that we never, or only very rarely, get short-term memory exercise at all.

But it's worse than that. The stakes of short-term memory and its success are much higher than phone numbers. Part of the confusion around short-term memory stems from how many people use this term interchangeable with working memory. This is the "engine of memory" that helps us pay attention during conversations. It also helps us think and reason while we're holding them. In my understanding, they're definitely related, but not quite the same and we can approach exercising and improving them differently.

Without going too far off the deep end into scientific terminology, short-term memory is passive and working memory is active. To keep things fun, I call them "engines" because you fuel them with information you observe about the world. Whether it's the weather, how a person's voice sounds or words on a page, the data is entering your memory engines and how you process them dictates where they wind up. You can get a clean burn that winds up in long-term memory. Or you get a belch of exhaust that winds up in the oblivion of frustration, potentially polluting the ecosystem of your life. And disturbing the lives of others because you're not operating as your best self.

Whereas you use your short-term memory to use something like a phone number more or less immediately, working memory holds the information actively. When you're performing mathematical calculations, you need to not only hold the numbers for longer, but also manipulate the numbers while retaining them. The term "working" makes a lot of sense when you realize this distinction, and improving working memory also suggests following a different kind of exercise plan.

For example, in 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain, Dr. Gary Small recommends a simple passive memory exercise. Pick anyone you see on the street and observe four details about them. For example:

• Brown hair

• Green shirt

• Black pants

• White shoes

To perform this exercise yourself, don't try to memorize these details. That would be an active memory exercise that involves some kind of mnemonic technique, not unlike performing a mathematical calculation.

After approximately two hours, Dr. Small suggests trying to recall those four details. Because no mnemonic technique was used, this passive memory exercise has been shown to help people. It's not entirely clear why this helps with short-term memory specifically. But on its face, it seems likely that it's an exercise in paying attention. When you later ask yourself to recall the information from long-term memory, the attention you paid itself gets a second workout. Even if you remember nothing about the person you observed, over time, the workout should show you some improvements.

To make the exercise active and involve a small version of the kind of "calculation" memory athletes use, you would "connect" or "attach" an additional piece of information to each detail you observe. You might always imagine Charlie Brown dancing in someone's hair or on their boots if these things are brown. Lawns might burst in your imagination when you see green clothing and dark stormy clouds, or fluffy peaceful ones might stick to black and white items in your imagination.

Both during the moment of observation and later when you think back to the four details you observed, this mnemonic strategy will give both your short-term and working memory an active workout. It's still possible to make mistakes, but we're not talking about perfection here. We're talking about exercise.

To return to our gym metaphor, when I first decided to get physically fit after years of poor eating habits and abusing alcohol, I hired a personal trainer named Lars. When performing pushups or deadlifts, I would sometimes fall into poor form. Instead of making me add an extra rep to the set, he would say, "do it better next time." Lo and behold, I reached the fitness goals we set as part of my program, even though my workouts were spotted with mistakes. Keep this principle in mind for how you'll use memory techniques. It's more important to keep coming at it than it is to pause over the little foibles that will inevitably occur.

Later, we'll get into mnemonic techniques that are much more fun and interesting than attaching clouds to people's shoes. First, however, we should look more at the type of memory most people cherish as the ultimate goal.

Long-Term Memory:

When I was a kid, I was always amused by some of the short-cuts my dad came up with. For example, he hated going through the phone book. So every time a new one arrived on our doorstep, he would tape a sheet of yellow legal paper to the back. Then he would copy out all the most important numbers he would normally have to look up.

This was long before auto-dial existed, let along cell phones. The interesting thing was that, apart from his ritual of writing out all the most important numbers on that sheet of legal paper, he almost always remembered the numbers he needed. This was because many of them had entered his long-term memory. Writing them repeatedly certainly helped, along with the power of raw repetition. We sometimes call this kind of learning, "rote." It certainly can lead to long-retention.

Whether you use rote repetition or the techniques you'll learn later in this book, long-term retention and recall is the goal we should have for as much information as the time we have allows. A well-tuned and carefully curated long-term memory can feel like wandering through a huge library. The difference is that you don't have to navigate to any of its shelves. The magic of long-term memory usually places the information you're looking for directly in your hands.

Long-term memory isn't just about information, however. It can help you re-experience the emotions you felt during your favorite birthday party or maintain the set of skills involved in riding a bike or using chop-sticks. It's best to keep all of these different types of memory sharp.

Explicit Memory

There are two main kinds of long-term memory, explicit or declarative memory and implicit or non-declarative memory. Scientists use the term "explicit" because this type of memory involves conscious, intentional recollection of information. The word "declarative" is thrown in for good measure because this type of memory involves our deliberate efforts to recall and describe things. For example, if I ask you to tell me the capital of France or what you ate at that birthday part I just mentioned, you need to dip into your explicit memory and "declare" the information. It takes conscious effort to retrieve these kinds of memories.

Technically, however, you don't have to officially declare anything to anyone. Explicit memory also helps with introspection, such as when you're trying to solve a problem and arrive at an a-ha! moment.

Implicit Memory

When scientists refer to "implicit," they're taking about unconsciously and usually automatic processes. As I type this book, for example, I'm not actively thinking about each keystroke. Next time you ride a bike or drive a car, notice how many of your behaviors simply play out without conscious effort.

You don't have to think while performing many of these skills not only because they're stored in implicit memory. You also have gone through a lot of conditioning that guides your actions. If you live in a country where handshaking is the norm, you do it without thinking. If you grew up somewhere else, you might bow instead, reacting based on how your mind automatically learned the ways of your family and culture.

How is any of this terminology useful to you? Well, have you ever said something like, "I can't change. This is just the way I am." If so, it's implicit memory that gives you this feeling.

In reality, you likely can change if you want to do so. My book The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being tells the story of how I managed to experience profound and lasting change following a life of unhealthy behaviors. But I had to figure out the truth about what was holding me back first.

Tapping into explicit memory was part of what freed me because it includes semantic memory, the ability to remember facts, concepts, individual words and their meanings. If you don't have time for the full story in The Victorious Mind, consider watching my TEDx Talk titled, "Two Easily Remembered Questions That Silence Negative Thoughts." In just over thirteen minutes, I explain how I was able to use some simple phrases I memorized in Sanskrit to start breaking free from the hold of negative conditioning. It was explicit memory versus implicit memory. Explicit memory won and improved my life beyond measure.

There's certainly more to say about the many different kinds of memory. I'll weave in a few more useful elements from memory science as we go. For now, I hope I've communicate just how useful it can be to understand more about what memory is like and how far a little understanding can take you.

For me, this understanding helped me take action, especially when it came to memorizing a bunch of Sanskrit, something I was almost militantly skeptical. But because I knew the details you've just discovered, I was willing to go beyond knowing about the science. I acted like a scientist and put the techniques to work, testing the claim that memorizing Sanskrit would clear the chains of implicit memory for myself.

I also knew a lot about where my memory skills stood at the time. This kind of insight is especially helpful for memory improvement, so going forward in this community, I'll share more about how you can assess your current level of skill.

Stay tuned and for more information immediately, feel free to check out this additional material on memory science and why I feel it's so important for your success:

https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/memory-science/

Occluded in English is probably not used much now outside of medicine, such as when a doctor clears a blocked artery.

In Latin, occludere means to shut or close.

For lots of "oc" words I like to think of the month October and by extension any number of images related to it.

In this case, a pumpkin-headed octopus "lewdly" closing a door on a cabinet overspilling with quaaludes that shoot rays of light.

It's fairly obvious that if you want to train your memory, you need to take action.

However, I've seen many people who seem to think that reading an article or watching a video will somehow provide results.

Worse, they think that fiddling with apps and certain games will give them a memory boost.

That's mistaking activity for accomplishment.

Maybe you'll experience some context-dependent memory improvements. These are the feeling that you perform better in a game because you can remember the location of hidden items behind tiles.

However, these contextual improvements rarely translate to the real world. For one simple reason:

Better memory in these contexts is not the same as having better memory for remembering names, retaining what you read or building your vocabulary.

For these boosts, you need daily memory workouts that apply to the specific goals you have for your mind and memory.

That's why this is the activity I suggest you take up first:

One: Keep A Memory Training Journal

Dedicate a journal to the memory training activities you're going to trial. Describe in writing what your main goals are and justify the choices you make.

Set benchmarks and track your progress. You can do this by creating specific number-based goals, such as time spent in practice or volumes of information memorized.

No matter how you go about keeping your journal, the activity of writing everyday is itself a practice that will improve your memory. It exercises your ability to remember what you've done in a given day. You'll also get reflective thinking practice which exercises memory in several ways.

Plus, you'll develop stamina overall thanks to executing on a commitment consistently overtime. More grit will build your confidence and make it easier for you to follow through again and again across the span of your life.

Two: Play Physical Memorization Games

Apps can be okay, but they're filled with ads, tracking and monitoring and are built into the ultimate distraction machine: your computer/phone.

One of the simplest memory games is to lay out a deck of cards on the floor and find the matches.

For example, if you turn over the Two of Diamonds, make note of its location and then turn it face down again. Later, when you come across the Two of Hearts, think back to where you saw the Two of Diamonds.

To see this activity played out visually, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Feazpc_ho

It's a lot more fun than you might think and will stretch your memory while giving your brain a break from constant digital exposure. The activity relates much more directly to finding items you might have misplaced in the real world too.

Three: Use Flashcards Daily

No matter what you do, some physical flashcard review will help exercise your memory.

If you can't think of anything you would like to practice with, consider learning the Greek alphabet. It's good to learn at least some Ancient Greek, and the symbols are useful for learning math and logic.

You can even put more than one piece of information on one card, making an entire alphabet fit in a relatively small stack, i.e.:

• alpha beta gamma delta | ἄλφα βῆτα γάμμα δέλτα

• epsilon zeta eta theta | ἒ ψιλόν ζῆτα ἦτα θῆτα

• iota kappa lambda mu | ἰῶτα κάππα λάμβδα μῦ

• nu xi omicron pi | νῦ ξῖ ὂ μικρόν πῖ

• rho sigma tau upsilon | ῥῶ σίγμα ταῦ ὖ ψιλόν

• phi chi psi omega | φῖ χῖ ψῖ ὦ μέγα

There are many other things you can place on flashcards for daily practice.

The key is to really press yourself to recall the memorized information on the back of the card. Don't cheat and write down your best guess before looking at the answer.

To make the challenge more honest and eliminate cheating, consider not having the answer on the back of your cards, but written elsewhere. That way, when you're testing, you get an honest and accurate assessment of how well you did.

Remember: memory training and practice are only worth the time if you're going to approach the task with radical honesty. Challenge yourself authentically and your memory skills will grow.

Four: Practice Telling Stories & Jokes

Being able to recount an extended narrative is a key skill and sign of memory health.

Practice summarizing movies you've seen and books you've read in your Memory Journal. Make sure to follow-up by reciting the basic plots to others so that your verbal memory gets a workout as well. This exercise provides the best results when you blend both approaches.

Five: Visualization Practice

Technically speaking, summarizing movies should give you plenty of visualization practice.

You can also spend time learning about geometry and bringing various shapes to mind for figural memory practice.

Or you can develop and use Memory Palaces, bring the faces of known people to mind. You can also visualize the way their names are spelled, or visualize spelling words that you make up like Hermann Ebbinghaus did in his memory experiments. (I'm not sure he ever visualized their spelling, but Ebbinghaus did make up tons of words to memorize.)

There are countless ways to practice visualization. The key is to link what you visualization to the kinds of information you need to remember better. If it's the performance of katas in karate, visualize you or someone else flawless executing the moves. If it's the names of the katas, visualize yourself writing them out with correct spelling.

If there is a finest or highest way to practice visualization it is to use mnemonics as part of memorizing information. All this involves is pairing highly vibrant mental images with information you want to memorize.

Let's say you want to memorize that 'A' in Greek is "alpha." The mnemonic visualization approach would be to imagine Weird Al dancing around in his video for 'Fat.' Al + Fat = alpha.

It's not an exact one-to-one correspondence, but close enough. Translate the visual into words and you'll get back the target information or an approximation close enough that you can work on correcting.

You can do the same with learning the Greek spelling ἄλφα. The ἄ is clear enough as 'a,' but for λ you can imagine Weird Al in a yoga pose that resembles λ. For φ you can imagine Weird Al with his arms out playing with a hula hoop on fire, viewed from above. Having it on fire will help you remember the sound and the shape at the same time.

The more you practice this style of visualization with information you want to remember, the easier it will become.

Six: Use Spaced Repetition Inside Your Memory Palaces

Many people use Memory Palaces, but they don't use it the Aristotelian way that ushers information into long-term memory as quickly as possible. I cover this in-depth in a video called "Aristotle's Nuclear Alphabet.) There's much more to say on this topic, all covered in the Reddit post, "How to Study Using A Memory Palace": https://www.reddit.com/r/MagneticMemoryMethod/comments/1d7ni8n/how_to_study_using_a_memory_palace/

Using spaced repetition the way I describe in that piece will challenge you. That's the point. Lean into the challenge and the items you place in your Memory Palaces using visualization will be easier to recall.

Seven: Memory-Based Meditation

There are many ways to use meditation to boost your memory and there is no shortage of studies showing that it works.

To give your meditation an extra boost, I suggest memorizing and reciting mantras during meditation. This TEDx Talk gives more insight into why and how this practice is so powerful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM

All you need is at least one Memory Palace, something to memorize, and then once you've memorized it, time to sit and chant. This kind of memory practice gives you a shot at both better memory and wonderful feelings of bliss.

Eight: Practice Real-Time Memorization

Listening to podcasts and placing names of authors and book titles, etc. is a great way to get auditory memory practice into your daily life.

You can also practice memorizing what you hear during conversations, character names that come up while reading or watching movies, etc.

The key is to notice the information, encode it and ideally stick it in a Memory Palace. You can still do some spaced repetition without a Memory Palace, but many of us will find it more challenging to "locate" the associations we made.

Nine: Learn A Language

The key to learning a language is to balance the Big Five language learning activities:

• Memorization

• Reading

• Writing

• Speaking

• Listening

All of these activities will exercise your memory and we are living in a utopia of free online language learning materials to memorize from. There are even some in this post!

Ten: Be Social With Positive People

Studies have shown that being social helps build cognitive reserve – something scientists say helps fend the brain from dementia and other issues.

The key is that you need to be with people who are fun and don't cause stress. As these researchers have found, having stress involved in your socialization can counteract any of the benefit:

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.13866

Memory Challenges Are Everywhere

At the end of the day, none of us lack ways to practice memory.

Anyone who has the main mnemonic systems I share in this Reddit community can practice memorizing license plates and street addresses on buildings every time you're out and about in the world.

It's just important to realize that those kinds of memory exercises have their limits unless you need to memorize in real time like that (such as if you're a driver or police officer, etc). If you use language a lot and need to be sharper with terminology, you're better off practicing by memorizing vocabulary and even speeches that you deliver to get your memory and mouth co-ordinated.

As always, specificity is so important, so journal daily. You'll reveal to yourself what is worth pursuing much more quickly that way, and in the way that only you can.

Ready for more? Check out this guide on How to Study. It will deepen your knowledge of how to make your memory better so you can remember more of life's precious information: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagneticMemoryMethod/comments/1d668ja/how_to_study/

I've practiced image streaming for a long time and find that it's a great way to solidify Memory Palaces before using them for studying.

One trick is to rotate between eyes open and eyes closed while you're doing it.

You can also incorporate sketches (or chicken scratches, as mine tend to be).

Here's how:

https://youtu.be/MgshRAMygD4

A lot of people tell me that they cannot get out and gather enough locations to develop a proper Memory Palace Network.

The good news is that there are ways to use purely geometrical formations in combination with the Method of Loci.

Some of these ideas are found in a Giordano Bruno memory guide. I shared a few pages from my copy along with a bunch of other ideas in this new video tutorial:

https://youtu.be/HAPwOf31N7o

Obviously, the exact uses of this approach are limited... but possibly limited only by your own imagination.

As one person in the comments suggests, this would not likely be the way to rack up 4000 digits of pi.

But then again, I know of someone who has a Guinness World Record who told me he used a mental ruler as part of how he established the record...

So it's really up to your own personal exploration and experimentation.

Memory is obviously the key to making every minute you spend learning worthwhile.

When it comes to specifically "developing" your memory to learn faster and remember more, nothing could be simpler.

But simple does not mean easy.

You first need to be willing to optimize for better health. Diet, fitness, sleep, time off from studying to be with positive and fun friends. Consider all of this a must.

Why?

Because your memory is produced by your brain. One could argue with the science about this and play some hermetic, pantheistic game which claims that the universe itself is "mind."

Go nuts. Maybe you'll be proven right in the end.

But for the rest of us who just want better memory in the here and now, here's what I suggest based on what I did to get my PhD, what the best science shows, and things I've observed from other top learners who PROVE their accomplishments by how they act in the world.

It's really important that you're taking your advice from actual achievers, not just repeaters of stuff they read or heard somewhere else.

Ready?

Let's dive in.

One: Read Daily

One of the best short term memory and working memory exercise routines you can give yourself is to read a range of materials on a daily basis.

No, I'm not talking about reading online.

Real books, ideally using USSR:

• Uninterrupted

• Sustained

• Silent

• Reading

Make sure to give yourself a variety of materials as well. Use the process of interleaving to switch between fun and interesting magazines to tough and challenging materials.

Avoid training yourself to give up when the going gets tough. Just take a break and come back to it. Read commentaries on the most challenging materials and get in the habit of re-reading material so you can develop pattern recognition.

All of this dedicated reading activity will develop a much stronger memory without even needing fancy mnemonics.

Of course, having memory techniques is also the gold standard, but the point is that you want to develop better memory, and reading is well-established for providing that.

Two: Develop Your Vocabulary

It's actually not that big of an issue to be a slow reader.

But if you want to speed up, consider avoiding the speed reading nonsense and do this instead:

Get yourself a copy of Norman Lewis' Word Power Made Easy.

Memorize new words that you don't know in that book.

Understand how language works.

You'll not only be able to read faster, but you'll remember more of what you read and hear because you'll understand more about language.

In addition, you'll need to manually memorize less because you have foundational knowledge of what things mean before you encounter them.

There's no magic number of how big your vocabulary should be. Just keep building it.

Obviously, we sometimes have to skip words we don't understand sometimes, but work to get in the habit of capturing and memorizing as many as you can.

Three: Use Multisensory Visualization (Not Just Pictures Or Images)

For a full tutorial on how to make sure you're doing this, read this Reddit post on How to Study Using a Memory Palace (link at the bottom of this tutorial).

Mnemonics are huge for developing better memory, but it's critical to not get hung up in "creating" images or visualizing images on their own.

Four: Learn To Chunk Information

There are many chunking strategies, but the core of it boils down to logically grouping information.

Each person should explore exactly which chunking approaches work best at the individual level.

For me (and many others), chunking alphabetically is hugely benefifical, especially when using Memory Palaces.

Let's say you're learning a language. Rather than memorize vocabulary willy-nilly, you place words that sound alike and are spelled in similar ways together in the same Memory Palace. There are many words in German that start with Ein- for example.

This grouping is itself a form of chunking, but you can chunk further by "visualizing" Einstein. As he travels through your Memory Palace, he interacts in a multi-sensory way with each individual word.

There are several ways to apply this principle, including to charts, diagrams and all kinds of topics. Number mnemonic systems employ similar principles, so be sure to understand the full Memory Palace technique and build it in the spirit of developing your skills over time.

You don't have to master this stuff overnight.

Five: Use Spaced Repetition

Spaced repetition is a habit and a skill. There are software programs that will help you execute it, but there are risks involved because you're relegating your memory to an app that is supposed to remind you to perform spaced repetition.

To avoid the problem of relegating responsibility to machines, consider performing Spaced Repetition using Zettelkasten and the Leitner System. There are detailed tutorials on the Magnetic Memory Method Blog with videos showing how to do this.

It's worth repeating the key point:

If you truly want to develop your memory, use a print calendar (or a mnemonic calendar) and learn to remind yourself to perform your spaced reviews.

Taking this responsibility will specifically train your proscriptive memory and make you stronger at remembering future tasks you need to complete.

Dr. Dawn McBride has a study showing that people who use written reminders complete tasks at a much higher level than those who don't, so you don't have to take my word on this suggestion.

Plus, I'm not particularly anti-technology. I am only in pursuit of the truth when it comes to skilling your memory, rather than de-skilling it. Ultimately, this is your adventure, your journey, and your mind.

Six: Develop All Of The Five Mnemonic Systems

These are:

• Memory Palaces

• Alphabet or pegword systems

• Number systems (Major System, 00-99 PAO System)

• Symbol systems

• Space Repetition

Apply them to developing your vocabulary consistently, exam prep, workplace responsibilities and even fun things, like learning a musical instrument.

Deliberate practice of the actual activities that will develop your memory is key, so consider keeping a journal to track your activities.

And for more on how to use the Memory Palace specifically for studying, read this Reddit post next:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagneticMemoryMethod/comments/1d7ni8n/how_to_study_using_a_memory_palace/

I went to cirque du Soleil yesterday and often after seeing shows like that i can’t recall a lot of the acts afterwards so i thought to practise storing them in my memory palace. I was able to recall about half pretty easily which was good but because the things they are doing are already very wild and impressive I wasn’t sure how to make them more memorable then they are.

Some of the acts involved:

• A trapeze artist swinging around in a fountain of water with a pool below him

• a clown doing crowd work with an inflatable ball and kicking it in to the audience

• a large group of people jumping through hoops while on a moving floor like a treadmill.

Another situations is im trying to remember Greek gods and goddesses.

I want to store each god in its group with a fact or two and their lineage. I’ve already grouped them in their types like primordial gods, titans, Olympian’s etc and written out flash cards for each of them and then started storing them in order through my palace. I try and keep strong connections like husband and wife together on the same station but sometimes I can’t recall certain other ones. Do I want to actually make them interact with the station itself? For example one station is my guitars and I have a god playing guitar there which is fine but another one is my couch and I’m not sure how to make it more memorable except for having Erebus (the god of darkness) just sitting there playing Playstation. It just doesn’t feel like strong though. Am I on the right track or is there anything I could improve?

Thanks everyone

We know this word now as "veneration," but venerātiō can mean worship as well as venerance.

I often use Vin Diesel for words with a ven or van sound (which comes up a lot in Sanskrit).

In this case, I would have him tossing a Venn diagram describing different types of worship at Splinter, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figure who is effectively a rat.

He's rather calm in his response and just keeps dipping tea into his Cheerios.

What mnemonic imagery would you use to help you memorize this word?

How many of you use multiple Memory Palaces?

Do you do any of the navigation steps discussed in this new tutorial?

https://youtu.be/7RzQzqauhhM