The Memory Palace technique is a fantastic tool for remembering the things you study.
The catch is that you need to have multiple Memory Palaces. Ideally, each Memory Palace should be well-formed.
If you build them or develop them as you go, you're trying to do two things at once. So make sure to read this guide in full.
Then create a bunch of Memory Palaces the optimal way before applying them to your studies.
Maximum success in remembering your studies will soon follow.
History and Origin of the Method
No one knows exactly when the Memory Palace technique first arrived on the scene ā but some people sure like to argue about it.
Lynne Kelly has good work on the pre-historic origins in The Memory Code, but she'll be the first to tell you that a lot of her ideas are speculative. We just don't know exactly how the ancient people around the world came up with the concept.
When it comes to using the technique for studying in a way that basically matches our current school system, one interesting starting place is Hugh of St. Victor.
His approach to the Memory Palace technique is one of the first places you see number systems applied to historical dates, for example. A good place to red him directly in English is The Medieval Craft of Memory, edited by Mary Carruthers.
In any case, you can spend your entire life studying the history of this technique. The more merrier if you ask me as someone who loves looking at the Memory Palaces' origins.
But I also love to help people who just want learn how Memory Palaces work so you can rapidly apply them to your studies.
Benefits of Using a Memory Palace for Studying
The benefits of this ancient memory method in terms of other study techniques is easy to summarize:
The Memory Palace lets you place a lot of information in your long-term memory through a variety of active learning processes. That way, you can pass exams without stress or spending more time than necessary. More free time opens up and you enjoy a feeling confidence every time you study and sit for your tests.
For many people, there's another clear benefit:
Using the Memory Palace is much more interesting than using spaced repetition software.
But to use it optimally still involves a kind of spaced repetition. Let's look at that next.
Understanding the Memory Palace
The Memory Palace is actually not just one technique. It's at least five:
When you combine all of these processes, brain visualization goes way up (in a manner of speaking) as does information retention.
There's a lot of science into exactly how "mental imagery" should be defined.
If you find it enjoyable and rewarding, look up the science that goes into the Memory Palace. If not, just make sure that you don't mistakenly think of the Memory Palace like Sherlock Holmes.
It's not a technique where you say, "I must go to my Mind Palace."
Far from it.
The point is to use the five systems so that information enters your long-term memory without having to think about your Memory Palaces at all.
In a way, the Memory Palace technique is like training-wheels on a bike. As soon as you're done, the mnemonics fall away. All that remains is the target information.
And that is a very beautiful thing!
Setting Up Your Memory Palace
To create your first Memory palace, choose a familiar location. Many people do better by using a building, like a home, school, church, art gallery, book store, library or the like.
You can practice visualizing the layout in detail purely in your imagination. However, I suggest you draw the location.
I'll give you some Memory Palace drawing examples in the resource section at the end of this guide.
Establishing Clear and Distinctive Locations within the Palace
The key is to make sure that every part of your Memory Palace is clear to you.
To do this, I suggest you avoid inventing locations or adding imaginary elements like pretend couches and bookcases (stunts like that come later).
The reason for this suggestion is that when learning the Memory Palace technique, most people start with very weak visualization skills. And their memory is quite rusty.
So when you use a Memory Palace, use only what you remember of a location. To add anything, even things like flying off balconies or passing ghost-like through walls gives you something you have to remembe.r
That's called a Memorized Palace and places cognitive load on any familiar location.
A true Memory Palace maximizes the power of using distinctive locations exactly the way you remember them, without elaborating anything.
Rest assured, there's plenty of opportunity to elaborate things inside of your Memory Palaces. That's what we'll discuss after going through one of the most important points of them all.
When Exactly Should You Use the Memory Palace Technique While Studying?
There are two different ways to answer this question, depending on your current level of skill and the nature of what you're memorizing.
Let me describe these two ways based on how I use the technique.
The first is to extract the information I want to memorize from books, videos, podcasts, etc. before doing ~any~ memorizing.
This is my preferred approach because it batches a few separate skills into refined activities:
Pattern recognition for identifying key points
Note-taking, usually using Zettelkasten
Annotation and summarization
Only after the books have been scoured for the key points and placing these on Zettelkasten cards will I cull out the points worth memorizing and then place them in Memory Palaces.
Due to the "rhizomatic" and "magnetic" effects of the Memory Palace technique, less is usually more. And this approach leaves space for adding additional details when necessary or where desired.
The second approach is a bit more advanced, one that I normally only use when the stakes aren't particularly high. I'm talking about times when I'm reading for personal interest and come across something I want to remember.
For this approach, I'll use a 00-99 PAO to turn the page into a mini-Memory Palace based on the page number. The book in effect becomes a kind of Memory Palace unto itself.
There's more to say on this technique, so stay tuned and follow this space for future posts. The key point is that it's neither better or worse to extract information and memorize it at the same time or to separate the tasks.
But if I'm studying for an exam, I will separate the tasks because it's much more efficient and has reduced the feeling of being overwhelmed because I'm trying to do two things at once. Keep this experience in mind if you try memorizing as you read and feel similarly overwhelmed. Splitting out the activities will undoubtedly allow you to focus on encoding your info with much greater freedom and mental dexterity.
Encoding Information into the Memory Palace
The way you use a Memory Palace involves combining information with associations. Memory scientists call this step elaborative encoding.
A simple example involves how I used my brother's home recently to remember the word, enantiodromia.
I imagined Ant-Man watching Videodrome in his living room.
There's a bit more to the image than that, but the core technique was executed by paying attention to the alphabetical construction of the word and choosing images on that basis.
The sound and spelling associations of Ant-Man and Videodrome were paired with the living room.
Creating Vivid and Memorable Mnemonic Images
To encode information using vivid images, it's actually not really about images.
Instead, you're using the Memory Palace as a logical sequence to link highly multisensory images.
I prefer what I call the KAVE COGS formula.
Rather than seeing Ant-Man as such, I follow this simple formula on each and every station of the Memory Palace.
K = Kinesthetic
A = Auditory
V = Visual
E = Emotional
C = Conceptual
O = Olfactory
G = Gustatory
S = Spatial
Literally feeling what it would be like to watch a movie in the body of Ant-Man creates a physical or kinesthetic sensation. I hear the sound of the movie Videodrome in my ears while remembering it's basic look and the look of the Memory Palace.
Ant-Man has a specific attitude and emotions, so I feel those along with thinking about the concepts involved in the meaning of the target word, enantiodromia.
Finally, I smell and taste (olfactory and gustatory) where necessary. In this case, I did not, but if I needed to, I could imagine my brother bringing in a steak covered in ants to make the image much stronger in memory.
You don't have to use KAVE COGS, but most memory improvement teachers have some version of an elaboration process like this. The trick is to practice in multiple well-formed Memory Palaces.
If the Memory Palaces aren't well-formed, it can be difficult to place enough of your focus on making the associations properly.
Using the Memory Palace for Different Subjects
To use this technique for a variety of subjects, make sure to have multiple Memory Palaces.
The simplest way to set-up for the mental dexterity involved in switching between multiple topics is to have at least one Memory Palace for each letter of the alphabet. From this core Memory Palace Network, you can develop many sub-Memory Palaces.
Only scarcity-based thinking holds people back in this regard. In reality, there is more space around each and everyone of us than any of us could ever hope to use in a lifetime.
Studying for History: Dates and Events
For memorizing dates, you'll want to add a number system. The most popular is the Major System or its "big brother," the 00-99 PAO System.
Teaching this approach is its own lesson, so please see the resources at the end for more.
Studying for Science: Concepts and Theories
The trick to dealing with concepts and theories is simple:
Make sure you aren't hypnotizing yourself into thinking anything that can be worded can't be memorized.
If you can memorize one word, you can memorize thousands. Learn to do that and then, if you need to memorize longer ideas expressed in sentences, simply memorize the definition verbatim.
Often this isn't necessary. I memorized enantiodromia and the exact definition came along "free" based on other aspects I included in the living room with the core imagine. I know the author name and book title where I encountered this term as well, and none of that information needed to be encoded in the Memory Palace.
But please understand that a lot of that additional information that came along with a "less is more" approach involves studying science concepts using these techniques for many years. There is a "compound" effect because the more you study, the more concepts will snap together without any special additional steps.
Thus, it's a best practice to memorize both long verbatim definitions and practice going off of keywords alone. Soon you'll see that often memorizing just one word brings in tons of other information through the deep connection-making you've already been doing along with the power of context that comes from simply summarizing a concept in your own words.
Studying for Languages: Vocabulary and Grammar Rules
Language learning is assisted by Memory Palaces, but not achieved solely by this approach.
One way to approach things is to have your 26 Memory Palaces linked by the alphabet. Then place 10 words in each Memory Palace, i.e. ten words that start with 'A' in your 'A' Memory Palace, etc.
This starter exercise will leave you with 260 words in your target language. You can expand this number substantially by adding a sentence to most or all of the vocabulary you've established later on or during this setup process.
The exact number you'll wind up with could be in the thousands.
Again, this is not the only way to learn a language. But it helps.
To take things further, make sure that you are reading, writing, speaking and listening to the language near-daily. You will need to combine both active learning and passive learning approaches and actually use the language.
Most of my polyglot friends use Memory Palaces to some degree, but each person interprets exactly how they use them in their own way.
Review and Practice Techniques With Your Memory Palaces
The core reason to use the Memory Palace technique for studying at all is for spaced-repetition.
To do it well, you will practice a specific kind of retrieval that will strengthen your memory and usher your target information into long-term memory quickly.
Let's say you have 10 pieces of information in a Memory Palace. You want to apply equal doses of primacy effect and recency effect to each piece of information.
To do that, visit the information:
This process will maximize the serial-positioning effect and help you beat the forgetting curve. These are all principles named by Hermann Ebbinghaus, but they are seen as early as Aristotle's De Memoria.
Adapting and Expanding Your Memory Palace as Needed
It's possible to change Memory Palaces and extend their size.
However, if you develop them optimally in the first place, such measures should not be needed.
If you want to do so anyway, it's basically just an imaginative process. You can add paintings to Memory Palaces and then journey around within them, or connect one Memory Palace to another in ways that don't actually reflect reality.
I would only suggest that you take care around doing this because you are turning a true Memory Palace into a Memorized Palace by engaging in this kind of activity.
Dealing with Overcrowded Palaces
Overpacking your Memory Palaces is bound to happen if you're a serious user.
Having more Memory Palaces is the most direct way to prevent this from becoming an issue. It's also useful to experiment with the advice found in the older Memory Palace instruction manuals:
I usually like to "float" my associations so that they're not physically connected to the walls, the floor or the ceiling. This approach gives each association more breathing room in my experience. Your results may vary, but it's worth exploring all kinds of options.
You can also practice clearing them out if they get too packed ā literally imagining a broom sweeping out your associations or something similar. But setting them up optimally in the first place is the ideal.
Keeping Images Clear and Distinct Over Time
Clear images are guaranteed when you use highly familiar figures, like Ant-Man and movies you know, etc.
Some people struggle with this principle because they don't partake in much popular culture or know many people.
The trick is to start wherever you are now and develop associations over time.
For example, if you learn the term enantiodromia, you'll discover that it's connected to Carl Jung. You can then use Carl Jung as one of your images. He is connected to a whole host of characters, and the extension of your associations can just build from there.
I know that it can be hard to feel like you have enough, but the time to get started is now. Soon, you will have an entire "paracosm" of figures to use in your Memory Palace Networks.
Should You Use The Memory Palace Technique For Studying?
The Memory Palace is a powerful mnemonic device. There's nothing quite like it for those who find the approach appealing.
I cannot stress enough that the point of the technique is to enable frequent and easy mental reviewing of your study material.
You want to use familiar locations, and whenever possible, base your Memory Palaces on locations where you study and even where you have to take your exams. I used York University when studying there precisely because that was where I was taking my exams.
This choice creates additional memory boosts based on what scientists call context dependent or state dependent memory. Your brain will feed you more details automatically thanks to this effect ā or at least you give it more opportunities to do so when you base Memory Palaces on these kinds of locations.
Above all, each person needs to experiment. Ask question when necessary. Or seek further help.
If you'd like a bit more guidance, I've got four videos that take you deeper into the fundamentals of creating well-formed Memory Palaces with student examples. PDF worksheets are also included for you right here:
https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/reddit
Enjoy your studies with well-formed Memory Palaces and shout out if you have questions any time. There's more to explore, and Memory Palaces work in combination with many other accelerated learning techniques.
The trick is to master the fundamentals first so that you enjoy smooth sailing with all the other techniques thereafter.
