8 ms·

Learn to remember everything: The memory palace technique

201 points by RBerenguel 16y ago

MrMan 16y ago
4 hour memory
swah 16y ago
This works, but I don't know if its web scale. Like, do you use the memory palace at first, and later it just fixes into unconsciousness? Because there is no way greeks really had hundreds of memory palaces where they structured all their knowledge, right?
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  We can't be sure about the greeks, and I still don't know how well it scales personally. Memory champions claim to have quite a lot of palaces and ways to cram information in them (for example, for memorisation of digits of pi), but my personal experience is not that big as of yet. As a matter of fact, an informal list of places I can use as memory palace, as I know them from memory ranges around 70 "palaces" with between 4 and 15 rooms each. If you cram 3 items per room its around 700 things to remember. But you can get better. You can also use association (I am about to write a post about it) to get facts about books, people, things without using a new palace for each kind of data type.
  - blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
    You can see the very impressive results from the previous World Memory Championships here: http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/MemoryAchievements.asp http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/MemoryAchievements.a...
  - akheron 16y ago
    I've also found it quite hard to "overwrite" memories. At least, you need to let the pegs rest for a while before reusing them.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      When he writes about this sort of thing Derren Brown (British mentalist) mentions that once you get to a decent level of skill with this you can just make up new rooms in your head; he talks about "dropping" overused rooms and starting fresh ones.
- Estragon 16y ago
  > I don't know if its web scale. Does it support sharding?
- diiq 16y ago
  Yes, if you run through the memorized list once a day, in a few weeks you can free up that parrticular palace for other work and keep the memory --- you've memorized by rote. As for scale, many memory workers use a linked list as well as the memory-palace array. Associate each item with the previous item, and you don't need 10,000 room palaces; just someplace to put the head of the list. That's how I memorize decks of cards: http://blog.diiq.org/post/3366119815/what-are-the-step-by-step-processes-for-using http://blog.diiq.org/post/3366119815/what-are-the-step-by-st... An excellent resource is Lorrayne and Lucas' The Memory Book:http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345410025/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/175-3789761-0128154 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345410025/ref=redir_mdp_mobil... , which has been lifechanging for me.
  - RBerenguel 16y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. I'm more prone to associative stuff, only that they require more work. Will have to move some lessons I'm memorising to a linked list to free space ;)
- swah 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure they have lots of palaces. But think about a subject like "World History". How are you going to store that? I also noticed a problem I have with using something like the Dominic System to store phone numbers, which is remembering the first image.. after that, this image just "pulls" the others by association.
phpnode 16y ago
This is an awesome technique and I can't believe it's not taught in schools. It's better to think of a previous home rather than your current one though, otherwise things can get confusing.
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  As you say, it is better to use not-often used places. I use my home for grocery lists, as they are usually short-lived lists. For longer lasting stuff I use older places, or not-frequently visited.
JosephHatfield 16y ago
A new book called "Moonwalking with Einstein", by Joshua Foer covers the Memory Palace technique and others. Check out the review at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-moonwalking-with-einstein-by-joshua-foer.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...
- 2mur 16y ago
  Also a nice segment with him on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003962/Moonwalking-With-Einstein http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003962/Moonwalking-With-Ein...
- tom_b 16y ago
  I like "Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It" by Higbee in addition to the Foer book. It is a little more pragmatic and thorough in description of the techniques discussed in "Moonwalking with Einstein."
d2 16y ago
Lettuce, Bacon, onion rings, SD card, oranges. This is weird it works so well.
vixen99 16y ago
I used to use this technique as a kid to win money off friends, betting I could instantly remember the order and nature of 50 objects read out to me. If you'd prepared properly it was embarrassingly easy. Recalling the list a week later was trivial for me but astounded everyone else. The author's place method is much superior to my idea then of using an arbitrary list of objects which I'd previously memorized and then associated with the spoken items by using outrageous mental pictures, Memory Palace technique is to be recommended.
regularfry 16y ago
There are a bunch of other techniques like this (which I've used with occasionally surprising success) at http://www.ludism.org http://www.ludism.org.
arnorhs 16y ago
Great article Ruben. I've been trying your method out for the past days, but the problem is I don't often have to remember things. I wonder if methods like this one are getting irrelevant in the days of computers and smart phones.. Probably the most useful use case is when you have to shop for groceries in a supermarket. My SO, Helga, usually tells me what to buy and I usually forget everything. But lately I've just been typing everything into my phone and that works. This method might work for that as well - Memory Supermarket, anybody?
- blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
  This technique works very well with names. Meet a person once, store his/her quirks alongside a name in the mental palace and every time you meet this person you can give a personal greeting. Now imagine doing that on your first day at work in a big company, or remembering the name of someone you met on a conference two years ago.
- hackerblues 16y ago
  I see computers as addressing a different part of the problem. Lets take as a given that people need a way to recall pieces of information for use in the future. 1. Initially people would probably just wander around aimlessly and hope that their natural capabilities would be sufficient. Apparently this was not the case. 2. To reduce these short comings people developed memory techniques to better organise the information to be remembered. By chunking pieces of information in mnemonics and associating facts to these memory journeys they were better able to remember them. 3. Next people developed the technology of writing. This tool had a number of advantages over the previous techniques: less effort was required to store the information, it maintained its accuracy over a longer period of time, and the information didn't need to be recorded (memorised/written) by the person who would need to use it in the future. The method also had disadvantages: this new external form of memory required the person to take something extra along with them, as the number of pieces of information became larger it becomes harder and harder to sort through them to find the correct piece whereas the human brain doesn't seem to become as `distracted', and the individual pieces of information become less connected. 4. I see technology as helping to reduce these disadvantages. The internet means I can check email from any computer in the world and not just at the one computer it was composed at. Search engines assist in finding a particular piece of information within a greater body of information. I am not aware of a great example of information synthesis but I suppose that certain parts of text mining are making steps in this direction: eg, sentiment mining Twitter or trend detection.
slevcom 16y ago
A few years ago I got decent at a similar method so I could memorize a list of 20 items pretty quick. I thought I was the cat's pajamas for awhile until it dawned on me that I had never used it once outside showing off the trick. I've since lost the skill from non-use. Not to troll against the post or the poster, just my personal experience data point. But hey, I love seeing and learning new party tricks, so don't let me discourage anyone from trying out interesting things.
codeslush 16y ago
I'm curious if this has any negative impact on the accuracy of long term memory recall. For example, I can imagine that I would place these exaggerated items in a friends house...then, years later, in a discussion with said friend; "Hey, do you still have that SD card bed?"
- blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
  You need to also learn a way to empty out your mental palace, or learn a way to build new rooms. After learning about this technique over 15 years ago I stored 3 things that I, to this day, know by heart. After learning Derren Brown's technique I still have these items in my mind, probably to the day I die. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8 (6 minutes Derren Brown technique) I like how this skill is innate. You don't get born with great memory, you can learn it (not photographic memory). When mastering the memory palace technique, one could store and recall the order of 20 shuffled card decks.
ilamont 16y ago
There's a book by Jonathon Spence called the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, describing the life of an Italian Jesuit who lived in China and was an advisor to the court (I can't recall if it was late Ming or early Qing, but it was in the 17th century). Besides sharing advanced Western science and artistic techniques, another way in which he and other Jesuits inserted themselves into the life of the court was by using the memory palace technique to learn spoken and written Chinese, understand the cultural and social aspects of the court, and impress the court officials with some incredible feats of memory. One trick I remember involved reciting a long passage of Chinese backwards after hearing it once, which utterly astounded those in attendance.
9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
FYI, this method is actually known as locus memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci You can get more advanced than simply using a palace.
sayemm 16y ago
Good article. I've been studying Dominic O'Brien's techniques for a while now, he's the world memory champ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien It takes some time to get the system down, but it's really handy for memorizing numbers, a pack of cards, or any other structured information. Basically, I've got a journey with 52 stages memorized along with a person and an associated action for each two-digit number from 00 to 99. When I was practicing regularly before I was able to memorize a pack of cards in 3 minutes. It may seem weird practicing this, but it turns out to be a pretty good gauge of your concentration and mental focus, just like how being able to run a few miles is a good measure of your physical fitness. Highly recommend Joshua Foer's book, "Moonwalking with Einstein", to learn more.
- arkitaip 16y ago
  Is there a book that you could recommend on O'Brien's techniques?
  - sayemm 16y ago
    "How to Develop a Perfect Memory"
  - georgieporgie 16y ago
    I've been listening to his Quantum Memory Power audiobook. It covers a huge range of memory techniques: memory palaces/journey method, mnemonics, visualization of numbers, etc. Some of his pop-culture references are a bit dated, but otherwise I find it to be a great system. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Memory-Power-Improve-Champion/dp/0743528662/ http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Memory-Power-Improve-Champion/...
    - sayemm 16y ago
      Funny you mention that, I listened to those audio CDs as well! I think that and "How to Develop a Perfect Memory" are the best resources on him, he's the man.
atlantic 16y ago
The standard work on the ars memoria is Frances Yates' The Art of Memory, which covers Renaissance practitioners (Lull, Bruno, Fludd, etc.) in some detail. These techniques date back to the classical art of rhetoric, which cultivated the capacity to memorize long speeches or poems.
- tumba 16y ago
  More recent scholarly work has been done by Mary Carruthers. I have found her books, "The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture" and "The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200", to be more engaging and useful than Yates.
- prestonbriggs 16y ago
  Another interesting view of all this is via John Crowley's novel "Little, Big" (certainly heavily influenced by Yates). Preston
dublinclontarf 16y ago
broswer broken, leaving comment to find later
WesleyJohnson 16y ago
I've always been pretty frustrated with my inability to remember simple things, while having knack for recalling useless information. I rarely can remember birthdays, anniversaries, phone numbers, important dates in my history like when I graduated or the specific date of when my father passed away. I have hardly any memory of grade school, only can recall two of my teacher's names in high school, etc. Granted, some of those are less useful than others but they're things that people tend to remember and I don't. Instead, I memorize odd things like a Windows 98 CD Key, for example. I must've reinstalled it so many times that it just stuck in my head. Completely useless and yet it'll be with me for many more years I'm afraid. I have found that I tend to remember things more if I put them into a rhythm, as if they were words in a song. I'm not musically inclined so I kind of find that odd, but it works. I used to work in inventory for a Best Buy warehouse and I'd often have to put UPC codes into a terminal for new inventory. I couldn't see the codes from the terminal most times, so I'd quickly memorize the code in my head by putting it into a rhythm. 1...2...3 4 5 6...7...8....9 10 11 12. Would be curious to know if that's common? Anyway, very interesting article and I'm definitely going to try and put it to use. See if I can create a memory palace for Rubix cube algorithms as I've recently decided I want to be able to master the 3x3 one. Now if I can only force myself to forget that Kermit the lettuce head is going to greet me when I get home by warning me that Kevin Bacon is chasing pigs through my living room, that someone accidentally formatted my SD card bed and that the sun is supposed to be extra Orange and juicy today. I think I'll keep around Scarlett doing her thing with an Onion Ring hula-hoop though. :)
- blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
  Look at how the Aboriginees use songs in their memorization techniques. Tribes or families would have songs about locations of food and water, and when two people from different tribes would marry, they would teach each other their songs. Isn't that the best dowry?
- mquander 16y ago
  I memorized pi to a hundred digits out of boredom in middle school, and I naturally did the rhythm thing, mostly with triplets of digits, sometimes otherwise. The interesting thing is that I can't remember any of it without using the rhythm to help me; for example, if you asked me "what comes next after the digits '197'", I have no way to answer that question without going through the digits until I get to the part that goes "..795 0288; 4-1-9-7-1 693 993..." and then going, aha, here it is. If you started ten digits in, grouped the digits differently, and read them off to me in a different cadence, I wouldn't even recognize it was pi!
VB6_Foreverr 16y ago
There is another memory technique where each item is like a member of a linked list. Say you have to remember bread, milk and sugar. So you imagine a loaf of bread that when you cut a slice off a cascade of milk comes gushing out and topples a dam made of sugar cubes. Then you discover that you already have milk, so you alter the image to a colossal slice of bread crashing down onto the sugar cube dam. I'd like a technique analogous to this where you start with 52 cards in your list and as the cards are drawn from a deck they are also dropped from your list. It would make it easier to see what's left
tom_b 16y ago
I'm interested in combining the memory palace and peg techniques, specifically for sw dev. Assuming you understand the fundamentals, I think there is a subset of any programming language, data structures, and algorithms for the programming paradigm you are working with where memorizing some of your "working" tools is a good idea. From my viewpoint, this might be helpful in a couple of different ways. First, if you are hacking away in a prog language, you need to have some decent set of it "embedded" in your mind. Memorization might help me for those languages I don't get to touch every day, but would like to keep handy in my toolbox. Second, the data structures and algorithms part would be nice to flash against new problems. E.g, here is a prob, can I quickly flash it up against my set of memorized data structures and algorithms to see if something "fits." I wonder if by the time you come up with an appropriate internal visualization for most data structures and algorithms, you'll probably have enough of a taste for it that memorization isn't useful anymore. As a side question, I think it might be useful to think in terms of how much code you can write without needing to rely on autocompletion in your IDE or without referring to an outside reference. Just curious if other HNer's have opinions about that kind of prog lang command as a measure of skill . . .
gwern 16y ago
More general and useful is spaced repetition: http://www.gwern.net/Mnemosyne.html http://www.gwern.net/Mnemosyne.html
andrewtbham 16y ago
Here is how i remember stuff, with mnemonics http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2008/08/remembering-things-5-examples.html http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2008/08/rememberi...
Apocryphon 16y ago
The only drawback to this method is that it makes it easier for dream-spelunking thieves to commit a heist in your mind.
Tycho 16y ago
We played a memory game at school once where everyone sat in a circle and said their favourite activity. For years and years after I could remember the entire sequence. I could probably regurgitate the whole thing now if I had a few hints. Another one that works short term for exams and such is 'definitions , lists and diagrams.' On left page of notebook write say 'definition of Agile development' followed by a dash for each point on the agile manifesto, followed by 'diagram of [something agile related. Textbooks always have diagrams]. ' on the right page write the actual definition, followed by the actual list, followed by the actual diagram, but use your own words, not the textbook's. Glance over it, then cover it with a piece of paper and write the entire thing out again from memory. No peaking but at least you can count how many list items are required from the other page. Check you got it right, reread any mistakes, and then you'll find that after having written it out twice you can easily remember the whole thing when the exam comes. I find any sort of thoughtful reinforcement makes memory very effective. I wanted to ask though, do you guys memorise APIs and keywords and other programming mattered, rather than just picking up or looking up as you go? Does it help you program much faster? Of course it's a lot to remember considering all the rules and contexts and parameters.
bourdine 16y ago
Mnemonic is not good for me to memorize a large number of unrelated and not a structured pictures. Is anyone know other way for pictures?
zach 16y ago
I keep waiting for someone with more spare time than myself to bring the memory palace idea to an augmented reality app. I have a feeling medical students will pay a decent amount of money to walk around their apartment with an iPhone held out in front of them. Also, the effectiveness of this idea implies that museums without a single artifact in their collection can be extremely educational by wisely creating a spatial environment. A tour led through a "Garden of Presidents" or a walkable map could help students on field trips actually retain much more knowledge than in the classroom.
- daralthus 16y ago
  I actually pulled this up on last weeks startup weekend and we made some prototypes. We tried it first with streetview, where you walk around and learn new words on a different language. We have the best results when we combined it, with a special spelling where the letters were objects also. (like in elementary school, for example "A" is for Apple) Like that you will remember the objects and not just some random characters. The "let's go for a walk" and the "stay in this room" mobile versions are still in the pocket, so let me know what do you think about this.
  - RBerenguel 16y ago
    Where can I have a look at them? (I don't know what you refer as "pocket")
    - daralthus 16y ago
      I am sorry they are not online now. By pocket I mean ideas we haven't tried out yet. I imagine the mobile app version to have 3 separete functionality, and we only covered 1,5 1. "I would rather sit" Is a streetview walkaround with predefined routes. 2. "I want to stay in this room" Is an AR version where you walk around in your room and place the words where you want. 3. "Let's go for a walk" Would give you new words when you stop somewhere in the city. Of course there are other task and opportunities, like testing, spaced repetition, linkwords etc and unfortunately the team got separeted now (both in space and in thinking) so I am not sure if I would make this project hight priority... Still I would love to hear your toughts.
johnwatson11218 16y ago
When I work on a large piece of software I use techniques like this to build a model of the software in my mind. The various layers seem like physical objects or places in my mind. It is a hard point for me to articulate but when I know a software code base really well I am able to immediately answer question about whether certain things are or are not possible. I always thought of this as the "topology" of the solution. I know that is why I have a preference for certain design decisions. Some software seems like a well designed house with layers that do one thing really well and can offer strict guarantees about the state of the system. Sometimes I am asked to do things to the software that conjure up images of mobius strips or klein bottles and I cringe. Only because of what it is doing to my mental model.
arctangent 16y ago
I recently wrote an article for my company's in-house staff magazine about how Google was my favourite web site because it freed me from having to remember facts. I think it's a waste of effort to devote time to memorising mere details, when these can readily be looked up. I think it is much more sensible to remember connections between facts (i.e. to theorise and systematise based on experiences) than it is to just store the facts themselves.
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  The problem is that, unless you know a lot, you can't relate facts. I also prefer associative memorisation (i.e. I can think of subject A, which is related to subject B, caused by subject C and leading also to subject D), but you need to know your stuff, too.
methodin 16y ago
I still remember the 5 things in this list and I wasn't even trying to... I wonder if it works with bland data?
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  What do you mean by bland data?
Vmabuza 16y ago
I wish this post was around when i was in the 9th grade so i wouldnt have spent so much on Kevin Trudeau's Megamemory just to learn this.
dennisgorelik 16y ago
Why learn tricks to remember stuff if there is paper and pen (or portable computers)?

201 points by RBerenguel 16y ago

MrMan 16y ago

4 hour memory

swah 16y ago

This works, but I don't know if its web scale. Like, do you use the memory palace at first, and later it just fixes into unconsciousness? Because there is no way greeks really had hundreds of memory palaces where they structured all their knowledge, right?

RBerenguel 16y ago
We can't be sure about the greeks, and I still don't know how well it scales personally. Memory champions claim to have quite a lot of palaces and ways to cram information in them (for example, for memorisation of digits of pi), but my personal experience is not that big as of yet. As a matter of fact, an informal list of places I can use as memory palace, as I know them from memory ranges around 70 "palaces" with between 4 and 15 rooms each. If you cram 3 items per room its around 700 things to remember. But you can get better. You can also use association (I am about to write a post about it) to get facts about books, people, things without using a new palace for each kind of data type.
- blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
  You can see the very impressive results from the previous World Memory Championships here: http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/MemoryAchievements.asp http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/MemoryAchievements.a...
- akheron 16y ago
  I've also found it quite hard to "overwrite" memories. At least, you need to let the pegs rest for a while before reusing them.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    When he writes about this sort of thing Derren Brown (British mentalist) mentions that once you get to a decent level of skill with this you can just make up new rooms in your head; he talks about "dropping" overused rooms and starting fresh ones.
Estragon 16y ago
> I don't know if its web scale. Does it support sharding?
diiq 16y ago
Yes, if you run through the memorized list once a day, in a few weeks you can free up that parrticular palace for other work and keep the memory --- you've memorized by rote. As for scale, many memory workers use a linked list as well as the memory-palace array. Associate each item with the previous item, and you don't need 10,000 room palaces; just someplace to put the head of the list. That's how I memorize decks of cards: http://blog.diiq.org/post/3366119815/what-are-the-step-by-step-processes-for-using http://blog.diiq.org/post/3366119815/what-are-the-step-by-st... An excellent resource is Lorrayne and Lucas' The Memory Book:http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345410025/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/175-3789761-0128154 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345410025/ref=redir_mdp_mobil... , which has been lifechanging for me.
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I'm more prone to associative stuff, only that they require more work. Will have to move some lessons I'm memorising to a linked list to free space ;)
swah 16y ago
I'm pretty sure they have lots of palaces. But think about a subject like "World History". How are you going to store that? I also noticed a problem I have with using something like the Dominic System to store phone numbers, which is remembering the first image.. after that, this image just "pulls" the others by association.

phpnode 16y ago

This is an awesome technique and I can't believe it's not taught in schools. It's better to think of a previous home rather than your current one though, otherwise things can get confusing.

RBerenguel 16y ago
As you say, it is better to use not-often used places. I use my home for grocery lists, as they are usually short-lived lists. For longer lasting stuff I use older places, or not-frequently visited.

JosephHatfield 16y ago

A new book called "Moonwalking with Einstein", by Joshua Foer covers the Memory Palace technique and others. Check out the review at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-moonwalking-with-einstein-by-joshua-foer.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...

2mur 16y ago
Also a nice segment with him on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003962/Moonwalking-With-Einstein http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003962/Moonwalking-With-Ein...
tom_b 16y ago
I like "Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It" by Higbee in addition to the Foer book. It is a little more pragmatic and thorough in description of the techniques discussed in "Moonwalking with Einstein."

d2 16y ago

Lettuce, Bacon, onion rings, SD card, oranges. This is weird it works so well.

vixen99 16y ago

I used to use this technique as a kid to win money off friends, betting I could instantly remember the order and nature of 50 objects read out to me. If you'd prepared properly it was embarrassingly easy. Recalling the list a week later was trivial for me but astounded everyone else. The author's place method is much superior to my idea then of using an arbitrary list of objects which I'd previously memorized and then associated with the spoken items by using outrageous mental pictures, Memory Palace technique is to be recommended.

regularfry 16y ago

There are a bunch of other techniques like this (which I've used with occasionally surprising success) at http://www.ludism.org http://www.ludism.org.

arnorhs 16y ago

Great article Ruben. I've been trying your method out for the past days, but the problem is I don't often have to remember things. I wonder if methods like this one are getting irrelevant in the days of computers and smart phones.. Probably the most useful use case is when you have to shop for groceries in a supermarket. My SO, Helga, usually tells me what to buy and I usually forget everything. But lately I've just been typing everything into my phone and that works. This method might work for that as well - Memory Supermarket, anybody?

blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
This technique works very well with names. Meet a person once, store his/her quirks alongside a name in the mental palace and every time you meet this person you can give a personal greeting. Now imagine doing that on your first day at work in a big company, or remembering the name of someone you met on a conference two years ago.
hackerblues 16y ago
I see computers as addressing a different part of the problem. Lets take as a given that people need a way to recall pieces of information for use in the future. 1. Initially people would probably just wander around aimlessly and hope that their natural capabilities would be sufficient. Apparently this was not the case. 2. To reduce these short comings people developed memory techniques to better organise the information to be remembered. By chunking pieces of information in mnemonics and associating facts to these memory journeys they were better able to remember them. 3. Next people developed the technology of writing. This tool had a number of advantages over the previous techniques: less effort was required to store the information, it maintained its accuracy over a longer period of time, and the information didn't need to be recorded (memorised/written) by the person who would need to use it in the future. The method also had disadvantages: this new external form of memory required the person to take something extra along with them, as the number of pieces of information became larger it becomes harder and harder to sort through them to find the correct piece whereas the human brain doesn't seem to become as `distracted', and the individual pieces of information become less connected. 4. I see technology as helping to reduce these disadvantages. The internet means I can check email from any computer in the world and not just at the one computer it was composed at. Search engines assist in finding a particular piece of information within a greater body of information. I am not aware of a great example of information synthesis but I suppose that certain parts of text mining are making steps in this direction: eg, sentiment mining Twitter or trend detection.

slevcom 16y ago

A few years ago I got decent at a similar method so I could memorize a list of 20 items pretty quick. I thought I was the cat's pajamas for awhile until it dawned on me that I had never used it once outside showing off the trick. I've since lost the skill from non-use. Not to troll against the post or the poster, just my personal experience data point. But hey, I love seeing and learning new party tricks, so don't let me discourage anyone from trying out interesting things.

codeslush 16y ago

I'm curious if this has any negative impact on the accuracy of long term memory recall. For example, I can imagine that I would place these exaggerated items in a friends house...then, years later, in a discussion with said friend; "Hey, do you still have that SD card bed?"

blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
You need to also learn a way to empty out your mental palace, or learn a way to build new rooms. After learning about this technique over 15 years ago I stored 3 things that I, to this day, know by heart. After learning Derren Brown's technique I still have these items in my mind, probably to the day I die. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8 (6 minutes Derren Brown technique) I like how this skill is innate. You don't get born with great memory, you can learn it (not photographic memory). When mastering the memory palace technique, one could store and recall the order of 20 shuffled card decks.

ilamont 16y ago

There's a book by Jonathon Spence called the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, describing the life of an Italian Jesuit who lived in China and was an advisor to the court (I can't recall if it was late Ming or early Qing, but it was in the 17th century). Besides sharing advanced Western science and artistic techniques, another way in which he and other Jesuits inserted themselves into the life of the court was by using the memory palace technique to learn spoken and written Chinese, understand the cultural and social aspects of the court, and impress the court officials with some incredible feats of memory. One trick I remember involved reciting a long passage of Chinese backwards after hearing it once, which utterly astounded those in attendance.

9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago

FYI, this method is actually known as locus memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci You can get more advanced than simply using a palace.

sayemm 16y ago

Good article. I've been studying Dominic O'Brien's techniques for a while now, he's the world memory champ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien It takes some time to get the system down, but it's really handy for memorizing numbers, a pack of cards, or any other structured information. Basically, I've got a journey with 52 stages memorized along with a person and an associated action for each two-digit number from 00 to 99. When I was practicing regularly before I was able to memorize a pack of cards in 3 minutes. It may seem weird practicing this, but it turns out to be a pretty good gauge of your concentration and mental focus, just like how being able to run a few miles is a good measure of your physical fitness. Highly recommend Joshua Foer's book, "Moonwalking with Einstein", to learn more.

arkitaip 16y ago
Is there a book that you could recommend on O'Brien's techniques?
- sayemm 16y ago
  "How to Develop a Perfect Memory"
- georgieporgie 16y ago
  I've been listening to his Quantum Memory Power audiobook. It covers a huge range of memory techniques: memory palaces/journey method, mnemonics, visualization of numbers, etc. Some of his pop-culture references are a bit dated, but otherwise I find it to be a great system. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Memory-Power-Improve-Champion/dp/0743528662/ http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Memory-Power-Improve-Champion/...
  - sayemm 16y ago
    Funny you mention that, I listened to those audio CDs as well! I think that and "How to Develop a Perfect Memory" are the best resources on him, he's the man.

atlantic 16y ago

The standard work on the ars memoria is Frances Yates' The Art of Memory, which covers Renaissance practitioners (Lull, Bruno, Fludd, etc.) in some detail. These techniques date back to the classical art of rhetoric, which cultivated the capacity to memorize long speeches or poems.

tumba 16y ago
More recent scholarly work has been done by Mary Carruthers. I have found her books, "The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture" and "The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200", to be more engaging and useful than Yates.
prestonbriggs 16y ago
Another interesting view of all this is via John Crowley's novel "Little, Big" (certainly heavily influenced by Yates). Preston

dublinclontarf 16y ago

broswer broken, leaving comment to find later

WesleyJohnson 16y ago

I've always been pretty frustrated with my inability to remember simple things, while having knack for recalling useless information. I rarely can remember birthdays, anniversaries, phone numbers, important dates in my history like when I graduated or the specific date of when my father passed away. I have hardly any memory of grade school, only can recall two of my teacher's names in high school, etc. Granted, some of those are less useful than others but they're things that people tend to remember and I don't. Instead, I memorize odd things like a Windows 98 CD Key, for example. I must've reinstalled it so many times that it just stuck in my head. Completely useless and yet it'll be with me for many more years I'm afraid. I have found that I tend to remember things more if I put them into a rhythm, as if they were words in a song. I'm not musically inclined so I kind of find that odd, but it works. I used to work in inventory for a Best Buy warehouse and I'd often have to put UPC codes into a terminal for new inventory. I couldn't see the codes from the terminal most times, so I'd quickly memorize the code in my head by putting it into a rhythm. 1...2...3 4 5 6...7...8....9 10 11 12. Would be curious to know if that's common? Anyway, very interesting article and I'm definitely going to try and put it to use. See if I can create a memory palace for Rubix cube algorithms as I've recently decided I want to be able to master the 3x3 one. Now if I can only force myself to forget that Kermit the lettuce head is going to greet me when I get home by warning me that Kevin Bacon is chasing pigs through my living room, that someone accidentally formatted my SD card bed and that the sun is supposed to be extra Orange and juicy today. I think I'll keep around Scarlett doing her thing with an Onion Ring hula-hoop though. :)

blauwbilgorgel 16y ago
Look at how the Aboriginees use songs in their memorization techniques. Tribes or families would have songs about locations of food and water, and when two people from different tribes would marry, they would teach each other their songs. Isn't that the best dowry?
mquander 16y ago
I memorized pi to a hundred digits out of boredom in middle school, and I naturally did the rhythm thing, mostly with triplets of digits, sometimes otherwise. The interesting thing is that I can't remember any of it without using the rhythm to help me; for example, if you asked me "what comes next after the digits '197'", I have no way to answer that question without going through the digits until I get to the part that goes "..795 0288; 4-1-9-7-1 693 993..." and then going, aha, here it is. If you started ten digits in, grouped the digits differently, and read them off to me in a different cadence, I wouldn't even recognize it was pi!

VB6_Foreverr 16y ago

There is another memory technique where each item is like a member of a linked list. Say you have to remember bread, milk and sugar. So you imagine a loaf of bread that when you cut a slice off a cascade of milk comes gushing out and topples a dam made of sugar cubes. Then you discover that you already have milk, so you alter the image to a colossal slice of bread crashing down onto the sugar cube dam. I'd like a technique analogous to this where you start with 52 cards in your list and as the cards are drawn from a deck they are also dropped from your list. It would make it easier to see what's left

tom_b 16y ago

I'm interested in combining the memory palace and peg techniques, specifically for sw dev. Assuming you understand the fundamentals, I think there is a subset of any programming language, data structures, and algorithms for the programming paradigm you are working with where memorizing some of your "working" tools is a good idea. From my viewpoint, this might be helpful in a couple of different ways. First, if you are hacking away in a prog language, you need to have some decent set of it "embedded" in your mind. Memorization might help me for those languages I don't get to touch every day, but would like to keep handy in my toolbox. Second, the data structures and algorithms part would be nice to flash against new problems. E.g, here is a prob, can I quickly flash it up against my set of memorized data structures and algorithms to see if something "fits." I wonder if by the time you come up with an appropriate internal visualization for most data structures and algorithms, you'll probably have enough of a taste for it that memorization isn't useful anymore. As a side question, I think it might be useful to think in terms of how much code you can write without needing to rely on autocompletion in your IDE or without referring to an outside reference. Just curious if other HNer's have opinions about that kind of prog lang command as a measure of skill . . .

gwern 16y ago

More general and useful is spaced repetition: http://www.gwern.net/Mnemosyne.html http://www.gwern.net/Mnemosyne.html

andrewtbham 16y ago

Here is how i remember stuff, with mnemonics http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2008/08/remembering-things-5-examples.html http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2008/08/rememberi...

Apocryphon 16y ago

The only drawback to this method is that it makes it easier for dream-spelunking thieves to commit a heist in your mind.

Tycho 16y ago

We played a memory game at school once where everyone sat in a circle and said their favourite activity. For years and years after I could remember the entire sequence. I could probably regurgitate the whole thing now if I had a few hints. Another one that works short term for exams and such is 'definitions , lists and diagrams.' On left page of notebook write say 'definition of Agile development' followed by a dash for each point on the agile manifesto, followed by 'diagram of [something agile related. Textbooks always have diagrams]. ' on the right page write the actual definition, followed by the actual list, followed by the actual diagram, but use your own words, not the textbook's. Glance over it, then cover it with a piece of paper and write the entire thing out again from memory. No peaking but at least you can count how many list items are required from the other page. Check you got it right, reread any mistakes, and then you'll find that after having written it out twice you can easily remember the whole thing when the exam comes. I find any sort of thoughtful reinforcement makes memory very effective. I wanted to ask though, do you guys memorise APIs and keywords and other programming mattered, rather than just picking up or looking up as you go? Does it help you program much faster? Of course it's a lot to remember considering all the rules and contexts and parameters.

bourdine 16y ago

Mnemonic is not good for me to memorize a large number of unrelated and not a structured pictures. Is anyone know other way for pictures?

zach 16y ago

I keep waiting for someone with more spare time than myself to bring the memory palace idea to an augmented reality app. I have a feeling medical students will pay a decent amount of money to walk around their apartment with an iPhone held out in front of them. Also, the effectiveness of this idea implies that museums without a single artifact in their collection can be extremely educational by wisely creating a spatial environment. A tour led through a "Garden of Presidents" or a walkable map could help students on field trips actually retain much more knowledge than in the classroom.

daralthus 16y ago
I actually pulled this up on last weeks startup weekend and we made some prototypes. We tried it first with streetview, where you walk around and learn new words on a different language. We have the best results when we combined it, with a special spelling where the letters were objects also. (like in elementary school, for example "A" is for Apple) Like that you will remember the objects and not just some random characters. The "let's go for a walk" and the "stay in this room" mobile versions are still in the pocket, so let me know what do you think about this.
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  Where can I have a look at them? (I don't know what you refer as "pocket")
  - daralthus 16y ago
    I am sorry they are not online now. By pocket I mean ideas we haven't tried out yet. I imagine the mobile app version to have 3 separete functionality, and we only covered 1,5 1. "I would rather sit" Is a streetview walkaround with predefined routes. 2. "I want to stay in this room" Is an AR version where you walk around in your room and place the words where you want. 3. "Let's go for a walk" Would give you new words when you stop somewhere in the city. Of course there are other task and opportunities, like testing, spaced repetition, linkwords etc and unfortunately the team got separeted now (both in space and in thinking) so I am not sure if I would make this project hight priority... Still I would love to hear your toughts.

johnwatson11218 16y ago

When I work on a large piece of software I use techniques like this to build a model of the software in my mind. The various layers seem like physical objects or places in my mind. It is a hard point for me to articulate but when I know a software code base really well I am able to immediately answer question about whether certain things are or are not possible. I always thought of this as the "topology" of the solution. I know that is why I have a preference for certain design decisions. Some software seems like a well designed house with layers that do one thing really well and can offer strict guarantees about the state of the system. Sometimes I am asked to do things to the software that conjure up images of mobius strips or klein bottles and I cringe. Only because of what it is doing to my mental model.

arctangent 16y ago

I recently wrote an article for my company's in-house staff magazine about how Google was my favourite web site because it freed me from having to remember facts. I think it's a waste of effort to devote time to memorising mere details, when these can readily be looked up. I think it is much more sensible to remember connections between facts (i.e. to theorise and systematise based on experiences) than it is to just store the facts themselves.

RBerenguel 16y ago
The problem is that, unless you know a lot, you can't relate facts. I also prefer associative memorisation (i.e. I can think of subject A, which is related to subject B, caused by subject C and leading also to subject D), but you need to know your stuff, too.

methodin 16y ago

I still remember the 5 things in this list and I wasn't even trying to... I wonder if it works with bland data?

RBerenguel 16y ago
What do you mean by bland data?

Vmabuza 16y ago

I wish this post was around when i was in the 9th grade so i wouldnt have spent so much on Kevin Trudeau's Megamemory just to learn this.

dennisgorelik 16y ago

Why learn tricks to remember stuff if there is paper and pen (or portable computers)?