Simonides in a Greek legend recalled events from a dinner party by tying physical location to other mental details. This technique is known as memory palace or “method of loci.”
The Method of Loci
The method of loci hijacks our mental capacity for remembering physical spaces, using it to allow us to remember other details with ease
- Journalist Joshua Foer set out to win a memory championship by training his brain
- Utilizing spatial and visual cues is the easiest way to remember things
How a memory palace works
Humans have better spatial memory than real memory
- The stranger the image that you have of a person, the better chance you will remember it
- An important caveat is that loci only helps you recall information you’ve used to encode it
- The more times you use it the better you will become
- Probably will not help with general memory
How to build a memory palace
Think of a familiar memory that you have but then add something bizarre to it that you need to remember
- A cow sitting like a human in the chair of your house could help you remember to buy steaks at the grocery store
- You want a mental image to engage with a specific place as much as possible
Remembering numbers
PAO Person action object
- This method can be used to remember numbers by having obscure people doing actions with objects for numbers 00-99
- String them together to remember more complex numbers
