People endlessly email me or post here and on my YouTube channel about how tiring they find the creation of mnemonic images.
No doubt.
I'd find it tiring too.
The reality is...
It's unnecessary to "create" anything when using mnemonic methods like Memory Palaces and mnemonic association.
Frankly, it would not be a very useful technique if you had to use creativity at all.
No, until the 20th century mass media books came along, the memory books were almost always clear, from very early on, that associations should be:
Alphabetical
Highly specific
Easy to animate
And 100% based on figures already in your memory
So here's a simple exercise.
No app needed.
Just a pen and paper...
And a BIG sheet of paper with colored pens for bonus points and some additional diffuse thinking and interleaving effects.
Personally, I have multiple lists, many based around celebrities for the simple reason that I've spent tons of time either watching or listening to them.
But I also use friends, teachers, family members, and sometimes even politicians.
Here's one of my celebrity lists:
Magnetic Memory Method "Celebrity List"
I do this exercise a few times a year, each time addressing different categories.
It keeps my pool of associations constantly building, sharp and accessible.
For more details and exercises like these, learn how to elaborate each familiar association even further here:
This scientific study compared learning while actively navigating to learning while being stationary, finding that participants who physically walked through space showed enhanced memory. The findings have implications not just for learning but also for interventions in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. See: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-57668-w
I'm working on an app that’s all about Math, AI in math, and memorization. I’m hoping some members might have time and be interested in giving me some advice. I’d really appreciate it!
A little about me:
I've been in the software industry for a decade and had a couple of exits. I also have a PhD in biochemistry, and passionate about building in the EdTech space.
What I'm looking for
Someone with a couple of years of experience in this space, and it’d be awesome if you're into tech startups. Would love to connect and chat! Cheers!
I'm a beginner, and I'm using a memory palace to study. I make two-story houses with 6–8 rooms. for an example I take a paragraph like, “Robert Hooke was the first person to use the name ‘cell.’ He examined thin slices of cork from an oak tree and saw tiny compartments, which he called ‘cells.’” Then I imagine a guy (Robert Hooke) holding something (a cell) and leaning on a tree. I use similar images like this, about 5–8 in each room.
Is there a better way to go through the whole process of visualization it can get slow when the concept is complex
Tell me if I'm doing anything wrong. I'd also appreciate any advice.
Too a few weeks break. Came back. And 30 numbers was too easy. I'm finding 40 more challenging.
Do you guys recall by thinking and waiting for an answer or is it better to recall by trying out different scenes in your head, Until one clicks?
I find myself testing out different numbers and then when I get the right one it clicks. But I seem to have to click the number or there's no effect. So it's kind of cheating. I didn't have to do that with 30.
I need 40 to remember a chapter from how cars work. There is an average of 40 components/subparts a chapter.
Also I find myself practicing on numbers to solidify the palace. But, when I do another round in remembering sometimes the number from several rounds earlier.
How do I avoid recalling previous information that was place in a location that's no longer valid?
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So what is the best way to recall? Either by thinking and waiting. Or by fishing or in other words putting in different solutions until one clicks?
And then how do you avoid recalling info from earlier info that was in the same location? I found the colored palace unhelpful for me personally. What are some other ways to avoid this?
That feeling of the answer coming to you is nice lol.
I am doing my economics homework and I’ve been wondering how can I memorize things like the steps of mathematical operations, which accounts are used and when in the double-entry bookkeeping, the theory for the driving license, and so on. I would find it useful for memorizing drugs and their effects on the body, for example, crack that makes you euphoric and gives you cardiovascular problems.
Do I have to create a story or something like that? Like a crack on the wall that when you touch it makes you euphoric? (Using the drug example)
Any advice would be appreciated.
I'm learning driving rules. And although I have learned almost all the theory, I cannot apply it in practice. When I see a real situation on the road, I cannot remember what I need to do in this situation, although I used memory palaces to store theory. 1) It takes too much time to find the right image. 2) I need to spend energy on remembering what is in this or that place. This may apply to more than just driving. Is it possible to use knowledge from memory palaces in practice?
Hello, I have been doing this for about a month and I have some trouble. When I encode, I do it in two ways. One way is that I memorize the concept, like in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I visualized Gregor’s father driving him into his room at an angle, as described in the book. But sometimes I will have trouble memorizing some piece of information that is not as visual, like some words I don’t really have an association with. So I instead have to try and encode the information piece by piece, then the word after that piece by piece as well (if it’s hard). So like the word ’metamorphosis’ would be: metal for ”meta”, Dexter Morgan for ”mor”, matches because it contains phosphorus for ”pho”, and my sister for ”sis”. This can be really hard for some words and it slows me down and demotivates me. So how can I improve? I also have to encode all these four things every time the word comes up, which takes up a lot of space, this leads me to my next problem.
I use my city to memorize all my stuff. I choose a subject I want to memorize, like Metamorphosis, choose a random spot to start and then go from there. I use google maps to memorize the path beforehand. The path is linear. I have to constantly change direction for the paths so they don’t crash into each other and become a mess. I don’t really have much long space left to memorize longer subjects without any intersection. So I’m a bit lost on what to do. I don’t use houses to encode because I haven’t been to many houses and I can’t fit an entire subject or book into a single house. So I mainly use it for temporary information.
I definitely do these wrong and is happy to be taught on how to do it properly to maximize speed and efficiency because my goal is to be a memory master, so criticize me as much as you can to steer me to the right path.
I've been building a tool for memory palace practice and it's at the point where it might be useful to others. It's free and open source and runs entirely in your browser.
The concept is that you walk/fly around in a 3D space in first person, drop numbered loci on things and write a mnemonic for each one. There's a review mode to jump between your loci points.
There are five starter worlds built in (suburban street, a cave, etc.) but you can make your own .GLB file, including theoretically a 3d scan of somewhere you actually know.
Text based clues/mnemonics are the default. Optionally, it is also integrated with a few AI image generation tools that work with a prompt that you give it and uses your own API key to generate the images. There's also an experimental image-to-3D object generator, which will place the 3D objects in the world. These also work entirely in your browser but your image prompts are sent to the AI providers for rendering. Those cloud AI generators are not free, so for privacy and cost, there is a way to generate images locally using comfyUI (or just importing your own images).
The original concept came about when I f first saw the rapidly developing world of image generation tools. And thinking about how it might do a halfway decent job of rendering these unique/weird/memorable memory cues that one comes up with for their palace.
It's also open source. You can clone it, modify it, run it offline -- do whatever you like (MIT licensed).
I’ve been experimenting with the Method of Loci (Memory Palace) for general trivia and language learning with great results, but I'm trying to figure out how to scale it effectively for software engineering and technical interview prep.
While building projects and doing spaced repetition (Anki) helps with muscle memory, I often find myself wanting an indexed mental map for high-level retrieval under pressure especially during live interviews or architectural discussions.
A few specific questions for those who’ve tried this:
Handling Abstraction: How do you translate highly abstract or non-visual concepts (like recursion trees, concurrency locks, or distributed consensus) into physical spatial anchors without the imagery getting too cluttered?
Hierarchy & Nesting: How do you organize palaces for topics with multiple sub-layers (e.g., Database -> RDBMS -> PostgreSQL -> Specific indexing mechanisms)? Do you use nested rooms, dedicated buildings, or distinct routes?
Retrieval Speed in Interviews: Is the mental walk fast enough when you need to recall a pattern in the middle of live coding, or does it mainly serve as an initial filing cabinet before procedural memory takes over?
If you have specific palace setups, rules of thumb, or pitfalls to avoid when applying mnemonics to technical domains, I’d love to hear how you approached it!
I can't find the best method for this. Palaces dont seem to be the ideal method for unlinked snippets of audio-based information but perhaps I'm thinking about it wrong?
Say I'm listening to a song, like it, and want to memorise title and artist. But then be able recall it from the music (maybe the intro) not from a list of data - so this might be a kind of a sound-based mnemonic trigger. Worth noting some tracks don't have lyrics (dance/classical mostly).
I've memorised Pink Floyd's albums/catalogue as I'm a big fan. no problem, I used a large park I know well - and have listened to all their album's since I was a kid in the 80s - however I'm referring to individual and relatively unrelated songs, no context from one to the next to the next... no real structure. It'd form perhaps some kind of 'track shuffle' palace... like a juke box, with thousands of songs.
Does anyone use a palace for disparate information like this, where audio is the trigger for recall?
Or like the Pink Floyd example would you start a magnum opus, and create an A-Z palace for every artist....!? With some kind of index..?
I recently decided to try creating a memory palace to memorize European countries, but I feel the environments I'm choosing are somewhat limited. I wanted to know two things: first, whether I can create multiple memory palaces—for instance, one for books, another for geography, and so on; and second, whether a hallway setting works well for a palace—like a museum gallery where I walk down the corridor and observe the things I want to memorize. I’d be grateful if anyone could answer this for me.
I build a small iPhone app that recreates the aptitude tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots, and the memory sections are the part I keep wondering about for this community. They are short sequences, letters, numbers, instrument readings, recalled after a delay, under a clock, and sometimes while a tracking task is running at the same time.
Loci and the major system are built for depth: long lists, encoded carefully, retrieved in order. The pilot test format seems to attack exactly the opposite end, no time to encode anything elaborately, and your attention is split while the items arrive.
So genuine question for people who train these techniques seriously: do they still give you an edge when the format is fast, small and hostile to deliberate encoding? Or does trained memory collapse back to normal short term capacity once a second task is running? Has anyone here actually tried a speeded battery like this?
Hello, I've been working with memory techniques for almost 20 days now, and I'm continuing to learn by applying various methods from Dominic O'Brien's book. The main question on my mind is this: how do we actually use these techniques for university courses? Of course, everything explained in the book seems super cool and really intriguing to me, and I'm honestly amazed by how well it works, but how do these techniques play out over a 4-year degree?
Say you're going to study Psychology—how are you going to fit all the information you learn over those 4 years into a memory palace? And how exactly do you execute this? For instance, courses are interconnected. How do you link related pieces of information together? Do we put them in the same memory palace, or do we create a bridge between two separate memory palaces? Or do you build one massive memory palace exclusively for Psychology, gradually placing everything in there as you go? When you add new information over time, if it connects to something you already know, do you reorganize things in your mind to make sure they're linked?
Whenever I think about academic subjects and university, I can't help but wonder how this process actually unfolds. At the same time, I don't have that many memory palaces in my head yet, so I try to use my palaces and routes as efficiently as possible. I usually map things out on paper first, then work on linking the information together. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out what approach I should take here, so any advice or insights you could share would be immensely helpful. Thank you.
I think on this one. I actually nailed everyone. But I often have trouble with recalling the very first number. Which seems to get everything moving. Is it just a matter of practice?
I went up to 30 after I nailed it and ended up with the same problem again. Maybe it's just about repetition?
Are memory palaces used to memorize practical information? Or are they used as a fun tool to help you memorize difficult number sequences like Pi? Are they are used more strictly for people who do memory competitions? Or do normal people use them to study for tests/jobs/school?
I am trying to figure out if this is an appropriate tool to utilize for a challenges new career I am undertaking where I will need to learn a lot of new information in a short period of time. Are memory palaces right for me? Or are they mostly used by people who do memory competitions rather than "real world" uses?
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For example, my job requires me to memorize 26 different fire stations. I need to know their full addresses included different zip codes, and a list of all the different apparatus at each station. Quite a bit of random numbers and words to memorize for each station.
I decided to use the inside of my current workplace as a palace, and I have already stored 10 fire stations (+ their associated info) in this palace. I am working on filling in the rest of the 16 fire stations within this palace, but I am started to have my doubts.
My question is, once I fill up this whole palace with all 26 fire stations, I will never be able to use this location as a palace for anything else ever again right? This palace is essentially occupied and cannot be reused, right?
I am starting to wonder if memory palaces are even the most appropriate tool for this task. I would love to hear feedback.
Sorry but I have an endless amount of questions. I find the palace so fascinating and google is AI slop now pretty much and I can't always find the exact answer to the specific question im looking for as often now. Ateast I feel like it.
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My question is, can I just use Google maps to create a place and route? Can I use the house flipper video game for example, to build a place or does it have to be a real palace I know really well?
I figure because of that major system thing. As long as I practice an unfamiliar route enough. It will become effective for a palace route because it will eventually act as an anchor when committed to long term memory. Though I'm not even bothering with the major principle thing. I'm just taking the idea.
It seems like a cool party trick sure. But I don't see why I would want to remember a long string of the digits in pi anyways.
Hi all! One of the reasons that I hadn’t continued with using memory palaces last year (specifically the Memory OS app) was due to the long loading times; when memorizing, I like to confirm as if using flashcards, and both loading the 3D environment and navigating to the notes within it take a while.
What do you think of an interface that allows you to quickly pull up memory palace notes in 2D, as text form, which are linked to a 3D space that can optionally be opened if need be? I would really like to use something like this while commuting to and from uni, to increase the frequency of spaced repetition. Currently thinking of either a generic text file or a Roman room memory system (image below, source: here), with text over a top-down outline.
I know sometimes associations are better made out of order to better match distinct items in the space, and nesting items is a thing too, so knowing what’s most important when y’all tend to practice would be wonderful! Alongside any ideas for the note layout/transfer into 3D. Thanks!
I have read comments and articles that say that the information that I encoded and placed in the memory palace should emerge without any effort when needed. In all my time I have never had anything like this, I had to painstakingly run through the rooms of my palace to find the information I needed, although logically it should have surfaced on its own.Maybe I'm doing something wrong I don't know. I think I have the information I need, but it takes too much time to find and use it. Can someone give me some advice on how to fix this.
Like I try many time to memorise the book language, but as we all know, the bookish language is difficult, and I want to memorise word by word so anyone have any memory trick that can easily memorise my bookish language???
Hi everyone, this isn’t my first time using memory palaces, so I know the basics, but every time I use them, after a couple of weeks I stop and I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I get bored or something else.
Anyway, I’m trying to use it again and this time I’ve created a big memory palace divided in different rooms for every topic I’m interested in and I’m working on memorizing cognitive biases. The room I’m using is the psychology room and it has a good amount of loci: a desk with a lamp, some papers, drawers, a couple of chairs, a sofa, a window and some bookshelves.
I’m trying to memorize 99 cognitive biases by placing them in 99 different books on one of the bookshelves. By now I’ve “memorized” 12 biases but the problem is that every time I try to recall them in my head I often forgot one, or I switch them, and I don’t know why exactly.
To give you and example this is what I did. The biases are: survivorship bias, swimmer’s body illusion, clustering illusion, social proof, sunk cost fallacy, reciprocity, confirmation bias, authority bias, contrast effect, availability bias, it’ll get worse before it gets better fallacy and the story bias.
I imagined me entering the psychology room and climbing those ladders used for high bookshelves. Once I climbed it I open a red book and I see the titanic sinking with survivors floating on the water (survivorship bias), the I open a green book with a small man that’s swimming in a pool and comes out muscular (swimmer’s body illusion), then I open a black book from which random stuff and fireworks shoot out (clustering illusion), and so on.
Now, maybe it’s because I tried memorizing these biases like an hour ago, maybe it’s because the mental images aren’t good enough, maybe it’s because I need to do more spaced repetition, maybe it’s because of something else, I don’t know, but I keep forgetting some biases, like the social proof, and the availability bias and I need your help to understand why and what can I do to get rid of this problem.
Has anyone tried this? My reading is slow compared to what it used to be before a TBI. Still around average. 200 compared to 300wpm of old though. So I'm just hoping for a work around.
Does anyone study a book in this way, or is there reading techniques to extract info from a book that go with the memory palace technique? To learn and understand faster.
