The Palace of Memory

This technique for improving memory recall apparently had its origins with Simonides in ancient Greece. One day in fifth-century-B.C. Simonides was attending a banquet, chatting and drinking and being merry, when he was summoned by two messengers to attend to urgent matters. Just as he left the banquet hall the roof collapsed. The bodies within were unrecognizable, so family members of the deceased were unable to identify their loved ones. Then Simonides closed his eyes and re-imagined the moments preceding the collapse; as legend has it, he was able to remember each person and where they were seated.



I'm currently reading a book by Joshua Foer called Moonwalking With Einstein that deals with "the art and science of remembering everything", and in it he describes a technique that many 'memory athletes' use to memorize lists of random words. I am referring to the Palace of Memory technique, also called the method of loci. Lets say you want to memorize a to-do list with 20 different tasks; first you would imagine a location that you intimately know - it could be your childhood home, a route you walk on daily, your workplace, etc - then you would map a route through that location, making a mental note of every appliance and item of decor. Finally, you place each item of the list along the route, the more bizarre you make the item the better!

I'll try an example of just five items, using the house where I currently live:

1) Get car inspected
2) Pay lab society membership dues
3) Buy a gift for the person I drew for secret Santa
4) Pick up a 2L bottle of pop
5) call my sister

On the driveway beside my house I imagine my car is being circled by a very ponderous and serious Inspector Gadget. I walk up the stairs and open the front door; in the living room to my left I see Bill Nye in full laboratory regal with a beaker full of coins, in the closet to my immediate right I see Santa Clause hiding amongst the coats, making a worried hushing motion. I continue down the hall into the kitchen: on the floor of the kitchen there is a 2L bottle of root-beer with its contents gushing up and hitting the ceiling. I turn to look at the kitchen table, and there is my sister standing on top of it, holding my cell-phone up in the air and waving it around frantically.

This might sound ridiculous - like it would require one to remember much more than the list itself - but after much practice memory athletes can access their "palaces" in a moment. The most expert memory buffs have hundreds of these memory palaces, each one holding a different list.

An interesting little fact: the phrase "in the first place" has its origins with this ancient technique.