Recommended Posts: The Number Peg System
This technique cannot be overstated. Chances are that any amazing memory ability performed, whether it be on television or in competitive memory competitions, the memory palace technique was the technique uaed to achieve it.
There are MANY resources for this technique in books and online, so this post will only give you the minimal re description of how it works.
As you explore the posts on this site, you will use this technique in many different contexts, so you will be working toward mastery in no time.
For now, let’s get started with the first things I teach students: how to remember a long list of numbers.
Imagine giving someone a tour of your home. You are going to walk through it in the most logical way as to not double back at any given time. You want to choose the path that takes the least amount of time.
Go ahead and imagine what path you would take through your home.
When I begin this process with students, there are obviously many variants to the size of the homes. Some live in one – bedroom apartments. If this is the case with you, we will tell you how to make it bigger, so to speak, further in this post.
Now that you imagined going through your home, imagine going walking back. That seemingly mundane process of walking back through your home leads to awe struct responses, and you will soon see why.
Now, it is a simple process of placing items in each room that represent what you want to remember.
My father told me that when his doctor checks for any memory lapses, he states a few random items and asks him to repeat them. I showed him this trick for helping him pass the test.
Years earlier, it was during this exercise when I realized that memory techniques like this can be used for memorizing useful information in the classroom, which would eventually lead to the existence of this nonprofit. So, this exercise has a special place in my memory for sure.
Keep in mind, if you read and practiced the post on the body peg list, you already did this by using your body as a sort of memory palace.
We are going to start with four items: clock, lettuce, toilet paper, and a TV.
Picture yourself at the door of your home. Itis the same as it has always been, but now there is a clock strung up to it. Now this strange, but it is not memorable. How can we make the clock more memorable?
Perhaps we can picture the clock melting down the doorway, as if it is in a Dali painting.
After you enter your door, you stand in the first room with a giant head of lettuce. This lettuce is personified, so it greets you, and asks if you are interested in a salad.
Now step into the next room and pick out something in the room that is meaningful to you, or is very important to your life. It is important to use items in the room. This separates one room from another in your memory. For example, if you a clock in your toilet and it explodes, you will likely remember the clock is in the bathroom since there is only one place you keep a toilet.
On the other hand, if you are currently in your bathroom right now, in your memory palace, be careful that you do not use the toilet paper for something predictable.
So, decide what you are going to do with your toilet paper to remember it. Remember, our brain remembers weird, funny, sad, happy, and, in general emotional things.
Finally, go to the next room, and decide what you are going to do with that TV.
If you only have three rooms, then you can always put more than one thing in a room; however, try to keep it consistent at first. If you are going to put two things in one room, then put two things in every room. In fact, using the corners of your rooms gives you four places per room. If you use more than one location, remember tie it to an object in the room (closest to the corner), and always go in the same direction in each room.
When you are done, walk back through the house and see if you can see exactly what you did in that room. If you cannon, then you need to make the image weirder and/or give it more action.
This is an ongoing process that you will always be tweaking.
If you have more than four places, then keep going!
If you read the post on the number peg list, which you should have, then put the symbols you have for the numbers 0-9 in each room based on the order of your credit card number. If your credit card starts 6023, then put whatever you have for six, such as a bundle of sticks, in the first room, and so on.
Finally, go back through your house in the opposite direction. You should see everything still waiting for you just like before.
Memorizing items in order after one look at them can be pretty impressive but wait until you ask a student to go backward through the home and recite the items or numbers backwards. The look son their faces are worth it!
As I previously stated, many of the lessons on this site will use the memory palace technique, which will give you more practice. In fact, many of the lessons on this site can use the memory palace, even if I did not feature it on the post. When you can start employing this technique on your own to your content area, you will know you have it!
If you would like to dive into the memory palace technique, the Magnetic Memory Method has a free course. Anthony is, I believe, the world’s leading expert on the memory palace. He is also someone who has used it to get multiple college degrees, so he is well versed on using it for educational purposes. He offers a paid master course as well if you decide to do that later.
Anthony was a huge mentor to me and incredibly generous in his time to help me develop the idea for this site. It is our dream, and that of most other mnemonists in the world that these techniques find their ways into the educational system sooner rather than later!
