Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0298: Reprise: How do you memorize maps?

Episode Date: April 29, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to memorize maps, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode of episode 21, which is about memorizing maps. Some things I liked about this episode, and the reason I'm bringing it back up, is it's a good way to break down and memorize primary areas on a map, and apply mnemonics to the locations so that you can quickly remember where things are. I've used this technique more than once to memorize, for example, the map of a zoo, so that I know where to go to find some things in the zoo or whatever. You know, that's perhaps the easiest one to think of if you're just going to a place that you can walk around and you're going to be given a map and you want to

find your way around it. Some things I would change about this particular episode, though, are although the concept of using the quarters in a memory palace is interesting, perhaps instead taking those quarters of the city, you know, you've divided it into quarters and you've placed, you've made corresponding places in a memory palace. Maybe instead just focus on a few landmarks within those quarters and then place things around those. And so always be thinking in relation to landmarks and just remember where those landmarks are and where everything else is in relation to those. And if you do that instead of using a memory palace, in a sense, your city becomes your memory palace. So spending time in the city itself

rather than in this memory palace may be a more effective way to learn a map more quickly. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Tim asked in an email about memorizing maps. Tim is interested in rapid but effective memorization of local maps for walking and driving. He says, I have a good sense of direction, so I'm able to get from A to B. But when someone asks me how to get to B, I can't tell them.

Well, Tim, thanks for the question. This is a great one because I think a lot of us want to know, you know, how do I learn the map? If I come to a new city, how do I learn where everything is? And then if I'm used to following certain routes, how do I know where I am the map? If I come to a new city, how do I learn where everything is? And then if I'm used to following certain routes, how do I know where I am in context? Because I think it's way too easy to remember a route so that you can get from one point to another point without actually knowing where you are in the broader context of the city or wherever you are. And so it's hard to explain to other people how you get from one point to another because you can do it when you're there, you can do it when

you're in control and you know each intersection that you're going through where you're supposed to turn, but you can't necessarily explain it as far as a map goes. So here are some broader tips for understanding the layout of a city or a region so that you know in general where things are. Once you've gotten that down, it becomes much easier to memorize routes and then be able to explain them to other people. Now there are two approaches you can take to this global method. First, you could take vertical and horizontal streets, so to speak, or the north-south and east-west streets, and then memorize the

primary streets of those. And this would apply if you live in a city where the streets kind of cut it up into squares. I was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma where we have a street every mile east-west and a street every mile north-south, so the main streets of the city could be memorized in that fashion. So for this, you could start by just listing out the streets one by one as they're named or numbered, and then memorizing each of those, associating it with its own mnemonic, or maybe using a memory palace.

So for example, in Tulsa, we have a bunch of primary streets that are called Peoria, and then Lewis, and then Harvard, Yale, Sheridan, Memorial, and Mingo. If you associated the name of each of those streets with something memorable and then placed each of those in a memory palace you could learn the primary streets really quickly and so you'd know what order they were in from west to east. Now even if you're not in a city that's so easy to divide by squares, you know, you don't necessarily have those north-south streets every mile, those east-west streets every mile. You can still memorize some primary streets and then remember where other things are, where, you know, the smaller streets or even the locations that are memorable to you are in relation to those main streets. In Tulsa, again, where I grew up, most of the city was

divided by two highways that ran diagonally, or they still do, I guess, run diagonally from northwest to southeast and from southwest to northeast. So what you might do is choose some primary locations that you want to remember and then place them in memory palaces based on where they are in the quadrants that are formed by the intersecting main highways. So bunch all of the locations that are south of these highways somewhere and then the ones that are east of them etc so that you know roughly where any of these locations is in relation to the main highways in the city and then i would say if once you have a general feel of where these things are once you know you know my home and these few stores and this park are all in this quadrant.

And then my favorite library and the school that my kids go to are in this other quadrant. You know, that doesn't really tell you how to get to those places. It just kind of gives you a general feel of where each of those locations is. But as I stated earlier, it does make it easier for you to learn how to explain how to get from one point to another once you do this. So once you've kind of gotten past this point and you're able to explain the layout of the city to yourself or to someone else, then what you can do is while you're driving around the city and getting a feel for it from this new perspective, you can just remember little things about the routes you normally take and think, I'm in this quadrant right now, or I'm on this street right now. And so if I go west,

Memorial is one mile west of here. And you can be thinking in that mindset, and the map will kind of form itself in your head as you go. If it doesn't seem to come naturally, you can be a little more proactive and actually sit down after each time you make a trip or after sometimes when you make a trip. You know, if you go from the grocery store to your house, you can sit down and try to recall what streets you must have gone by during that trip and remember going past them.

And then the map will form in your head because humans think spatially. Another suggestion if driving isn't working for you would be to get out and walk or to get out and bike because that really forces you to be immersed in the environment. Once you have a general picture of how the city's laid out, then getting out there and walking through it or biking through it is going to help you a lot with understanding how the little things fit in within the bigger picture. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from

wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the Thank you. You can do that at timothymoser.com.