Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0324: Searching for more memory palaces

Episode Date: June 4, 2015

Ignacio asks about resources for finding more memory palaces. If you run out of palaces, where should you turn to in order to find more? 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.

Master of Memory 324. 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. Ignacio submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Ignacio says, how can I find more memory palaces for use? Is there some web page where they recommend an amount of a lot of palaces for use? So first of all, Ignacio, to answer the latter part of the question, I certainly don't know of such a page myself, but I would be interested if

anyone else knows of such a resource. I would be very interested in helping create one if there is no such thing. So just a place where you could go online and find a bunch of pre-made memory palaces that you can fill with your information. And really, I don't know of any resources for that. Although you can kind of make up your own if you just go online, search for famous places like large historic buildings and big parks and things like that. And then if you learn those really well and can imagine yourself going around in those places, you can then use those as palaces, which can easily be shared with other people who know those places as well. So that's one way that you could do it. Now, as far as just your more general question

of finding memory palaces for use, I tend to suggest quite frequently that you always just use your own personal palaces, meaning when you're starting out, use lots of places that you've been on your own. And it's really not that easy to run out of those. So you may have lived in maybe two or three houses in your life, you know, spent more than a year in one house, and you should have lots of memories and be very clear about the layout of that place, unless it was when you were too young to remember. There should be plenty of places like that. So think through your whole life and think of any building

or really even an outdoor area where you've spent lots of time. And if you can walk through that place in your mind, then it's good enough to create a very strong memory palace. So think through your whole life in all those places. It's not just homes. It can be restaurants, school buildings, and so on. And it doesn't have to be just buildings either. Now, another suggestion is to travel more. So if you can go to new places and spend a little more time in those places, then you've just given yourself new palaces.

And even if you can't afford or don't have the time to go abroad or to travel more, you know, for hundreds of miles to different cities or whatever. Just travel more even just locally. Choose a few, you know, big restaurants or a few cafes or anything in your own area. Spend a little time there until you know them quite well and can use them as palaces. Or even just walk around your city a little bit or around the country. You're creating palaces by spending time and absorbing places. Plus, I think that just generally as life advice, spending time outside the home is a great thing for you. It's just good to get out and to refresh your mind through locations because locations aren't just good for memory. Locations are good for all sorts of things, including clearing your mind and just kind of doing a reboot on your mind. So it's a good

excuse for doing that sort of thing as well. Now, the last option would be to create virtual palaces for, but I would pretty much restrict that to palaces that you're interested in sharing with other people. Because as we've talked about several times on the show before, virtual palaces have their drawbacks. You have to learn the palace before you learn the stuff that you're storing in the palace. So you have that drawback. The advantage is that you can share it with other people because you can give the same palace to more than one person. And you can store essentially the same memories in the same palace.

That's the advantage. But I would do this only for palaces that you're interested in sharing with other people, which for myself, admittedly, is most of the palaces that I create because I'm most interested in sharing palaces with other people. So if there's any information, any topic that you're wanting to learn that you think other people would benefit from at Master of Memory, I would definitely be happy to help you develop those palaces so that we can share them with the world as well. Now, listeners have asked about how they can support Master of Memory and keep this show free for the world, particularly if you don't have a lot of time or any money to spend. So right now, I'm going to tell you that, believe it or not, right now at this moment,

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