Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0353: Is a memory palace ALWAYS the right solution?

Episode Date: July 15, 2015

Natalie is taking an accounting course and is wondering whether a memory palace is the right way to learn her material. I talk about different ways to use memory techniques and mnemonics without necessarily relying on memory palaces. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed […]

Master of Memory 353. 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. Natalie submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Natalie says, I'm a college student and struggle on learning my accounting course, and it's quite hard for me to remember the format and terms. I heard about the method of Loki and mnemonics, but I don't really know how to relate these methods.

So what I would do, Natalie, is actually question whether the tactics that you're hearing about are necessarily applicable to your situation. The method of Loki is the memory palace method. Those are just basically two synonyms for the same thing. But really, a memory palace is useful if you're storing information in a particular place so that you can always go to that place in your mind and find it there. I find memory palaces particularly helpful if you want to store information in areas where they're organized with other similar things. Like when we teach languages, we teach people to place all of their words of particular functions, like pronouns, object pronouns, dative pronouns, etc., in scenes that belong to other words of the same function. But I don't know if that's necessarily the best solution in your case. In your case, generally, the trigger, as you say, is probably

going to be these terms that you don't know. So the goal is that when you come across a term, you should remember what it means. What I would actually suggest that you start with is not building a memory palace, but doing what I suggested in the previous episode and going to the back of your textbook, if you have a textbook, and just searching for the terms that you don't know in the index. Find the ones that are referenced the most times throughout the book

and make sure to learn those really well, ignoring all the terms that you don't know but aren't used very much. Start with the ones that you don't know that are used throughout the whole book. If you don't have a textbook you can maybe take a web page or something like that on your particular subject and search for any term that you've come across that you don't know and whichever has the highest count of words you don't know you'll want to learn those first.

Another thing you can do is before going to your textbooks for your study you might just go online and do some general research into what's called the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and just do some very high-level research on that. accounting principles, especially under the basic concepts part of that page, just to get sort of a, you know, take a step back and get a fresh perspective on accounting in general. And between that and learning all these terms that I suggested you look up for yourself, I think you'll be in much better shape for your course. 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, the number one way that you can support the show doesn't require any money of you, is very easy, and will only take a few seconds, and it requires nothing but your smartphone in your hand right now. So listen, if you've enjoyed listening to this show,

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