Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0383: More thoughts on using memory palaces for information that changes

Episode Date: August 26, 2015

Jeremy asks about using memory palaces for information that changes regularly. For example, if you want to memorize information about the previous quarter, how do you replace the content of the memory palace with the new information for the next quarter? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, […]

Master of Memory 383. 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. Jeremy submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Jeremy says, how do you structure detail that changes frequently into a memory palace or some other structure? For instance, if you want to have last quarter's results and performance ready to go, how do you replace the content with the new content for the next quarter? These details

may be a few dozen data points or more. So Jeremy, this is going to be related to episode 167, where I talked just in general about memorizing information that's subject to change. So for example, talking about the populations of countries and talking about how maybe you could memorize some information with a starting point, and then if the information changes, you can just remember based off of that. So for example, it's very easy for me to remember that Thailand currently has 67 million people in it, because I remember memorizing about a year ago that Thailand's population is 66 million, and my character for the number 66 is still prominently associated with Thailand,

but I just simply remember that they've gained one point at this point, so I still remember my character for 66, but I can easily remember that they're 67. So that's what I talked about back in episode 167. Now in your particular situation, Jeremy, what we're talking about is something a little bit different. You have to overturn your information, I'm guessing, not just remember one years and remember how much, or one quarters, and remember how much it's changed by the following quarter. Instead, what you're wanting to do is actually just overturn all the information, and you want to have a system for that. An idea that I presented in episode 167 was using the same memory palace over and over and just changing the information in it,

but I don't really recommend that anymore, at least not anytime soon. Perhaps you can reuse one of those memory palaces, but only after you've cleared it out and you're not going to confuse the information in that palace with the information you've previously stored there, because you only really want to have one thing stored in one location. Instead, I would suggest coming up with some sort of really reliable system where you know exactly what you're doing, but perhaps, for example, you use the same memorable character for each data point, but you use a different palace. So let's say you have 50 data points. So you have 50 different substations throughout your house,

50 different spots. Maybe you have, you know, some things on ceilings and in sinks and on different pieces of furniture just to make sure that these different spots are all distinct from one another. But then you go from 0 to 50 with your different PAO characters. So you have characters for the numbers 0 to 50. And so you can easily go throughout your memory palace, see all the characters that are in there, and have them holding an object in that place that represents the piece of data that is actually stored. So maybe your first character is holding a piece of data that says 79 and your second character who's sitting in the bathroom sink is interacting with a piece of data that represents the number 3. That's all well and good for one quarter. You've just stored all 50 data points using, you know, sort of indexes from

zero to 50 or from one to 50, whatever it is. And they're all holding the information or representing the information mnemonically in some way throughout your palace. But what do you do when you need to do the same thing for the following quarter? Simply pick a new palace. You know, 50 places in that new palace with the same characters, you know, 1 to 50. I don't know why I keep saying 0 to 50. The same 50 characters, 1 to 50, but you give them different things to do. So now they're in different locations, and you can easily remember, now that they're in different places, that they're doing different things with different objects. So you can, once again, go through that whole palace, 1 to 50, and remember all of the data points that you have in the new quarter

rather than the old quarter. Feel free to tweak this method as you find suitable. You want to find something that works consistently and that makes sense for you. For everyone listening, leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.