Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0407: Do mnemonics work if I have aphantasia?

Episode Date: September 29, 2015

Steve finds it practically impossible to create memory palaces because he has aphantasia, or the inability to recall images mentally. Are there mnemonics that he can use 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 407. 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. Steve submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Steve says, have you heard of aphantasia? I've been listening to your podcast for a while, and I still can't make a memory palace, and I believe I may know why. I have aphantasia. Below

are some links about it, and I thought you might find it interesting. I'd also like to hear if you've had any suggestions on exercises that would help me to see mental pictures. So after looking at Steve's links, basically aphantasia is basically a characteristic where you have trouble seeing mental images or you basically don't have a mind's eye is how some people have explained it. Obviously, some people's mind's eyes are better than others. For example, just for anyone listening, think about somebody you know really well and you see them on a daily basis. Now, if you were actually looking at their face in real life, you could analyze things. For example, hmm, it looks like the middle of their nose to their chin is about the same

distance as the middle of their nose to their hairline. But right now, thinking while listening to this podcast and not seeing their face, are you able to determine that kind of thing? How sharply do you see their face? Can you trace the outline of their profile? Some people can do this, and there are ways to improve this. But if you have a lot of trouble, if people's faces are just a blur to you in your memory, then how do you create mental images? So Steve, my solution to this would be just the fact that what mnemonics are at their core is really not about images per se or about seeing things in your imagination, although most of us are visual learners and we do remember things and remember

things better when we have some sort of visual representation. The fact is that mnemonics are all about remembering things the way that you remember them. So if you personally remember things better from having touched them or from having done something, you know, active with them or from hearing something or smells are very memorable to you, then the things that you store in your memory palace should engage those senses. Let's try this exercise. Suppose you wake up in the morning in your bed and you have this big weight on your chest.

And so you look down to see what it is and there's a microwave sitting on your chest. So you wake up with a microwave on your chest. You push it off of you and you sit up and then you try to put your feet down on the floor into your slippers, but instead of feeling your slippers, you feel a bunch of slimy stuff and you look down and there's olive oil all over the floor, actually two inches deep in your bedroom. After making your way across the room very carefully trying not to slip in the oil, you open your closet door and out of your closet pours a mountain of sand.

So now there's sand pouring out of your closet covering the floor of your room that was covered with oil, now it's oil mixed with sand, and everything in your closet, all of your clothes and everything, are just full of sand. I could go on, but I think that that's enough just to demonstrate my point. If you think of each of these locations, your bed, you'll remember the microwave, the floor, you'll remember the oil, and then the closet, you'll remember the sand.

In this case, I made the pictures, the mnemonics, a bit more tactile rather than visual so that you think about them, you remember them based on how they feel rather than how they look. But again, the bottom line is to remember things the way that your mind likes to remember them. So I would suggest that you just think back through your own day, just what you've done today, no matter what point it is in your day, even if you've just gotten up in the morning, think about what you've done and what it is that you remember about what you did. Those are the types of things that you want to incorporate into your mnemonics so that you can remember other things more easily as well. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn?

The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.