Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0442: How much space does my memory palace need?

Episode Date: November 17, 2015

Bonny is memorizing laws and is trying to organize a memory palace for this information. How much space is needed in a memory palace for a certain amount of information? 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 442. 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. Bonnie submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Bonnie says, I have to learn 17 laws in great detail and five acronyms for a federal national exam.

I believe in your system, but because of the complexity in each law and acronyms, I can't figure out how to set up my building or buildings. For example, under each law, there may be five to 10 items to know well. So if I put a law in one room, do I place all the ones that pertain to that law in the same room, or does each one get a different room? So Bonnie, what this question is getting at is how much information can you really store in one place? Let's say you choose one room for a particular law and there are five to ten items within that law, you have to know really well five to ten locations

in the room that you're in. That way you know that those items relate to that law, you have to know really well five to ten locations in the room that you're in. That way you know that those items relate to that law because they're in that room that belongs to that law. And you can also think around that room in order sequentially and list off those items, granted of course that they're in unique places that you can distinctly remember and your imagery is sharp in those locations. And that's what this all comes down to because, believe it or not, I think that you could store a whole lot of your information. I mean, you have 17 laws. You might even be able to store all of those laws, including all of their details, in one room, depending on what level of detail you need. So you said under each law,

there may be five to 10 items. Well, if you have 17 general areas, not necessarily rooms, but even general areas within rooms, as long as they're separate, you can store a lot of information within those general areas. For example, I'm staying at my brother's house right now for the holidays. And in the dining room in this house, we have several general areas. Even though it's a small dining room, I can look around it and see different areas. And I looked around it and did this as I made the notes for this episode. So in the first area, there was an octagonal table with four chairs around it. In the second area, going to the south, there's a mini fridge with some things on

top of it. Above the mini fridge, there's a cup hanger with six cups hanging from it. And then going along the wall, there's a shelf on the wall with beer bottles on top, a book on the second shelf, and some fancily branded sort of beer glasses on the bottom shelf. And then in the southwest corner, there's a table with drinks and a candle on top of it, a sort of fancy rack underneath it, and an empty frame on the wall behind it, which is a little funny. And then in the northwest corner of the room, there's another bigger shelf with actually several glass shelves. On top, there's a whiskey collection. Underneath that, there are several, I guess, three shelves of glasses. And then under that, there's a rack with a collection of wine bottles, used wine bottles.

And there are seven bottles on the rack. And they're basically all the same except for the two on the ends, which are smaller than the five in the middle. And then next on the north wall, there's a window with two curtains, one of which is shorter than the other because of an air unit. So those are the general areas in this dining room. And as you can see from me sort of describing it in a bit of detail, there are a lot of locations and sublocations that you can use just in this one small room.

Now, I know that some neminists would go so far as even to use the details of the chairs as separate places, including, let's say, the two spikes on top of each one, all separate, and then each of the arms of each of the chairs, maybe even all 16 feet of the chairs separately, even though they're all basically identical. For myself personally, I did a little experiment with the wine rack underneath the glass shelves,

quickly trying to remember the number 1258-0519-100207, which I sort of generated at random. And the idea here is that I would use the seven locations, the seven different racks for the wine bottles, as separate locations with a different object peg in each one. So for the first number, I had one, two, so I imagined a tuna can that was somewhat smashed, representing the first of those wine spots, which is smaller than the rest, so the tuna can is being smashed.

Second, for 58, I had some lava flowing from the back to the front. And then for the third one, 05, I had a whistle hanging off the front of the third of the wine rack spots. And then a tuba hanging off of the back, kind of inside the rack for the next spot, for the number 19. And what I was doing there is, I don't know, the whistle was hanging, and so I made the tuba hang as well, and so I can remember those two next to each other. And then for 1-0, I had two dice balanced on both the front and the back of the next spot on the rack, and then I had a chunk of frozen snow, which was also kind of balanced on the front and back of the rack, for the number 0-2, And then for the last one, 0-7, once again, since it's on the end, kind of like the first one, it's smaller than the rest. So I had a sock for 0-7 kind of rolled up and smashed in that last tight spot.

What I was doing with this experiment, just as an example, was to see if I could think of these different rack spots, even though they're all essentially identical, at least the middle five. I wanted to see if I could think of them as separate locations and remember the objects in each one. Now, I was able to remember accurately immediately afterwards when I thought through the seven locations in order, but I couldn't think of those locations independently. So I couldn't say, let's say, for example, what's the fourth one? I was only able to remember what was in each of those spots when I thought of them in sequence from beginning to end. So it's more like they're not associated with their locations so much as what came before and after them, which is just kind of informative. It tells you about how your palace is working.

Now afterwards, I tried storing another random number in the six hanging cups above the refrigerator on the opposite end of the room, and I found that I could do that quite easily. And then I went back to the wine racks and discovered that it was a bit more difficult to remember the number that I'd stored there, and that I could still recall the numbers, but only in order, and only kind of slowly. So I felt that they weren't really in long-term storage. So for me personally, although some nemonists use identical locations like that, just because, I don't know, a chair has four feet, they're all identical, but they think of them separately, I personally prefer unique locations. Still, if you think about this dining room, there are about 20 very unique locations just in that room, and once I use all of those for separate topics, maybe the table for one law, and then the chairs around it for another

law, the refrigerator for another law, the cup hanger for another, the black shelf for another, the glass shelves for another, the wine racks for another, and so on, I would associate the laws strongly with those locations, just the laws in general, and then with a little work, I'd be able to subdivide those into several parts and remember those kind of aspects within those laws pretty well with some practice. Now to read a little bit more about memory palaces and to get kind of a guided exercise in creating an organized memory palace out of your home, I would recommend that you go to masterofmemory.com slash start, which has a guided exercise in lesson four of the guide. Meanwhile, 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.