Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0458: Can a memory palace just be a chest of drawers?

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

Bobby asks a technical question about memory palaces: If he’s using a chest of drawers as a mental storage space, is this inferior to a proper memory palace? In my response, I challenge typical conceptions of 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 458 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. Today's question is from Bobby. Hi, my name's Bobby. I'm asking about the memory palaces. I've been learning, I know you're all about the memory palaces, but I've learned to use a chase of drawers. So I'd normally say, okay, I need to meet my sister at the shop, so I'd remember in the top left by my socks, a picture of my sister with a shopping cart, and like a big number three in it. So I'd be like, uh, out and about, uh, yeah, I need to meet my sister at three in it so i'd be like uh out and about uh yeah i need to meet my sister

at three in t-scores so basically what i'm asking is like do i need to stop doing these chest withdrawals or like come out of the closet basically and use memory palaces instead because they're better for more intricate and detailed and a variety of work or what's the advantages of that or will my system still work? Thanks for the question, Bobby. And this is really interesting because the fact is, I would say myself that the chest of drawers that you're using to store information is in fact a memory palace. You're pegging the items that you have to remember on different places in your sock drawers and in your different drawers. And the reason that that works is because you know those drawers pretty well. You've used them lots of times and you know how to get around them. So if you want

to find a piece of information or if you're going through your drawers in your mind just to see what's there, you encounter these pieces of information in particular areas and you can remember them because of your familiarity with this chest of drawers. And that's exactly how a memory palace works. A memory palace may be bigger in a physical sense, although in reality, it's in your mind. So abstractly, I would say that some people's memory palaces are smaller than some people's chests of drawers because they just use them room by room instead of using the details from those rooms. So thinking about it in those terms, if you were to use your entire house as a memory palace, but you were able to store lots of information in it because you're using things like a chest of drawers full of

information and a piece of furniture with information on top of and underneath it and things like that, you're using a memory palace to its fullest extent. So that's really the answer to this question is just that you are already using a memory palace, you just can expand the extent to which you use it by using more sophisticated mnemonics like number pegs and advanced things like that, and also just using more spaces, not just a chest of drawers. Now of course for people listening, you might consider using chests of drawers like Bobby does, but it does work best if you actually really know each drawer individually and the different parts of those drawers. So you might refer back to episode 442, where I talked about experimenting with your palace so that you can make sure that you know each individual part of it, you know, kind of personally so that you can store information in each individual part and not get the different, let's say, drawers mixed up. Now in your case, Bobby, I would suggest that you do sort of the opposite and go beyond your chest of drawers to try another room in your house and experiment

with it. Subdivide it mentally into five or ten different areas, or between five and ten different areas, let's say three pieces of furniture, the floor, and something on one of the walls or a window. And then see if you can store information in those places the same way that you've done with your chest of drawers. What this is going to do is it'll let you not just use a temporary palace like your chest of drawers over and over, but actually expand to more areas using this experience with experimenting with these new areas. And then you can expand to actually building palaces such that you're storing information in the long term in a variety of different areas. Thanks again for the question, Bobby.

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