Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0473: More about reusing memory palaces

Episode Date: December 30, 2015

Brian asks about reusing memory palaces. I talk about the various types of memory palaces and about the mest ways to reuse 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 by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 473. 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. Brian submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Brian says, you spoke in episode 104 about having an erasable memory palace where you store short-term memories. Other than this erasable palace, do you find that once you make a palace, like your credit

card numbers and your childhood house, that you can no longer use that palace for a memory palace? For example, I used my own parents' house to remember information during paramedic school. Assuming I can still remember it, have I essentially used up this location for future palaces, or can I try using it again, but this time in the context of something different that I want to remember? For example, if I wanted to remember some new information about, say, a recipe, could I store it in my parents' house as well, and then when I need to recall that recipe, my mind will take me through the recipe version of my parents' house, and not the paramedic version.

Hope this question makes sense. Thanks for all you do. So thanks for the question, Brian. And so here we're readdressing the age-old question of how to reuse memory palaces. In my mind, you can use a palace both as a temporary palace and as a permanent palace. If you've used it as a permanent palace, you can then use it as a temporary palace. Because the fact is, it's kind of like just using your childhood home as a palace at all. You have the real version, the way that your palace really was, and then you have your imaginary version, the type that you're

using as a memory palace. That's very similar to what you're doing here. You're using your permanent palace, the one that you're really using it for if you've memorized paramedic information in it. But then you also have the temporary version that you're kind of squeezing in around it, which is the version you're using for the recipe. But I would encourage you to distinguish them in a way other than just reality versus fiction, or let's say permanent versus temporary, by actually adding a dimension to the palace that I've been spending more and more efforts on in my own palaces that I create.

And that is by putting an environment in the palace. So let's say you have your childhood home as it really was in your memory. And then you have this palace that you've created for paramedic school. But you also want to use the palace as a recipe palace for some recipe that you want to learn short term. Instead of just using the version of the palace that you've always used,

imagine that your entire household home is on fire, and imagine what it would look like if that home was on fire in each individual room. So you're sharpening it and distinguishing it as a temporary palace that's on fire. You can always go back to the version of the house that's not on fire if you want to remember your paramedic school information, but you can also just go to the version that's on fire for your temporary palace that you're using right now and memorizing this recipe or whatever it is that you're memorizing

throughout the entire palace. You can then also create another temporary palace using the entire house underwater, let's say, with everything floating around, and imagining what it would be like to go through that palace and, you know, swimming through your parents' home with everything filled with water. So those are some suggestions for turning a permanent palace into a temporary palace and being able to use both at the same time. Now, one caution, I would not, as I have in the past and as some other neminists do,

recommend reusing locations a whole lot by simply changing the environments like this. I would actually encourage you just to use those different changes as temporary palaces and really having for each individual location a single and unchangeable bit of information stored in there. So don't try reusing palaces too much as permanent palaces, although feel free to use them and reuse them as much as you want as temporary palaces using different environments like this. Now for everyone listening, if you're not sure what I'm talking about when I refer to environments and memory palaces and temporary versus permanent memory

palaces, go to masterofmemory.com slash start for a complete starter guide on how to use mnemonics and how to make sense of everything that I say in this podcast about accelerated learning and mnemonics. What do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your specific learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.