Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0475: How to memorize a period in history using a memory palace

Episode Date: January 1, 2016

Gretchen asks about memorizing a period in history, such as the Hundred Years War, rather than a single date. How do you integrate periods like this into a memory palace? 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 475. 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. Gretchen asked, what's your tactic for approaching the start and end dates for wars? For example, the Hundred Years' War, including crossing over a century. So Gretchen, the approach for this type of thing can vary based on the intended result. And what you might do is something that I've been talking about lately in the episodes,

which is actually distinguishing a part of your memory palace from the rest of the memory palace by environment. So for example, during a war, a significant long war, you might have the entire region on fire. So from the start date to the end date of the Hundred Years' War, you just have everything during that war on fire, and you can always remember that it's during that war, any trivial event, whether it's from the world of art or from, you know, a battle in history, whatever it is, you can remember that it happens during that war by the fact that its surroundings are all on fire. Then you can remember the start and end dates just by the fact of, you know, the fire starting at one point in the palace and then not being there anymore at a particular date at the end of your

palace, maybe using a fire extinguisher or something like that to mark the end of the war, or just by using the event itself of the battle that ended the war, and having that represent the line between the fire and the non-fire. But referring to those major events, like the battle at the end of the war, I would suggest that in many cases you might not have to do this. One idea is just to store the dates of the most important battles of the war in your cases, you might not have to do this. One idea is just to store the dates of the most important battles of the war in your palace. And in some cases, I think that like for the 100 years war and for many wars before World War I, wars aren't so important as the battles in those wars. So just as maybe learning all of history, you can kind of reduce it to a series of wars, as I've mentioned in a different episode. You could just learn the major wars,

and you've really learned a lot of the major landmarks in history. Maybe the best way to learn a war is just by learning the most important battles of that war, rather than focusing on things like the starting and ending dates of the war. So if you just look up the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War, you can store those in their appropriate places in your memory palace, and you'll always know which side of the battle you're on based on where you are in the palace. So let's say the English make a major victory at some point in the war, you'll know whether you're before that happened or after that happened based on where it lies geographically in your palace. So whether you use the environment

technique or whether you simply store the battles is up to you. It just depends on the intended result and how significant you think that this war is for all of world history, you know, whether a particular event happens during the war or before or after the war. Now, for anyone who's not familiar with memory palaces, or perhaps not familiar with using memory palaces to memorize historic facts and a historic timeline, go to masterofmemory.com slash start for a complete guide to the techniques used for creating a memory palace for memorizing unlimited information about history and any other topic that you want to learn. Meanwhile, what do you specifically 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. © transcript Emily Beynon