Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0482: How to answer multiple choice questions when you have a memory palace

Episode Date: January 12, 2016

Chris asks what the best approach is to answering multiple-choice questions, especially when your answers are memorized in a memory palace. When you’re taking a test, should you cover the options and retrieve the information before choosing one of the answers? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, […]

Master of Memory 482. 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. Chris asked in an email, how would I approach a multiple choice test while using my memory palace? What's your mindset and what steps are you going through when answering the problem while simultaneously referring to your palace? For example, as soon as I read the question, do I cover up the answers and go to my memory palace, or do I read each answer and then go to my palace? So Chris, this is a good question and a good example of the dilemma of multiple choice questions, which I actually would say, first of all, doesn't involve

memory palaces at all. It's just whether you should pull your answer from the answer options or from something in your head. And this is something that I work with extensively with my SAT students that I teach. I work on this extensively because it's just really a very difficult and tempting thing to have those answers in front of you that you can choose from. And it's really bad, actually, because the fact is that the answer generally should be generated from your head or from, let's say, you're doing SAT questions based on a passage. They should be generated from the passage. The answers that you're given in front of you, those multiple choices, are there to distract you,

whether that's the intention or not. That's just what they do. They distract you from what really should be the origin of the answer, which is what you know is the answer. So this is a bit of a generalization, but you should, I would say, in almost any case, try to cover up or ignore those answer options and produce the answer from your head, not from what's in front of you. So now going and applying this to a memory palace, you want the info in your head or in your memory palace to translate to the paper, not the other way around. So yeah, cover up those answers, look at the question, go to the appropriate place in your palace, which you should be able to do pretty quickly if you have a good organized memory palace, find the fact and then choose that from the answers. If you look at the answers first,

sometimes that information will be confused with what you already have and you might end up actually absorbing information that's wrong from those answers and you definitely don't want that to happen. So the bottom line in general is yes, cover up the answers and generate the answer from your head, not from what they suggest to you. Thanks for the question, Chris. And for everyone who's listening and isn't sure what I'm referring to when I talk about memory palaces or wants to know more about how they can store things in their head to be used on multiple choice tests like this, go to masterofmemory.com slash start for a complete starter guide on how to use mnemonics, create memory palaces, and generally learn anything faster than ever. 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.