Our modern world is full of competition and it does not come out as a surprise to anyone. What is surprising is how one is able to make it to the top while others remain on their positions. Starting from our school days to adulthood we all tend to forget things from time to time. There was a time when one had to rely on paper while today the majority of people count on their mobile devices for storing things in memory.
What if you get to discover the technique which you can used to leverage the power of your brain and imagination? Yes, this is where memory palace comes in and this article will help you to understand the way it functions.
What is the Memory Palace technique?
Certainly, the name of this technique for memory improvement sounds like a palace full of memory, doesn’t it? Indeed, it does, however, the palace of your memory is fully customisable and the one who is building it is you. There are vast possibilities which are only limited to your own imagination. Let’s dig in to find out how it works.
The idea of Memory Palace
A Memory Palace is the palace not somewhere on the map of the world. Neither is it any fancy hocus pocus which will give you a fantastic tool for using clairvoyants in your daily life. Rather, this tool is already inside your head. A memory palace is a place where you store information based on the locations you know very well and using the associative method for recalling the information stored in your memory.
If you want to create your own memory palace, you do so by taking a moment to find out which house you know very well and are able to recall every nook and cranny of this place. Once it is done, you should divide the room into a storage place where you will keep your information stored and in times of need, you can simply visit the associated room and look for that information.
The Memory Palace at work
Now, you are certainly wondering where you should look for the exact piece of information stored in such a house. Here you have an example.
Obviously, it will be easy for you to use your own house for such a storage space. Let’s say, there is a shelf in your bedroom. It has four drawers in it. It is up to you how you are going to categorize the drawer. This can be done in any way you want it to be. For instance, the first drawer will have the highest priority, so it will be perfect for office or business tasks. The second one can be used for your home responsibilities. Apply any categorisation you need to the third and the fourth shelves according to your needs. How can this be applied to a real situation?
For instance, there are a couple of things on your to-do list now. You need to fix a pipe in the bathroom of your house and there are some papers in the red file waiting for you to sing them. You can definitely see how these tasks can be applied to the categorisation you have used for your house.
Still, you should be aware of the fact it is extremely important to visualise the process of putting the tasks on particular shelves. See clearly standing in front of your drawer and putting the tasks on their categorized shelves respectively.
Tips for using The Memory Palace technique
Even though the trick is to use a place you really know very well for this task, the exact visualisations used for storing your information do not have to be realistic. On the contrary, the more the surreal the visualization of your tasks are, the more likely it is you will find it easier to fetch the stored memories. For example, you can think of a big bathtub full of pipes located on the second drawer. The probability of this image triggering your memory about the exact task will be pretty high. For the first drawer, seeing big read files running around in the house with piles of papers, you will know what tasks you have at the moment.
As you can see, you should really keep it absurd. Now every time you need to fetch a piece of information you simply set a start point. Note that it does not matter how far this particular task is from your other task points. It is important to pick your starting point for memories which can be, for instance, the entrance door to your house. Start off by setting other memory points with the respect to the starting point.
Although at first it all might seem strange and grotesque, soon you will be amazed by the vast power it holds as you practice on. If you are still doubting in this technique, you should be aware of the fact Memory Palace is one of the oldest tools used by people for memorisation of vast amount of information coming to the time when not only did the humanity have no electronic gadgets, but the majority of people could not even write.