It'd be more surprising to me if people here haven't heard of it. But my view is skewed so I'll give a link and a brief explanation. http://remembereverything.org/memory...ethod-of-loci/ is the link.

"Memory palaces are a way to remember things based upon the fact that it's easier to remember locations and visuals rather than 'information'. It works by creating a place in your head from a place you've been to before, that you can then put mnemonics for the things you need to remember. It works best if it's silly and exaggerated." is my brief explanation.

So this method is good for grocery lists, and other mundane lists. I used to think it wouldn't work very well for second language vocabulary acquisition, especially because my second language of choice is Japanese which has kanji. I'm still set that remembering kanji with a memory palace is too inefficient to be worthwhile. Words themselves though, I've decided to give a try. I'll log my progress here, and anyone else can comment with their own memory palace related things.



Entry 1


Entry 2:


Entry 3:

I'm interested in this, please continue to post updates!

How much maintenance do you have to do? Do you have to visit your palace periodically to keep it maintained? Do you have to review each item?



"Often my memory palaces have things like gore or tied up lolis in order to be more memorable."
Nice.

Entry 2:


Glad you're interested :)!

Each time I add a word, I walk through from the beginning. Not really the beginning beginning, I ended up not walking through yesterday's words most of the time. But the other words added today needed the repetition. A single repetition of yesterday's words today probably would have kept it maintained enough to be OK. Tomorrow I'll try to only go through today's words once, and tell you how it goes.

It's taking me a lot of focus right now to go through each loci. Some words it takes me ~20 seconds to recall the mnemonic and meaning. Some words I breeze through.

In any case, 20 words in a day is more than I've ever done in a day, so I'm quite happy. It's not working knowledge, and I haven't seen example sentences to know the exact usage, but that's 20 words and short definitions that are in my head in a minimal amount of time. If I see a word in my palace irl, I'm certain I'll remember it's a word in my head I can go look up the definition to.

Please continue to post comments/questions or to start a discussion in here, or whatever. It's fun!



edit: Just a fun somewhat unrelated thing to share; I used memory palaces sometimes in school. I used it most for psychology. There was a lot of times we had tests and I didn't study the terms. In the few minutes we had before the test, I'd be able to go through and put them all in my memory palace. A few times I had no more room to put them and was rushing, so I did a makeshift memory palace in the room, but without the walking through, just attaching things to random spots trying to hurry. It worked ok. At the very least I was much better off than the other hopeless souls who didn't study. Actually I started looking forward to tests as a test of my use of memory palaces.






Entry 3:



Entry 4: 1/24/14

Just a quick upate, first review today was 2:30 for words up til hanamuke(30 words) and adding onto that it was at total of 5:05 for the entire list. 2:30 is faster than yesterday's 3:54 for the same words. So it did get significantly faster. and then the newest 10 words took as long as the previous 30. I'll entry more later.

Also I ran into osusume in the wild yesterday. Very motivating to run into words you're learning.

So I ended up only learning 7 words. Giving a total of 50 Still averaging over 10 words a day with this, so I"m not too disappointed.

Entry 5: 1/25/14

Didn't learn any words today. Still have a 10 word per day average though due to extra words other days. Taking longer and longer to review the entire palace. I *should* skip the first sections now because I go through in seconds, but it feels like I'd miss out on something if I did, so I have an urge not to. Memory palace review would probably work well on an anki like timer. I'd guess I fit at least 100 locis in my memory palace by time I use up all of the house. A high guess would be 150-200. Having a memory palace that long will be useful for when this is done with and I'm remembering other things. The way my memory palace got to 40 to begin with was playing simon and putting the colors in there. I got up to close to 40.

Entry 6: 1/26/14

Going to try to learn at least 10 words today preferably a little bit more so I can slack off other days lol. update: only got 5 done :(

Its cool to see a post about this. Back before books or writing were easy to get, people would use this technique to memorize entire books. I use this technique to study for tests, and for speechs.

where did you hear about this technique?