Hello everyone and welcome back to another productivity technique. If you missed my last article about the Pomodoro Technique make sure to check it out (Click here).
If you've ever watched Sherlock Holmes (The TV series), you may have heard about Sherlock's memory palace, a place where he stores all of the things he learned, but that's fiction, right? Wrong, the memory palace technique is a real method that was widely used by the Greeks and later the Romans more than 2000 years ago.
It's actually called The Method Of Loci and it's one of the most powerful memory techniques known to man, for instance, Dominic O'Brien, Eight-time world memory champion, was able to memorize a pack of 52 playing cards in less than three minutes which is about 2808 cards using this very method.
The method of Loci (loci being Latin for "places") also called mind palace technique or memory palace is a method of memory enhancement which uses our remarkably great ability at remembering places we know to store information in a familiar environment. This environment could be your house, your bathroom or even your friend's home.
Start by choosing a place you really know well, For example, look at your apartment and chose different items or pieces of furniture. Let's say you have 7 words to memorize: ball, dirt, mud, robot, bath, girlfriend and cat. Try to relate them together. For example, you may imagine a cat playing with a little ball next to your desk with mud all around it because it was out playing in the rain when all of a sudden a little cleaning robot comes out of the closet to clean the mud. Then your girlfriend takes the cat for a bath.
I guarantee that you will remember those words whenever you go back to this scenario. It doesn't matter how ridiculous it may sound. It's your own story, you don't have to share it.
You can use the method of Loci to memorize tons of information but it requires a little training. But to be honest it's kind of fun and entertaining but also a little time-consuming, thus, never use this on a major test if you are just 'starting out'.
Many scientific studies proved the effectiveness of the Memory Palace Technique I will link some of them below so make sure to check them out.
So next time you're struggling to memorize something make sure to use this technique to improve your memorization.
References & Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25039085
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23098905
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16484109
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