The Memory Palace

Years ago, I was teaching an English class about memory. I shared with them a technique for remembering a list of items when you are unable to write down your list. 

My short term memory has been affected by all of the anesthesia from my various brain surgeries so I use this technique quite a lot. Luckily my long term memories and language abilities have not been affected, even if my speech has. Now I will share the technique with you. I hope that it is helpful to someone.

Firstly, you need to think of a place that you are very familiar with. I find it helpful to think about my house. However, if you want to choose another place, feel free to do so. 

So, imagine your house. Each individual room in your house. You need to place each item on the list of things that you want to remember, somewhere in your house.

It is important to make sure that it is unusual because then it will be easier to remember. 

For example, imagine that you want to remember your grocery list but you have nothing to write on. You need to remember to buy bread, milk and eggs for example. 

So, you place your bread on your couch in your living room. That is easy to remember because it is not the normal place where your bread goes. 

Next, you place your milk on the roof of your house. Again, that is not the normal spot. 

Finally, you place your eggs on top of your bed. Now all you have to do is to think of each location that you chose, and the item that you put there. Now you just remembered bread, milk and eggs all without writing anything down. 

One other tip, unless your memory is excellent, I would not suggest that you try to remember a list of things that is longer than rooms in your house. For example, if you can only think of ten locations in your house then limit the list of things that you want to remember to ten. 

Til next time, Tyler