A memory palace is a way to remember information. Do you want to learn to speak a foreign language fluently as quickly as possible? Most likely - yes, but for this you need to do a lot of work and first of all you will need to remember a lot - several thousand - new words and phrases. There are ancient proven ways to remember large amounts of information.

You can read about one of these methods - mnemonics - in the previous article -.

And in this article we will talk about one of the specific types of mnemonics, which is called the Memory Palace or the location method. Hundreds of words and phrases can be memorized quickly using this method.

According to legend, this name appeared even before our era, when one day the Greek poet Simonides of Keos was invited to a banquet in the palace, where he was supposed to give a speech. Someone called him from the palace, and at that time the roof of the building collapsed and everyone who remained there died.

Because the poet used a special technique to remember the names of those invited and the places where they sat, he could identify the bodies of the dead and help grief-stricken relatives bury the bodies correctly. This is where the name of the memory development method comes from - Memory Palace.

What is the Memory Palace?

These are figurative structures in your imagination, which are based on placement in real space. If you can see your bedroom in your mind, then you can build a Memory Palace.

There are objects in the Memory Palace - these are rooms (kitchen, living room, bedroom, corridor, etc.), as well as objects that are permanently located in these rooms and in certain places. We will lay out a route through the premises in such a way as to sequentially bypass all these objects. We will then place words and phrases on these objects and pick them up as we imagine our journey through the Palace.

You don't have to be a visual learner to use this method. The main thing is to simply imagine where your kitchen is in relation to the bedroom, and what objects come along the way.

4 simple steps to create a Memory Palace.

1. Choose a well-known room: an apartment, a school classroom, grandma’s house, a church, an auditorium. office - anything, as long as you can draw a plan for this room.

Example of a two-room apartment plan:

2. Draw a route according to your plan. The route must have a beginning - an entry point, which will also be an exit point, it must be consistent, must not intersect itself and must not lead you to a dead end. If you select objects randomly rather than sequentially, such a route itself requires memorization.

Draw (first on a piece of paper, and then in your imagination) this route of movement. Let's say you always move clockwise, and you view objects that are on the same vertical line from top to bottom. Try not to overload your first path through the palace with details.

Travel route:

3. Number the objects that you encounter along the route.

4. Run through these objects in your imagination in forward and reverse order, mentally stop at each of them.

If you need to add more words, you can remember more rooms, you can look at objects in more detail - the near edge, the far edge, and you can also use routes that you often walk or drive through, for example, this is the way home from work. Objects along the route can be: a store, a stadium, a theater, a bench, a tree, a sandbox, a lamppost - it is recommended to select no more than 50 objects.

How to use Memory Palace?

Now we must learn what to do with the words and phrases in our palace. Here the work is divided into three parts:

1) Let's carefully study the composition of the memorized word or phrase - analyze the spelling, sound and meaning.
2) We encode the sound and meaning of a new word, using visual images and actions on them so that they become memorized.
3) We decode images and actions so that the word being studied moves into long-term memory.

Principles of information encoding: it is better to imagine objects as grotesque, large, colorful, detailed, three-dimensional, and actions on them as intense. Exaggeration will not hurt here.

The more crazy the association, the better and faster it is remembered. You can go even further and make the Memory Palace even more effective by using a certain person who travels with you through your Palace and helps you perform mental actions on the words you remember.

Examples of word coding.

Several irregular verbs are discussed here - a difficult topic, they are irregular, they are not built according to the rules, and besides, here you need to remember three forms of each verb at once: the infinitive, the simple past form and the past participle. Well, for example, here’s a funny picture:

The more practice, the better and faster you will get. It is imperative that you come up with associations yourself, based on the connections already existing in your mind.

Practical tips for building a Memory Palace for learning foreign words

- Relax. Memory techniques work better when you are mentally and physically stress-free.
— Arrange your list of words in alphabetical order. Write down the words, their meanings and the invented association on paper, or better yet, in an Excel spreadsheet.
— Don’t worry if you can’t immediately create an associative image for a word or sound or the meaning of a word on your list. You can come back to this later.
- Use the words you remember in conversations, come up with and write down ten sentences for each of them.

The Power of Memory Palace for Language Learners

The Memory Palace is a powerful tool for learning a foreign language. You can use it along with other methods to learn and speak a foreign language faster and more efficiently.

Building a Memory Palace only takes a few hours, and with some skill, this learning method will help you quickly increase your vocabulary.

Repeat the words and phrases stored in your memory palace often. You may forget them, but don't worry: this happens in our native language too.

If we relax, the words and images that were created in the Memory Palace will return to us when we need them. So go ahead, build your memory palace and start using it to increase your vocabulary and phrases. Happy memorizing!

More information, training videos and examples can be obtained from Anthony Mathivier on his website:

Don't lose it. Subscribe and receive a link to the article in your email.

The Cicero method, the Roman room or the method of loci are names of the same technique, based on the construction of a memory palace. After its creation, a person can remember large amounts of information (numbers, words, etc.) in a certain sequence. In this article you will learn how to build a memory palace, how to use it, and what mistakes to avoid.

Why do you need a memory palace and how to use it?

A memory palace is a kind of space with certain static objects that a person can recreate in his imagination.

It sounds difficult, but in reality it is much easier than it seems. Try closing your eyes and imagining your kitchen or your workspace. Happened? Consider that you have already done the bulk of the work on designing a simple memory palace.

How to prepare your memory palace for memorization

Step one:

Choose a space that you will turn into your memory palace. It’s better to take one of the rooms in your apartment, because you often go there, which means it won’t be difficult to imagine this place in your imagination.

Step two:

Highlight items that do not change their place. This could be a refrigerator, a TV, a picture on the wall, a sink, a wall clock, an aquarium or an air conditioner. Try to mark as many of these objects as possible.

Step three:

Visualize your chosen space. In your imagination, sequentially move from one object selected in the previous step to another. You need to make sure you know their locations and can mentally move between them.

Step four:

Work out the outlines of each of the highlighted objects. To you no need remember the smallest details (every magnet on the refrigerator, the exact image of a painting on the wall, etc.). You should not see a spot or something completely different from your object, but excessive fanaticism will only do harm.

Step five:

You need to determine the sequence in which you will mentally move between the selected objects. In other words, create a route. Don't make it difficult: move left to right or right to left. The simpler, the more convenient.

That's it, your memory palace is ready for use.

How to use the memory palace?

First I'll introduce a new word: locus. Locus is those objects that you have highlighted in your memory palace; this is one “station” of your route.

Important: you can select details of one object for memorization, for example, take not the entire refrigerator, but a separate door, freezer, etc. Then the loci will be the door and the freezer, and not the refrigerator as a whole.

The mechanism of using a memory palace is most easily demonstrated with an example. Let's say we have a random set of words and some kind of route.

Words: ice cream, soccer ball, smartphone, perch, palette, acorn, horse, milk, love, December.

Now we go along the route and leave one or two words at each locus. Let's leave one on the first two, and then we'll leave two on each.

Let's say the first locus is a bookshelf. We imagine melting ice cream lying on it between the books.

Chair. Allow your imagination to put a huge perch on it, with a meter-long smartphone pressing on top of it.

Note:
Memorized objects and loci should be approximately the same size. Discrepancy from reality is allowed. Also, since we read from left to right from top to bottom, the word that comes first should be higher. That is why the smartphone is located above the perch.

Battery. Imagine that a large acorn is hammered into it, from which a palette sticks out from above.

Chandelier. A carton of milk caught on the edge of the chandelier, and the hanging horse grabbed it with its teeth.

Note: For many nouns, the imaginary image is obvious: you need to remember a cat - imagine a cat, a pen - a pen. But there are also abstract concepts, the image of which is not always obvious (feelings, emotions, names of cities and countries, names, etc.). Then you need to use associative thinking. I associate love with the heart, and December with a gift, because my birthday is in December and New Year in addition. And yes, associations can be purely individual, illogical and strange. There is only one criterion: you must understand them.

We present a hanger on which a heart has been placed, with a gift attached to the bottom.

All. We remember these words.

Now the most interesting part: we mentally walk along the route and we see on the loci are the words that were memorized. Take the same words or some others and try to place them in your memory palace. It works!

The memory palace is universal. I took the example with words because it is the simplest and any beginner can repeat it. But you can also leave them on your loci, or even place entire textbooks in your memory palaces.

Mistakes that are often made when creating a memory palace:

1. Using the same loci. That is, if you have two identical objects on your route (two absolutely identical bedside tables, for example), you will confuse them. This will lead to errors. You can use loci of the same type, such as chandeliers of different types or aquariums of different shapes, but you cannot use the same ones.
2. Errors associated with moving through the memory palace. It is best to choose one general rule for all routes and stick to it. Then you will know exactly what is going on.
3. Forgetting loci. You must know your memory palace well. It is unacceptable to sometimes skip some of the loci. Practice remembering regularly, or at least just take a walk through your memory palace.

You can read about how to expand your memory palace and remember more and faster.

How to do this correctly?

General principle of creating memory palaces

First step - select the place where it will be “built”. You can come up with a space for creating memory palaces (for example, draw up a plan for a small town or imagine the house/apartment/room of your dreams) or imagine a territory that is familiar to you (your apartment, a summer cottage or something similar).

The second method is more reliable, since in this case at this stage you do not need to remember anything - just imagine something that has been familiar for a long time. For those who are just learning to create memory palaces, experts advise starting with this option.

Next, for each object that you need to remember, select area in your “palace”/“apartment”/“city” of memory and think through the association with him. These areas are usually called strong points. Associations are always very individual, and sometimes you may surprise yourself, why is this so? In this case, ignore it - choose what is easiest for you to remember. For example, you are a student who wants to learn 20 geography tickets by tomorrow. In this case, divide the space allocated for the “memory palace” (let’s say a living room) into 20 conditional zones - one per ticket. And then build associative chains for each zone.

Let's say the Rivers of Europe ticket is a buffet. There are blue vases (symbolizing rivers) in the sideboard. We bought the largest vase when we were sailing along the Volga on a steamship (the Volga is the longest river in Europe). We sailed for 35 days, and spent only 30 nights on the ship (3530 km is the length of the Volga). (Next, you come up with a story about the objects on the ticket and unwind the chain).

But the TV will be the Animals of Australia ticket. There is a TV in the room, showing a program about Australian animals. There are a lot of very interesting endemics here. First they showed the platypus, and then the armadillo. And here is the bookshelf. There is an atlas on the bookshelf, and in the atlas there is a large political map. The atlas is quite thick, containing about 240 pages (approximate number of countries).

Some nuances of the construction of memory palaces

If you need remember information about people, then they also need to be assigned certain zones in your “memory palace” - tied to strongholds. The simplest associations will be like “Igor loves to eat deliciously - that’s why he’s a refrigerator”, “Tanya constantly complains that she doesn’t sleep enough - she’s a coffee maker” and “Vasya can’t get out of online games - he’s a computer.” The main thing here is that you yourself can quickly remember who you associate with what.

At remembering the sequence it is important to quickly come up with a story related to the characters or objects already placed in the zones of the memory palace. For example, first I decided to have breakfast and came to the refrigerator (one object). I took the cheese, and then thought that a sandwich with cheese was even better and went to the bread bin (second object). But the sandwich needs to be washed down with something, and what could be better in the morning than a cup of freshly brewed coffee, and so I went to the coffee maker (third object). For more information about how to remember the sequence, read the corresponding article.

Practical advice for memorizing sequences in the “memory palace”: the more unusual the association and the more emotions it evokes in you, the better(it doesn’t matter whether they are good or bad, in principle the bad ones are considered even more reliable). It is easier to remember something extraordinary than something ordinary. Absurdities and absurdities are used well.

Another piece of advice applies to all “memory palaces,” regardless of the purpose of their “construction.” “The first pancake is lumpy” - this saying also applies to this mnemonic technique, so before memorizing really important and voluminous data, practice on something less important and simple. If you want to remember something for a long time (and not in the “pass and forget” mode), you will have to periodically “walk” around the “palace”.

If you are not sure that you will be able to master this mnemonic technique or that the results may not be as good, check out Joshua Foer's talk “Feats of memory anyone can do.”

Before we begin to describe the palace of memory, let us remember the words of Sherlock Holmes that our memory is like an attic, and in order to get out of it everything you need on time, it is extremely important to forget everything unnecessary. However, firstly, many simply do not know how to consciously forget, and secondly, as Dr. Watson correctly noted in the film, how boring it would be to live if everyone only remembered what they needed for work.

However, there are a number of compromise options that allow you to memorize and train your memory, and mnemonics techniques stand out especially among them. Each of them has its own “purpose”. In particular, in the article “Mnemonics for remembering numbers” we tell you how to retain large numbers in memory. In turn, the technique discussed in this article, with a certain experience (which is achieved by practice and only practice), helps quickly and easily remember the required amount of factual information. This technique is called differently - palace of memory;, memory lock, memory patchwork, Simonides method, locus method. There are some other names, in particular, with the release of the popular British series, the variation “paintings of the mind” has spread. Like many other similar techniques, this one was known to the ancient Greeks.

Using Memory Palaces

These days it is primarily associated with gamblers who are able to remember the location and/or sequence of cards. The ability to build such “castles in the air” will also be useful in everyday life, and for different purposes. For example, you can remember some information about your subordinates, colleagues or clients and show them how well you remember them - a person is always pleased with such attention, which means it will help to establish contact. Details of your friends' lives (including the name of your favorite cat and the date of birth of their daughter) will not appear. And this is not to mention sessions, tests and other situations when in a limited time you need to remember a large number of words, concepts, phenomena, and not necessarily in any particular order.

How memory palaces work

How is this achieved? Brief description of the memory palace technique, will look like this: the palace itself is something built in your imagination room(real or fictional), in which various strong points– for example, a bed, a desk, a secretary, a TV. The space does not have to be residential, but it should be a calm place in which you feel comfortable. The most important condition is to have a good idea of ​​both the room itself and all the strongholds. Linked to strongholds by association information, which must be remembered. As a rule, the brighter the associations, the easier it is to reproduce the information later. When you need to do this, you simply “go” in your imagination to the right place in your memory palace and fish out everything you need from it.

In order for your memory to reliably retain all the information placed in the palaces of the mind, when building a memory palace, you need to take into account several points, which we will discuss in the next article. But before we move directly to construction mnemonics, let’s pay attention to a practical point. If you want to break or at least get close to world records or surprise your friends with your superpowers, be prepared for the fact that you will need hard training - nothing comes easy. For everyday purposes, a few practical lessons will suffice, but here too need to practice before remembering the really important things.

If you are not sure that you will be able to master this mnemonic technique or that the results may not be as good, check out Joshua Faure's talk “Memory Tricks Everyone Can Do” (

Do you ever feel like you've forgotten something very important? Perhaps the name of a new colleague or the location of a pet store, or, say, some work-related details. It's OK! Spatial mnemonics, often called the “memory palace,” is a time-tested technique for remembering a truly amazing amount of information.

If you had to give your memory a physical form, what would it be? Is your memory like a filing cabinet, where everything you've ever seen or heard is carefully organized and cross-numbered for easy access? Or is it more like a slightly leaky bucket, meaning you can hold information in your memory for a short time, but if you don't refresh it, it will eventually disappear. Don't be upset if the second option is closer to reality than the first. This applies to most of us. And in fact, it is very interesting to understand exactly how memories disappear, are lost or are transformed over time.

As you may have seen in the TV series Sherlock, there is a special way of using our memory that can significantly increase the efficiency of remembering. The “memory palace” (or “mind palace”), or method of loci, is a mnemonic device that transforms any physical location into an easy-to-navigate storage of information. Of course, this method was not invented by Benedict Cumberburtch, or even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. In fact, in the original, the character of Sherlock Holmes did not have a particularly good memory. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes's first story, he even forgot that the Earth revolved around the Sun. No, the “memory palace” has its roots in Ancient Greece.

According to a rather grim story told by the legendary Roman statesman Cicero, this method was developed by the Greek poet Simonides after a state dinner that went about as poorly as it could possibly be. First of all, the rich host made an insulting comment about Simonides' poem, and later, as if things weren't bad enough, the roof collapsed and crushed all the guests except Simonides himself, so much so that they were unrecognizable. The poet was lucky - someone mysteriously called him out of the room shortly before the disaster. Simonides was able to help identify the bodies. By remembering where each of the guests sat, he managed to ensure that the grieving families received the remains of their loved ones. And then he realized that he could use this spatial method to remember less painful information.

In the film Sherlock, the memory palace method takes the form of an imaginary state that has no spatial meaning. Holmes only uses it to store memories. If you start building your memory palace, you will have to do things differently. In fact, it is very important that the place you choose is not just real - it must be very familiar to you. Your own home or office, or even the route you take to get to work every day is a great choice. Have you already made yours? Here's how it works.

Let's say you have a huge list of errands that need to be completed today and you're afraid you'll forget something. You need to go shopping, pick up dry cleaning, change the oil in your car, find a gift for a friend's birthday, and take your cat to the vet. Of course, you could write everything down, but why waste paper?

Instead, simply visualize the layout of your home in detail. Imagine entering the entrance and walking up the stairs to the front door. When you take out your keys, you notice a couple of grocery bags rolling around on the children's swing in the yard (the dumber your idea, the more likely you are to remember everything). You enter your apartment and stand in the hallway when you suddenly come across a stack of freshly ironed suits. Moving past them, you enter the living room, where your car rests in a kiddie pool full of black grease. And as you pass by the bathroom, you suddenly hear the melody of “Happy Birthday to you.” When you look inside, you see that someone has replaced the shower curtain with wrapping paper. Finally, you get to the kitchen, and there is a cat sitting at the table with a thermometer in its mouth. “I actually feel great now,” he tells you gratefully.

The point is, you know the layout of your home well, and you don't have to think too hard to imagine it. This way, you can easily imagine the changes that you yourself mentally outline. It will not be just a list, but a list enlivened by exotic details and anchored in solid reality.

This combination makes it easy to add additional elements and more detailed information as needed. For example, you might go into the bathroom of your memory palace to find out details about a birthday party. Perhaps you can add a dinosaur fighting Luke Skywalker on toilet paper to remind yourself of your daughter's two biggest loves, or leave a pile of socks in the shower... in short, don't hold back your imagination. Although this path may seem too winding at first, memory palaces work, it has been tested. We've often wondered how Cumberburtch remembers his lyrics.