How would you do if someone asked you to list the first 20 U.S. presidents in chronological order? What about the 10 largest capitals in the world?

If you’re anything like the average person, you don’t have that stuff memorized.

But what if you needed to memorize something like that for an exam, or even just for a high-prize trivia night? How would you even approach doing so?

The answer is the Memory Palace! It’s a proven, widely used technique that people from Sherlock Holmes to U.S. Memory Championship winners have used to memorize complex sequences of information.

This video covers all the Memory Palace tips you need.

What is a Memory Palace?

Imagine you’re walking through a familiar place – let’s say your childhood home. You start at the front door and walk into the first room. You hang your coat, kick off your shoes, and sit down at the first available seat.

Now imagine a portrait of George Washington hanging on the outside of the front door. As you walk in with your coat, John Adams is standing in the corner to help you hang it up.

As you take your shoes off, you notice a tobacco pipe has fallen into your shoe, and you look up to find Thomas Jefferson looking down at his dropped pipe. As you finally go to take a seat, James Madison pops out of a side closet and steals the seat before you can.

This is how the memory palace works.

A memory palace is a strategy that taps into familiar spatial environments to enhance recall. It’s like building your own Lego creation from scratch, but instead of playing on the floor, you’re playing in multiple rooms and building a large, complex Lego set.

If you need to memorize a list of something, you simply choose a familiar physical location – such as your house or your office space – and associate an item from the list you’re trying to memorize with an item or scene in the physical space. Then mentally walk through that space and recall each item as you visit it.

Examples of Spaces Within A Palace

The beautiful thing about a memory palace is that there are no right or wrong ways to build it. However you choose to build your palace is up to you! It’s a fun opportunity to get as creative, ridiculous, or as silly as you’d like.

Let’s say you’re trying to memorize the first 10 digits of pi: 3.141592653.

You could break this down into four segments: 3.14—159—26—53.

Now you just need to assign a location and 4 specific points within your memory palace location. Let’s set our location as a kitchen.

Step 1

You walk into a kitchen, and on the counter is a steaming hot apple pie with the number 3.14 engraved on top.

A pie decorated with the number '314' sits on a counter next to a pie knife. Illustration

Step 2

You look down and notice a hopscotch grid drawn on the kitchen floor, with the numbers 1—5—9 highlighted. You hopscotch your way down it.

Hopscotch is drawn on a dark background with the numbers 1, 5, and 9 listed. Illustration.

Step 3

As you reach the other end of the kitchen, you look up and see a mirror on the wall. You look at yourself and acknowledge your age: 26.

A person takes a selfie in a mirror wearing a sash that says, '26th Birthday'. Illustration.

Step 4

You turn back to the kitchen counter and open the top drawer. A miniature version of your dad pops out holding the number 53. He was born in 1953.

A miniature person pops out of a drawer holding a sign that has the number '53' on it. Illustration.

Now every time you want to recall the first ten digits of pi, you mentally walk through this adventure. The more times you walk through it, the more the numbers become ingrained in your memory.

The Power of Spatial Memory

Spatial memory is a critical piece of our daily lives. It allows us to recall tiny situational details, from the shape of a road or trail to the distance between two points. It’s our brain’s GPS system, and it has indefinite storage space.

Research has found that 90% of “super memorizers,” or memory athletes, use the memory palace technique. Brain scans show that the regions of the brain involved in spatial awareness activate during a memory athlete’s preparation and performance.

Think back to your elementary school. For some of us, that was a few decades ago. Can you recall the hallways you walked down to get to class? What about the way the desks were set up in the classroom and where the chalkboard was? Chances are, you can. You can probably recall spatial details of just about everywhere you’ve been – from the dentist’s office to the grocery store to your friend’s house.

A memory palace is a strategy that taps into familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information.

Our brain’s ability to permanently store seemingly monotonous information is at the core of why the memory palace works – you use your brain to tap into pre-existing roads and connections to build new connections that have a solid foundation to work from.

You Don’t Have To Be A Savant To Use The Memory Palace

There’s a unique enjoyment and power in discovering something that others haven’t found yet. While this memorization technique has been around since 500 BC, most of us were never taught anything about it in school, much like we were never really taught how to learn or study properly in general. A very small segment of the population has taken this technique and run with it – most commonly to memory competitions.

A 2011 book titled Moonwalking With Einstein touches on this very concept. Its author, Joshua Foer, was fascinated by the seemingly impossible feats that the world’s best memorizers were accomplishing.

Some of those feats included:

To Foer, these seemed like things that only the smartest people could accomplish.

What started as a journalistic project to interview the world champions who compete in the annual U.S. Memory Champion competition turned into Foer’s personal mission to take part in the competition.

Foer learned that the memory palace was the single most important tool the memory athletes used to accomplish their seemingly inconceivable stunts.

Within just a few weeks of training, he could successfully memorize the order of a full deck of cards. After a year of training, he found himself in the finals of the U.S. Memory Champion competition, competing alongside the same people he had assumed were untouchable geniuses.

Using The Memory Palace In Everyday Life

You don’t have to train for a world championship to use the memory palace. There are plenty of things in our day-to-day lives that we can use this technique for. Some of those things include:

  • Memorizing a friend’s phone number
  • Memorizing the names of a bunch of new people you just met
  • Building a grocery shopping list
  • Learning new vocabulary words
  • Mapping out and memorizing the topics for a work presentation

If you’re studying for an upcoming test or exam, try this technique to memorize anything chronological or uniquely complex. This method is particularly useful for any testing situations that involve mathematical formulas and equations.

The memory palace is a surefire way to impress not only your friends, but even yourself with its effectiveness. If you’re looking for a new way to boost your memory, give it a try!