Mind Palace - Conversion

So far, we've talked about the basic framework for a mind-palace, and the general idea behind setting one up. Today, we're going to examine what goes in to actually internalizing information in a really concrete way. In order to do that, I thought I'd take you through one of my pet-projects that I work on when I'm bored - memorizing Pi.

NOTE: This is advanced. If you cannot use your mind palace to remember a shopping list, a list of 20 random words, AND the order of songs on your favorite album first, DO THAT FIRST. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. Everything after this will assume you are at a level where you are capable of the above tasks or better.

Now, since Pi is an infinite non-repeating decimal, you'll never actually be able to get it memorized by virtue of the fact that there's always one more number you haven't stored away (for more information, please Google "Pi"). This element of futility makes Pi an excellent way to "score" your mnemonic prowess. You'll never actually complete the job, but you'll have a number to point to - you'll be able to say, "I've stored X digits of Pi in my mind palace, and I know them backwards and forwards." For me, that number is currently 78. Nothing crazy, but then, I'm not trying to win any competitions.

In order to memorize something like Pi, which (after you get passed the 3 and decimal point bit) is just a series of numbers, you're going to need to figure out a few things in advance.

• Chunk Size :
• You're obviously not going to make one gigantic image by just combining all of the numbers together. This is a bad idea for two reasons. The first is that, depending on how you set it up, your image might change dramatically with every new number you add. The second is that even if you didn't hit the first problem, eventually your image would be so complex that you'd be better off just trying to remember the numbers in another way (perhaps a song?).
• So what we're going to do is "chunk" the number up into manageable pieces that we can memorize and add to a list. If you're a world champion mnemonist, you may end up using a system that has 9 digit chunks. The system I use has 6 digit chunks (I'll explain why in a bit). If you're a total beginner, you can chunk 1 digit at a time too (of course, if you're a total beginner, perhaps memorizing Pi shouldn't be your first exercise).
• Conversion Method:
• We need to find a way to convert the data we want to remember (strings of numbers) into something our brain can more readily process (sensory-enriched images). So they question is, how do we convert a 6-digit string into an image?
• Enter the PAO System (Person, Action, Object). The PAO system is one of the more popular systems for encoding any data that can be "chunked" into 3's. Essentially, we convert the first chunk into an image, the second into an action, and the third into an object to create a little scene which we can place into one of the loci in our mind palace.
• But wait, above I said that I use chunks of six digits at a time. Still true. We're just going to use the PAO system to break it down further into chunks of 2. So for the purposes of this memorization exercise, the smallest mnemonic unit we'll be using is a 2-digit number. Sound fair?
• Setup:
• The setup required to create a successful PAO system is a tad daunting. For a 2-digit PAO system, basically you need to think of 100 people - numbered 00-99 - each one of these people has a unique action and object that is associated ONLY with them. They don't have to combine to create a sensible image as long as you can use any one to get back to the number associated with the person.
• Ex1:     14 - Albus Dumbledore, Blackening His Hand, Elder Wand
• Ex2:     15 - Albert Einstein, Writing Equations, Chalkboard
• Ex3:     92 - Napolean Bonaparte, Posing For A Painting, White Flag
• The above examples make use of a technique called the Dominic System, which you can feel free to Google at your leisure. Essentially it maps numbers onto letters, turning all 2 digit numbers into sets of initials, which you can use to associate people with numbers.
• This is not the only way - feel free to use direct association as well (Ex: "01" could be George Washington).
• From there, all you need to know is the location of the number in the chunk. We'll get there.

Now, once you've got all the legwork done, you're ready to actually memorize the data (I know, so excited).

• Conversion Itself:
• For this, we'll use as our example the very first numbers in Pi. It begins, for those of you who do not know, as 3.141592653589793.......
• STEP 1: Chunk by 6 - Since I already know Pi begins with a 3 and a decimal point, we'll start just to the right of the decimal. This results in a 6-digit chunk of "141592."
• STEP 2: Apply the PAO - The PAO System breaks down our chunk into 3 pieces, resulting in "14 / 15 / 92" where the 14 is the person, the 15 is the action, and the 92 is the object.
• So "14 / 15 / 92" becomes "Albus Dumbledore / Writing Equations / White Flag."
• From there, all you have to do is create a little scene out of the above phrases. For me, it's an image of Albus Dumbledore furiously scribbling equations onto a large white flag, accidentally tearing it in places from his efforts.

Then, take that image you created and place it in your mind palace. Finally, just repeat the conversion step for every successive chunk of 6 numbers and add the resulting image to the next location in your mind palace.

As always, if you have any questions, need some clarification, or just want to add a suggestion, please feel free to leave a comment (or on Tumblr, just PM me). Happy memorizing!

Mind Palace - Organization

Hey guys. Since my last post, I've been hard at work tweaking my mind palace so that it functions at its maximum potential. in light of that, I'm going to do some more posts on how to organize and maximize the efficiency of your mind palace.

For those of you looking for an update, I've now permanently stored the following data in my memory palace:

• The order of the U.S. Presidents (and some of the vice presidents... still in progress)
• Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If"
• An excerpt from "Hunting Season" by Beau Taplin
• The name and year of every movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture
• A few debit card numbers (mine, that is)
• The order of a specific deck of playing cards (used for magic tricks)
• All of the locations of the above data relative to my mind palace

If the last bullet point seems a little circular, rest assured that it's not. It IS, however, what I would like to discuss with you today.

(Warning: Meta-Thinking Paragraph Ahead)
You see, having a lot of knowledge and being able to utilize it are two completely different concepts. While having a functional memory palace in which to store specific types of information can be / is incredibly useful, it's only useful insofar as you remember where you put everything. In other words, you can know that you know who the 19th president was, but until you actually go into your palace and pull Rutherford B. Hayes out, you don't actually know who the 19th president was. If someone came up to you and asked what data you've put away in your mind palace, how would you go about answering their question? In short, while it is very easy to know things, soon one discovers that the harder problem is actually to know what you know.

This is one of the main problems with utilizing the memory palace method to permanently store lots of information - no doubt something Sherlock Holmes would have had to deal with fairly early on in his exploits. Rest assured, there is a solution. For the purposes of this post, we're going to refer to it as The Index. Thus far, I have experimented with 2 variations which we'll call web and map indexing.

What is an index?

If you've ever been to a library, you should know the answer to this question. An index is a system of organization, usually taking the form of a list (often alphabetized). How does this apply to us? The short version is this - we're going to make a mind palace containing everything we know, AND where to find it.

The Web:
In experimenting with the web index, I created a small room (think elementary school classroom) and painted the walls all different colors and lined them with bookshelves of different kinds and various decorations so that no two walls were even remotely similar. On the bookshelves, I placed tiny trinkets - things that would remind me of the specific information stored within them - as well as a reminder of the location where the information was stored. (Ex: A picture of President Obama standing in front of my old home would tell me that the U.S. presidents were stored in that home.) I had one trinket for every chunk of information I had logged away. One problem I ran into with this method was that it quickly became difficult to store information, especially literature, on the bookshelf with other similar data. In order to fix this issue, I would recommend creating tiny rooms hidden behind the bookshelves to serve as the set of loci (Latin word for locations) rather than the bookshelf itself. The method functions like a web in that while there are no expressly visualized pathways to your various mind palaces, they ARE connected through your trinkets, making each trinket a vital link to the information you want to remember.

The Map:
The thing about map indexing is that it doesn't actually exist. Sure, I gave a name to the concept, but the essential bit here is that we're just making a bigger mind palace. Rather, we are combining all of our existing mind palaces into one gigantic cobbled together neighborhood of mind palaces. For a more in-depth look at this idea, check out "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" by Johnathan D. Spence. Old-school mnemonists used to use city blocks, or whole cities, as mind palaces, making the amount of information you can store as large as the city in which you stored it. Then, we can rename houses, blocks, or even streets to segment the data you are storing (Ex: The "head trauma" room in the "Emergency Medicine" house on "Science Street"). The tricky thing about this method is that in order to effectively use such a large area, one must be either very familiar with the area or very willing to make up a lot of the missing details on their own. One more difficulty is that even if you use a neighborhood you know well, odds are that you don't know the layouts of all the houses. But really, there's no reason to use those houses, is there? One could simply use the layout of an old neighborhood and plant all of the houses one has known or lived in to create a new neighborhood full of memory storage space.

Mind Palace - Putting it Into Practice

Previously, we've discussed the basic structure of a mind palace and what it's used for. Today, I'm going to discuss some basic encoding methods, and the building blocks for creating your own.

But first, a little history...

The practice of using a person's visual/spatial memory to organize non-visual non-spatial data has been around since the ancient Greeks. In its simplest terms, a Mind Palace utilizes images to organize and store information for later retrieval. The ancient Greeks and Romans used this system, also called the method of loci (meaning places/locations), for remembering anything from names of soldiers to important speeches. In fact, the expression "in the first place" refers to the technique of placing talking points in a mind palace (First thing you want to say goes in the first place in your mind palace). The method of loci was also used very often for everyday knowledge - something that, today, you could simply look up in a book. The first "books" were more like very lengthy scrolls with no chapter headings, page numbers, and little to no spacing or punctuation. This meant that in order to efficiently use a book as a reference, much of the organizational data would have to be stored in one's own head. Today, there is less of a need for a mind palace, but it can still be a useful technique for reliably internalizing everything from a list of names to a phone number to a shuffled pack of playing cards. A detective today using a mind palace filled with crime solving information would be able to have infinitely more data at his fingertips without the dependance on technological devices to access the information he needed.

Now for encoding....

The first thing you need to remember about encoding data into a mind palace is that it's not an exact science by any means. There are an infinite number of ways to encode information, and very little information can be coded verbatim. Mind palaces are most useful when the data can be easily broken down, only the general idea is important, or you're working with small, simple data to begin with. Rest assured, any data can be encoded, but not all data can be encoded quickly. As there is no one-hundred-percent right way to encode data for use in a mind palace, I'm just going to give you a few rules of thumb which have served me (and several unnamed international memory champions) quite well.

•  Make it Simple:
• Most of the time, a person who uses a mind palace won't be remembering anything much more complicated than a shopping list. It's important to remember that less really is more. There's no point in telling yourself a long story to remember every single thing - you might as well just memorize the list by reading it over and over again. A good rule of thumb is that whenever you're trying to remember a list of distinct objects, simply place comically large versions of the objects in various loci in your mind palace (Ex: eggs, cheese, and fruit can code to a giant egg on your porch, a huge wheel of cheese on your couch, and a massive fruit basket on your bed).
• Use Relationships:
• Sometimes, you'll be at loss for what images to place in your mind. My advice to you is to quickly think about things which are related to the item you wish to memorize, and use those instead. As an example, let's say your girlfriend gives you a list of things to pick up - one of these things is hummus. You don't know how to visualize hummus - but you know that it falls into the category of Greek food. Instead of trying in vain to place hummus in your mind palace, you place a Greek temple filled with food in there instead. This will remind you that you are looking for a Greek food item, which will send you back to hummus.
• Homophones are Your Friends
• In a pinch, words that sound similar may also be substituted quite easily, leading to quicker and easier memory storage. A great way to think about this technique is to imagine trying to memorize a list of names of people you've never met. Let's say one of the names on that list is "Kanasha". If you're like me, this doesn't evoke any useful images right off the bat. What I would do in this situation is visualize a few old people sitting around a table playing Canasta (if you don't know what that is either, then you may want to find a different image), and use that.
• More than Just Your Eyes
• In the case that you find yourself working with kind of a vague image, remember - YOU HAVE 5 USEABLE SENSES. You're not limited to just your eyes. You can also use touch, taste, smell, and hearing to enhance the images you've placed. Let's say you don't have a very specific idea about what a tuna looks like. You know it's a fish, but beyond that, you're lost. You do, however, know what canned tuna smells like. Why not imagine a sort of generic fish, then add in the idea that it smells like a tuna sandwich? Bingo.
• Make it Weird
• Nothing hurts a mind palace more than banality. If you want to remember things, for the love of all things cold and rational MAKE THEM MEMORABLE. Think of it as if you were telling yourself a story as you walk through your mind palace. It'll be much easier to recall if you know that it's Darth Vader is waiting for you down the hall as and not your old boss from the previous year (unless you had a really exciting boss). As a general rule, make your images as large, crazy, wacky, lewd, crude, or otherwise weird as you can. You're brain is hardwired to remember those things BETTER, LONGER, and EASIER.

If you're interested in continuing your education in the area of mind palaces and tricks involved, I highly recommend reading Josh Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein. It's an excellent read and is invaluable in  expanding one's knowledge of the mind's potential (not to mention, it's where I learned much of what I know about these techniques).

As always, I appreciate your input. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to me. If there's ever a topic you don't understand, something you need clarified, or you'd like to suggest an idea for a post - send in a comment or drop me a message and I'll do my very best to help. Happy memorizing!

Mind Palace - A How To

Welcome back. Using a mind palace to store information is a bit like tricking your brain into working like a computer. In order to create a mind palace which will function effectively, you're going to need three things. You'll need a place, data, and an encoding method. Your place is a bit like a hard drive - it's the place where all the data goes. More importantly, it's the place where all the data is stored, waiting for you to need it, at which point the data will be right there where you left it. The data is a little trickier to think about - it's anything. Absolutely anything that you need to remember can be data (phone numbers, playing cards, people's names, etc.). And how will you remember it? You'll need an encoding method. If your place is your hard drive, your encoding method is your software. It's what allows your to translate the data into something that your brain (hard drive) can understand and store away for later.

1) A Palace - A mind palace is a place. It can be any place you'd like (your house, your friend's house, your work, even your city). It can even be made up (although I'd advise using "real" places until you've got some practice in). The important thing is that the place does not change - it could be sunny, rainy, whatever - but the building itself, the architecture, does not change. This is very important, primarily because you will be "filling" your place with things, and those things WILL change. It's best to have some element of constancy to anchor the variable things on. Finally, you need to pick a route within your mind palace - a specific path you follow when walking through. It doesn't always have to be the same route every time, but when storing/recalling the same set of data, you must walk along the same route. This will become more clear as we go on. I'll post some more tips on optimizing the efficiency of your mind palace once we have a good understanding of how to use one.

2) Data - In order to store data in a mind palace, you'll need to figure out exactly what it is you are storing. Typically, you'll want to avoid storing multiple kinds of data in the same mind palace (there's no law against having multiple palaces - in fact, it's highly encouraged). In my first experience using a mind palace, I was memorizing a shopping list full of random items. I've since used it to remember a deck of playing cards in order, a list of names of people I'd never met, and even a list of landmarks in ancient Rome for a quick cramming session. The reason I'm telling you this is so that you understand the importance of knowing your data. you can't remember something you've never seen. You have to hear, see, touch, taste, or smell it. You can't memorize a shopping list that you can't read. Make sense?

3) Encoding Method - This is the crux of the mind palace. This is how you turn your hard-to-memorize data into something your brain can use. In order to do this, we'll be converting all of your data (names, numbers, playing cards) into images. Those images will then be "placed" in your mind palace, just like we did in Part 1 of this topic. Then, by walking through your mind palace along your pre-defined route, you can remember which images you placed where, which will then be decoded into the data you originally stored. How do we decide which images to use? The secret - it's all about using your imagination. Your brain very efficiently processes and stores very specific kinds of information - the funnier, weirder, and (in some cases) sexual your images are, the easier it will be for your brain to remember them. For example, in order to remember that the first thing you need to do in your day is call Peggy, you might imagine a pirate with a wooden peg-leg yelling into a cell phone. It sounds silly, but it gets the point across.

To demonstrate, let me take you back over the mind palace we created in the introduction.

We started at the front door, where we found a doll-house, which reminded me to tell you that you need a place to store the images. Then, we step inside to find a giant playing card with things written on it, which reminds me to tell you about the kinds of data you can store in a mind palace, and give you some examples of what you can use it for. Then, as we get into the next room, we see the bank of computers with the large flash drive - this is the part where I talk about the encoding method, which converts images into things that your brain remembers better. The other two images refer to the science of mind palaces, and remind me to tell you about where they came from (history). They also remind me to talk about how to maximize the efficiency of your own mind palace, and the different encoding methods you can use.

But that's for another post. Later!

Mind Palace - Introduction

Okay, it's time - I've been putting this off for a while because quite frankly, I'm terrified of underselling such a valuable concept. In this three-part set of posts, we're going to discuss the Holmesian (actually ancient Greek) technique of remembering absolutely anything, for any length of time, limited only by the power of your imagination.

But before we do that, I have to tell you a story:

Stop what you are doing. Close your eyes and imagine yourself standing at your front door. Yes, of your house. I don't care which house, where it is, or when you lived there - it just has to be a place you remember well. I'm serious. In order for this to work, you have to trust me a little bit.

Now, standing between you and your front door, I want you to imagine a dollhouse. It can be whatever color, size, shape, or level of decadence you desire. But a dollhouse. Don't laugh, just imagine it. Right there on your doormat. See it.

Now, open your front door, and imagine walking two steps into whatever room is there, when you come face to face with a giant playing card - I mean huge. Whatever card you like, just make it gigantic - floor to ceiling. On this card, there's a ton of what looks like graffiti. You can see paint dripping - it's fresh. You can smell it as it dries. Upon closer inspection, you notice that the graffiti is actually words and numbers (names, definitions, phone numbers, somebody's social security #). Got it, good.

Next, move to the next room, which is now completely full of computers - maybe wall-to-wall WWII machines, all feeding into a massive flash-drive which sits at the end of the banks of computers.

Keep walking. Next room. You could be in your kitchen, living room, bathroom, etc. Just be sure it's set up as though you're actually walking through your house. You don't want to be teleporting between rooms. If you are out of space, walk back and go another way (no need to change what we've already done). That being said, in the next room, put a stack of books. In keeping with our theme, make this a massive stack of books. Not just ordinary books - old books. Ancient, dusty tomes as thick as your head. Something you'd see in some thousand-year-old library.

And finally, walk into what will be the final room on your walk through your house. In it, be sure to imagine a giant brain. Maybe in a glass tank, hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, even perhaps floating in some mysterious liquid.

Now, what I'd like you to do is walk back. Take the little walk that we've just taken in reverse. Go from the brain, back to the giant stack of giant books, through the room with the computers, back to graffiti-covered  playing card, and finally out your front door, almost tripping over the dollhouse on the doormat. Then walk it again. This time, walk through as though you're seeing the house for the first time. Be sure to notice the large and strange things that you've placed in the different rooms. You should find it pretty easy to remember which things you placed in which room as long as you see them as opposed to just trying to recall them.

That example may not make a ton of sense right this second, but for now, suffice it to say that you've just stored some very specific information in a mind palace.

Tune in soon  for Part 2, where we'll discuss exactly HOW this works. I'll show you as best I can the techniques that make the above story make sense, and allow you to construct your own mind palace and fill it with whatever you need to know.