In this week's episode, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art explain the concept of building a memory palace (a/k/a Method of Loci, or Journey Method) and then discuss its veracity in work and personal life, and some productive uses of the memory palace for someone starting out.

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In this Cast | Building a Memory Palace

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Building a Memory Palace

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Method of loci

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsA

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to listeners to another, I think, action-packed episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we are going to be talking about something that goes by many names, but is all the same thing. We're going to be talking about the method of loci, also known as the memory palace method, or the Journey method. And what we're going to do today is really talk about its history. I just want to go through a little bit about what the history of the method of loci is, then we will talk about the method itself, how it actually operates, what are the functions of the method, the primary part of our conversation will then center on whether any of us have used the memory palace technique or the journey of method, technique, and what our experiences are with other kinds of mnemonics in either studies or at work. And then we'll close out with maybe some productive uses for you. And where you can apply the Journey method. Let's get into first, the history and the idea of the Journey method. The method of loci really started out in the concept of the ancient Greeks and Romans talking about the idea of memory, and how the brain really works, how the mind works. In this particular case, the, the ancient Greeks and Romans had a different perception or conception of where the mind lived. So we won't get into that. But in essence, it was used for memorizing everything when you studied in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, you were memorizing full treatises, and all of these things were required of you in order to be a learned individual, the mnemonic system known now as the Journey method, method of loci or the memory palace was developed. And so this is an very ancient concept. And so what I want to do is just cover what and how I understand the method. And then gentlemen, you can jump in with any questions that you might have. So the way in which I think about the Journey method is four distinct components. I use the acronym alles AI ls to remember it generally. And it stands for Association, imagery, location, and story. And the idea is, is that the more outlandish and connected pieces are in a specific location connected to a story, then the more likely we are to remember those things. And more importantly, in that order. And many people may know the Joshua force story. This is a guy who was not a memory, genius of any kind. But he decided to use this technique and won the World memory championship the following year, and he did a TED talk. And I'll post the Embed of the TED talk in the show notes. But in essence, he used the method of loci, he used this technique in order to be able to remember all of these cards in a deck and all these other memory, you know, tests that they put him through. And so the idea is, is that you come up with something that you want to remember, say it's a deck of cards. And in essence, that deck of cards becomes associated with something. So for example, you might decide that the the jack of hearts is a family member. Now this is something that you have an association with, and so therefore, it can be tied or anchored to something that you already know. And so generally, when we think about the method of loci, we're thinking about what are the things that we know what are the things that we're associated with so many memory champions, what they do is they take every letter in the alphabet, and they associated with a particular thing that they already know, a may or may stand in, as an apple. And now this leads us to the next point, which is that imagery, if we take that Jack of Hearts, and we're thinking about that family member, because maybe they look like the jack of hearts on the card. Now that creates a connection, but we also know have an image in our mind, we then placed them in a location and this is where the memory palace really comes into play and why they call it the memory palace or the mind palace, because you pick a spot in physical space, and then you recreate the journey, the story in that physical space. Now that physical space can be a very large place like the planet or the solar system, or the universe or a can be a desk literally just the space on your desk and you different you choose different points on the space on your desk. And so from there, you go through the process of telling the story of what happens to those things in that order. And by doing so you're able to remember all of the pieces. And as many people note, the more outlandish the story, the crazier the things are, the more novel It is to your brain, and therefore the the likelier that you will remember those components connected to each other. So through association or connection to things that you already know, imagery, placing them into physical locations, and then telling a story you're capable of combining. In this case, memory champions will sometimes can sometimes combine hundreds or 1000s of data points together in this method, and all they're doing is telling a story. And they're, they're telling themselves a story so that they can remember that story, as these pieces are being put in front of them. And what happens is, they can then speed up the process of memory for them. That's not particularly case for us. But for these folks who are in these memory championships, they are in essence, rapidly creating those stories by connecting those associated images, which are kind of pre populated in their mind, right? A is for apple, B is for boy, C is for cat, and so on and so forth. And now as soon as they see those components, they're capable of starting to tell that story. Oh, the Apple was picked up by the boy, the boy then saw a cat. Now, as I said, you want to make the story outlandish, you want to make it exciting and interesting. And that way your brain would be more likely to remember it. So you can say something like, you know, the Apple flew out of the sky and whacked the boy in the head, and the boy fell on top of the cat and the cat screeched, and, you know, and so on, and so forth. So you start to create these really provocative stories, these journeys of all of these connected data points. And when you see them in the locations, where they're supposed to be, that actually connects inside your mind to it maps it out, your mind maps out a physical physical location in that sense. So that's, in essence, the method of loci as best as I can kind of explain it. So from there, where do we go from here? What are the what are what are your experiences with either the method of loci or with other mnemonics that you've used, maybe in university or in other areas of your professional life,

Art Gelwicks 7:42this is a tough one for me, because I've never had any personal success with this. Mnemonics themselves have always been a struggle point, much less, you know, apples and houses with Uncle Bob. I mean, I, it almost to me feels like more work to try and remember this stuff than less because now I got to remember all this other stuff. And remember the story along with this other thing that I hope will help me remember, I've I have to admit, I really struggled with even where to start with this I've used. There are some mnemonics that I use. But even those take a lot of work to get to that point where they become second nature and their recall. I mean, it sounds great. It sounds like it would be fantastic to be able to just recall stuff like that. But I don't know, it just sounds like a really heavy lift to me.

Francis Wade 8:39I have used mnemonic, well, I can't say I use them, like I invented them. But I still remember the ones that was taught when I was a kid. So aren't that wondering if there's not some age component, that after you get past a particular point, the effort it takes to embedding a mnemonic is significant, but teach a kid a mnemonic, and they'll have it for life. You know,