If you’re new to what a memory palace is and how to get started, you should probably take a few minutes to read my introduction to memory palaces post. I have now built 3 palaces with a plethora of information like interesting stats I come across in studies and books I read, names of interesting individuals with their achievements, key concepts of specific books, ingredients of recipes I love along with proportions, world war events and birth dates (this one is interesting and I will talk about this one in another post). My world war 2 events related memories live in the palace in which I also share the key concepts I read in books. This is my parents’ house and it has 4 bedrooms, 1 living room, 1 kitchen, and 1 dining room. Our mind has no physical limitation but I seem to have trouble making smaller images so I am sort of constrained by how much I want to keep in a single palace. It’s actually better to have a large striking image to represent anything and the more details it has, the easier it is to recall. This is why memory champions have hundreds of memory palaces, each representing various categories and information pieces.
I am outlining 3 simple but important preparations that I go through before depositing stuff in a memory palace.
Segment the information into n logical broad pieces. This could be categories, dates, alphabetical order of names, etc. Since we are dealing with world war 2 events that happened between 1939-1945, I will divide all the events into these yearly segments.
It makes this easy to sort the information into an order that is relevant to the concept. In the world war 2 scenario, it makes sense to make it chronological. As I walk through my palace, the order in which I encounter the various rooms is 1939 through 1945. Each room corresponds to the events of that year. I can walk in and out of any room and I know the images that I see in them correspond to the year in which these events occurred. This way I can take a walk through my palace and recall all the events as they occurred in a chronological fashion.
I have found having a theme you can refer to, while painting images, to be super helpful. That way you can quickly use aspects of the theme to draw images. The PAO method is one such technique but I have found it was much easier to just use weaponry and people to be much easier for the world war 2 events. It is also because I have watched many documentaries and read many books on this topic that there are already so many images to refer to. Assigning them some context so it stands apart is the key job. This is actually very important and very specific to an individual. You may prefer a completely different set of images.
An interesting fact I have realized over time in building memory palaces is that it might make sense to deposit information in two passes. In the first pass, you put in the broad details. Think of these as headlines in the papers. In the second pass, you can put in details.
Once you’re ready with these three things, it is time to start depositing memories in the rooms. The chronological separation means I have to walk into specific rooms to deposit images. An interesting fact I have realized over time in building memory palaces is that it might make sense to deposit information in two passes. In the first pass, you put in the broad details. Think of these as headlines in the papers. In the second pass, you can put in details. I’ll walk you through my events of 1940s ww2 room in two passes. The years 1939 to 1945 are assigned to rooms as one encounters as one enters my house. The 1940 room is my parents’ bedroom.
As I enter the 1940s room, I see these 4 images.
These are the key 4 broad events that I want to memorise from the 1940’s. In the next pass I add more detailed imagery to each of these events.
German tanks leaving a trail of fire – the Blitzkrieg
Churchill cutting a steak – Churchill introduces rationing in Britain
A german plane dropping a bomb over a burning London – Blitz
The Dunkirk film poster is enough to recall the events of the approx 300k British Expeditionary Forces that were rescued from Dunkirk in thousands of civilian and naval vessels some of which included small boats that could only bring 8 people at a time.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
As I consume more information on ww2, I keep going to the specific rooms and keep adding more context to my images there. This is not very different from creating mind maps but this idea of having a central image or headline and around it a layer of related images as details seems to be working well for me.
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