One of a great ways to deal with this worry is by using technique called Memory palace.
The story of how Memory palace technique was invented starts from ancient Greek poet Simonides. Simonides was attending dinner at the house of a wealthy nobleman, where he was invited to entertain guests. While Simonides stepped out of the banquet hall for a moment, a horrible accident occurred – the roof of the hall where the banquet was fell in, crushing the nobleman himself and all other attendees underneath the ruins, killing each one of them. Even worse, when their friends wanted to bury them, they were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed. The story goes that Simonides managed to identify them by his memory of the place in which each of them had been sitting at the table and lead their friends to the exact place where the remaining’s of the fallen would be found.
This sad event lead him to the discovery of the idea that the best way to achieve sharp memory consists in linking the objects or people to space with some order to that space.
Developed on the basis of Simonides idea, “Method of Loci” or “Memory Palace” is a mnemonic strategy of mentally placing to-be-remembered items along a well-known route.
The whole ideas it so associate items that you would like to remember with specific physical locations, where recalling the location will evoke the memory of the item.
How it works?
Step by step:
1. choose the space (it can be one that you are familiar with already, or you can get familiar with it for the purpose of using it with memory palace
- It is really important to know the place well – the effectiveness of the technique relies on your ability to mentally see and walk around in that place with ease – this will usually require you to take a walk through the space before you start using if for memory techniques, and pay more attention to the details or specific points in that space…
- define a specific (walking) route in your palace instead of just visualize a static scene.
- A basic palace could be your kitchen, for example. Larger memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to work, or your neighborhood. The bigger size and more details the real place has, the more information you can store and memorize using it
2. List Distinctive points in the space (items that are “permanent” in that space or features of the space) – Try to have them linked one to another (so that your look goes naturally from the last point noticed to the next point)
- Make sure you know these points well, and that one point naturally leads to the next one – one way to remember that is to physically walk through the route repeating out loud the distinctive features as you see them, or to write down the selected features on a piece of paper and mentally walk through them, repeating them out loud.
- Always look at the features from the same point of view
- When you believe you’re done, go over it one more time. – you want to know these place and items really well
- each “new” item that you want to memorize link to one “familiar” item from the route
- use associations that are “out-there” – the more weird, crazy, ridiculous, unusual, extraordinary, colorful you make it, the better your memory of it will be—make the scene so unique that it could never happen in real life – the only way to do it wrong is to make it boring
- also, link together visual, auditory and kinesthetic queues (eg apples falling down the stairs – see the apples, see how they hit and bounce of the stairs, hear them hitting the floor)
How to use it
Notice that you can create as many palaces as you like, and they can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish to make them.
A memory palace can be reused over and over again, in case you want to remember things for just a limited period of time. If you replace the existing contents with new ones, and you’ll soon remember only the new ones.
If you need to remember the contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace as it is and create new ones in which to store other information as needed.
Space can be real or virtual – it is only important that you know it well and that it has specific “points of interest” whose order you remember clearly.
You can use Memory palace to remember full “list” of items or exact sequence. You can use it in learning a foreign language, memorizing a presentation you’re about to deliver, preparing for exams, grocery lists and many others — even if all you want is to develop and advance your memory.
For more complex things (e.g. a long speech), there is no need to place all the details in the memory palace – just a crucial ideas and transitions.
To make it more efficient, use symbols – you don’t need to put full sentences or absolutely all content in a given location in order to be able to remember it, and trying to do so can be too complex and counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each location is some cue that will pull out the rest from your memory, something that will lead you to the actual idea you’re trying to remember.
And in the end, don’t forget to be persistent. The memory palace is a very powerful tool, but it is not necessarily easy to master. It will require some practice, and you will need to prepare each new memory palace as you did the first, so you may want to develop new ones before you need them.
Real life examples
Great example of how to use this technique when preparing speeches, and making it memorable yet flexible at the same time, can be found in chapter called “Navigating through your message – Interview with Bill McDonough” from great book Slideology.
This 2-pages-chapter can be found here: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/office-and-productivity-applications/9780596522346/chapter-11dot-interacting-with-slides/224
Example on how to use this technique can also be found in this short (1’30’’) youtube video:
If you are interested in some celebrities that are using this technique, you might be interested in learning that all world champions in memory contests are using it. Hannibal Lecter used is as well, and so it Mentalist from tv-series with the same name.
For those who want to know more
There are many variations of the memory palace, such as the Roman Room and the Journey. They are all based on the idea that associating abstract or less-known ideas with a well-known location will enable you to more easily recall the things you want to remember.
To learn more, check out Joshua Foer’s TED Talk “Feats of memory anyone can do”:
More info about the technique can also be found on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
Or in a very good book Joshua Foer: “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything”, in which he uses Roman palace method to become a memory champion.