Imagine your house, your office, or a place you visit often. Recall every item of furniture, every picture on the wall, every fixture and fitting; really see everything in your head. You could probably walk through this place blindfolded, couldn’t you?
Believe it or not, this simple act could greatly enhance your memory and boost your learning capabilities.
Visualisation is a key component of the loci method, also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or journey method technique. It works by linking new information in the brain to key points in a familiar setting you can easily navigate in your mind.
It can be used to help you remember almost anything, whether faces, digits, numbers or words.
“Loci” is the Latin word for places or locations, and its associated method is based on principles of spatial memory. Your brain has already strongly familiarised itself with certain spaces; as such, terms and facts associated with these spaces can be easily recalled.
The method is fairly simple:
- Visualise a well-loved location, such as your home.
- Select key points within this location and really see them in your head, with as much detail as possible. For example, if using your house, imagine the front door, the hall, the television, bathroom, and so on.
- Associate each item you wish to remember with each of those key points. This is the most important step: to “place” what you need to remember around the room, one item in each area.
- Take a mental journey through the location. Visualise yourself picking up each of those items, one at a time, in the order in which you “placed” them. Make sure you REALLY see yourself doing so.
- Repeat this mental walk as many times as necessary.
Used properly, the loci method can be a highly useful way of improving memory retention and recall. Its origins go all the way back to ancient Greece, where it was said to be created by the poet Simonides of Ceos in 500 BC.
According to legend, Simonides had attended a banquet in the city of Thessaly. After he had stepped out, the hall’s roof tragically collapsed, killing everyone inside. Most of the bodies were too mangled to be identified.
Simonides, however, had remembered each guest’s name and seating position at the banquet. By mentally reconstructing the scene and focusing on their arrangements, he could properly tell who was whom.
This led to the development of the loci method, which has now been practised for centuries. It frequently employed at events such as the World Memory Competition, with 2006 World Memory Champion Clemens Mayer using a 300-point-long journey through his house to memorise 1,040 random digits in half an hour, setting a world record.
Films such as “Dreamcatcher” (2003) and “Hannibal Rising” (2006) feature characters using the loci method, as do television shows such as “The Mentalist” (2008), “Sherlock” (2010), and “Bordertown” (2016).
The loci method can be used for remembering shopping lists, the order of steps in a complex procedure, or a schedule of appointments for the day. Here are some further everyday applications:
- Remembering facts
The loci method is very useful as it not only helps you remember certain items, it also ensures you recall their exact order. As your mental walk always goes down a familiar route, whatever you see always follows a particular sequence.
Use this method to easily recall things like the order of planets in the solar system, the colours of the rainbow in sequence, or a chronology of historical events.
- Making speeches
First, break down your presentation into key parts, or pick out important facts. Place each of these points, or an image associated with it, with a location within your mental walk, and visualise yourself going through all of them in order.
- Remembering phone numbers
Yes, you can save numbers on your phone – but if there is an important contact you wish to store in your own memory, the loci method can be very helpful.
Simply link each digit, or group of digits, with a representative image – for example, 11 could be a pair of chopsticks – and “place” this image at key locations of your mental walk.