The Method of Loci: a powerful technique to boost your memory

How do World memory champions remember things? What is a good way to beat forgetfulness? The Method of Loci offers a solution.

Commonly known as the mind palace, it uses our brain’s capability of storing spatial information to remember things. This is how it works. Picture a place you know very well (your house, garage, office, etc). Associate one thing you want to remember with one part of the place. Let’s do an example. You want to remember a grocery shopping list. The list is: two cartons of milk, an apple, 4-5  bananas and baking soda. It’s not a huge list to remember, but it does the job. Taking a house as an example, pretend you’re entering and on the door is a sticky note saying 2. You hang your coat, and the coat has a cow sign on it. You put your keys on a shelf that has a banana bunch hanging from the top. You go to your room and see an apple on your desk. You sit down to start working and realize there’s baking soda all over your mouse mat. If you can pretend all of this, because you know your house so well, you can remember this list very easily.

However, I have to warn you. This method is NOT easy to master. I still don’t believe I have grasped the full potential of the mind palace, and struggle to do it for huge lists. Still, I would encourage you to try it as it is a proven method that retains memory. One more piece of information: this method isn’t new. It’s quite the opposite: it’s ancient. It dates back to the ancient Greeks and many philosophers have used this method in the post. If it works for them, there’s a good chance it will work for you.