Using mnemonics and developing sharper recall shifted my perspective on memory and how it works. It’s made me wonder if my assumptions about memory are accurate, and even if I understand what memory is.
Here are some of the benefits, perspective shifts, and side effects I’ve observed in utilizing mnemonics.
I didn’t think memorizing and remembering could be peaceful. The rote memorization of my school days was painful and largely fruitless, after all, so it’s always seemed a pretty wretched way to spend time. And aside from remembering happy memories, getting information out of my brain was generally emotionally neutral at best.
But yesterday I was sitting on my balcony, feeling a bit stressed and unsettled, and decided to walk through a memory palace I hadn’t been in for 6-8 months. I’m not sure how long I was traipsing around in there, but I came back to reality feeling incredibly calm, focused, and happy. This is not a one-off. I generally feel great after a focused bout of encoding or recollection.
Why is this? My guess:
It’s a flow state inducer. After you’ve gotten the basics down, it’s demanding enough to require your full attention, but not hard enough for frustration to set in.
The focus drives out any interior monologue. This is doubly impactful if you’ve got intrusive and troubling thoughts.
Each session can feel like an accomplishment. Put just one meaningful thing into a memory palace and your day has been made better.
Whatever the case, mnemonics feels great, and though I don’t use it explicitly to relax, it’s a pretty great side effect.
Learning mnemonics didn’t make my natural memory great. It’s still pretty poor, actually. I essentially just bolted on a fancy upgrade to a shoddy base model. It leads to some ridiculous situations like remembering obscure dates and facts but not knowing a long-time acquaintance’s name because I didn’t bother to encode it properly.
I’ve observed that the secret to becoming curious about something is figuring out how it connects to something you’re already interested in. The more interconnections discovered, the more curiosity colonization occurs.
Mnemonics follow a similar dynamic. The more you have reliably memorized, the easier it becomes to memorize new things. This is because the grist of mnemonics isn’t what you want to memorize, but all the things you can associate with it. It’s about stocking your toolbox with more tools.
For instance, when memorizing a foreign vocabulary word, you need to remember how it’s pronounced. Strange-sounding words might be tricky to recall, so you’ll probably need a reminder for each syllable. You might put a person on your locus who has a name starting with the first three letters of that foreign word, and then have him interact with other things you already know for the other syllables. As you know more concrete things, this is all so much easier. Memory begets memory.
I’ve always had trouble recalling my past, and my family often shakes their head about things I’ve forgotten. But since I frequently rifle through my past to look for memory palaces, I’ve noticed something interesting: I have no idea what’s gone forever. When I stir the pot a bit, surprising stuff tumbles out.
I thought I only remembered two rooms in my childhood best friend’s house. But once I started mentally walking it, feeling the weave of the rug on my feet, remembering how the garage door creaked and the cat food smelled, I suddenly could walk the whole house. The long-forgotten faces of the people I knew there arose from the fog like ghosts.
I’m often left thinking — How much of what I’ve forgotten is actually forgotten? I often only need to find the right knack and it all comes rushing back.
I’ve historically not been great at multitasking and am easily distracted, but it seems to me that encoding into and decoding from memory palaces has made me much better at both. The focus spills over into other areas of life.
The other day I was listening to a conversation at my table and I wondered if I could both listen and do something cognitively demanding. I decided to try and so pulled up a memory palace and walked through 10 stations, each containing a number, a person, an action they were doing, and an object they had with them (40 things). I followed about 95% of the conversation and didn’t miss anything in the palace. I didn’t think I could do this, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have before mnemonics.
Resonant meaning arises from memorizing what’s most important to you. Philosophy, poems, religion — whatever moves you. I find that word-for-word recall (as opposed to “the gist”) really makes an impact. Just tap the right palace and the words tumble into your consciousness in a way that feels magical.
Medieval and Renaissance mnemonic practitioners describe blissful states in terms normally reserved for religious experiences, and I get it now.
If you’re interested in learning mnemonics, check out my course, Memorize for Meaning.
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