Mind Palaces and Their Many Benefits(Informative)

The idea of a mind palace was brought to my attention when I was watching BBC’s Sherlock about the detective Sherlock Homes who uses a palace he imagines in his mind to memorize the most minor details with extreme accuracy and that was very interesting to me I knew this show was fictional but it still peaked my interest making me wonder if this palace was possible for anyone to create. This idea was not created for Sherlock and has actually been around since the fifth and sixth centuries BC. After research I found it is not only possible but also rather simple. Mind palaces are one of the most effective and best memory techniques you can use. Why you might ask is because humans have amazing spatial and visual memories because our brains are programed to hunt and gather; Let’s start off with what a mind palace even is. To start using this technique you need to choose a palace, this can be your house, school, or any familiar space you can easily visualize in your mind. Next you make a route through the palace you have selected. Make sure you pay attention to the details in every room such as books, doors, dressers, or tables. After you have a route and can effortlessly walk through your palace. Now you need to fill your palace with what you want to memorize, if you have a grocery list and want to memorize cheese envision the cheese on your bed or if you want to memorize a formula image a book on your shelf with the formula on the cover and as you walk through you can see all your memories. You may be thinking this is not going to work or this will not help me memorize anything, but this method has had so much success and is used by the best memorizers in the world Dominic O’Brian was an 8 time world memory champion and used this method to memorize 54 decks of card having only seen each card once that is 2,808 cards memorized. Another example is Rajveer Meena who recited 70,000 digits of pi. These examples are very extreme and used by people who are very experienced in these memory techniques, but you too can use this same method and keep whatever you want in your palace. I have used this method for tests and have found great success using it and I feel it is not as well known and taught as it should be based on the results.