Start the Year With a New Super Power: Memorization!

Memorize 30 or more digits with just a few hours of practice

Take a moment and try to memorize the following number:

8541935207325

How many digits could you recall correctly? Most remember between 5–9 digits. This is the famous “seven, plus or minus two” rule for short term memory capacity. Did you memorize more than ten digits? Would you like to try 30 digits?

317402592810672987613201972641

Pretty hard huh?

Now imagine being Lance Tschirhart who set the “World Memory Championships” record in 2016 by memorizing 456 digits (spoken 1 digit per second)!

862167124587723192783009852503752316260344363284181771963294258124335973278314733477254276389062017543279551555112628802028814378548407524376723666133253939450607521561485628528358235403179236547266051153101638675391416688312236349449247247393361294842014814331756360112426716845291433346123221933372525771292257118427692322622153542295441245481640836881377527643791762478788531805048748422855389537920586262480333329685820570954135145737932695265108410171

This article will reveal one of the most powerful secrets to memorization that you can master with just a bit of practice.

You can also try out an online app to visualize just how easy it can be to obtain a new super power. Get ready to hack your brain!

Location, Location, Location…

Short term memory has its limits and even considerable practice makes memorizing more than 10–12 digits difficult. In order to extend your memorization boundaries, you must have a method to go beyond using only short term memory.

Is there a way to inject information directly into your long term memory? The answer is “yes” and it is actually quite simple. All you need to do is access your “Memory Palace.”

The Memory Palace

The Memory Palace or “Method of Loci” dates back to ancient Greece and is a technique that utilizes a physical location to promote storage and recall of information. You already have this power, so take it for a test drive. Consider the following 5 objects:

1. Cowboy hat
2. Taco
3. Spoon
4. Briefcase
5. Deck of Cards

Now, think of a location you know well like your office or home. For this example, this location will be your new Memory Palace.

Now walk through it (mentally) and as you walk through it, place the items above in order. You could place the cowboy hat on the entry door and the taco on the floor as you walk in etc.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/RitrattoMuseoFerranteImperato.jpg

Okay, now, take the same mental route you did earlier and try to recall the same 5 items from the first walkthrough. Was it easy to recall all the items in sequence again?

For most, it is trivial to recall all the items encountered during the trip. In-fact, tomorrow you will likely be able to remember the same objects again in the same order by revisiting the same route in your new Memory Palace.

Why can you remember such detailed layouts and objects within them?

The likely reason is that evolution provided our brains with the capabilities to learn layouts, remember them quickly, and map objects in space relative to each other in order to improve survivability. Ever see a snake in the wild? You probably remember exactly where you saw it.

Now you know the secret tool that memorization professionals use. It is now time to apply it to memorizing random digits.

Encoding & Decoding

Since it is easy to recall objects sequentially in your Memory Palace, the next step as you might have already guessed, is to figure out a way to encode digits into physical objects.

There are many ways to do this but this article will focus on this approach:

1. Take in a sets of random digits, 2 digits at a time
2. Encode each set of two digits into a physical object
3. Place each object sequentially as you walk through your Memory Palace
4. Later, traverse the same path and recall the same objects in order
5. Decode those objects into the corresponding 2 digit sets
6. Grab a stick to fight off your new fan base because you rule!

This does mean that you will need to map each of the 100 digit pairs from “00” to “99” to a unique physical object. Don’t worry, it’s easier than you think.

The Training Process

There is no getting around the fact that it will take repetition and active engagement to learn these 100 objects, but as always, there is the hard way and there is the easy way.

The hard way would be to randomly assign two digits to a random set of objects and remember those assignments. Though possible. it would take a LOT of time and energy.

The easy way would be to leverage patterns your brain is already good at using and organize the digits and the images in a more meaningful way. This will give your brain much more information in order to make more associations between objects making recall and learning faster and easier.

Consider a tool a lot of people use to organize information, the outline:

Outlines, have a nice tree structure that brains tend to gobble up. Using the underlying principles of outlines, you can organize the images for efficient learning and recall. Consider this approach:

1. Take sets of ten digits from the original 00–99 and create a theme that you can remember. For example, for the digits 50–59, the group could be states within the US. Any time you think of a two digit number that is in the “fifties” you can associate the “fifty States”.
2. Organize personally relevant objects that follow the theme for each group and sort them according to some scale.
3. Split that group into two sub groups

Here is an example of implementing these 3 steps. First, consider all the digits in the forties:

40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49

One possible theme for “forties” could be “fruits and veggies” because “forties” and “fruits and veggies” share the same starting sound.

Second, you need to come up with 10 fruits and veggies that can be associated to each digit upon some scale. Using size could be a useful scale for “fruits and veggies.” Here is the “fruits and veggies” group arranged by size:

The number 40, the smallest in the group is mapped to a pea. The largest number in the group, 49, is mapped to the giant pumpkin.

Great, now the last step is to make it easy to mentally hook into any position within this group as quick as possible. One way to do this is to make memorable subdivisions of the group. The example above uses an orange and grapefruit as a memorable dividing line in the middle and then grapes and a cantaloupe are highlighted to further subdivide those halves.

Now, using these guidelines, how would you determine which object is mapped to 46?

1. First determine the group that 46 is in? This number is in the “forties” group, so “fruits and veggies.”
2. Which object is 46 associated with? Well, 45 is the grapefruit which is the first item in the second half of the “fruits and veggies” group and 46 is one bigger which is Jicama!

Awesome! You now have a technique to drill down to any object. With practice, it will become easier and faster.

Training at Ludicrous Speed!

So now you have a way to learn how to map two digit numbers to their corresponding objects but you want to learn these mappings as efficiently as possible. Luckily, there is an app for that:

This online app tests your ability to encode digits into objects and has another mode to test your ability to decode objects into digits.

You can try it out here: Memory Palace Training App Demo

Note that the object groups may not be particularly relevant to you. For example, the numbers 50–59 are mapped to states in the United States that are organized by size. Those particular states may not be personally relevant.

If you know how to code and want to customize the images, you can pull down the application source code!

After just a few training sessions, you should be able to go back and forth between digits and objects pretty well. The more you practice, the quicker you will be at the encoding and decoding phases.

To the Palace!

Now, that we have tackled encoding and decoding, it is time to place some objects into your Memory Palace in an attempt to memorize 12 digits.

Normally, the process of memorizing long numbers would go like this:

1. You would be given one digit at a time.
2. Once you have a set of two digits, you would encode them into an object.
3. You would place that object into your Memory Palace.

For the following walkthrough, you will be shown all digits and objects up front to emphasize how the objects should be placed in your Memory Palace.

Here are 12 random digits broken into sets of two:

41 93 52 07 32 85

Using the app’s mappings we would end up with the following objects:

• 41 > Fruits and Veggies by size > second smallest >Blue berry
• 93 > Vehicles >one smaller than golf cart >Go cart
• 52 > States > middle state in smaller half of list > Utah
• 07 > Jars of Stuff > middle jar in larger half > Jar of Sand
• 32 > Planets > second planet from the sun > Venus
• 85 > Balls > smallest ball in second half > Football

So now place each object, one at a time, into groups of three (some people will use groups of 4 or 5) within your Memory Palace. Use your own house as your palace for this example. Try to visualize yourself walking around as you build out your Memory Palace.

Visualizing Group 1

You are standing in front of your house. Whoa! You almost step on ablue berry as you notice your new go cart has been delivered by your front door. You notice a picture of Utah on the package because that is where it came from.

Okay, the first group of 3 objects is done. Be sure to run through them once more in order before moving on to group 2.

Visualizing Group 2

You open the door and in your entryway you notice a jar of sand has broken on the floor. Sitting in the sand is the reddish planet Venus. You notice a football off to the side which must knocked over the jar of sand.

Nice, group 2 is done. Run through this group of three items in order to make sure you have them all in memory.

Recalling the Digits

Now, walk back through your Memory Palace and recall the two different groups of three objects sequentially. You can then turn each object back into its corresponding digits and BINGO, you have just memorized a 12 digit number!

That wasn’t hard at all!

Now there are two things you can do to improve:

1. Improve your speed by practicing encoding and decoding
2. Improve the length of numbers you can remember by practicing more groups of objects in your Memory Palace. Getting to 5 groups of 3 objects will put you at 30 digits!

Way to start off the year right! Enjoy your new super power!

Thanks for reading! Click the 💚 below to recommend this to others!

Related Stories & Links

• Memory Palace Trainer Source Code