An ultimate guide to memory palaces
I&#x27;ve trained my memory over the last ~5 years.  I became fascinated with oral cultures.  How could they transmit enough knowledge to survive and basically confer PhD level knowledge of survival without books?  How could they remember it all? How does your experience of the world change when every place you find yourself is (mentally) chock full of (your most prized) memories?<p>I also wanted to get more out of reading. I used to read a book, maybe take notes and hopefully take some new action. Next year it&#x27;s gone, maybe I recall 3 ideas. How could I get more out of reading?<p>So I memorized books.  Convert a book into 100-250 bullet points, memorize them in a memory palace. If I don&#x27;t practice recalling my palaces, at least once every 6 months or so, I&#x27;ll forget it. However, this isn&#x27;t a negative. When recalling you can ask yourself questions about the knowledge.  How is the relevant to my life right now?  How can I apply this?  How does the world look using this knowledge as a lens? How does this compare or contrast to other things I&#x27;ve memorized?<p>At first this was an enormous effort. But with all training it gets faster.  We&#x27;ve all spent thousands of hours learning to read. Now reading is unconscious, you see a word and instantly you know the concept behind. My first book took about 4 hours and reviewing it took an hour. Now reviewing a book (250 items) takes under 15 mins, and I can do it while making dinner or driving. People can memorize a deck of cards (52 facts in order) in two minutes. Eventually, I believe it&#x27;s clearly possible to be able to memorize at the speed of speech (250 words per min).<p>At the moment, I develop software.  I decided to memorize the packages of the python standard library.  Why? Is it going to help? It provides a link to attach concepts to. When I find a better solution than something in the standard library, I attach that memory to the standard library.  Like when I think of argparse, I automaticaly think of clicklib and fire.  Before coding I review the software development palace. I can hold it all in mind... because those packages have become one chunk in my mind.<p>With all this training, my ability to visualize has just gone through the roof. At the end of the day, I can mentally re-watch my whole day and catch interesting, things that I missed in the moment.  It feels like watching a vivid (albeit dreamy) movie.<p>Anyways, like anything the deep end of this mind training is totally amazing and unlike the initial &quot;lifehack&quot; quick wins.