My First 10 Memory Palaces: A Beginner's Guide to the Loci Method.
Are you worried that technology is making you forget how to think? You're not alone. I'm a psychology student, and I recently became concerned that my reliance on AI was diminishing my own imaginative abilities. That's why I dove back into mnemonics, and my first project was building my foundational ten Memory Palaces.
What Are Mnemonics and the Memory Palace?
A mnemonic technique or mnemonic device, according to Anthonie Metiever’s definition, is “Anything that helps you remember better”
What Are Mnemonics and the Memory Palace?
A mnemonic technique or mnemonic device, according to Anthonie Metiever’s definition, is “Anything that helps you remember better”
The Memory Palace is a mnemonic device that enhances skills such as long-term retention and language learning by linking information to familiar locations. It also stimulates imagination and strengthens critical thinking skills.
In this article, I am going to show you how I built my first 10 Memory Palaces as the starting point of my mnemonic learning Journey.
Storytime: Diving back into Mnemonics.
With the rapid rise of technology, memory skills have become more important than most people realize.
Mnemonics offer a variety of tools - flashcards, acronyms, the story method, the Memory Palace, among others - that can strengthen how we learn and recall information.
Recently, I had a surprising experience. I was trying to memorize a biblical story about the life of King David by imagining the scenes, but I realized I couldn’t visualize it clearly. Years ago, this ability felt much more vivid. That raised a concern for me about my visualization and imagination skills.
A few weeks ago, I decided to investigate Memory Palaces again. Some years ago, I had already explored this topic for a few months, so I knew that this Mnemonic technique usually requires strong visualization and imagination skills.
During my first year studying psychology, I was deeply engaged with cognitive science. One of the most interesting processes was memory, and it led me to explore a lot of content about mnemonics from Mnemonic World Champions, bloggers, and youTubers.
At that time, I built a few Memory Palaces and memorized some irrelevant information to test the method. I also created my own number-shape system, a mnemonic tool that associates each number with a familiar shape to make recalling sequences of numbers easier.
Eventually, I lost interest in mnemonics for a while. Between the demands of other courses and the rush of everyday life, I set the practice aside. The only technique I continued using consistently was spaced repetition, relying on software like Anki and Quizlet to support my English learning.
Now that I’ve finished my university studies and am just four months away from earning my psychology degree, I find myself returning to topics that have always fascinated me. Since I remain deeply engaged with cognitive science, mnemonics feels like a huge opportunity to bring together my efforts, interests, and goals at this stage of my journey.
At the same time, I’ve become more aware of how my imagination and visualization skills have faded over the years, which makes this return even more meaningful — for me, mnemonics is not just a tool for memory, but also a way to strengthen the creative and imaginative abilities I want to recover.
The Memory Palace
We already said that the Memory Palace is a mnemonic device, and it has been used by many people since ancient times to memorize speeches and large texts, pass exams, win memory competitions, and other mind-exciting uses.
This mnemonic device is also known by other names such as the LOCI method, Roman rooms, journey method, or mind palace. Now let’s unfold how this technique works.
This technique consists of creating a vivid and well-known place in your mind. This place is your mental palace, and it should be clearly divided into locations where information is stored and encoded by visualization, so that you can retrieve it later. Each of these locations follows a natural order that you can index either by name or number.
When we are introduced to this method for the first time, there are some important criteria to build a good Memory Palace:
- A well-known place such as your home, workplace or school.
- The place must already be in your memory; at first, do not try to memorize any new place.
- The place must have linear or logical navigation, not cluttered spaces.
- Ideally, it should be possible to index the sublocations by word-based or number-based labels.
How to build a Memory Palace: Step-by-Step.
1- Make a repository list: Make a list of all buildings you know well - your current and previous homes, homes of relatives, workplaces, churches, schools, cafes, and restaurants, among others.
2- Select 10 palaces from your list: These 10 places must have at least 8 clear sublocations.
3- Select and imagine your first palace: Suppose your first palace is your home. Close your eyes and picture it vividly - colors, furniture, and big and small objects. Repeat this and the next steps for the other 9 palaces.
4- Sketch out the palace: Don’t skip this step. Take a few minutes to sketch your palace, either by hand or digitally (as I do). This will help you reduce cognitive load when you use the palace to encode the information you want to memorize.
5- Number the stations (optional): I label each station with a number to prepare my palaces for advanced mnemonic tools in the future, such as the PAO System - a mnemonic device for memorizing numbers.
How to build a Memory Palace: My journey (Project #1)
First of all, I created a list of 39 potential Memory Palaces. The list includes my current apartment, houses where I lived in the past, churches, my girlfriend's home, and the homes of relatives and friends.
[ Photo of my list ]
Then I selected these ten Palaces from my list.
[ List of selected palaces]
Now, I sketched each of the ten Memory Palaces digitally in Excalidraw.
Finally, I added and reviewed them on physical flashcards. This is a way to use the spaced repetition technique to internalize every station in the palaces, as an exercise to reinforce the sixth step explained in the previous section. In the future, I could transfer them from physical to digital flashcards using Anki software.
Now that I know how to build Memory Palaces, I’m going to expand the number of palaces I study so I’ll have space for new things I want to memorize in the future.
[Ten palaces photo]
While researching the Memory Palace, I came up with some ideas for future projects. These include using the technique to memorize Bible and classical stories, songs, and English vocabulary - my foreign language - along with other exciting small projects.
Final Thoughts
During this project, I had the opportunity to actively visualize, imagine, and recall vivid colors and objects. It served as a starting point for exploring mnemonics and a way to begin enhancing my visualization and imagination skills over the next few months.
It’s time to create your own first ten Memory Palaces. Share in the comments how many locations the largest one contains, and let me know any other insights you’ve discovered.
In my next article, I’ll show how I use a memory palace to memorize a list of story plots. This will help set up an important tool for making it easier to memorize stories in the future.
References
Metivier, A. Mnemonic Devices. Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/mnemonic-devices/
Metivier, A. The Method of Loci (Memory Palace). Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/method-of-loci/
Metivier, A. Roman Room Technique. Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/roman-room/
Metivier, A. How to Choose a Memory Palace. Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/memory-palace-ideas/
Metivier, A. Building Memory Palaces. Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/memory-palace/
Metivier, A. PAO System. Magnetic Memory Method. https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/pao-system/
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