I find it interesting to hear what kinds of information people find usable to memorize. If there are people here that utilize the memory palace (or any other memorizing method): what do you put inside the palace?
- Casual thoughts and ideas to review and ponder about them later. In case I didn't have a smartphone or notebook near me, I could put them into a palace, into the so-called "random room"(a place that you should review periodically to sort the remaining things out, i.e. categorize, put images into other places). However, it's simpler to spend time looking for a notebook to write the ideas down.
- Phone numbers. In cases such as losing my phone, to call my relatives, friends.
- Information about people I met. Sometimes there were a lot of people I met in a day/week at university. I wanted to remember their names, some general info. The problem with names is they may repeat. One may use an image of a known person with this name and add a few more images to describe the person better. E.g. a place where you've met, hair color, a hobby, other peculiarities.
- First medical aid.
- Books' summaries.
Rather fun to store than useful in real-world situations:
- Bus numbers and their schedule. Also, a schedule for a local airport and railway station. E.g. where this man with luggage is going to? It's winter, yet he wears a Panama hat. Let me check the possible routes...It was fun to guess. p.s. I didn't haunt people.
- Birthday dates.
- Other random information, e.g. historical dates.
Things that I memorize now: Bible verses (I've memorized all of Galatians and I'm working through Ephesians right now), a couple of important phone numbers, credit card number (I don't want to save the details on every website), and some programming concepts that I use on a roughly monthly basis - frequently enough to save time by memorizing, infrequently enough so that I can't memorize them purely by using them.
Your memory palace won’t store information indefinitely. Not unless you keep reviewing it, at which point it might be best to instead consult your notes.
A simple use case is memorising a shopping list for an hour and letting it fade. In addition to utilitarian, it can be fun as a creative exercise because you invent interesting visual combinations.
I recommend the book “Moonwalking with Einstein”[1] if you’re interested in the subject.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein
That's the question. You have to want to collect something. I tend to collect random connections between disparate things (i.e. the answer to an everpresent "how does this affect the price of rice on Sunday?"). The other side of it that complicates it all is that your brain works this way normally. The mind palace is just a frame you can use to access a particular subgraph of thoughts. Once you do it long enough, it becomes second nature and you realize your normal, undisciplined thoughts are just residents of a different palace.
I'm told you can reach a speed of +200 words/week with this approach.