The method of loci is a technique from ancient Greek times. Orators, philosophers and others had to rely on memory for memorizing speeches and knowledge in general, as the printed book only came into use roughly two thousand years later. They devised various memory techniques, one of which is this one.
The method of loci involves associating information you want to remember with specific locations, or loci. These locations may be points along a journey or objects in a room. Usually the journey or room would be one familiar to you, however sometimes you might create the journey or room for a topic. Indeed, the ancient users of this technique didn’t create just rooms, but entire palaces and cities to remember much information.
In this section I first look at the general principles of this method. Then I outline two common techniques. These are the mental journey or story technique, and the Roman Rooms technique.
The principles for associating objects to locations are essentially the same as the general association principles. The term location refers to a placeholder. It may be a stop in a journey or an object in a room. There are a few guidelines for selecting locations:
The information you memorize should already be familiar to you, for example through the explore step of the Memletic Process. If, for example, you are associating names of famous painters through history, you should have already explored those painters otherwise the location may not trigger the association.
The mental journey or story technique involves associating information with locations along a specific path. As a result, this technique is good for recalling information in a certain order.
The path may be a journey that is familiar to you. For example, the stops along a particular train route or the towns along a particular drive. You could also invent a path, however this needs some extra mental effort.
Here are the steps:
Here’s an example of how to use this technique. You want to memorize the key points in a sales presentation on your particular product. The key points are:
Let’s go through each step of the process together:
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Delivers Savings and Bedroom, get out of bed |
As you get out of bed, you realize it was full of coins. There are round red impressions all over your body. |
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Improves Quality and Bathroom, taking a shower |
You don’t have an ordinary shower. The water you are using is high quality filtered water. There is a tank of that high quality water right above the shower, with five stars on it. It cost you a fortune! |
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Addresses staff Concerns and Bedroom, getting dressed |
When you open your wardrobe, there are twenty staff people hiding in there. They want to thank you for addressing their concerns. You feel embarrassed as you are only wearing a towel. |
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Reduces wastage and Kitchen, eating breakfast |
As you prepare your breakfast, use not just the food, but also the packaging. Your aim is to eat the packaging so you can reduce wastage. That cardboard tastes horrible though! |
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Take four weeks to install and Bathroom, brushing teeth |
Because you are going to be busy for four weeks, you choose to brush your teeth once to cover the whole four weeks. Twenty days times two minutes a day means you need to brush for forty minutes. Your arm starts to get sore! |
4. Test your associations. Try running through the example and see how well you remember the points.
The Roman Rooms technique is similar to the mental journey or story technique. The difference is the locations are objects in a room. The name comes from the Romans using this technique nearly two thousand years ago.
You can use this technique for both ordered and unordered lists. For an ordered list, follow a specific path around the room. Even for unordered lists, still follow a specific path to ensure you recall each item.
The “room” does not need to be a single room. It may be a series of rooms within a house or building. As I mentioned above in the mental journey technique, the original users of these techniques built palaces and cities to remember the information they wanted. You may choose to use your own house, work building, school, or other familiar buildings. Each room represents a topic, and the items in that room represent individual pieces of information.
You normally choose rooms and buildings you are already familiar with. However, you may choose to create your own. This takes added effort to first create and then fix the locations in your mind, before you start associating your content to those locations. This does have the benefit though that you can create the locations based on the content you wish to memorize. You can make the links more obvious, and you can expand your rooms and buildings without limits!
Another variation on this technique is to create your own learning campus. Create a place in your mind that you go to when doing any form of mental work. Create different buildings and rooms for each topic, and then associate specific information with items in those rooms. You can also create an entranceway with which you associate the elements of Memletic State. The entranceway reminds you of those elements as you begin each learning session.
Use the same steps for Roman Rooms as for the mental journey technique above. Select the room or building, create and fix the locations, associate the content, and test the results.
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The underlying lesson for good association is to use your imagination. It may take you some time to allow your mind to create the creative, illogical and absurd associations that help you remember more. It comes with practice. And there are some good side effects from letting loose your imagination, such as higher creativity and problem solving skills. All this comes from thinking like a child again.