The memory palace technique: a step-by-step guide

The method memory champions use to remember hundreds of items: turn a place you know into a mental storage system. It takes ten minutes to learn.

The memory palace is a technique with a history stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome, and it’s still the main method used by memory champions today. It’s also called the method of loci (“loci” is Latin for places). The idea is simple: you already have a superb memory for places. The memory palace borrows that strength to remember things that aren’t places at all.

Why it works

Try it now: picture your home. You can walk from the front door to the kitchen in your mind without effort, and you know exactly what’s where. Your spatial memory is strong, detailed and ordered. Abstract lists, on the other hand, are hard to hold. The memory palace turns a list into a walk, and turns each item into a picture, two things memory handles far better than words.

Step 1: Choose your palace

Pick a place you know very well: your home, your route to work, your school. Start small, with one floor of your home.

Step 2: Plan a route with stops

Walk through it in your mind in a fixed order and pick distinct stops: the front door, the shoe rack, the sofa, the TV, the kitchen sink, the fridge. Always walk the same direction. Ten stops is plenty to start.

Step 3: Turn each item into a vivid image

Make each thing you want to remember into a picture that’s big, strange, funny or disgusting. Boring images fade; ridiculous ones stick.

Step 4: Place each image at a stop

Put the first image at the first stop, the second at the second, and so on. Make it interact with the spot: don’t just put it there, make something happen.

Step 5: Walk the route to recall

To remember, just take the walk again. Each stop brings back its image, in order.

A worked example: a shopping list

Say you need eggs, bread, bananas, soap and coffee:

• Front door: a giant egg is jammed in the doorway; you have to squeeze past it.
• Shoe rack: your shoes are stuffed with warm, crusty bread.
• Sofa: a family of bananas is watching TV, eating popcorn.
• TV: bubbles pour out of the screen; someone is showering in it with soap.
• Kitchen sink: the tap runs hot coffee, and the smell fills the room.

Now close your eyes and walk it. Most people remember all five, in order, the first time.

Tips for better palaces

Use distinct stops. Two similar chairs get confused; a chair and a fish tank don’t. Add movement, sound and smell. Reuse palaces once old images have faded, and build more as you need them. Review a list you want to keep by walking the route a day later, then a week later.

Try it on a game

The Words game is a great test: as each word appears, drop it into your palace. It turns “have I seen this?” into “is it somewhere on my route?”.

Build a palace of your own, for fun

On Daily Recall, every game you play earns Sparks to build your own Memory Palace, with rooms for each game. It’s not a memory technique itself, just a nod to one of the oldest ideas in memory. For the full story of memory palaces, Moonwalking with Einstein is the best read; it tops our list of the best memory books.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading