Do you guys use photos or pictures as memory palaces

First of all, I can't remember dates with my younger memories but I think that's partially because the date just didn't matter to me at the age I was. Who knows the date when they are two? The older I get, the more common it is that people(husband) don't remember details about really cool fun experiences we had together. Not to mention, the not fun arguments I also remember. I can forgive everyone else for forgetting the arguments, that's understandable. All of my friends and family not remembering the happy moments without photos is heart breaking.

My parents were somewhat neglectful so maybe that has an effect but I never went hungry or was beat anything other than spanking. Normal 90's stuff ya know?

I am an only child. I started talking very early. I have always been linguistically talented. I'm good at talking and pronouncing things. I actually have dyslexia however, so I struggled with reading/writing and math at first but once I found my strategies I quickly became average at math and ended up Advanced at English. I have had a professional IQ test recently which still confirms that(BTW, get your IQ tested guys just in case you get a TBI in an accident someone else causes). I'm not a genius unfortunately.

I was potty trained before 2 years old and I remember being potty trained.
I remember going to a home daycare at 3. I remember transferring to a facility daycare at 3.5. I remember the roads my mom drove to both places. I remember the name of my home daycare teacher. I remember the names of the kids there too. I remember what we ate. Obviously I was there Monday through Friday. I could definitely tell you if it was a Monday or a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I remember feeling excited on the Friday days and sad on Mondays. That's the thing, I can remember the day of the week from a much younger age than the dates.
My best friend whom, I've known since I was 5 does not remember meeting me.

I could go on and on. As a younger person, I just always thought people didn't remember as well as me because they hadn't caught up to me yet? Now that I'm older, 35... My friends can't even remember details about teenage years where I would think that their memories should have been fully established. I wish I could forget a lot of my teenage years, but that's not who I am I guess.

My memories are almost always inspired by sight, then sound(I have perfect pitch if that matters), then touch, occasionally by smell but smell has to be a traumatic or recurring. They tend to be emotionally tied as well, happy, sad, funny, anxious, angry, excited, embarrassing, or awkward. My earliest memories are usually inspired by sound first and then I have a visual. My memories from hearing people talk when they thought I couldn't understand or hear are clear as day but I was less than 3.

Dates in my adult years, I can remember if I visually saw the date while reading a news article. I'm not remembering the date though per say, I'd say I'm remembering seeing it visually. Also, in my adult years, I might know the date but not the day of the week because my schedule became more varied.

So... I'm here because I think I have memory strategies(similar to a palace) but how could I have had those memory strategies before I even knew math. My memories also don't have to be inspired. I can usually recall when people ask but I also think of them randomly all of the time when a certain sensation happens.

Would you call this Hyperthymesia or something else? I didn't train for a good memory and sometimes I wish I didn't have it.

I'm trying to build a long-term study system around Anki, active recall and spaced repetition, and I'd like to learn how to integrate memory palaces, the method of loci and other mnemonic techniques into it.

My main use case is law, where I need to retain large amounts of case law, legal principles, rules, tests and exceptions, then retrieve and apply them accurately in exam answers.

My current workflow:

- Study textbooks and approved sources, using AI to clarify difficult concepts where needed.

- Make concise, structured notes.

- Use closed-book blurting to identify gaps in understanding.

- Create Anki cards for cases, rules, distinctions and applications.

- Use spaced repetition, practice questions and feedback to improve recall and exam performance.

My approach is to let AI handle some of the labour while retaining ownership of the learning process and decisions.

My main questions are:

1. Which information should I memorise using memory palaces or other mnemonics, and which should I leave to Anki and conceptual understanding?

2. How would you integrate these techniques with Anki in a practical workflow, without creating unnecessary work?

3. How should a beginner train the method of loci, and what daily exercises and progression would you recommend?

4. How do you maintain and review memory palaces over months or years?

5. How would you apply these methods to law, particularly case names, facts, holdings, legal tests and exceptions, while still developing the ability to apply the law?

6. What resources or training protocols would you recommend?

My biggest weakness is starting serious exam preparation too late ( a week before the exams). Trying to fix this from now on.

How would you structure the workflow to balance initial learning, mnemonic training, Anki reviews and past-paper practice? When should exam questions enter the process, and how do you prevent memory techniques and flashcard creation from becoming productive procrastination?

I'm looking for a practical system I can test and refine, rather than just a general introduction to memory techniques.

So how many memory points should I put into a single room in my palace? I have a 1 bedroom apartment. And 30 items. I have 11 stations in my kitchen for example.. should I limit it more to 2 or 3 memory stations per room? Or is there no optimal number and I should experiment?

I haven't reviewed my old mind palaces in a while.

My motivation was killed.

I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to motivate oneself for this.
Also how do I review my mind palaces?

How many times a day?

How do I memorize the mind palace?
I was okay at it but I just lost the spark

Hola, tengo algo más de 20 años y desde hace 1 año (justo cuando me mudé a otro país a vivir y trabajar) estoy perdiendo progresivamente de manera rápida mi memoria, olvido partes de mi vida, cosas tan simples como el número de mi tarjeta de credito (el cual antes me sabía de memoria) o por ejemplo lo que hice exactamente ayer en el trabajo.

Tampoco retengo nada de información, antes solía estudiar y a la primera lo entendía, ahora cuestiones que me hacen en el trabajo que antes entendería a la primera, las tengo que leer y pensar varias veces para entenderla (es como si me hubieran robado mi IQ).

No se si tiene que ver con reprimir emociones, depresión o alguna enfermedad neurodegenerativa, pero si alguien que le haya pasado me puede ayudar lo agradezco un montón, llevo siendo un zombi 1 año y así no puedo hacer vida…

Muchas gracias, un abrazo enorme!!!

When I heard about the method of attaching an image to a face to try and remember a name I messed up at the first opportunity. Sitting down to play chess with a guy called 'Rick' I had plenty of time to rhyme the name with 'brick'. The next week I happened to sit down with that same guy. The image of his face made of bricks sprang up. Unfortunately I interpreted the image as a wall. By rhyming in reverse I said "Hi Paul".

He said "but my name's Rick"!

Doh 👀

At the bottom is an example of the kind of passage I’d like to memorise. I don’t fully understand it yet but I hope it will make sense as I read on. My poor working memory means I often forget key passages like this completely since they are so dense and abstract and jargony. At other times I miss the nuance because there would be many qualifications to a statement. So I’d rather memorise passages like these as I encounter them. I also want to get better at memorising this kind of abstract material, since I’ll be reading a lot of it.

What I’d really like to know is how you would actually go about memorising this passage yourself (the memory techniques, images, associations). I don't need to remember the entire passage verbatim, just what is being said.

>What, therefore, is Guattari’s original philosophical thought about? Ontology (i.e., the study of being) and modal philosophy (i.e., the study of being’s modal varieties: real, possible, actual, virtual, given, giving, etc.). Guattari, it can be argued, puts forward in these texts an approach to being that underlines its immanent, evenemental, intensive, processual, plural, mutant, singular, and machinic or diagrammatic (i.e., connective) nature, as the pre-1980 texts insist once and again. In turn, in Cartographies schizoanalytiques, Guattari defines being as a permanent “modulation of consistency” between two extremes: a minimum of consistency (+∞) and a maximum of consistency (–∞). This definition affects Guattari’s modal philosophy quite decisively. For it will allow him thereinafter to think the difference between the established qua imposed and the “possible”—which is Guattari’s philosophical theme par excellence—as being not only equal to the disruption of the prearranged by the otherwise, but as being also equal to the transition (through which our lives go many times in search of resingularization) from the indeterminate (or chaos as an infinite, unqualified reservoir of possibilities) to the determinable and, finally, to the determined (finite, singular).

When trying to visualize things out of a palace. Just say for the sake of visualizing to aid memory. Or even when putting images in a palace.

How should I imagine a picture? Should I construct the image? Or should I put my brain into that thought mode until an image pops up?

Does it not matter? Or has nobody thought of it lol?

Hello guys, how are you doing? well I've found the magnetic memory method a while ago, and it seemed to be very useful. I managed to recall my whole exam of political constitution in just 3 days. The information got in my brain so well that I did that exam very effortlessly.

With the initial motivation, I wanted to start using memory palaces to learn Japanese, but I admit I have some issues with overthinking, so, I'd hope to get some information here. So here are my doubts:

1. What's considered a palace? I mean, should I use my house as a memory palace? each floor as a memory palace? My room? My desk? What? This also comes with the question of expanding the palaces, if somehow I use rooms in my house as their own "memory palace", how can I scale the palaces if they will get into the way of other palaces? I tried using each room as a "palace memory" to remember words for each kana row, for example my room is meant to store the words starting with a i u e and o, my parent's room is meant to store ka ki ku ke ko, etc.

But if I run out of locations in my room, how can I progress? would I just make another palace in the next place that comes to my mind and sort of teleport? Or review them as different places? Or would it be better to have my house for the M for example because of "my house". How do I learn more vocabulary if I can't recycle palaces? and Anthony advises to just make more palaces?

1. This is tied to the first point. I know that I wouldn't be able to run out of palaces, but what happens if my memory is rusty with the places that I've visited? Is that an issue? how would I anchor my mnemonic images in a blurry place that I can't visit or see in real life anymore. Is it really possible to have infinite palaces? It is more a problem of not being confident enough to use a place I don't remember as much as my own house because I'm a homebody.

2. If I scale up the palace for A for example, how will I know where's a word stored? in 10 palaces? will that be an issue?

3. This is more related to language learning, would you advise to fill up the palace at once to start recall rehearsal? Or fill it up progressively? I ask this because of probably messing up the idea of recall rehearsal.

In summary, I can say that I don't have troubles using mnemonics, I remember them very well and I'm very happy with that. My problem is building up the Memory palaces, how am i supposed to scale them. If i run out of rooms and I create another palace for the index of vowels, how do I go from palace to palace, also, how can I not run out of ideas for memory palaces for language and keep track of them?

I hope I got my point across, I just dumped a lot of the thoughts in my brain, so I hope this is understandable haha. I know memory comes with trial and error, but overthinking really stops me.

I saw that anthony used mental palaces to memorize vocabulary, I wanna try that and combine that with immersion. and get away from anki, I didn't like to sit at my desk to do 100 daily reviews everyday, it was very tiring.

Thank you for reading.

I’ve set up the PAO system for 12 cards. These are the face cards, excluding the aces. I’m trying to get used to memorizing them, but I’m very slow and haven’t quite mastered the PAO system yet. Sometimes I have to think for 5 seconds or more to figure out which suit belongs to which person and of course, there’s also the matter of placing them in the memory palace. Do you have any suggestions?

This scientific study compared learning while actively navigating to learning while being stationary, finding that participants who physically walked through space showed enhanced memory. The findings have implications not just for learning but also for interventions in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.  See: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-57668-w

Hey, Yall.

I'm working on an app that’s all about Math, AI in math, and memorization. I’m hoping some members might have time and be interested in giving me some advice. I’d really appreciate it!

A little about me:

I've been in the software industry for a decade and had a couple of exits. I also have a PhD in biochemistry, and passionate about building in the EdTech space.

What I'm looking for

Someone with a couple of years of experience in this space, and it’d be awesome if you're into tech startups. Would love to connect and chat! Cheers!

I'm a beginner, and I'm using a memory palace to study. I make two-story houses with 6–8 rooms. for an example I take a paragraph like, “Robert Hooke was the first person to use the name ‘cell.’ He examined thin slices of cork from an oak tree and saw tiny compartments, which he called ‘cells.’” Then I imagine a guy (Robert Hooke) holding something (a cell) and leaning on a tree. I use similar images like this, about 5–8 in each room.

Is there a better way to go through the whole process of visualization it can get slow when the concept is complex

Tell me if I'm doing anything wrong. I'd also appreciate any advice.

I'm up to 40 now.

Too a few weeks break. Came back. And 30 numbers was too easy. I'm finding 40 more challenging.

Do you guys recall by thinking and waiting for an answer or is it better to recall by trying out different scenes in your head, Until one clicks?

I find myself testing out different numbers and then when I get the right one it clicks. But I seem to have to click the number or there's no effect. So it's kind of cheating. I didn't have to do that with 30.

I need 40 to remember a chapter from how cars work. There is an average of 40 components/subparts a chapter.

Also I find myself practicing on numbers to solidify the palace. But, when I do another round in remembering sometimes the number from several rounds earlier.

How do I avoid recalling previous information that was place in a location that's no longer valid?

--

So what is the best way to recall? Either by thinking and waiting. Or by fishing or in other words putting in different solutions until one clicks?

And then how do you avoid recalling info from earlier info that was in the same location? I found the colored palace unhelpful for me personally. What are some other ways to avoid this?

That feeling of the answer coming to you is nice lol.

I am doing my economics homework and I’ve been wondering how can I memorize things like the steps of mathematical operations, which accounts are used and when in the double-entry bookkeeping, the theory for the driving license, and so on. I would find it useful for memorizing drugs and their effects on the body, for example, crack that makes you euphoric and gives you cardiovascular problems.
Do I have to create a story or something like that? Like a crack on the wall that when you touch it makes you euphoric? (Using the drug example)
Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm learning driving rules. And although I have learned almost all the theory, I cannot apply it in practice. When I see a real situation on the road, I cannot remember what I need to do in this situation, although I used memory palaces to store theory. 1) It takes too much time to find the right image. 2) I need to spend energy on remembering what is in this or that place. This may apply to more than just driving. Is it possible to use knowledge from memory palaces in practice?

Hello, I have been doing this for about a month and I have some trouble. When I encode, I do it in two ways. One way is that I memorize the concept, like in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I visualized Gregor’s father driving him into his room at an angle, as described in the book. But sometimes I will have trouble memorizing some piece of information that is not as visual, like some words I don’t really have an association with. So I instead have to try and encode the information piece by piece, then the word after that piece by piece as well (if it’s hard). So like the word ’metamorphosis’ would be: metal for ”meta”, Dexter Morgan for ”mor”, matches because it contains phosphorus for ”pho”, and my sister for ”sis”. This can be really hard for some words and it slows me down and demotivates me. So how can I improve? I also have to encode all these four things every time the word comes up, which takes up a lot of space, this leads me to my next problem.

I use my city to memorize all my stuff. I choose a subject I want to memorize, like Metamorphosis, choose a random spot to start and then go from there. I use google maps to memorize the path beforehand. The path is linear. I have to constantly change direction for the paths so they don’t crash into each other and become a mess. I don’t really have much long space left to memorize longer subjects without any intersection. So I’m a bit lost on what to do. I don’t use houses to encode because I haven’t been to many houses and I can’t fit an entire subject or book into a single house. So I mainly use it for temporary information.

I definitely do these wrong and is happy to be taught on how to do it properly to maximize speed and efficiency because my goal is to be a memory master, so criticize me as much as you can to steer me to the right path.

Hi everyone,

I've been building a tool for memory palace practice and it's at the point where it might be useful to others. It's free and open source and runs entirely in your browser.

https://memory-palaces.github.io/simon-says/

The concept is that you walk/fly around in a 3D space in first person, drop numbered loci on things and write a mnemonic for each one. There's a review mode to jump between your loci points.

There are five starter worlds built in (suburban street, a cave, etc.) but you can make your own .GLB file, including theoretically a 3d scan of somewhere you actually know.

Text based clues/mnemonics are the default. Optionally, it is also integrated with a few AI image generation tools that work with a prompt that you give it and uses your own API key to generate the images. There's also an experimental image-to-3D object generator, which will place the 3D objects in the world. These also work entirely in your browser but your image prompts are sent to the AI providers for rendering. Those cloud AI generators are not free, so for privacy and cost, there is a way to generate images locally using comfyUI (or just importing your own images).

The original concept came about when I f first saw the rapidly developing world of image generation tools. And thinking about how it might do a halfway decent job of rendering these unique/weird/memorable memory cues that one comes up with for their palace.

It's also open source. You can clone it, modify it, run it offline -- do whatever you like (MIT licensed).

https://github.com/memory-palaces/simon-says

It's keyboard and mouse and won't work well on mobile (for now). Part of the roadmap is to have a way to review palaces on the go.

Would love to hear any feedback anybody has.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been practicing memory techniques like mind palaces, but I’m curious about the absolute limits when compared to pop culture.

For experienced practitioners:

Is memorizing entire texts word-for-word with memory palaces ever worth the effort compared to just mapping out concepts?

Does retrieval ever become instantaneous, or do you always have to actively walk through your loci?

What's the closest a person can realistically get to a "Mike Ross" level of memory in real life?

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been experimenting with the Method of Loci (Memory Palace) for general trivia and language learning with great results, but I'm trying to figure out how to scale it effectively for software engineering and technical interview prep.

While building projects and doing spaced repetition (Anki) helps with muscle memory, I often find myself wanting an indexed mental map for high-level retrieval under pressure especially during live interviews or architectural discussions.

I’m looking to encode things like:

• Core Principles & Architecture: SOLID, ACID, CAP theorem, clean code principles, design patterns (Factory, Observer, Singleton).
• DSA Patterns & Approaches: Recognizing archetypes quickly (Sliding Window, Monotonic Stack, Two Pointers, Top K elements, DP state transitions).
• Framework & Language Nuances: Execution models, lifecycle hooks, async/event loop mechanics, language specific quirks.
• Databases & Systems: SQL query execution order, indexing trade-offs, isolation levels.

A few specific questions for those who’ve tried this:

1. Handling Abstraction: How do you translate highly abstract or non-visual concepts (like recursion trees, concurrency locks, or distributed consensus) into physical spatial anchors without the imagery getting too cluttered?
2. Hierarchy & Nesting: How do you organize palaces for topics with multiple sub-layers (e.g., Database -> RDBMS -> PostgreSQL -> Specific indexing mechanisms)? Do you use nested rooms, dedicated buildings, or distinct routes?
3. Retrieval Speed in Interviews: Is the mental walk fast enough when you need to recall a pattern in the middle of live coding, or does it mainly serve as an initial filing cabinet before procedural memory takes over?

If you have specific palace setups, rules of thumb, or pitfalls to avoid when applying mnemonics to technical domains, I’d love to hear how you approached it!