Making Memory Palaces: Keep It Simple!

With my first World Memory Championship coming up in December, I found myself thinking a familiar thought: I need more memory palaces. Having competed in smaller events and applied palaces only sporadically to learning, I’ve been able to scrape by with a library of about 850 loci (ie. by WMC standards, barely any). In addition to needing them for the WMC, more palaces would help me in a host of different ways: fewer ghost images, more training variety, more room for learning applications, etc. There’s just one problem: I’ve always hated making new palaces, and they often don’t stick very well. So here’s what I’ve been doing differently.

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Coursera Interview with Nelson Dellis

Today I stumbled across this new Coursera interview with 4-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis. Nelson's got a lot of interviews out there, but I like this one especially for a few reasons. He hits your run-of-the-mill "How do I remember names?"-type questions while still tackling tougher subjects like "How can I apply mnemonics to learning concepts?". In answering the usual gamut of mnemonics questions, he branches into discussions about his "brain health" mission and how thinking like a kid can improve your memory. Whether you're an experienced mnemonist or have never even heard the phrase "memory palace," I'm betting you can find a few pearls here. Check it out if you've got a spare 20 minutes. And if you've got an extra 10 take the Extreme Memory Challenge! By the way, who knew Nelson spoke French?