One of the oldest memory aids is the method of “loci,” or locations—sometimes called the “journey technique.” According to memory experts, this technique dates back at least to the Greek orators, who used this approach to remember their compelling speeches. Supposedly, Simonides of Ceos, born in the 6th century B.C., was the first to develop memory training, and he created the “loci technique” of mentally placing bits of information at different locations so the orators would find it easier to remember them.[1] These orators may have also called on the help of the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, the source of the word mnemonic.[2] The Romans further adapted this system into the Roman Room system.
But the significance of place in memories can go back much further. One can even imagine preliterate storytellers, with their longstanding oral tradition, using such a method to remember their long stories about gods, animals, ancestors, and how things came to be. In fact, they often connected stories to all aspects of nature—from stories about the sun, moon, and stars to nearby trees, plants, rocks, and animals.
Using the Loci Method is a little like that, because you are imagining different words, objects, or ideas associated with different locations. They could be places from your favorite walk in the park, from a walk around your house or office, or any location you choose.
The method is especially useful when you want to learn a series of items—from words and names to topics to cover in a speech—in a particular order. Commonly, the method is used to go from place to place in a particular order. But as you get better at using this method, there’s no reason why you can’t zero in on a particular location to trigger your memory for what’s there—or even go backwards on the route in reverse order.
The method is also ideally suited to be used for a location you already know well, such as your home or office. As you walk through the location, you pick out places that you want to associate with a particular item. For instance, in your home, you might start by pulling your car in the driveway, then go along the path to your front door, open that and step into the hallway, after which you go into the living room, kitchen, and den and go up the stairs to the master bedroom, a smaller bedroom, and finally to the hall closet. You can select these places either in your imagination or by actually taking a walk to see them. Just pick out places that form a logical path as you walk around from start to finish.
If you are using your office, some stops along the way might be the building lobby, the elevator to your floor, the hallway outside your office, the reception desk, the corridor from the reception area to the offices, the kitchen or snack area, your boss’s office, your own office, and a co-worker’s office. Likewise, if you are into nature walks, pick out distinctive spots along a trail you know well. Or pick out a series of stops on a walk around a local park or city street.
Then, to associate a particular word, item, topic, concept, or idea with each location, make up an image to represent it; finally, individually associate each word, item, topic, concept, or idea with that location. Make the image visually exciting to help you better remember the image. The more dramatic, even bizarre and wacky the scene, the better you can remember it.[3]
After you come up with the associations, write them down to help affix them in your memory. After that, you can go back and review your associations with these items and locations to help implant them in your memory.
Here’s an example of how you might use the Loci Method to remember a grocery list using your home. Say your grocery list includes 10 items: hamburgers, dog food, apples, bananas, orange juice, ice cream, tomato soup, milk, soap, and plastic wrap. You might turn this into a series of associations such as this:
As you pull your car in the driveway you see a man jumping up and down eating a hamburger.
When you go along the path, you see a big dog coming to lick your face, because he is hungry for some dog food.
At your front door, you see a long snake hanging from the top of the door with a big apple in his mouth.
In the hallway, you see two children fencing with bananas.
When you walk into the living room, you see painters with buckets of orange juice who are painting the room orange.
In the kitchen, you see a huge snowman made of vanilla ice cream instead of snow.
In the den you see a body lying under the desk, like in a Hollywood film, and you see that he has tomato soup on his shirt in place of blood.
In the master bedroom, you encounter a beautiful nymph who is sitting in a bathtub of milk.
In a smaller bedroom, you see a big bar of soap that suddenly expands and expands and turns into a cloud of soap bubbles.
Finally, in the hall closet, you discover a mummy enclosed in plastic wrap.
So now that you’ve got the idea, here’s a list of places in the office and a list of things to take with you to a meeting. See what kinds of images you can come up with for them:
The building lobby—briefcase
The elevator to your floor—PowerPoint presentation
The reception desk—notebook
The corridor from the reception area to the offices—camera
The kitchen or snack area—coat
Your boss’s office—screen
Your own office—note cards
A coworker’s office—books
Similarly, you can use this method to cover different topics, such as when you have to come up with trigger words for outlining or mapping out a talk or for listing the things you need to remember for a test on a subject.
You can increase or decrease the number of stops along the way depending on your number of items. However, if the number of locations becomes too great, you may have trouble remembering all of them. If so, try combining two or three items together at one location. For example, in the shopping list example, you might put the hamburger, dog food, and apple in the driveway, and imagine a scene that connects all three items, such as: As you come into the driveway, you see the man who is jumping up and down eating a hamburger suddenly get down on all fours, turn into a dog, and start eating dog food out of a bowl. Then, a little kid from next door rolls an apple at the bowl, knocking it over, whereupon the dog starts barking.
You can use the same location more than once if there is a time lapse between the different items you want to remember, particularly if you are going to use a set of completely different items. With a sufficient time delay, your memory from one list generally won’t proactively interfere with your memory of the next set of items. But otherwise, it might be better to use a different setting for a different list to reduce the chances of mixing up different items associated with the same location.
Researchers have found that this technique can be effective even when there is a delay in calling up the items associated with each location. For example, Margaret Matlin reports that in one classic experiment, participants who used the Loci Method to remember a list of words were able to remember about twice as many words five weeks later as others who were simply told to remember the words.[4]
The chart below will help you practice using these methods. You can walk through the location in reality or in your mind. Use as many locations as you have items, but if you have more than 12 or 16 items, put 2 or more items at each location. Write down each stop on the journey, then write down a brief reference to the association you are making.
LOCATION | ||
|---|---|---|
Location | Item to Remember | Association |
While the Loci or Journey Method is based on going on a journey through a familiar place, the “Roman Room” system involves creating a room in a house in your imagination; then you fill it with any pieces of furniture or objects that you want. But keep the room orderly, so you can more easily move around it to mentally move from object to object. Thereafter, those items become the link to which you attach an image of what you want to remember. As in the loci method, create as dramatic an image as possible for this.
In Use Your Perfect Memory, Tony Buzan, an expert on brain and learning techniques, gives an example for how a Roman might have used this method. In his imagination, the Roman might have envisioned a room with two large pillars at the front door, a carved lion’s head on the doorknob, and a Greek statue in the hallway. Next to the statue, he might have imagined a flowering plant.[5]
Then, as Buzan describes, the Roman might have imagined an ancient Roman version of a to-do list in this way.[6] Say his to-do list included buying a pair of sandals, getting his sword sharpened, finding a new servant, taking care of his grapevine, and polishing his helmet. He might begin the memory process this way:
At the first stop, the left-hand pillar, he would imagine hundreds of hanging sandals, and not only see the glistening leather but smell it and touch it.
At the second stop, the right-hand pillar, he would see himself sharpening his sword, and additionally experience the sound of the scraping and feel the blade becoming sharper and sharper.
At the third stop, the carved lion’s head doorknob, he would imagine the servant he plans to buy riding the lion.
At the fourth stop, the Greek statue, he would imagine the grapes of his grapevine encircling the statue, and he might not only see the grapes but experience tasting them.
And at the fifth stop, the flowering plant next to the statue, he might see his helmet hanging from a flower.
Well, you get the idea. You use your imagination to create a lot of vivid and sensual images—and the room itself is entirely imaginary, unlike the familiar location you use in the Loci Method, so you can let your imagination run wild. As Buzon describes it:
The delight of this system is that the room is entirely imaginary, so you can have in it every wonderful item that you wish; things that please all your senses, items of furniture and objects of art you have always desired to possess in real life, and similarly foods and decorations that especially appeal to you . . .
The Roman Room system eliminates all boundaries on your imagination and allows you to remember as many items as you wish.[7]
In fact, Buzon suggests that when you use this system, as you imagine yourself possessing certain objects in your imaginary room, both your memory and your creative intelligence will work subconsciously so you may eventually acquire those objects[8]—such as if you envision a car you always wanted in the center of the room.
You can use the following chart to write down the items you would like to have in your memory room; then draw your room with these objects in it. Put as many objects in the room as you like—though initially you might start with about 7 to 10 objects; later you can always add more objects.
As the number of items in your memory room expands, you can write these down and draw your room on a larger sheet of paper.
Once you have selected the items for your room and drawn them on a sheet of paper, take a walk around your room several times in your memory. As you do, carefully encode into your memory the exact order and position of all the items in your room. Use all of your senses as you do this, so you not only visualize what’s there, but listen to what’s in the room, smell any smells, touch the items, and taste anything that’s there to taste, like the luscious box of candy on the brown oak table by the sofa with green velvet cushions. This process will help to implant this room in your memory.
Then, with this room clearly in mind, place objects you want to remember along the path you take through your room and create vivid associations.
Again, you can use a single image for each object in the room—or as the number of items to remember expands, place two or three items at each location. Also, allow a little time to go by before you use this room to remember another list of items, so you don’t get the associations confused. Or, create a second Roman Room to remember different items.
As previously noted, these methods are ideal when you want to remember lists of anything—from shopping lists to to-do lists to topics in a speech. But what if you have several lists to remember? How often can you use the same location?
One way to apply these methods is to vary which method you use for different lists to reduce the chances that you will have imagery from a past list intruding on a new one. For instance, use the Loci Method for a shopping list and use the Roman Room method for a list of topics to cover in a presentation.
Generally, after a few days, you can use a familiar location or the room for remembering another set of information. Or if you have multiple lists of items to remember in one day, you might use a different location or create another room to use for additional lists of items.
Find out what works for you. If you don’t get any proactive interference from a past list when you memorize your new lists, it’s fine to keep using the same location or room. But if you do have interference, change locations and rooms so you make new associations between them and the items you want to remember.
Additionally, you might choose a location or room that is particularly applicable to the information you want to remember. For example, if you want to remember a personal to-do list, use the living room; for the names of clients at work, use your office; for the names of hit songs and movies, use a recreation room; and so on. Fit the location to what you want to remember and that’ll help you remember better, through even stronger associations, because of the power of context.
Finally, you must practice to firmly fix the locations or places in the room in your imagination, so you can easily walk through each place and remember what is there in order. Once the stops on the journey are firmly fixed in your imagination, you can easily locate items out of order. You just see the place, call up your association with it, and you will remember the item on your list that you have placed there.