Wiping Your Memory Palace, Sealing Important Data Permanently & Layering For Incredible Recall

First off I would like to take a minute to thank all of you for your continued support in my work. Last month alone this blog maxed out at around 1.2 million views and my articles are about to be syndicated in some pretty amazing places. Thank you so much, every one of you.

The following article has been one that people seem to have decided upon themselves. I’ve received droves of emails asking one basic question, and a very good one at that. Here is an sample of one such email:

The memories are lasting longer than I thought (just today after going through my house in the real world, I looked at one of my “pegs” and surprisingly enough, the image flashed into my mind, and it was the weirdest one of them. No surprise there though). So that got me thinking, are the memories planted to pegs permanent, or is there some way to clear them, other than stacking newer memories on top?

That said is there a way to erase something from your ‘mental hard drive’ (say something like the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun, for example )? If there is one you should definitely include it in an upcoming post. After all, what use is there to have a memory palace if it can’t be cleaned?

I meant to write this article much sooner however things have been quite busy over here in my world. This topic actually calls to mind a few different subjects that I will try to cover in the following post. If you have not read my first two articles on the Memory or Mind Palace this would be a perfect time to get caught up, they will be referenced lightly in the following. You can find those here:

The Memory Palace – From Sherlock Holmes to Designing Your Own…

Supercharging Your Memory Palace, New Palaces & Connecting the Labyrinths Within…

So without further adieu let us begin.

“I’m your landlady, not your housekeeper.” -Mrs. Hudson

Recycling your Memory Palace

[image error]Ahhh yes this seems to be on the minds of many. There are quite a few reasons that one will run into this problem. Some people run directly into this issue the very second time they decide to use their Palace for the second time. As we learned in creating our Palaces we are to choose very vivid and often nonsensical images to attach to the pegs in our Palaces or Routes. (remember a mind palace can be a home you know by heart or any path or ride that you know without fail)

Creating images in this way as most of you have realized cause you to see them with little to no effort as you take you trips back into your Palace. In fact this is the very point, without this we would not be remembering anything at all. However when it comes time to start committing new lists or data into our palaces those old images popping up can become quite perplexing or problematic. If you are half as O.C. as I am this will indeed drive you mad at first. Fear not as this is very common and can be overcome rather easily. Also to note is that some individuals never have this issue at all, when they need to reuse their Palace it is always brand new and untouched. Either way when you learn to clean and remove items you will be no different than them. It will become second nature to most all of you. The rest it should become rather first nature…

A common pitfall most of us fall into is the notion that the solution to this problem is to just keep expanding your Palace. In my previous article “Supercharging Your Memory Palace…” I outline many ways to expand your palaces and to connect them all together. While this is a great method for  making your Memory Palace much larger and more efficient. It does not and is not a solution for storing new lists and data when you could easily get rid of the current imagery/memories you no longer need in a main room to reuse the room again and again. This is a far more efficient system and I will get back to the benefits of having the larger extended Palaces a bit later when we get to the section on ‘Sealing Important Data Permanently.’

Cleaning/Wiping Your Memory Palace  (The sane way & the crazy way)

Just yesterday I was mentally roaming through the labyrinths of my own Memory Palace and finding places [image error]that were in fact so old and neglected they were just scary. I thought I was in a scene from the film “The Ring.” No one wants that I am sure. If you do then that is a different issue entirely. Back to the subject at hand, cleaning or wiping your Palace. I’ve read many books and articles on this subject as well I’ve spoken in great length to many of the forerunners in this arena. While many of the methods I’ve heard explained sounded interesting enough they just never quite worked in a practical way for myself. I find Occam’s razor to be true: ”other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.”

This is not unlike our dear friend Sherlock Holmes as he once said “Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.” I have always lived by these words and I strongly feel my success with the Palace has mainly been a result of sheer practice and these two principals. So let’s go on to how to get your Palace in order.

1. Grab A Broom (the sane way, not to be underestimated)

I wish I could say I was joking yet in the same way that the Method Of Loci is in and of itself a visual experience one of the most POWERFUL ways to clean the areas you wish to reuse is to do exactly what you would do to your real place of dwelling. That’s right it’s spring cleaning time. Before you push the tiny ‘X’ at the top right of your screen just wait a minute. Everyone wants to have the super memory so you might want to stick around. Besides this kind of cleaning is infinitely more fun that any real sense of the world. Remember we get to make everything up. You even toss things out the window if you so desire.

[image error]In this scenario you quite frankly close your eyes choose your broom or more likely a high powered vacuume. These are exceptionally useful when dealing with that Giraffe you can’t quite remember why you ever needed to remember in the first place. Sweeping it away with the broom isn’t nearly as holographic an experience as what you would use the vacuume for, as you might imagine. Keep in mind the cleaning process should be as visual as the process of pegging items in the first place.

On a fun note it is important to remember that since this is YOUR Palace and it is YOUR imagination then YOU get to decide your cleaning atmosphere. This can actually be a very powerful step. Do you listen to music when you clean your real house? Well whatever the case may in fact be do this and more in cleaning out your Memory Palace. As in-need-of-therapy an idea this sounds, the experts have become experts for not being afraid to take the Memory Palace as far down the rabbit hole as they possibly can. This will not make things harder it will make them far more useful and thrilling as you begin to realize the implications of what is to come next. Every time you successfully wipe out data you no longer need you are instantly free to memorize an entirely new amount of information.  How efficient do you want your Palace to be? If your answer is extremely, keep reading. Caution this next bit may sound a bit strange but just stay with me, I’ve done this to achieve great ends I promise.

2. Destruction and Chaos (yes the less sane one however far more powerful to some)

Slow down we are not destroying anything here. I just saw in my mind the excitement on far too many faces. [image error]Well OK we are destroying some things in what can be some very imaginative kinds of ways. Let the smiles come back, a little. I can’t say enough that since the Method Of Loci otherwise known as the Memory Palace or Mind Palace is founded upon a visual process or walk that the reverse will be the same, a visual process. Just as well due to the fact that the more nonsensical and ridiculous the images you used to create your pegs just the same would likely apply to the removing of them. The following system is one I have found to be by far the most powerful for myself as well as many others. The possibilities become endless yet I will outline some scenarios for you to formulate your own. (this can also serve as therapeutic to some, just saying)

Armed with weapon of choice walk through your Palace and literally destroy unwanted images/memorized items. I hate to say it but this is extremely effective. I am not condoning violence, if you have stores faces in your Palace, do not remove them in this manner. Nevertheless this can make for a clean sweep of a room or path in your Palace. Make sure to seriously envision the memorized images shattering into nothingness. Note: do NOT destroy the stationary items in your Palace that you use to peg items to. You need to keep these. You are only removing the images you have attached/pegged to them. This would seem obvious yet I feel the need to just put that out there.
Take a more fantastical approach! Sherlockians, Whovians as well as anyone with an over active imagination will excel at this technique. Have you ever fancied magical powers? Yes that would be you too Potterheads. Maybe you’ve wanted the power to make things vanish or disintegrate  like a favorite science fiction movie. Whatever the case may be this is your time to shine. This is by far the method I employ the most and it seriously is extremely effective in getting rid of those no longer needed associations. As a child I often saw myself with a Ghostbusters backpack on and would phaser things out of existence. Remember to never cross beams. (sorry 1980s reference) Whatever the case may be enter your Palace equipped, hit the music if you wish and get rid of those unwanted images once and for all. I do not care how old you are people that are memorizing incredible mathematical equations with the Memory Palace are doing similar things.

Sealing Important Data Permanently – (back to the labyrinths within)

[image error]The need to empty certain rooms and pathways while retaining the ability to seal data you want to access permanently must be equally acquired to have a supercharged Memory Palace. I have the entire contents of books stored away at this point and I certainly do not wish to accidentally wipe these out. Just as well there are a plethora of examples of things you will store into your Palace that you never want to erase. We will be covering that very issue here.

In my second article on the Method Of Loci or Memory Palace entitled “Supercharging Your Memory Palace, New Palaces & Connecting the Labyrinths Within…” you learn many ways to extend your main Memory Palace by adding extensions such as additional rooms, paths to and from places you know by heart as well as how to connect them all together is some rather fun and interesting ways. This ability really starts to shine when you want to separate vital information you want to store permanently from things you will need for short term purposes.

Designation and the right kind of Layering
1. Designation

This one generally speaks for itself however I feel it is important to always be as clear as possible regarding such topics. While the right kind of layering that we will get to in a moment can often be very useful designation is by far the most used technique by myself and others. This is something we all do in some form or anther already in our everyday lives. We love to designate places and rooms for specific things or themes. In the world of the Method of Loci and the Memory Palace designating certain rooms, paths and extensions is a sure fire way to commit endless amounts of data permanently whilst leaving all other areas for cleaning and reusing.

Just as well you can purposely create new paths and extensions on the spot just before having to commit a permanent amount of data away. Again you do this by remapping out a known place or route in your mind as per the previous articles. Let’s move ahead to some examples.

Memory Lane

One of the extensions I added to my Memory Palace early on was the woods behind my house. For years I had explored these woods and made pathways and forts along the way. I never knew how important these would one day become. Years later in school when I wanted to commit to memory the names of all the Sherlock Holmes stories that Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote I went back in my mind and mapped out these old pathways from my childhood memory and made every thing that stands out along the way a memory peg. Then it was an easy matter to later walk back through these paths in my mind and attach the faces of all the Presidents. I still can’t forget them. As you can see here mapping out old routes and places from your memories is one of the most powerful ways to extend your Palace and store things you never want to forget.

Locking the Doors


This is quite frankly designating chosen rooms in your Palace to use for only one purpose, for only one set of data to keep. There are ways of using such rooms and even the paths referred to above to layer and store two or more sets of permanent data yet this can get a bit tricky and will be covered in the following section.  In this technique of locking the doors you will set aside certain rooms within your palace for a particular purpose. Generally you will create as many memory pegs as possible in these rooms. This is because I am assuming when designating one room to store something permanently you will want to be able to use the room to it’s maximum capacity.
To get the most capacity out of a room you are going to seal away and lock for one purpose, the best thing you can do is to create as many memory pegs as possible. That is to say, turn every stationary object in the entire room into a peg. The more things you mentally note and declare as pegs the more data you will be able to store in the room. Plain and simply this is the entire system here. I often like to see myself locking a door after I have successfully stored away the data I wish to keep in that room. I have heard of people making up imaginary keys to associate with those rooms however I’ve always felt to be an extra thing to memorize and not worth my time. Remember Occam’s Razor.

Layering for maximum capacity

 

Layering can be a very useful tool as well as a very misunderstood one. There are many ways to use [image error] layering to maximize the storage ability of your Memory Palace yet this can often become confusing and thrown to the wayside. I will outline what works best for me.

The best way I can explain layering is the adding a second set of permanent data you wish to store on top of a pre-existing set of a data that is permanently filed away. I find free association to be one of the most powerful ways to do this and is very similar to how we store information visually to our pegs in the first place. I will outline a couple examples of this for you to ponder and come up with your own ideas.



Let’s use a room I used to peg every US President then locked away for example.  Well let’s say that I later wanted to memorize all the names of the Sherlock Holmes stories of the Canon. This is actually a true story. By layering all I had to do was go back into that room and form free associations between titles of Holmes stories and former US Presidents. For example you could attach Bill Clinton to A Scandal in Bohemia by finding some way to relate the two in your mind. This actually wouldn’t be very hard if you think about it, i.e. ‘scandal.’ You would want again to make this a visual experience and would then be storing away two sets of permanent data in one room in this way. Pretty cool really.
Likewise let us say that using Phonetic Encoding I have converted every area code in my area to a word and have stored each word onto a stationary peg in a room set aside for this alone. Later if I wanted to reuse this room for another set of data to be committed forever all I would have to do is go back into this room and find ways to attach each piece of new data/imagery to the words that are already attached to the pegs from earlier, not the pegs themselves. This style of layering can be extremely powerful


One last note on layering, it is very possible to link images together with free association by making stories out of them to go on to store multiple layers of permanent data in one room alone. I will leave you with this to think about. I think we have covered quite a lot for now. I look forward to your feedback as always!

My next article “Phonetic Encoding and The Memory Palace” will utilize this and all the methods taught before to take you to the next level in becoming a true memory master. Stay tuned.

-Joe Riggs

By the way, something you might be interesting in:

Friends: When @spiritangel04 reaches 1,895 followers I will be randomly choosing 5 of them to receive my new book free. The game is afoot…

— Joe Riggs (@WorldOfJoeRiggs) June 24, 2012