Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

by Jim Kwik

I’ve been teaching business executives, students, actors, and others a time-honored technique for making their presentations without notes. And when I say time-honored, I mean this quite literally. The method I teach and that I’m going to share with you now is a version of the loci method, something that has been around for more than 2,500 years. The legend behind the loci method is that the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos survived a building collapse that killed all others in attendance. When officials tried to identify the victims, Simonides was the only person who could help them, because he remembered who the victims were based on where they were standing at the time of the collapse. In the process, Simonides created a memory tool that is as effective today as it was in 500 B.C. Loci is the plural version of the word locus, which means “a particular point or place.” The loci method, then, is a memory tool that aligns the things you want to remember with specific points or places that you know well.