go into like creating these locations or palaces because I think that's very critical for for
everyone really frozen memory athletes we have to create a lot when we have to when we train
for these competitions because you know we we can't just use one palace or one location set
to memorise you know ten decks of cards we need to create a lot more than that so it makes sense for
other memory athletes to create more locations but for students that's where I think a lot of them
get discouraged because like aha do I do I have to have a thousand locations or memory palaces to
memorize you know say just my body or my and Adam and Adam how do you say okay anatomical structure
do I have to have all these palaces so what would you guys answer to a question like that you know
do I really have to spend hours and hours creating these locations or can I just settle on you know
once that location and then reuse those locations where we get take to that so we if it's something
that we want to commit long-term we generally do not reuse locations and that's just because kind
of back to the concept we were talking about we want that place to retain that feeling you know
those this concept that we wanted to remember I said we don't overwrite in response to you know
oh do I have to sit down and think of hundreds and thousands of palaces we usually say it's
easier than you think it is because there's just so many places right like that that you've been
and you know and it doesn't even have to be you know actually accurate you just have to be able
to think of it and think of the same loci every time yeah and quickly going back to some of the
lights you know big quote-unquote discoveries that we made about how to use the techniques one of the
big things that we do is we we have a sort of a brainstormed list of palaces that we might want to
use so you know we've gone back you know some time ago and said like okay you know my home in Oxford
and my home and Jackson my in the movie theater libraries whatever and just kind of listed those
out but we don't really actually think of the loci within those palaces so you know we don't we don't
like for memory for competitions and things I know every single locus in every palace and I built it
that way specifically because that's how I want to use it in the competitions but for a learning
purpose you know maybe if I'm learning pathology I'll just pull up that brainstorm list and say
okay I'm going to use my my neighborhood right here for this first you know block of pathology
and then I'll start somewhere and I'll just choose the loci in the moment as I'm learning the
material based on based on what I think is worth knowing in that area so like you know maybe I'm
talking about you know acute inflammation and there's like you know five main components of
acute information so I'll use the house across the street and I'll do kind of one thing in each of
the rooms of that house and so we don't we don't like there's no like you know Palace building
phase where we think of thousands of loci ahead of time and we just do it as we as we go through the
material I think that's also useful because it went kind of a natural flow to it if I'm
just kind of mentally plopping myself down you know on our town Main Street and I'm learning
about cardiology everything kind of flows from there as I'm walking down it also goes with the
way I'm kind of learning it does I make friends so it's also geographically located in my mind
yeah god it's helpful that's not like yeah sorry it helped this is one last point it is helpful
for for organization a lot you know because we can this is part of the one this is one of the
reasons we like to use palaces rather than just images you know just links is that we can use the
palace to our advantage to organize the material so you know what I just said about you know using
the foregut meghan hindgut in this room if we want to do in the future if we want to encode
any kind of information about those things then we can always come back to your specific room and
saying okay this room has got all the info we want to know about it and you know in that way we can
we can make sure that the material is organized in a nice tidy way so then at that point we'll
you guys because Cathy said earlier that you don't like reuse locations but would that be kind of the
exception when you want to add on to the material already in that in that fake pallets in that way
we you know I wouldn't go back to the same locus per se but I would find something else in there
and add it in or maybe you have an inner act with an image I already have existing but but not you
know overriding it exactly so like if we were using the ceiling here for foregut and then maybe
there is another piece of info we wanted to add we might come down and just use the window right
here as another locus kind of an association with for good and it's actually pretty easy because you
know it's like you can have multiple memories of things happening in your living room it's not like
it overrides it you know you mean so remember it so ok let me let me kind of counter that a little
bit you know for my own experiences meaning like I I used I reuse with locations or like when I'm
learning you know certain information like I think when I was memorizing the presidents I reused a
specific set of locations and then I actually applied the periodic table of elements to that
same route so for me I was able to distinguish the two because I knew like I don't know I can kind of
link them together like I knew if I saw a washing machine right I knew that that it wasn't going to
be hydrogen for my first app for the first element meaning I wasn't going to confuse the elements and
the president have you guys had any have you guys actually like attempted to store multiple
sets of different topics on say let's say right here this is well we'll stick with this example
the mid good in others the what have you guys already attempted to store different things along
say this specific route or a route that you guys already used for a different piece of information
and then store something else and then what was what was the outcome for that did you guys get
up say interference between the stories you know I guess I'll say this once oh my this is a limit
it is something that we adopted relatively early on just based on kind of my personal experience
and memory competitions and I I think you know I can't remember any specific examples of really
experimenting heavily with it but my sort of initial feeling based on you know my competition
experience is just that if you want something to kind of stand on its own and really develop
a feeling like I said if you know like this place being the kind of for got area my feeling
was did I wouldn't want to overwrite palaces and that's not it's certainly not have to say it like
you know like you said obviously it can still work we're not saying that it would never work
you overwrite palaces but our our thinking was that okay well if we feel like we aren't going
to run out of palaces and we're still going to have enough space then why not you know why not
got yet not overwrite things and the other thing oh sorry does no I mean the other two things with
people say my school was like drinking out of a fire hydrant right it's just like so much stuff
all the time and so it just it was definitely I think probably easier for us to just kind of
go fresh you know and then the other thing is because we intend to use this information kind
of in real time in the future we it's helpful for us especially when we're taking tests and
hopefully when we're seeing patients to be able to scan through and I think that would be easier
for us to you know say we have a patient would be symptoms perhaps it can scan through more clearer
more easily and see what everything that's there without trying to juggle that kind of you know
double images right that make that that makes perfect sense and that's probably why I'm not in
medical school right because I already just start stacking each other as it and then and then what
I need to like actually retrieve am like wait I have like 10 things on there's one location which
one lose all right but but that's that's a good tip yeah I did it just because I wanted to for
fun to learn these things right right so you know we're like oh we're going to be quizzed on it or
whatnot but but a cool you know good good good tip sir so you're like one boy out there so we have
this real quick just to wrap up in case we kind of support what you were saying was one actually
thing that I do do is you know I also use a lot of the same palaces to learn Chinese and so that
was kind of a mistake of mine early honor is that I made these very kind of large locations to learn
various Chinese tones and things and so because those are so large I ended up overlapping a lot
of the medical stuff I was learning on to those same palaces and I actually have found that it's
usually not too big a problem of those palaces interfering even though they're in the same place
and I think part of that is kind of going back to what you said which is just when you're kind
of in the you know let's say the Chinese mode the Chinese images just seem to kind of come to you
and medical one sort of fade away you know what I mean a different mom and then another another one
of my kind of my theories about that is that for the Chinese ones you know a lot of those images
are unlocated that are I just sort of developed a slightly different way of seeing them so when
I you know I saw say like this fountain in pur medicine I'm using like a particular angle a
particular feeling associated with that found and maybe you know I was using a slightly different
angle looking at it from the other side for Chinese or something and so the difference
between those two is enough that there's not really much interference if that makes sense
okay um yeah not perfectly because yeah so okay that's it so that's big okay I know we're guys
you get a little bit ready to get it but I mean these are questions that people always absolutely
so up well let me have one more along this line of what you just said which it's perfectly fine
to kind of see locations from different angles because that was one of my biggest hiccups when
I was first starting off even just like memorizing cards right I would I would memorize a card on a
location let's say it was the chair you know the Charm City not and I would say stores up
on top of here and then when I you know face a fifty-two cards I would come back to this one try
to recall it and I would be looking say at the armrest instead of like looking here when I was
retrieving mystic I have no clue what I store on there right did I even store anything on there but
it was just because I was seeing that located from a different angle right so I didn't know
that like when you're recalling make sure like to see it from the same angle that you memorize it
in have you guys encountered anything like that while you you just give it a perfect example or
is it any examples where you're like when you're like recalling information does the viewing of the
the way you see the location does that affect the recall at all for you well as a non-professional
competitor in this conversation you know I think Alex does a lot of things where he will put them
kind of small not to scale does that make this kinda like what you said right on top of the the
chair so everything I do is more I guess more to scale and I don't think I really have that problem
but maybe I have and I just don't I can't think of it but you know I rarely put things on like a tiny
little question just on an armrest right it's just easier for me to kind of to create it so that it's
more something like a memory of mine and not some sort of like weird little thing but I know Alex
was it differently but for me as a non-competitive person that's kind of the trick that I found that
helps yeah - if you use the entire place yeah I'm using a desk I'm not going to like just put
at the new corner you know I'm gonna have an elephant like right here at the decimal easier
yeah you know my experience is actually sort of from medicine is quite similar to Cathy's
I think where because I'm not using places that I did I use over and over again like in memory
sports I usually just tend to pick kind of bigger objects and not really focus on small things and
so things tend to be more to scale and and I and I have that problem less but it for memory
sports specifically like like you just said that's a huge problem for me is or not not a huge problem
anymore but it used to be yeah because when my conclusion was it basically every time I see a
locust I always see it from the exact same angle and you know that's just something that's sort of
developed you know just throughout my you know experiences yeah practice is just I just I have
to see those same bloke eyes from the same place same angle and that is that is the case for those