Hey guys, this week I got a phone call, somebody that I know is going to have a competition
where they’re going to teach two different people two different memory methods and see
which method works the best.
They’re going to teach this person the memory palace, it’s known as the memory palace
or you might know it as the mind palace of the method of loci or the journey method,
it’s all one system though the mind palace.
They’re going to teach the other guy the story method or the linking method, then they’re
going to put them in a competition and see which one works better.
What are the positives and negatives of each memory method?
Let’s go.
So the first one were going to talk about is the story or the linking method, the most
simple of the two memory methods and my cousin is a simple man, that’s why he’s going
to help me illustrate it, I’m a simple man too, that’s why I work with cousins.
The story methods or the linking method is you take a series of 10 or 15 or 20 words
and you link them together in a story.
For example.
Let’s say you have the words mountain, ice, trees, bicycle, German shepherd, glass of
water, shoe, you could memorize that string of words by saying, the mountain ad it has
ice on the top, tress on the side, coming down the mountain is a bicycle ridden by a
German shepherd, he has a glass of water in one hand and a shoe in the other.
In other words what we did was we took a series of 7 or 8 words and we memorized them by creating
a story.
My cousin, Donovan, used the linking method or the story method
as all the united states used in this song, what grade were you in when you learned this
I was in the 6th grade The sixth grade so back then there was probably
only about 14 or 15 states 13 I think
13 so he used the linking method to memorize these states, you learned this song 25, 30
year ago, an can still sing it today That’s correct
Let’s hers it Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkinsaw, California,
Colorado, Connecticut……
Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, West Constance, Wyoming
That was the story method in my dancing was just a bonus.
Donovan Yes sir
Tell me the 20th state in that song I would have to take a minute
He can’t do it, that’s the weakness of the story method.
The strength of the story method is that you can learn it very rapidly and you can take
any string of words and you can memorize them really quick by creating a song or a story.
Now let’s talk bout the memory palace method.
Ok guys, now the memory palace or the mind palace is different.
It uses a room it uses landmarks in a room.
Let’s pick 5 landmarks in this room, this is my office.
The first landmark that were going to use is the door., the second one is the bookshelf,
the third is my chair, the fourth is that poster over there of the man with the gun,
and the fifth is the bleacher seats.
Now let’s take picture and I want you to see a photo album, an album that has a bunch
of pictures and were looking at a photo album on the door.
Over on my bookshelf I want you to imagine it’s an ice cube and it’s melting’s,
the ice cube is melting; imagine the water is getting on my books wet.
The next one I want you to imagine I try to sit down on my chair and I can’t cos there’s
a cactus so I stand up real quick, over here this guy he is getting on a boat, he is getting
on an arc so he’s getting ready to step into an arc, step into a boat and right here
at the baseball game and you get a bunch of gold bars, a bunch of gold, a million dollar’s
worth of gold.
So right here we’ve got a million dollars’ worth of gold, right here we’ve got a guy
getting on a boat, an arc, you sit on the chair and you can’t cos of the cactus, the
melting ice and the photo album.
This is the memory palace or the mind palace method.
What you do is you pick a room and then you pick 15, 20 spots around that room or 5 spots
around that room and then you take whatever you want to recall and you see it as a picture
on those spots.
Alabama, photo bum, Alaska, an igloo, Arizona, a cactus, Arkansas, an arc boat and the California
gold rush for California.
Now the negatives of the memory palace are it takes more time to learn and more set up
time.
The positives of the memory palace is that you could pick a thousand spots around different
home and you could memorize a thousand different pieces of information.
Not only can you remember more information with this than you can with the story method,
you can also say it forwards, you can say it backwards, right not I could say what’s
number 5 and you would think chairs, gold bars and remember that that was the California
gold rush.
So you can say the memory palace forwards and backwards, you can do up to a thousand
of them, it takes more time to build but in the end, in the long run it’s a better memory
method because you can memorize more information if you’re willing to spend the time, it
might take you a couple of days or even a couple of weeks to build yourself to a 100
or 200, 300 or a 1,000 files but if you’re willing to do that it’s the better memory
method.
If you’re looking for something quick and simple and easy the song works just fine,
you’re just not going to be able to memorize as much and you’re not going to be able
to know it by number and sometimes that’s not important.
My prediction for this competition that my friend is going to do is that the person who
uses the story method might do just as good or even better as the person who uses the
mind palace because there only going to be using 10 or fifteen words and the person who
has the mind palace might not have enough time to master the system before they have
the competition.
So there you have it, memory palace versus story method, 2 popular methods, 2 good methods,
I prefer the memory palace and I think most memory experts do.
If you’re not real sure what the mind palace or the memory palace really is and you want
more information on it then send me an email to that’s ron@memorizeordie.com, ron@memorizeordie.com
and I’ll give you more information on the memory palace.
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