\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>here\u2019s a scene from the 2010s series Sherlock that I think about a lot. Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) visits his \u201cmind palace\u201d to figure out how he and his friend\/minion John Watson (Martin Freeman) got drugged. Words, phrases and images float around his head, and he moves them around with his hands.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a memory technique,\u201d Watson explains to a confused onlooker. \u201cYou plot a map of a location \u2013 it doesn\u2019t have to be a real place \u2013 and then you deposit memories there.\u201d Theoretically, he says, you can never forget anything, he says: \u201cAll you have to do is find your way back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n The scene is ridiculous. It\u2019s become a meme. It\u2019s also mostly nonsense. \u201cThis seems more like run-of-the-mill free association,\u201d says Dr Nicole Long, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, when I send her a clip.<\/p>\n But the mind palace is a real mnemonic device, and Watson\u2019s description is fairly accurate, says Long. More commonly known as a \u201cmemory palace\u201d, or, in academic circles, the method of loci, the technique dates back to ancient Greece. And it\u2019s still widely used: one study found that nine out of 10 \u201csuperior memorists\u201d use the method of loci.<\/p>\n I am decidedly not a superior memorist \u2013 one with a \u201cremarkably retentive memory\u201d, according to the Collins dictionary. I often feel as if I am starting every day afresh, like a newborn babe. Information enters my brain and then sizzles into nothingness, like water evaporating from a hot pan. Friends bring up people or events from the past, and I smile blankly, with no idea what they\u2019re talking about. If a task or plan is not immediately slotted into the \u201cto-do list\u201d on my phone, it is lost forever.<\/p>\n So, I asked experts how memory palaces really work, and tried to build my own.<\/p>\n As John Watson said in Sherlock, invoking a memory palace involves picturing some structure or place in your mind, and linking items you want to remember with specific locations around that place, Long explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most classic version is rooms in your home,\u201d she says. Say you want to memorize a list of words, for example. Place each of those words in a different room and think about each item in each place, says Long. For instance, to remember the last 10 winners of the Academy Award for best actress, you could picture Mikey Madison at your front door, Emma Stone in your living room, Michelle Yeoh in your kitchen, and so on.<\/p>\n To remember the words, picture yourself walking through your home and seeing each thing in its specific location.<\/p>\n The method of loci doesn\u2019t work for all information. It\u2019s best for memorizing simple, discrete bits of data, Long says, like numbers or words.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more complicated memories, it is harder to use that as a strategy,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you are in the market to buy a house and you go see a bunch of houses, it would start to get weird if you associated each house with a different room in your house. There would be a lot of interference.\u201d<\/p>\n I decide I\u2019m going to memorize the first 20 digits of pi. Friends ask me if this is the most practical information to memorize. When will I use it? They\u2019re going to feel pretty silly someday when a stranger stops us on the street and asks if we can recite the first 20 digits of pi.<\/p>\n Although the Sherlock depiction makes it sound like you build one vast, glittering mind palace in which to store all of your memories, that\u2019s not quite how it works.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re trying to memorize different sets of information, it\u2019s helpful to imagine different locations rather than trying to cram all the data into the nooks and crannies of your studio apartment.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you walk into one room and you\u2019re queuing five items, that\u2019s hard because you have to disambiguate them and it gets confusing,\u201d says Long.<\/p>\n To learn more, I went to the pros. Vishvaa Rajakumar, an Indian college student who won the 2025 Memory League world championship, told me over email that he doesn\u2019t always picture the same place when storing information. \u201cIt could be any location that comes to my mind at that moment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Sometimes, he doesn\u2019t even picture places. \u201cFor numbers, I give them life by creating images,\u201d he says. \u201c9,356 means Michael Jackson watching TV, while 0812 means Alex Mullen [a memory athlete] eating ice cream.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, Rajakumar\u2019s record for memorizing 80 random digits is 13.41 seconds. \u201cI can also memorize 180 digits in one minute, and over 360 digits in about three minutes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Graphic with three lines of text that say, in bold, ‘Well Actually’, then ‘Read more on living a good life in a complex world,’ then a pinkish-lavender pill-shaped button with white letters that say ‘More from this section’<\/p>\n I decide to use my apartment as my memory palace. At the front door, I picture 3.14159; on the kitchen island, 265; on the stove, 358; in my sink, 979; on my bedroom door, 323; on the couch, 846.<\/p>\n It takes me about two minutes to cement the images of the digits in my mind. \u201cDo you want to hear me recite the first 20 digits of pi?\u201d I ask everyone I talk to that day. And several days after that.<\/p>\n None are as impressed as I\u2019d hoped, but I find it satisfying. Also, none of them check whether I\u2019m right, so if I\u2019m wrong, no one would know. Once, reeling through the numbers, I realize I have been saying \u201c256\u201d instead of \u201c265\u201d, but otherwise it seems to have stuck.<\/p>\n \u201cThe short answer is, we don\u2019t know,\u201d says Long.<\/p>\n One theory is that in placing information in a memory palace, we are paying special attention to it and therefore are more likely to remember.<\/p>\n \u201cJust thinking about strategies for trying to remember something is going to help you remember better than just passively letting things wash over you,\u201d Long explains.<\/p>\n But there might be more to it than that. The method of loci is uniquely suited to capitalize on how the brain works. One of the primary areas of the brain responsible for memory is the hippocampus, says Long. \u201cThe two things the hippocampus loves to do above everything else is spatial navigation and associations,\u201d she says. So by using spatial navigation to associate a place and an item, we are letting the hippocampus do what it does best.<\/p>\n \u201cThe jury\u2019s still out on that,\u201d Long says. \u201cI think the answer is that it can\u2019t hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe not, but remember what I said about my terrible memory? It felt like a gargantuan achievement to me, someone who regularly forgets the most important item on a shopping list.<\/p>\n Still, to test myself further, I used a random word generator to come up with 12 words for me to memorize: weakness, administration, council, protest, college, anniversary, sausage, genetic, growth, gap, bring, isolation.<\/p>\n I mentally placed these words around my parents\u2019 apartment, which took about a minute. In two minutes, I had them memorized. I tested myself several times throughout the day, and wondered how long I would associate the sconces in my parents\u2019 dining room with the words \u201ccollege\u201d and \u201canniversary\u201d.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been strolling through this list a couple of times a day, and can remember each and every one. How is that useful, you might ask? Well, you\u2019re going to feel pretty silly when a stranger stops me on the street and asks me to say exactly those 12 words.<\/p>\nWhat is a memory palace?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What kind of information can you store in a memory palace?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
How do I build a memory palace?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why does it work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Can memory palaces improve your overall memory?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Is memorizing the first 20 digits of <\/strong>pi really that impressive?<\/strong><\/h2>\n