Anthony Metivier: Memory Palaces
Kris Broholm interviews Dr. Anthony Metivier about memory palaces. They discuss what memory palaces are and how they function, with Kris asking fundamental questions for listeners. Metivier shares his expertise on applying memory techniques to various subjects, including language learning.
April 3, 2015 · 58 min
EP 53: Anthony Metivier: Memory Palaces
0:00 / 57:56
Guest
Anthony Metivier
What You'll Hear
- 1 Introduction: Journey to Memory Mastery
- 2 Language Learning: Memory Palace Breakthrough
- 3 Demystifying Memory Palaces: No Shopping Lists!
- 4 Build Your First Memory Palace: Practical Steps
- 5 Memorize Vocabulary: Vivid Sound & Meaning Imagery
- 6 Optimize Your Practice: Efficiency & Common Mistakes
- 7 Beyond Words: Phrases, Grammar, Mindset Shifts
- 8 Next Steps: Start Your Memory Palace Journey
Links Mentioned
Questions Covered in the Show
What is a memory palace?- 2m
How do you create a memory palace for language learning?- 16m
How do you memorize new vocabulary words using a memory palace?- 22m
How many memory palaces are needed to learn thousands of words in a new language?- 36m
What are common mistakes when using memory palaces for language learning?- 41m
Can memory palaces be used to memorize phrases or grammatical rules in a foreign language?- 46m
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Season 2, episode 3, Anthony Metivier, Memory Palaces.
This is the Actual Fluency podcast, helping you become a better language learner by providing motivating weekly inspiration, as well as top tips and tricks from expert guests. And now, your host, Kris Broholm.
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Actual Fluency podcast. I'm so happy that you've joined me once again on this nice occasion. Today, I'm going to be interviewing Mr. Oh, sorry, Dr. Anthony Metivier, depending on where in the world you're from. He's going to talk to us today about memory palaces, and I'm sure you're wondering, what is a memory palace? And for many people, this is indeed the way they feel about them. They know that they exist, or maybe they've seen them on shows like Sherlock, or just in, in any popular culture, and it seems like an almost superhuman feat to just kind of have a mental image of a, well, in this case, a palace, but it could be any location, and just be able to sort of retract or withdraw memories at will.
And I was very fascinated about the concept of memory palaces and, in fact, I have been for a long, long time. But there's been a few things stopping me from actually going through with it. And then, when I recently was doing the Language Book Club, we got Anthony Metivier to participate, and he shared a lot of his books about learning various things, like learning lyrics, learning lines, learning math, learning names, numbers, languages, you name it. And I was talking to him about memory palaces and I thought, you know, this topic should really be explored more than just, you know, sort of a shallow approach we had on that language book club, which was more about talking about books and why I'd written them and so on and so forth. So, I invited him to come on the show and actually talk about these sort of memory palaces techniques.
And, you know, I don't know anything about memory palaces and one of the, one of the jobs that I take very seriously here on the podcast is not to be too informed of the topic of which we're going to talk about. And of course, this is hard with language learning, so forgive me for that one. But if I invite somebody like Anthony Metivier to come on the show and talk about memory palaces, I'm not going to do a lot of studying about them beforehand. And this is because I don't want you as a listener to miss out on the knowledge because I assume that everyone knew it. Like, it's the reverse Dunning-Kruger effect. If you know something, you assume that everyone else is aware of it as well. So, in the sort of, in the interview, I'm asking a lot of basic questions about memory palaces, and I really hope that you can use this just like I used it to get to know more about it. And it's a very exciting method, and I hope to report more about as you hear in the interview, I, I would like to do an experiment with them and get to know them more, actually sit down and spend the time. And I, I'm looking forward to reporting back to actually to see, uh, you know, how it goes.
And, uh, just a, a quick shout out before we begin. I just want to give a, a shout out to the Language Hacking Travel League, and that is run by Benny Lewis, and you can join the league for free by going to actualfluency.com/league. And that'll send you to the free email club. And you get weekly tips, tricks, uh, the best language learning links from around the world. And Actual Fluency was actually featured on that one. So, it's a, it's a cool feature, and it's run by Benny Lewis, so you know it's high quality. And one of the cool things is, you actually get something just for signing up. You get a, a course that has some of the elements from his Conversation Countdown course, some of the wisdom about speaking from day one. And basically, you just get a lot of benefits from being part of that Travel League. So, go to actualfluency.com/league. And now for the interview about memory palaces with Anthony Metivier.
All right guys, today I'm joined by Anthony Metivier. Anthony teaches people how to memorize anything from chess to foreign languages and anything, everything in between on magneticmemorymethod.com. He also is a PhD, author and course creator, and a hundred things more. Originally from Canada, he joins us today from Germany. Anthony, how are you today?
Oh, excellent. And, uh, thank you for having me. And how are you?
Oh, I'm fantastic. You know, it's the second season and I'm excited to bring the joys of language learning and memory improvements to the, you know, language learners out there.
Cool. Can you start by giving everyone just a short introduction to yourself? You know, how does a Canadian citizen end up in Germany being sort of the man on memory and learning foreign languages?
Well, there's about 15 different stories there, but in terms of why I ended up in Germany, it was crazy. I actually ended up in New York first, and then here, and then back there and all over the place. Uh, a lot had to do with meeting someone, as so many things do. And I was completing my PhD and I went and did a second MA in Switzerland, which was really great. And so there, there was an international character to my studies.
And, well, the memory thing is came from a deep, dark night of my soul where I was really quite depressed and clinically depressed, taking pills and all that kind of stuff. And I had the burden of finishing my PhD on my shoulders. And not being able to think, not being able to focus was incredibly depressing and I was sleeping in bed for a long time every day and really only getting up to drag myself to get some frozen or heated pasta from some restaurant across the street and getting really fat and oh, it was terrible.
And so what I did instead of facing reality and finishing my studies and going to these exams where you have to sit in front of professors, I didn't prepare at all. I just started learning card tricks. And I kind of had in mind that I always loved magic and I had done it a little bit, very, very amateurish and so forth. Really simple, kind of stupid tricks, the mythical tricks that everybody's terrible uncle always does. And, uh, but I always had in mind that I needed an emergency paycheck. So, I started to prepare. My emergency paycheck being doing magic tricks, ideally on the street. And, uh, so you don't do magic tricks for very long before you come across card memorization. And I thought, this is absolutely insane. There's no way.
And, uh, to make a long story short, it isn't insane, and there is a way. And even with the numb head that I had from all kinds of antidepressants and stuff to manage bipolar disorder and the different things that characterize my life, I still was able to memorize a deck of cards very, very quickly with 100% accuracy. And it dawned on me, I can memorize anything from the 250 books that I'm responsible for before I go and sit in these exams, and I can at least boost my confidence and not be so foggy, because the fogginess and the depression is irrelevant to the way that memory techniques work. It has, there, there's nothing that can be a barrier so long as you actually follow a few simple steps. And so I went from, you know, near depression or near suicidal depression to absolute superhero powers and just slicing through the air with my memory sword, and like it got so ridiculous that I was citing page numbers.
And then after that, when I was in Germany and learning German, it, it dawned on me, wait a second. I could use this stuff to help me learn German. And so I monkey-wrenched everything together and created essentially, not so much a system, but a method for creating a system that, uh, can be mapped onto or, not mapped onto. There's not really any clean metaphor for it, but, uh, that can be used to, to help you learn languages very, very quickly, and it can be done with any language. So, and it's been really successful after, following that moment of invention, using materials that have been on hand for thousands of years.
Fantastic. And, you know, this is exactly why I wanted you on because this, I, I just find this story so incredible. I remember, you know, I, I remember seeing you in Berlin last year in, at the polyglot gathering. And I think we exchanged a few words, but we, we didn't really formally meet. And then I, I looked you up and I, I, I was just amazed by this kind of journey. It's almost a transcendence in a way, because you just go from, it wasn't nothing in a way because you, you know, upper academics, but definitely in terms of mentally, I suppose. And then just going into this memory superhero kind of thing.
How does this, how did it tie into the language learning when you first started applying the memory tricks? Did you find that it, or the concepts sort of, because at, at the end of the day, it is a learning, a language learning podcast, so I'd like to, to obviously focus on that. But how did you find that the, the memory tricks that you had sort of worked on and learned, well, maybe I would not call them tricks, maybe that's a, a wrong term, but the techniques and the methods that enable you to remember page numbers from lots of books, uh, how did you find that those sort of transferred into language learning immediately? Did you have to do a lot of adjustment or is it universal in a way?
Well, it's based on universal principles, but you do adjust it to the nature of what you're memorizing, what you're learning and putting into memory. And of course, you're putting it into different kinds of memory. But maybe a way to approach this is to think about what wasn't working in, in the language learning situation.
So, I, uh, because I was in a relationship of a particular kind, I was able to get, uh, access to, uh, training at the Hartnackschule in Berlin, and so I had to pay an euro an hour to go to class. And I did 300 and, uh, no, 635 hours in this course. And I learned almost absolutely nothing, because the teacher, you know, government-issued teacher who had a class full of Russian immigrants destined to be cab drivers, who just, I, I learned more Russian than I did German in, in this class because they were constantly talking and, uh, I was interested in Russian as well. But, uh, uh, and, uh, and it was just, it was just crazy. And the teacher didn't seem to care. And what was he teaching? Well, he was teaching, you know, grammatical things without knowing the words, uh, to which the grammar is matched, or, you know, the, the engine of grammar needs this gasoline, but you're not even learning the words of the, the gasoline words to put in the engine so that you can actually get some traction and go somewhere. And, uh, and I would show up with this huge dictionary and I would like try and follow everything that he was doing and I, and I couldn't. And, you know, I picked up some German. I, I did leave with this rudimentary, you know, like, not A1, but maybe A.27 or something like that. And, uh, it was really, really frustrating.
And anyway, go about a year later, I'm sitting on the porch down in Sailendorf. And I thought, I, I'm going to, I, I need to really get my German going, because I was in Germany, and I'm not talking to anybody, and I just, I just, you know, have grocery store German, basically. And so I was on the porch, and I had this dictionary and I thought, it's just like bingo in my head. What if I made 26 memory palaces? Forget the umlauts because no words that I'm aware of start with umlauts, except for in my fantasy language where Z has an umlaut. But, uh, and I thought, what if I made a memory palace for every single letter in the alphabet, and then started to memorize those words? And I started to do it, and it was absolutely incredible. And there were a number of pitfalls that I came across as I was doing this, but I learned everything that I needed to know by doing it, and I came across a number of discoveries, streamlined everything, made it very fast, made it very effective, and, uh, you know, none of it is a replacement for reading, writing, learning, uh, reading, writing, speaking and listening to the language every day. But it is, it is turbocharging it all. And, uh, so it's like injecting something into that gasoline that you put into the engine, and zoom! It's really, really cool. And, and every skeptic who is willing to try it and actually follow the quote-unquote instructions, they blow themselves away by how this works. And it doesn't mean that they take it up as a, as a life habit or anything like that, but they're like, I can see how this works and I know why it works and it's actually pretty amazing. So,
Right.
It's cool.
But can we talk more about that, because I think that's, um, we talked a little bit about that recently on the Language Book Club, about how there's a perception about memory techniques and particularly memory palaces, I feel like, and, you know, I was watching the Sherlock show, and I, I just love that show, and there's an episode where, you know, he's supposed, I, I guess, in a way, they're supposed to portray him as some sort of semi-savant, but in a realistic fashion. But anyway, he, he has this memory palace in, in one of the episodes and, and he's just, you know, flying through the air, he's like looking with his hands and he's like trying to find something from 10 years ago or something. And I was just really curious about it. And then I started researching about memory palaces and I was just like, I, I think I read, you know, a simple how-to, and it was like, yeah, come up with a big place that you are familiar with and just, uh, you know, put stuff around.
Um, why is it that it's so, and I obviously didn't do anything because I, it was just so overwhelming to get into, I feel like. But why do you think that this is the general consensus? Why, why aren't we teaching memory palaces to kids in school?
Well, first off, that instruction that you said, you know, just make a big place and strip some stuff around.
obviously very simplified.
No, but that's exactly what you see all over the place. And it's, it's exactly for that reason that nobody does it, is because the instructions are utterly obscure and they, not only do they make them just, you know, well, just take your home and, uh, you know, make a path through it. Like, that's the extent of the instruction. They also tell you to memorize a shopping list. Now, who on earth needs to memorize a shopping list? Like, who has a gun to their head that says, you must remember celery tonight or else? Like, it's just the most ridiculous thing to use as a memory exercise. I think it's, uh, uh, a crime against humanity to offer that as a, a as a point of entry into the most miraculous thing that the human mind is capable of, which is memorizing lots and lots of information. And, uh, so please, please, if you're listening to this and you come across the instructions to memorize a shopping list, email that person and say, stop forthwith, because this is, is a terrible, terrible, uh, piece of advice. What you do is you memorize something that you're deeply passionate about that you can instantly have a benefit from, even if that benefit is just an injection of pleasure, like Shakira lyrics or something like this, which I'm, you know, memorizing myself now. Um, which is why it comes up. But, you know, you want to make it easy for yourself. Put some, put some sugar, you know, on the, on your lips as you're doing it. And grocery, grocery lists aren't going to do that. So, that's one reason why people don't do it.
The other reason is, is that they, uh, they assume that it's going to take a lot of time. And admittedly, the first time, the first couple times you build a memory palace, it can take a little bit of time. It usually takes a little bit of time because you're overthinking it and not following a specific patterned plan that, uh, you, you can certainly bend the rules later, but you want to have some guidelines first. And the guidelines are very simple, they're very elegant and they're super effective, and they're easy to do. And so really within two to five hours, anybody can have 26 memory palaces. It's, it's a no-brainer thing. I've got worksheets that show you how to do it. And, uh, and, uh, anybody can get them. And it's just, it's just a no-brainer sort of thing. But it is a sort of situation where you have to spend a bit of time doing it. And you need to be prepared. It's one of those skills where you got to dig your well before you get thirsty and, uh, have things prepared for yourself. But, you know, a pilot goes through certain checks and measures before taking the plane onto the runway. But as soon as those checks and measures are fulfilled, then, boom, you're flying. And, you know, rarely does anybody crash land. And in our case, with memory palaces, you're not going to hurt anything or anybody if you make a mistake here and there. So,
That's fantastic. And could we talk about, you know, I, I know that you, you know, you have research, lots of resources on how to do it and, you know, you have courses and and books that we're going to talk about at the end of the show. But can you give people sort of the, I guess, the cliff notes of demystifying the, the process a little bit? Because I think that I would definitely feel if I was listening to what we were just saying, we would speak on a very superficial level. And that can be very sort of overwhelming in a way, because you, you now have to kind of consider not only the concept of a memory palace, but also how to get started with it.
Do you think we could, is that something we could do in, in, in a short amount of time? Just show people a quick, the quick process? Maybe try to demystify it a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, basically, a memory palace, just to give it a bit of definition, is a mental construct that is either based on a real place or an imaginary place. And one of the things that people want to do automatically is make a memory palace based on an imaginary place. Now, you can do that, but don't. You know, don't do it as a beginning thing, because what you have to do with a memory palace is you have to reconstruct it as you're traveling it in your mind. And the more that you use places that you're deeply familiar with, the less you have to reconstruct. So, the whole point of the memory palace is to reduce cognitive load and not increase it.
So, what does it mean to use a place that you're familiar with? Well, you want to think about it in a particular way. If you're using your own home or your workplace, you'll notice that the building has a sort of structure to it that you can move through it in a straight line or at least a linear path that you don't have to cross your own path. And that's a very fundamental principle. And also, there's usually a way to start at the back of a building and then move towards an exit. So, if you were upstairs in the master bedroom, you could go past the bathroom, another bedroom, maybe there's a closet, then there's some stairs, and then there's a kitchen, and you can move from there into the living room and then out the front door without ever crossing your own path. And you're not starting at your front door and moving up to your master bedroom with nowhere else to go, which is what a lot of people do. You won't, you go out into the driveway where then you can go to the, uh, the post office box on the corner and, and so forth. And it sounds like, you know, getting super, super specific to the point of, of ridiculousness, but it's actually that specificity that makes this so much easier. And it takes a little bit of thought to think, okay, well, I got to start here in my memory palace, and then move there and there, and then that fulfills these conditions of not trapping yourself in the memory palace and not, uh, crossing your own path. And that reduces cognitive load significantly.
And when you get better at it, like I would suggest for anybody listening to this to just use individual rooms, and I call these places that you use stations. So, you would say the bedroom is a station, the bathroom is a station, the closet is a station. If you're using a staircase, you can use the entire staircase as a station or the top, the middle and the bottom as three stations, as you please. But, you know, keep it simple at the beginning. And what this clarity brings is the ability to leave information at those stations. So, at, at the beginning stage, you can use an entire room to leave information. And later, you can make memory palaces much more complex. You want to keep them elegant and simple, but you can have 50 stations inside of a single room, so long as you're able to recall those 50 stations without overwhelming yourself. And it is possible when you think about it. You know, you've got, uh, a chair, you've got, uh, a desk, you've got the left corner of the desk, the middle of the desk, the right corner of the desk. You got maybe a dresser and the dresser has four shelves. You can really get detailed and still not cross your own path and not trap yourself and get a lot of room there. So, is any of that making sense?
Yeah, definitely. Uh, the thing that comes to mind again is that, or, I mean, uh, obviously a personal note, but when I'm thinking about a place, like let's say my childhood home, where I lived, uh, 15 years of my life, it seems a little fuzzy. Um, is it, I mean, it's not that I don't remember how the house looked, but it seems like it's really, it takes a lot of mental energy for me to focus on it.
Do you have any recommendations for people who might not be super creative? Maybe, is it creativity that does that? I don't know, but, um, have you noticed this before?
Well, creativity gets in the way. This is not the part to be creative about. And you don't need to see the house in your mind. What you need is the structure. So, uh, you know, if you just think about a room, it's got four corners. There's nothing to see in your mind. It's just four corners. And, uh, you so you want to feel it almost more than you see it and you want to conceptualize it. Now, of course, it it it is a part of this to work on being able to see it, but it's absolutely not necessary. And I, I know for myself and I know from a lot of memory champions and different mnemonists that I talk to all the time, is that you don't need to pull out of your mind a whole visualization of the memory palace. That's actually counterproductive in many cases. You just want to be able to say, to, to recognize, ah, there was a door there. There was a fridge there. There's a counter there. And you, you'll, you'll find that you're seeing it at some level in your mind. But that's not the important thing to focus on. The important thing to focus on is structurally, where is it? Where is the fridge in relation to the stove? And create that journey based on relationships between objects and corners and doorways in a memory palace and then again, not cross your own path and not trap yourself as you're moving from one to the other.
And you can help yourself out a great deal by drawing a floor plan and then putting numbers on the floor plan and then creating a list. So, you know, you've got this visual image. I'm sorry, there's all kinds of airplanes suddenly going by. I hope that's not
I can't hear it at all, so.
Okay, well then, uh, then I will allow it to distract me alone. But imagine that you have, uh, a floor plan that you've drawn, and you have numbers. And then beside that, or on a separate piece of paper, you draw those, you write down those numbers, one to 10, let's say. And then you just make a quick description of what that station is, just bedroom or floor, uh, um, desk, or table, or whatever. And, uh, that helps your mind really organize that much better. And it's, it's really just a couple of, of minutes or even seconds to sketch out a floor plan, put some numbers down, and, uh, and make a top-down list of what the stations are. And now, through all of this, you're basically embedding that journey in your mind, and because you already know the place anyway, there's really no, uh, there's no, uh, uh, effort to this, really. And and you're reducing that cognitive load so that you can place heavier loads on it later when it comes to memorizing the material, which of course we will talk about. But you don't need to be imaginative. This is, this is not a requirement for having a memory palace. What you need to do is just get busy creating one and you'll see that you have far more creativity than is needed and actually the too much creativity gets in the way because this is a structure. It's like the, the, uh, the rails of a roller coaster. You, you, you just need to be able to follow them in order to create a journey, a ride along the rails.
Fantastic. And then when we start placing things at these stations, um, yeah, maybe we just, uh, go into that, you know, when, if I have my, let's say I have a room, and I make, uh, maybe eight, how many stations do you think per room, maybe?
Well, again, I'd really just start as I, I start the way I started as a beginner, just one station per room. The room is the station, because then you're going to create these crazy images, and if you, the more space you give it in the beginning, the easier it is to, to work with that and make associations between the images that you're creating and the target information. But, you know, you can build up later, maybe four corners, uh, or you can just start with four corners. But again, don't cross your own path and, and, uh, move outwards. And, uh, that's a very, very helpful principle.
All right. So, let's say we got my, I, I pick a house that I lived in and there's maybe a, a 10 stations. Um, what's the, what's the next sort of step? Uh, it seems like at, at least in my mind, I, I'm missing a step between, I have my station, I have something to put in the station, and then now I remember something in the station. You know? It's like there's a question mark in the middle. Can you shine some light on that?
Yeah, well, basically, let's say you're in your bedroom and you want to memorize a particular word. What you're going, well, I mean, you want to actually have a bunch of words that you want to memorize in the first place. So, this is just part of language learning. A lot of people will use space repetition software, they'll pump in some words, or they'll use index cards, or whatever the case may be. And instead of doing that, you would then take those words and you would place them along the journey in a strategic way. And one of the great ways to do this that, uh, generates a lot of criticism actually for me, although I don't understand why, is to alphabetize the words. So, if you had a vocabulary list of 10 words, you would alphabetize them, and starting with the one closest to the letter A, you would put that at station one. And then proceeding alphabetically forward, you would go station two, station three, station four. And when you're there, you will then create some imagery that helps you recall not just the sound of the word, but also the meaning at the same time. So,
Sound of meaning, all right.
You, you want to kill both of those, those birds or those, yeah, both of those birds with the same stone or the, however that metaphor works. Because it doesn't help you much to be able to memorize, to recall a sound without the meaning, or a meaning without the sound. And, uh, so, you know, if you, I can give you all kinds of examples that I already memorize, but one of the more interesting ways to do this is for you to tell me a word and, uh, I, I'll show you how it works.
All right, uh, any kind of word, any language? Um,
Yeah, uh, surprise me.
Surprise me. Um, okay, well, I'll, I'll challenge you as well. There's, uh, there's a word in Russian for agricultural.
Mm-hm.
And it's, uh, Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy.
Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy.
Maybe I'll just type it.
Into Skype, yeah, okay.
I'll just type it in Skype. This is very, uh, technical, uh, tutorial here. And I'm probably going to get, uh, a lot of flag for my horrible pronunciation and probably misspelling, but that's the, uh, that's the, uh, fundamental of it.
Okay, so say it again for me with your pronunciation.
All right. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy.
Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Okay, so Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy.
Pretty much.
Pretty much. Okay, so and, uh, this is actually an interesting point because what I would suggest to people is that you just get approximations, because you can perfect pronunciation a lot better based on memorization of an approximation than you can trying to perfect pronunciation based on something that you haven't memorized yet in the first place. Uh, so, the, uh, uh, an allegory here or a simile or allusion or whatever word I'm looking for would be a singer trying to perfect the performance of analogy, analogy, that was what I was looking for. An analogy here would be a singer trying to perfect the performance of lyrics that haven't been memorized yet, right? So, you can, you can only work on delivery out of memory. But, uh, so, let's try this again. Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Now, the first thing that I would want to do is find some relationships there. So, Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy kind of reminds me of seltzer bath salt and, uh, maybe Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy, maybe, maybe Khan from Star Trek, Wrath of Khan. Uh, Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy. Okay, so Vinnie reminds me of My Cousin Vinny, that movie. So, um, uh, Khan from Star Trek has seltzer and, uh, and, uh, he is kissing Vinnie from My Cousin Vinny, who, while they're on, you know, maybe, maybe the seltzer has something to do with agriculture. Um, but beginning to build this picture, right? And dividing the word, the words into components that can be associated with information that I already know, and that's really what anybody would do, is to use their personal mythology. Uh, hopefully just the first things that come to mind, not overthinking it too much. Uh, and then create this exaggerated picture. So, seltzer, Khan, kissing Vinnie, and there's, has in there somewhere that I got to figure something out. And then building a little story, not even a story, a vignette. And then exaggerating it in my mind and making it big and crazy, and adding just vibrant action. And so it wouldn't just be kissing Vinnie, it would be like really grabbing him by the lapels and like a big smooch. And getting somehow the actual meaning in there. So, you know, this this requires a little bit of thinking, but the more you do it, the easier and quicker it becomes. And Benny Lewis actually talks about this in Fluent in 3 Months, how he thought when he was making images that this is too difficult. And how easy it became just by actually doing it, not thinking about it too much, not telling yourself that it won't work, but just doing it and it gets easier and easier and easier.
And sort of one of the major differences between what Benny is talking about, what I'm talking about, is that I would locate those words in very, very specific places and then strategically move to the next word in line alphabetically. Because that alphabetization helps, uh, helps with recall in and of itself because you have an idea of what must be coming next. And it can't be anything else, so it'd be Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy and then the next Sel'skokhozyaystvennyy or something along that nature, along those lines. And, uh, of course, you want those words to have something to do with something that you're doing. Uh, ideally what you're interested in or that pertain to a lesson or, or what have you. And, uh, and then what you do, once you've got this in memory and you can recall it, is you practice your journey, and you go backwards and forwards, and that is going to help overcome what's called the primacy effect or the recency effect. And it's going to help overcome the forgetting curve. And you do it maybe three, four times the first day, you, this journey. And as soon as you can, you're writing sentences using these words, you're speaking these words, you're encountering them in your reading and using these images to help you, uh, along. And this becomes very, very fast. And and it's just a technique to really help yourself out. But the key is to make sure that you're recalling the sound and the meaning at the same time. And then refine your pronunciation thereafter.
Okay. So, the, the next, uh, sort of, uh, concern, I guess, I have is that this is also kind of a controversial point, because people don't seem to agree how many words we need in general, just a full stop there. But if, if we want to communicate, I, I've seen some reports that, you know, some kind of between 3 to 6,000 words is kind of required in a new language to have a, a conversation and understand maybe some kind of basic, uh, native material, or maybe intermediate. But anyway, um, isn't, doesn't that, wouldn't that take a long time with this method if you, I, I know that, you know, building these kind of mnemonics is not exactly, uh, I mean, that that's what a lot of people do when they're using Anki or Memrise, they use some pictures or they do some kind of mnemonics to help them. But if you have the extra step added of the memory palace of putting it somewhere, how, how is that in terms of time and efficiency? Because obviously, not everything should be about time and efficiency. But to me, I'm a little bit concerned that it takes, I mean, how how long time would it take for, to do, uh, you know, thousands of words that's required for the, uh, for the task?
Well, first of all, if you're waiting for 3,000 or 6,000 words to engage in conversation, you're missing out on many pleasures in life. I'm sorry, but that's, uh,
It's not what I meant, you know.
No, no, but, you know, people do that. People do that. I, I had an email the other day from someone who said, I really want to memorize 10,000 words of Russian and then I'll feel fluent. And I just thought, you know, start with 20 and, uh, see what 500 do for you because 500 is achievable in a week. Yeah. Uh, it's really the, the, the amount of time that one spends on this is up to them. It can be very, very fast. I mean, I, I have all kinds of memory palaces built, so if I want to sit down and memorize a bunch of words, I can do a hundred words in a day and be able to, and that's manageable to actually rehearse them all as I'm suggesting, going forwards and backwards through the journey. Because you're walking around, you're mowing the lawn, you're washing the dishes, you're bathing yourself. There's all kinds of downtime that is completely unimaginative and just used worrying about the past, worrying about the future, thinking about alternative fantasies about the present, and you could be using that time to recall words and build sentences based on those words, and then going out and using them because they're pre-prepared in your mind. So, the amount of time, the time commitment is actually less than zero, because what you get back is, is manifold. So, any investment that you make is paid back a thousand times by the time you're not spending with SRS software and index cards, driving yourself bonkers with the hammer of rote learning. You know?
And, but, but, but the thing is, is you actually have to enjoy this. I mean, you, you, you have to get a kick out of it at some level, or at least it seems to me that that's one of the, that's the secret ingredient, is, uh, enjoying using your imagination. Enjoying exploring what your imagination is, what it can be, what you can transform it into and having a purpose, having a desire to actually, you know, essentially achieve something that seems superhuman, but it's, is just something that was normal a couple thousand years ago, that you that was just nothing, it's just, just the same as tying your shoes, you know? Uh, so, I don't really think of it in terms of time commitment. I think of it in terms of time, uh, investment and time receivership. I, I'm not sure what word to call that, but it's getting interest. Time interest. And it really pays off. And it pays off in multiple ways because when you, when you get traction with this, then you teach it to other people. And when you teach it, then you really start to learn it. And you make other people's lives better as a result.
Fantastic. And, uh, I guess a, a related question to that, uh, that that time question is, if we have to memorize, uh, let's say we, we're aiming for a, a few thousand words to, to memorize and after that we can probably get words from, you know, uh, context or native material or something. Um, but doesn't that require a lot of memory palaces? Isn't that hard to balance so many particularly starting out?
Well, some people do have this issue and others don't. It, it all has to do with how you approach it. So, for example, you could say, oh, well, this is dozens of memory palaces that I need. Or you could say, well, I'm going to start off with 10. I'm going to put 10 words in each of them, which is 100 words. And then I'm going to go from there. I'm going to either reuse those memory palaces, or I'm going to come up with another 10 memory palaces. But to come up with a thousand memory palaces doesn't make sense and it's not even necessary. But to come up with 10 is pretty simple because everybody was born somewhere. Everybody went to school somewhere. Everybody has shopped somewhere. Everybody's been to a library. Everybody's been to a movie theater. Probably most of us have been at one point in our lives or not at church, and then a hotel, and a restaurant, and a cafe, and maybe when they used to have video stores, maybe a video store. So, there's 10 memory palaces right there. And they're pretty well universal that just about everybody has visited. So, uh, to me, it's just, it's a non-issue. And and to this day, I've lived on a street for a long time. To this day, there are stores that I haven't gone into. So, heaven forbid that I was running out of memory palaces, it's, they're, they're just around the corner, you know? So,
That's really funny. I was just imagining you sitting there with your, I don't know, Britannica or something, and just, you made it to like Q and oh no, no more memory palaces. Must go out and find new ones.
Yeah, it's like, you know.
This isn't the Hunt for Red October. I mean, it's just, they're everywhere. Right. Well, it's, I'm really glad that we can kind of, you know, dispel some of these myths and, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, always happy to, uh, provide people with, uh, my own misconceptions about concepts, uh, in order to, uh, shed some light. And this is definitely something that I want to, I want to get to work on.
And, uh, a related question is, what's the, what's the scaling once you get good at it, well, not good at it, but once you get into it and you start feeling, uh, kind of a groove? Do you build more palaces, or do you build more stations in the palaces? What's the first step?
Yeah, that's, that's a individual issue. I tend to encourage people not to build more stations inside of palaces in favor of building more memory palaces. Because, let's say you want to preserve a journey of 10 words. You just want to keep it, which I often do. Um, it's just, it's fun, it's neat, and there's no real pressure to rebuild those memory palaces. Well, if you're doing things alphabetically, you got to slot something in between C-A and C-O, right? And start shifting stuff around. What makes more sense is to start a new memory palace for C-O words and leave the C-A words independent, or just reuse that memory palace.
And, you know, a general rule of thumb is that if you don't have those words in, if you're actually doing things as described and actually doing the repetition work, if you don't have those words in long-term memory after 72 hours, then you need to go back and think about what it is that you're doing because there's something misfiring.
Right.
Uh, there's something that just needs to be attended to. And I've got a video somewhere on magneticmemorymethod.com, about the five big mistakes that people are making that you can, you can look at and, uh, and apply to your work to see what it is that you could improve. But there's usually issues are that the memory palace isn't properly constructed. The images that you're creating do not help you effectively recall the sound and meaning of the word. The images you're creating are not memorable because you haven't made them large and weird and strange and exaggerated and, you know, uh, Khan is not really, really kissing, uh, Vinnie from My Cousin Vinny as vigorously as he could and he's not throwing that seltzer as hard as he could and you don't have the agricultural meaning in there.
And, uh, and also, the, the other mistake that people make is they don't appropriately rehearse those words. You don't, they don't restage the play enough times to get it into long-term memory. And then, they're not listening, reading, writing, speaking the language every day to give themselves opportunity to embed it in the context of larger language learning principles.
Right. Exactly. And I, I can definitely imagine people, you know, sitting down, maybe after listening to this, I would hope so, sitting down, making their first memory palace, learning maybe those 10 words, and then not really going back to it, just assuming that, well, build and set, you know. I suppose it's, it's really worth mentioning that it is an ongoing process.
But you say 72 hours. I think that's, that's quite good numbers compared to just using, uh, spaced repetition where I think that from, that takes a lot of repetitions, and maybe, uh, I don't even know how long, I just know that it's, you know, five or six repetitions and they keep going longer. So, I guess it's, it might be a week or two, uh, at least before, uh, it's, it's ingrained. So, so at least that's a, it's got that going for it.
Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with space repetition software. The only thing that's wrong with it is that I find it personally dreadfully boring, and I know hundreds and hundreds of people have emailed me and said thank God that there's an alternative, because there's no way I'm going to sit there punching a button. And there's no way that so many people are going to be honest and say, oh yeah, I got it this time. Yeah, right. You know? It's like, you just miss the word and it never comes back for a week or however long it never comes back and you haven't really learned it. You've tricked yourself into thinking that you've learned it because you've got that little mouse pleasure button, you know, that deludes you and gives the illusion that you've got the word. And of course, the same problem with SRS exists with anything, which is that the people aren't reading, writing, speaking and listening every day. So, um, if people aren't getting results from, uh, space repetition software, the answer is not necessarily the method that I'm teaching if they're not doing those other, uh, language learning activities.
Of course.
So, there's no magic bullets, but really, I personally think that this is the closest thing to real magic and it's because you're actually not relying on a, on, on blunt force repetition to get something into memory. You're using your imagination and that strengthens your imagination. It's like pushups for your imagination, which means that you're stronger and faster and better for the next material that you want to memorize. And you're creating, we know that your brain plasticity and all that stuff. You're creating new little parts of your brain and making new connections. And it's extraordinarily healthy. And you're not like leaving it to random chance that if you look at it enough times, it's going to stick in. You're creating images that are unforgettable, that you have to pay attention to. You have to look at it and and they're so shocking and strange that you have no choice but to try and decode them.
Right.
Uh, and that to me seems much more interesting and much more valid and worthy of one's time than all the time that it costs programming SRS software and all the discipline that it takes to hit those buttons and to be honest that you've actually absorbed that word. And, you know, there are people who are very good at it and they get amazing results and by all means. But for the vast, vast numbers of people who cannot do it, will not do it, and are missing out because of the rigors of space repetition, there is an alternative and it may attract you and it may actually make it easier for you to find a, a point of entry into this and and and really have a great time because you're using your creativity. And you don't have to be imaginative. You just be able, you just need to be able to build a sentence. And then you can work on becoming more imaginative. And I teach all kinds of things about becoming more visual and more creative. But at the end of the day, if you can rent a DVD or illegally download a movie, then you can increase your imagination just while you're having fun. You just got to pay attention more to what the filmmakers are doing in order to create images that are memorable. And then start making them in your own mind with the attachment to the sound and meaning of the words you want to learn. And the entire phrases that you want to learn.
Yeah, fantastic. That that last point, I just wanted to ask you because we've talked a lot about putting words into memory palaces. Are there any applications of putting anything else in there, like phrases, sentences, or I guess grammatical rules, or some kind of things like that?
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I mean, what, once you have, let's say 10 words, one of the best things you can do is go and attach an entire phrase to each one, which gives you more words and also a phrase. And that's and then you rehearse it the same way. And now you're rehearsing entire phrases from inside your mind, not externally responding to, to a piece of software. Because when you're in a real conversational setting, you're going to need to get those things from your mind, not a piece of software. So, this is quite a nice thing to be doing, adding phrases.
So, essentially, you've created the roller coaster ride, then you've created the little stops that the roller coaster is going to go along. And then you go back and you create, you know, uh, long, longer lines at those stops. And in terms of grammar principles, I don't think it makes that much sense to remember the grammar principles as such. But you can make a crib sheet that shows you like, say, for regular and irregular verbs, right? You can make a journey for regular verbs based on run or read or whatever. And then you can make a memory palace with a list of the, of the different forms that, uh, an irregular verb would take. And then you can use that as a crib sheet for every other word that you would memorize that's either regular or irregular, how that works. And you can do it for all the tenses and so forth. To the, to the extent that that's actually necessary, I don't know because it, it depends. But as a, as a, as an opening to really give yourself a, a some movement forward to get this aha, I get it, sort of thing. Then that can be very, very powerful and useful. And yeah, I mean, there's no, there's really very little that you can't memorize. You just got to think about how that these techniques would apply to that particular situation. So, I've had people throw all kinds of graph charts at me and so forth. And I, I come up with a solution whether or not that that's the solution for, for them is not something that I can really say. But I know that I can give them the example of what I would do, and then I do it, and it works. And so, they just need to try and, you know, like I said, I don't really give a system, I give a method for creating your own system. And really, ideally, systems, because this is, this is a, a, a martial art, so to speak, you know? You're responding to different situations and that response needs to be different according to the situation based on fundamental principles of gravity, of the human body, and, uh, other sorts of things of force and duration and velocity. But, uh, at the end of the day, it's still just another body that you're interacting with. And so you change your form in accordance with what that body is doing. So, if you imagine that the attacker is a vocabulary word, then, you know, maybe it's not Vinnie and it, maybe it's not Khan, but it's going to be something doing something to somebody else. And that other somebody else is going to be reacting and that's going to help you recall the sound and the meaning of the word or the sounds and the meanings in a phrase, or whatever crib sheet that you might build in your mind for, for, uh, regular or irregular verbs and so forth. Um, there's no limit to it. The only limit is your interest and your, your willingness to work on expanding your imagination wherever it may be at the present moment. And no one is, no one has image deficit disorder or imagination deficit disorder. People try to pull this one on me. And, uh, I'm just like, well, what does the toilet sound like when it flushes? And nobody can, nobody cannot answer that. And, you know, you know, no one, no, no, everybody has the ability to imagine at least a ghost image of what, of a certain things, like the, the fridge door closing or the taste of milk or something like this. It's, it's, it's just, but people, people bring the resistances a lot. And so that's why I teach relax, relaxation. Because at the, at the end of the day, this is what it is. It, it, Bruce Lee said something that I quote all the time, which is that no self, no enemy. And we are constantly, it doesn't matter, it's not just about this learning technique. We always go to learning techniques and we always say, yeah, but my mind works different. And yeah, but it's not that way for me. And we always come with this, right? And it's we're making an enemy out of something because our ego does not want us to change. Our ego does not want us to improve because it threatens the status quo. It threatens the way things are. And the ego likes to keep things the way that things are. And because if you improve yourself, if you become more fluent, then you have the burden of actually being a different person than the one you are now. And now you got to communicate with people and that puts you in a threatening situation. It will does. The real core of people failing to learn new things, math, language learning, whatever, is the fear of responsibility and the fear of death because when you have to go and put yourself in new situations, you are symbolically facing death.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anthony, you're just breaking up on this.
Okay, so I got Freud on you. Freudian on you.
No, unfortunately. Anthony, yeah, you just broke up a little bit at the end there. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for coming on the, uh, you know, the second season. It's, uh, it's been a lot of fun and I, I'm, I'm happy that you were available to answer all my, uh, my problems with the memory palaces or at least concerns or fears. And I'm really excited to get started on them myself, uh, obviously after such a an inspirational dose. I'm, I'm ready to give it a try and I, I'm looking forward to reporting back on the blog with a, probably a blog post on, on how I'm getting along and maybe I'll take some pictures of my mega drawings or just to show the method from a very beginner perspective.
Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, just want to say thank you for that. That, uh, that was a, a great summary of, uh, of why we do, uh, what we do. And I wanted to just add the, the flash cards, you know, I've been working on Memrise for a long time. And I've been really bored with it recently. And I've just seen people, you know, there's, uh, particularly one guy called George who just gets so many points every week and he's like, I, I do it before I go to bed. And he, you know, he learns so many words. And for him, obviously that method works. But I've really enjoyed hearing about this sort of added in to the SRS method of how to, uh, add new vocabulary without getting bored because I don't know if it, if it's, you know, uh, a cyclical thing where you find a method, then you get bored with it, then you find something else, and you get bored with that, then you go back to the first, or you're just improving all the way. Uh, but either way, I hope that we have, during the course of this conversation, at least, um, interested people in the act of creating a memory palace or at least look into, uh, using the creativity more and, and attaching those locations to the meaning and the sound and the mnemonic of a, of a new word or phrase.
But anyway, Anthony, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you as always. And before we end, I just wanted to, uh, give a little shout out to your, uh, to your website, magneticmemorymethod.com and the podcast on there's actually really great. Not only do you obviously talk about memory a lot, but you also have a lot of language learners on. So, if people, you know, enjoyed this podcast, I'm sure you would enjoy Anthony's. But Anthony, what's the next step for people if they want, they want you to teach them how to build memory palaces? Where do they go to get that information?
Okay.
Well, I've set up a special link for listeners to the Actual Fluency podcast and that would be magneticmemorymethod.com/fluency. And there's a special memory kit waiting for you that will give you some of the worksheets that I mentioned and give you some videos that will show you the construction of memory palaces and I think that they will help you a great deal if all of this sounded abstract or strange or weird or or anything like that. But,
Or in German.
Yeah, well, I mean, it is strange and weird and that's the point because strange and weird things are memorable. And, uh, yeah, so magneticmemorymethod.com/fluency. And, you know, as things grow, I get more and more questions, but I'm generally available and give me a week or so and I will answer any questions that you have. And, uh, the ultimate answer is to do, take action, because at the end of the day, you know, Gary Halbert once said that motion is more important than meditation. And that doesn't mean don't meditate, but when it comes to things like these, just get started, uh, begin anywhere. And, uh, that was John Cage who said that. And, uh, they were both right. Uh,
Oh, start it. And, uh, try, try your best and, uh, as long as you do something every day, you know, you're probably getting smarter and, and, Yeah, and you can always go back to SRS, you know. There's not, uh, it's not like you're abandoning anything. Uh, you can use it in combination and I teach how to use it in combination. You can literally make your flash cards correspond to a memory palace journey. And, uh, I've experimented with it. It does, it doesn't add anything in particular for me, but it does help a lot of people because they can see the possibilities of having a hybrid SRS memory palace methodology. And, uh, and it, it does help. It, it softens the blow of boredom with SRS when you are not seeing the definition and trying to come up with the word, but instead you're seeing, you know, Khan throwing seltzer at Vinnie while he's trying to kiss him. You know? And then you go, oh yeah, and then you're decoding this image. You're seeing this little movie in your mind. And then you go, aha! And then, then you get that word. Uh, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's much more interesting than definition and then trying to come up with the word out of nothing. Right. Which often happens, to be honest. Yeah.
All right, well Anthony, thank you so much for being on the show and and thank you for coming on the, uh, you know, the second season. It's, uh, it's been a lot of fun and I, I'm, I'm happy that you were available to answer all my, uh, my problems with the memory palaces or at least concerns or fears. And I'm really excited to get started on it myself. Uh, obviously after such a an inspirational dose. I'm, I'm ready to give it a try and I, I'm looking forward to reporting back on the blog with a, probably a blog post on, on how I'm getting along and maybe I'll take some pictures of my mega drawings or just to show the method from a very beginner perspective.
Yeah, and you can always go back to SRS, you know. There's not, uh, it's not like you're abandoning anything. Uh, you can use it in combination and I teach how to use it in combination. You can literally make your flash cards correspond to a memory palace journey. And, uh, I've experimented with it. It does, it doesn't add anything in particular for me, but it does help a lot of people because they can see the possibilities of having a hybrid SRS memory palace methodology. And, uh, and it, it does help. It, it softens the blow of boredom with SRS when you are not seeing the definition and trying to come up with the word, but instead you're seeing, you know, Khan's throwing seltzer at Vinnie while he's trying to kiss him. You know? And then you go, oh yeah, and then you're decoding this image. You're seeing this little movie in your mind. And then you go, aha! And then, then you get that word. Uh, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's much more interesting than definition and then trying to come up with the word out of nothing.
Right, which often happens, to be honest.
Yeah.
All right, well Anthony, thank you so much for being on the show and and thank you for coming on the uh you know the second season it's uh it's been a lot of fun and I I'm I'm happy that you were available to answer all my uh my problems with the memory palaces or at least concerns or fears and I'm really excited to get started on it myself uh obviously after such a an inspirational dose I'm I'm ready to give it a try and I I'm looking forward to reporting back on the blog with a probably a blog post on on how I'm getting along and maybe I'll take some pictures of my uh mega drawings or just to show the uh method from a uh very beginner uh perspective.
Cool. Well, thank you very much.
All right, yeah, we'll meet in Berlin, I assume.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna give a little talk about this, um, maybe more on the results side than than actual hard training, but give a report on some of the, some of the things that have occurred as a result of this and some of the barriers and challenges that remain to be addressed and and, uh, different ideas about that.
Fantastic. I'll look forward to it.
Cool. Well, thank you very much.
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