Don't Use Similar Locations In Memory Palaces

Using every single location you have in a house, park, or store seems like a good idea when you are creating a memory palace. If locations in your palace are similar, you have a problem you need to fix quick! When you're creating a memory palace, you might think you can use any items as a location regardless of how the items/locations look similar.

Now logically, this makes sense, right? If you need locations, why not use anything in your house, library, or park as a location? But if you have similar locations in a single palace, it's going to cause problems. Let's say you have three beds in your memory palace. bed one, bed two, and bed three. You're trying to memorize some info, and you place an image on bed one.

Then you place another image on bed two and another on bed three. Later when you're going to recall the information, the problem you run into is, "On bed one I saw this image. Wait... Or was the image on bed three? What image did bed two have again?" So what happens is that you're mixing up your images and stories on the different beds because they're so similar. I understand when you see the beds in person, it's very easy to make a distinction between them.

But in your mind when you're trying to memorize quickly and see your locations in the memory palaces, you see a beds with no real distinctions. Hopefully, you can see how easy it is to mix up your stories and locations on similar locations. Unless you have a bed that's really crazy and different from all these other beds, then you could probably get away with two beds.

But if you're using the same location over and over again like all the chairs at your kitchen table, you're going to have a problem about which image belongs to which chair. You can easily prevent this problem by not using similar locations! But if you have to as a last resort, use similar locations... Make sure you pay close attention to how the location feels and what makes one location different from another.

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