Scribba
Some things you have to know in order. The twelve cranial nerves. The phases of mitosis. The causes of a war, in the order your professor listed them. Lists like these are hard to hold because nothing connects item four to item five. The memory palace gives each item a place to live, and places are something your memory handles very well.
The technique is old. Ancient Greek and Roman speakers used it to give long speeches without notes, and memory competitors still use it today. Here's how to build one for a class, step by step, and when it's worth the effort.
How the memory palace works
You already know the layout of your home without ever studying it. You know what's past the front door, which way the kitchen is, where the couch sits. The memory palace, also called the method of loci ("loci" is Latin for places), borrows that spatial memory.
You pick a route through a place you know, turn each thing you need to remember into a vivid image, and leave one image at each stop. To recall the list, you walk the route in your mind and look at what's there. The order comes for free, because the route already has one.
Build your first palace
- Choose a place you know well. Your apartment, your family's house, your walk from the dorm to the dining hall. You should be able to picture it with your eyes closed.
- Pick your stops. Walk through it in your head and choose distinct spots in a fixed order: the doormat, the coat hook, the hallway mirror, the kitchen sink, the fridge. Always move in the same direction.
- Write the route down. Number the stops. Walk it a few times until you can list them without thinking.
- Turn each item into an image. Abstract ideas need to become something you can see. Make it concrete, exaggerated and, if you can, a little ridiculous.
- Place one image at each stop. Make the image do something to the spot: it's crushing the doormat, dangling from the coat hook, staring back from the mirror.
- Walk it back. Close your eyes, start at the door and name every item. Then write the list from memory and check it against your notes.
An example: the cranial nerves
Say you need the twelve cranial nerves in order, and your route is your apartment.
- Doormat (olfactory): a giant nose sniffing the doormat.
- Coat hook (optic): an eyeball hanging from the hook, swinging.
- Hallway mirror (oculomotor): your reflection's eyes rolling in every direction.
- Light switch (trochlear): a tiny truck driving up the wall to the switch.
And so on through the kitchen and living room. When the exam asks for nerve four, you walk to the fourth stop and see the truck. It sounds silly. That's the point: silly, specific images are the ones that stay.
Tip: use sound-alikes for unfamiliar words. "Trochlear" becomes a truck, "vagus" becomes the lights of Las Vegas. You only need enough of a hook to pull the real word back.
What it's good for, and what it isn't
The memory palace is strongest for ordered lists and for sets of items with no logic of their own: steps in a process, lists of causes or effects, the parts of a structure, the points of a presentation you need to give in order, or the outline of an essay answer you want to write from memory.
It's weaker for understanding. Knowing that the vagus nerve is number ten doesn't tell you what it does. Use the palace to hold the list, then learn what each item means with your notes and practice questions. It also takes setup time, so save it for lists you'll really be tested on. For a short list, a simpler mnemonic like an acronym is often faster.
Keep your palaces from blurring together
Once you have more than one palace, a few habits help:
- One palace per list. If you use your apartment for both the cranial nerves and the steps of the Krebs cycle, the images crowd each other. Use different places: your apartment, a friend's house, your old school, a route across campus.
- Keep the route fixed. The stops are the stable part. Only the images change.
- Review it like anything else. A palace you walk once fades like a page you read once. Walk it the next day, then a few days later, then a week later. That's spaced repetition, and the spaced repetition guide explains the schedule.
- Recall, don't reread. Walking the palace with your eyes closed is active recall. Looking at your list of images and nodding along is not.
Building a memory palace in Scribba
Scribba is an iPad notebook for class. It can't build the palace for you, since that part happens in your head, but it's a good place to keep the plans and practice walking them.
Draw the floor plan. Add a blank page to the class notebook and sketch the route: a rough floor plan with numbered stops and an arrow for the direction you walk. Hold the Apple Pencil still at the end of a stroke and it snaps into a straight line, arrow or rectangle, which makes walls and rooms quick to draw. You can also add a photo of the real place from the camera or your photo library.
Write the stops and images. Next to each numbered stop, write the item and the image you put there. A Cornell Notes page works well: the stop goes in the CUES & QUESTIONS column, the item and its image in the NOTES column.
Quiz yourself with study tape. Drag study tape over the items so only the stops show, then recall what's at each one. Tap the tape to peek. The study tape guide has more ways to use it.
Turn the stops into flashcards. Write each cue as a question, like "Stop 4, the light switch?", and Scribba reads your handwriting and turns each cue into a flashcard. This doesn't need Apple Intelligence. Check the words it read, fix anything it got wrong, then study. Cards come back after 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 days, which matches the walk-it-again schedule above.
Find the palace again. Add a named bookmark to the page, like "Cranial nerves palace", so it shows up in the notebook's table of contents in the page sidebar.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a real place for a memory palace?
A real place you know well is easiest, because the layout is already in your memory. Some people use a building from a game or a show. What matters is that you can picture it clearly and walk it in the same order every time.
How many items can one palace hold?
As many stops as you can picture clearly in order. Start with ten or so. Longer lists can continue into the next room, or out the door and down the street.
Can I reuse a palace for a new exam?
Yes, once you no longer need the old list. Leaving some time between them helps the old images fade. If you'll need both lists for the final, use two different places.