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If you want to know how to remember concepts, the trick is to use memory techniques that can handle conceptual information.
But deeply absorbing concepts is not entirely about memorization or using learning techniques.
On this page, I’ll teach you the Memory Palace technique and how to use it for developing expert levels of familiarity with multiple concepts.
And go further by making sure you embed the memorization steps in the larger process of processing what you learn.
How do I know why it’s so important to combine memorization with other learning activities?
My knowledge is based on my experiences as a professor who taught critical thinking at university.
And as a memory expert who has written over a dozen bestselling books on memory techniques, I’ve memorized dozens of concepts.
I learn a lot from the broad fields of philosophy, music, grammar, business and sometimes even physics.
From a memory perspective, the tools you need boil down to five “systems” that combine the best mnemonic devices for effective recall.
I’m going to share all of them with you and give some examples. But we’ll also talk about the bigger picture so that you’re not just reciting concepts from memory.
You’ll also be able to connect them across multiple fields.
Ready for a deep dive tutorial on turning even the most abstract information into concrete ideas you will easily remember?
Let’s dive in!
How To Remember Concepts: 5 Simple & Effective Steps
Before we get into the individual steps, you might want to read my tutorials on turning abstract thinking into concrete thinking within just a few seconds.
This opening step is essential because without it, you’ll be stuck thinking that concepts are much more abstract than they might be in reality.
This video tutorial above details the first step:
Knowing your concepts and recognizing them by name.
I highlight this important step because a lot of people think that they are dealing with concepts when in fact, it’s specialized terminology they’re struggling to remember.
In other words, it’s often the case that you get the “gist” of the term. But it’s the term itself that’s got you stumped.
If that’s the case, you can move directly to my tutorial on how to memorize vocabulary. It will save you a lot of time whenever you’ve got the basic idea, and are really just struggling with the words themselves.
One: Start With The Concept By Name (With Or Without Understanding It)
Here’s a principle that I think you’ll find useful based on a problem:
A lot of people think you have to understand concepts before memorizing them.
As a result, they wait until they understand before committing anything to memory.
Although that delay can be useful in some contexts, I disagree that you have to wait for understanding before you start memorizing.
Here’s a personal example, one I unfolded in my TEDx Talk:
I only came to understand a lot of the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized while studying a philosophy called Advaita Vedanta after memorizing them.
Just memorizing the term “Advaita Vedanta” and its meaning helped me better understand it.
The process of memorizing first and understanding later might sound counterintuitive. But once you give it a try a few times, you’ll quickly see that the name of any concept is core information.
So, it’s well worth starting by memorizing the name of a concept first. Next, understand that every part of the concept is also essentially a name.
Example of a Concept with a Name and Multiple Parts
For example, a Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass student recently asked me about memorizing the Eightfold Path in Buddhism. The main concept is that certain behaviors will free you from suffering.
Then, you need to memorize each of the eight interconnected aspects of the concept. Each are themselves conceptual.
You can spend a lifetime reflecting on these paths and still not fully understand them. And that’s okay.
The key is to simple know how to memorize a list of information. And as I told my student, from there you couple memorizing the names of the parts by combining further study and practice over time.
How to Memorize Multiple Concepts by Name
To accomplish this, I personally use multiple Memory Palaces. That way I always have a lot of room for all the concepts I want to commit to memory.
We’ll talk more about layering concepts into Memory Palaces in a moment.
But here’s another tip:
Always say the concept and its definition out loud as you’re learning it.
This step is important because often we try to understand things purely in the silence of our minds. That’s just not workable for most of us.
That’s why formal courses often get you to engage in discussions with your fellow students. It’s a way of cementing in what you want to learn by experiencing both the term and the ideas in a more concrete format.
It’s also useful to question everything about the concept, both verbally, mentally and physically by writing.
I think of applying questions as a kind of “mental rotation.”
The more angles you see by asking the classic who, what, when, where, why and how questions, the easier it will be to remember any concept.
Two: Start To Apply “Magnetic” Associations
The instant you come across an association, translate it mentally into a multisensory mnemonic image.
As discussed in Scientific American, and even taught in its pages, making striking images is especially powerful in information dense fields like science and medicine.
To give you a simple example, when I memorized the term “Advaita,” I combined the most famous advertising expert I know with Steve Via. Ad + Vai created a core imagine that made “advaita” stick to memory.
Then I added a few more associations for the second part of the term and the meaning.
If you feel like you might be too slow with this kind of association assignment activity, I suggest completing these simple and fun visualization exercises. Then go through these sensory memory exercises for even better results.
Visualization and association are so important because they help make abstract information concrete and tangible for your brain.
Three: Place Your Associations In Memory Palaces
If you’re new to the Memory Palace technique and memory skills overall, here’s what it a Memory Palace is and how it applies to rapidly absorbing conceptual information.
The Memory Palace technique is also know as the method of loci or the journey method. To use it for memorizing concepts, choose a familiar location, like a living room or workplace office.
Once this is done, split your location into specific spots, as you see in this illustration:
You then associate each concept you want to memorize with each spot in the Memory Palace by placing your associations along a journey.
Then, when you mentally walk back through the Memory Palace, you’ll recall the images. Like an advertiser with Steve Vai to get back the word “advaita.”
Although this kind of alphabetical association might seem like it only works for small bits of information at a time, that’s actually a good thing.
To understand why focusing on smaller units of information is so powerful, you can look into the science of memory and chunking for more on the why and how.
What’s more important is to know that breaking things down into smaller parts has been the method of choice for many great conceptual thinkers throughout history, including:
- Simonides of Ceos
- The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium
- St. Augustine
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Giordano Bruno
- Robert Fludd
You can learn more about all of these thinkers and how they used this ancient memory technique in The Art of Memory.
I suggest studying the history and techniques of these mnemonists in particular precisely because they learned and used so many concepts throughout their careers.
Four: Use Active Recall & Spaced Repetition
Right or wrong, a lot of people learn about the Memory Palace technique through Sherlock Holmes.
As a result, they come to think of the technique as a kind of “storage.” It can be, but that’s not really the point.
Rather, we want to use the Memory Palace technique for spaced repetition and active recall. This is the fastest and most reliable way to usher the concepts you need to learn into long-term memory.
You can also use flashcards for concept retention, but the point is to self-test.
Using the Memory Palace makes it easy. If you have ten concepts in a Memory Palace, you simply mentally walk through the space. As you go, you think about the associations you placed there and let them come to mind.
This process will feel challenging. But we know from plenty of memory science that the mind needs challenges like this to form memories. It can get a bit technical, but in this study you can see how various practice routines are essential to memory formation.
The same findings are available in many studies of what we call deliberate practice.
Five: Employ Study Habits That Boost Retention
Memory techniques are fantastic. But as I said in the introduction, you also want to embed your memorization in a larger range of activities.
These additional strategies include using active reading strategies and take notes from your books in a sophisticated manner.
Making sure you choose to learn in the best possible study places will also help.
I’ve talked a lot about how to learn faster on this blog and highly recommend modelling how I memorize textbooks.
This video details exactly how I passed my PhD at York University far ahead of my peers who entered the Humanities program the same year:
I had to deal with dozens of concepts during those years of study and I’m so glad I had all of these techniques in my skillset.
The main technique starts with extracting ideas from books and writing them out on Zettelkasten. The Zettelaskten process is essentially an advanced form of using flashcards.
But this is perhaps the most important tip of all when considered in the context of my entire approach:
The study habits I use involve taking frequent breaks and switching strategically between topics.
This process of rotating through textbooks is the principle of interleaving that has been so helpful for many people dealing with concept-heavy information.
You Really Can Retain Even The Most Complex Concepts
As you’ve seen, improving how you learning complex ideas starts by deeply engaging the concepts you need to remember.
As we’ve discussed above, don’t be passive about it. Literally start by memorizing the name of the concept and unfamiliar terms.
Then go further by saying the concept out loud.
Then, commit the concepts to memory using the mental tools we’ve discussed. Mnemonics that use associations will lead to making greater connections over time.
And don’t worry about making mistakes. You can always go back and fix errors. Mistakes will also teach you as you learn to commit challenging information to memory.
In my experience after years of working with thousands of students, the key is to ensure that you’re actually memorizing the main point of the concept.
That way, you can add on the more subtle details on the basis of the biggest idea. This will help you memorize entire passages relatively quickly using the Memory Palace technique.
But it will also help you benefit from the “less is more” principle over time. When you’re regularly reading, writing, speaking about and listening to others talk about concepts, more detail will stick without needing memory techniques at all.
If you need more help with the Memory Palace part of the process, feel free to register for my memory improvement course:
In just four video lessons and three worksheets, you’ll have mastered the core technique needed to content with any complex conceptual information.
You’ll be joining the ranks of all the philosophers I mentioned above, not to mention becoming a top performer of the mind.
So what do you say?
Now that you have the power, get out there and memorize the heaviest concepts you can find!
