They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I know that if someone wanted to memorize a list of all its major architecture, or all of its major streets, they could definitely do that well inside of a day.
In fact, I’m not sure why the memorization championships don’t include memorizing city streets.
This addition would make an especially interesting challenge because one would use a Memory Palace journey to memorize the name of a street that is in and of itself a journey. It would be like a roller-coaster inside of a roller-coaster.
And that’s really the mental exercise I propose you try today.
Think of it as Magnetic Memory Stretching.
Here’s what to do:
1. Create a Memory Palace journey with ten stations (no more than ten unless you want to remember more things).
2. Open a map of your favorite city (or a city you would like to visit).
3. Find the city center or a major landmark. Or perhaps use a large convention hall if you can find a blueprint.
4. Pick a major street.
5. Memorize the names of 10 of the streets that branch to the left (or right, or both) of that major street.
If you are using streets that use words from your target language if you’re learning one, memorize the meaning of those words as well.
You can also work on memorizing any traffic symbols you don’t already know. This will give your visual memory an additional workout.
Why do this exercise?
It will increase your conceptual abilities and your talent with manipulating geographical space at two separate levels of cognition.
This is all part of a solid Memory Palace practice when you’re using memory techniques to reach bilingualism.
Guaranteed.
But it’s also just a core part of using memory techniques well. For example, you can use the technique to memorize any street address:
As you can see in this video, I’m in Australia. They speak my mother tongue, so there was no language learning involved.
However, memory is itself a language. If you can learn how to play it, you will do very well.
And if you would like more guaranteed help memorizing foreign language vocabulary, How to and Memorize the Vocabulary of Any Language will be your guide. You’ll find it in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.
Or, continue with these additional memory improvement exercises.
