Memory hack: Derren Brown teaches the method of loci | Big Think

DERREN BROWN: We all think we're terrible at remembering things. We all complain we can't remember faces and remember names. We can remember faces often, but we can't remember names. At a party, and you know, we all think we have terrible memories. I think we sort of imagined maybe that some people just have amazing memories, and we have images of, you know, Meryl Streep who can supposedly just, you know, photo-read a script. But I think these things don't really quite exist in the way we imagine that they do.

What's useful is that all memory techniques are based on the idea of working with what the mind already does, which is forming memorable connections between bits of information. So we lock them together. For example, to give you a practical example, everything, like everything great, goes back to the Greeks. So this is an ancient Greek technique; it's called the loci system, and you can use this if you need to remember any long list of things.

So it could—I use this at night if I need to remember stuff I've got to do the next day, but I'm too tired to write them down. So here's what you do: it sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't once you get your head around it. So have a walk that you know, around an area that you can create in your mind very easily. It could be your street, it could be the walk from the subway station to your house, or whatever.

All you need along that area are a few set points that you could remember without having to think about it. Because you know there's always a zebra crossing there, there's a post box, mailbox—I'm probably using very English, quite an English explanation. If there's a certain store, there's a bush, or whatever. Just things that you're very familiar with.

So the first thing you've got to remember is, I don't know, I have to take my suit to the dry cleaners, and I've got to do that tomorrow. So I make an image. You have to make a bizarre image of that thing. So say a suit that is so clean, it's sort of gleaming bright white that you can barely look at it, and you attach that to this image of the mailbox. So you imagine someone's pulled that—like dressed up the metal box in a gleaming white suit or is trying to stuff it in, but the light's shining out of the little slot.

Whatever; you just make a bizarre image that links the two. Then you forget about it. You don't need to think about it. Then the next thing you do at the next location, and the next thing you do at the next location, and so on. As long as you've made those images as bizarre and ridiculous as I'm making them sound, which is what's important, all you do the next stage—you just mentally walk down that route again, and you go, "Why is there a white suit on the… oh yeah, I'm going to take my suit."

And then the next one maybe is, you know, you have to call your mother. And it's what is it? It's a big shrub by the side of the road. So you're, you know, there's your mother in there waving a telephone from the shrub, and she's, you know, there's branches and leaves caught up in her hair and your—whatever, just a silly image that you don't forget.

So they would do this, and you can—the longer, you know, the bigger your area of locations are, the better. I did this with the history of art. I used to read a lot around the history of art. I was sick of forgetting about it. So I know the City of London fairly well. So I just took the route around the center of London that I know well, which would give me about 600 different locations.

Then starting in Greek Street, for example, which is a city stop, I started there with the ancient Greeks. I would place these bizarre images at little locations. So by walking around this route, I could recreate the history of art as I knew it from the books that I've read. So you can expand this thing, or you can keep it small and manageable.

So that's a really good system for remembering lists. If you want a couple of others that are probably a little briefer to describe, if you want to remember names at a party—and I don't enjoy parties, so I always tend to do this because it gives me something to do—you find a link between the person's name and something about their appearance: what they're wearing, their face, their hair, something.

So you do have to listen. That's the first thing. When they say the name, normally that very moment where someone's giving you the name, you're just caught up in a sudden, like, you know, whole load of social anxiety. Anyway, you don't even hear it, so you have to listen. You find a link with something that they're wearing.

So if they're called Mike and they've got, I don't know, big black hair, you think, "That's like a microphone." So I can imagine like a big, you know, microphone walking around. Or if they've got a stripy t-shirt on, you imagine a microphone with those stripes going around it, and it's the same process. Later on in the evening, you see them, you look at the stripes and you go, "Oh, that's Mike, really Mike, that's Mike." Or the hair—why am I thinking that he has like a big microphone? I use, of course, "They’re called Mike."

And then while the party dips and you're a bit bored, you look around the room and see if you can do everyone's name. And then you've got a couple of minutes to sort of try and recreate it. If you can't quite remember, "Oh yes, of course, it's the jacket," although taking their jacket off—that's why I can't do it. So I'll link it with something else.

And then at the end, you get to go around and say goodbye to everybody by name, and everyone thinks you're very charming and clever.