So-called memory palaces are more popular than other mnemonic systems, like memory walks or The Journey Method. In essence, they are the same. Let’s see what a “memory walk” is.

As you probably know, memory palaces and the use of visualization as a mnemonic tool began a long time ago. Yes, it was the Greeks. They discovered that humans remember more easily when visualizing spaces they have been in. Like, for example, in a theatre that collapsed a person would easily remember where famous and known-to-him people had been sitting in that space. This was great for identifying the bodies, but more importantly, if you let people that are placed inside rooms symbolize concepts, words, or ideas you wish to commit to memory you simply place them inside rooms you know, and you can easily remember everything you wanted.

This is also called the Roman Room technique.

Simply by placing objects not normally associated with that room, in that room, you will be able to recall the data. People prepare rooms for memorization which means they choose some of the furniture or other objects in the room to be pegs or stations within that room.

Of course, rooms are part of houses. If you want a larger system you could choose a house you know instead of just a room. Note that the sequence of how you read back the pegs or stations is important. Always choose one particular way to move around the room, for example clockwise. Also, the way you move around the house could be in sequence as well.

I find that memory walks work equally great as the Roman Room techniques. And another advantage is that you get so many more mnemonic structures to work with instead of just using rooms and houses.

Everyone can find a walk from where they live and to any point they choose, in fact, it should be easy to construct at least four walks around your house and neighborhood. I say the number four as this represents the cardinal directions, but even if you can’t access east from your house, the point is that you can still find four “walks” around your neighborhood, with ten stops or stations along the way.

In my neighborhood, I have many, many walks. The great thing about choosing walks in your neighborhood is that you can walk around them regularly to fortify your powers. Get more familiar.

If you do not have any nice walks around your dwelling, what about near your place of work? Or in the nearest town? If you start thinking about walks you will most likely find a whole bunch.

There are two major types of walks: Nature walks and urban walks. A person who is familiar with trees, plants, and nature could possibly get more out of a memory walk in nature. But in most cases, I would say that an urban environment, where you find different types of buildings and other structures, is easier. Still, if you walk in nature a lot, by all means, use this…

You need a starting point, which could be the outside of your front gate or some landmark or object near it. Then you find ten, fifteen, twenty points along a walk that you do. Start with seven to ten. Go over your walk mentally for a few days, check with reality in between, and you should be good to go.

I have many mnemonic walks I use, some in the neighborhood where I grew up. The benefit of this is that I know everyone who lived in the twenty or so houses along that road.

I can visualize them. This means that just in my street I have 20 points/houses that I clearly remember in terms of building structure, color, cars normally parked outside, people living in the houses, etc. I can get at least 100 mnemonic pegs from this. One simple way to get three to five pegs from one house is to use the various parts of a house or the plot as a station. Let’s say you place one mnemonic object at the mailbox/street entrance, one at the front door, one on the roof, one in the garden, and one bang into a window? That’s five pegs for just one house. If you get more courageous try using the chimney as peg number 6, any equipment or landmark in the garden as peg 7, as well as smashing mnemonic objects into a wall (peg 8), cars parked outside the house (9), the garage door/roof/window/wall (10, 11, 12, 13, etc).

As you see, if you take a street you know well and can study a little, you can easily make a pretty large mnemonic structure simply using walks!