The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I'd really love to improve my memory, but the popular approach to this sort of baffles me. Memorizers construct large memory palaces and winding trails to recall specific, precise bits of information, like numbers or the words of a speech down to the letter, and this is synonymous with memory improvement. But is this not just trivial recall that could be handled easily by a computer, or a scrap of paper? Consulting my internal memory palace is no different from consulting a library. And it's obviously additional. When we talk about memory, we really mean that natural faculty through which things float into our mind as they appear relevant, the source of all creativity. This faculty of memory can be improved through exercise and health and frequent use, and reduced through idleness and so on.
...But is that it? This memory pretty much determines your intellectual life, it determines whether a book will benefit you or be meaningless. Memory is everything. So where are the great writers and studies showing how to optimize this function? Surely it's not just "eat vegetables, do cardio, sleep well", right?
+1 to spaced repetition.
The other technique I will add, which I think underlies memory palaces, is...let's call it "deep engagement." Rather than just trying to remember rotely, deeply engage with the knowledge by connecting it to other knowledge. You've now added multiple recall points to your brain for the single fact, and as long as any of them are intact, you can get the fact.
In the case of memory palaces (which I find overhyped and not personally useful), that knowledge is a location in the memory palace. E.g. if yours is Pokemon, and you are trying to remember a grocery list, maybe you pictured Pikachu eating a watermelon. The element of the memory palace itself (Pikachu) is by design easy to remember. The visual of Pikachu eating a watermelon connects to enough other things (my memories of eating watermelon, a chuckle at the visual there, etc) to provide redundant encoding of "watermelon."
In the case of learning physics, you can:
In the case of politics, you can:
So, no, it isn't - it's redundant encoding that gives you more threads by which to remember. In CS terms, I no longer have to linearly loop through my list-o-facts; instead, I map quickly to the needed fact via any of a number of hashes (connections).
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Write it down , periodically refer to it by glancing at it and mentally reciting it, at which point it should be easy to commit it to memory. Look for patterns in numbers or words.
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The only reliable/efficient way of memorizing large amounts of information I'm aware of is spaced repetition. I'm too lazy to make Anki cards, but I do try and apply the practice to reviewing the copious amounts of notes I need to memorize, and it does work.
On the nootropic side, ashwagandha is more or less robustly shown (going off last time I read up on it) to have mild benefits for memory. There's not really much you can do to improve it above your usual baseline unless you're a dementia patient needing memory enhancers really.
"Great writers" such as Gwern or Scott both do their best to note down things, and are also blessed with great memory by default, which strongly correlates to intelligence anyway.
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