How I Used the Memory Palace Technique to Recall Ten Decks of Cards

After reading Josh Foer’s excellent book Moonwalking with Einstein, I decided to give the Memory Palace technique a try. The book is even reviewed by Bill Gates, who writes that it was one of the most interesting books he read during the summer of 2012. Anyways, much to my complete shock, I tried this technique and discovered it was effective in helping me to memorize and recall an essentially superhuman amount of information, almost effortlessly.

Within 6 days of starting, I was able to memorize 520 cards (ten 52-card decks) in about 90 minutes, and then recite them backwards! Here’s how I did it, and how you can do it too.

Technique
All you have to do is envision yourself walking down a street or through different rooms in a “palace” and place various objects at different locations. To recall those objects again, simply walk through in your mind starting from the first location (or the last location backwards). You’ll see that without much effort, you can recall all the objects you placed there.

That’s it! The following are tricks I use in order to make the recall even more vivid. Mindblowingly, the first time I remembered multiple decks of cards, the cards feel so vivid and permanent in my mind that I’m facing a problem that I thought I’d never face…