Both methods skip the route. Instead of hanging items on places or pegs, you hang each item on the one before it. The first item is the only thing you have to remember cold; everything else is pulled out by what came before.
The link method (visual chains)
Take the items two at a time and make one vivid image of each pair. Suppose the list is milk, stamps, batteries, umbrella, onions:
- A carton of milk licking a sheet of stamps and sticking them all over itself.
- The stamps wrapped round a battery that fizzes and sparks.
- A battery the size of a bus opening like an umbrella.
- The umbrella raining onions instead of water.
Each image only involves two things, which makes it easy to build. To recall, start at milk: what was it doing? Stamps. What were the stamps wrapped round? And so on.
The story method
The story method strings the same items into one continuous scene with a plot. I pour milk over a pile of stamps, which short-circuits the batteries in the drawer, which blow the umbrella open so hard it rips, and onions pour out of it.
Stories are easier for some people, because a plot has its own logic: once you know what happened first, the next event almost suggests itself. Other people find that the story becomes muddled and prefer the clean pairs of the link method. Try both and keep the one that feels natural.
Where they break
Chains have one weakness a palace does not: one lost link breaks the rest. If you cannot remember what the batteries turned into, you have lost the umbrella and the onions too, because there is nothing else to pull them out. A palace does not have this problem - if stop four is empty, you simply walk to stop five.
Chains are also slower if you need item seven, because you have to run through the first six. That is what the peg system is for.
Making the links strong
- Make the two items interact. Not a battery next to an umbrella, but a battery turning into one.
- Exaggerate. Size, number, speed. A thousand stamps, not one.
- Keep it physical. Things crashing, melting, exploding and sticking are easier to recall than things that are merely present.
- Replay once. Run through the chain from the start before you need it.
Which one to use
| Situation | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Five to ten items, needed today | Link or story |
| Need item seven without counting | Peg system |
| Long list, or one you want to keep | Memory palace |
| Numbers, dates, PINs | Major System |
Most people who train end up using all of them, and they combine well: a chain of three items at each stop of a palace is a common way to fit a long list into a short route.
Practising both
Memory Palace for Apple TV includes the Story Method and Visual Chains as two of its six techniques, each with its own guide and sessions built for how it works - the story test, for example, asks what came right after a given item, which is exactly the question a chain has to answer.