Reading Time: 2 minutes

The idea of a “memory palace” has been around for centuries, and I’ve been loosely trying to use them for a few years. Like many things, though, just trying to use them a little bit meant that I really wasn’t using them at all. I’ve finally cracked down and dug in, and I’m finding some amazing uses for them!

Memory palaces are best for helping you remember a list of items. There are other techniques for remembering text word-for-word (like the app I shared a few weeks ago), and other techniques for remembering names and faces (which I’ll share in the coming weeks), but memory palaces generally focus on lists.

If you’re not familiar with a memory palace for remembering things, the overall concept is fairly simple:

• Think of a place that you know well, like your house, a friends house, or even an area from a video game or movie that you know very well.
• Pick one, and slowly walk through it in your mind. Look for large items (chair, refrigerator, TV, etc) as you go through it. Walk it a few times in your mind until you have a consistent pattern (in the front door, notice the chair, then go to the sofa, then to the TV, etc).
• Now write it down and number the items.

That’s a memory palace! Now, to use it to actually remember some items, you need to walk back through it in your mind but assign items to each place.

Here’s a short video of me showing how it could be done with “The 6 Principles of Persuasion” and The Ten Commandments:

How many palaces?

As I’ve been digging into this, the question of “how many palaces should I have?” or “is it ok to reuse a palace for multiple lists?” show up, and the answers are varied. My thoughts are:

• Create a bunch of palaces. Once you get going, it only takes a few minutes to walk through, find some items, and make a list.
• Don’t reuse them very much, if ever.

I struggled for a bit to come up with other ideas for palaces, so here are some that I’m using:

• My house
• The house I grew up in
• My mother-in-law’s house
• My business partner’s house
• Our office
• Our previous office
• Various restaurants that we visit
• Various business meeting facilities
• The high school where I mentor a student every Friday
• The school district office where I have a meeting every month or two
• Church
• The UPS Store that I’m at far too often

Beyond those, you could try:

• Locations from a video game that you frequently play.
• Locations from a movie or TV show that you’re very familiar with.
• Driving down a specific street.
• A local park
• A museum or stadium

The list is endless! The key is to choose locations that you can imagine in your head very clearly, and then briefly write down the path you walk through it. For example, the first five items when I walk into my house are:

1. The table my the front door.
2. The french doors that lead to my office.
3. The old doorbell box on the wall.
4. A tall wooden mirror.
5. The bannister that leads upstairs.

For most locations, I just have 5-10 items total, but for my house I’ve done five in every room, so I can build a huge list in there if I need to.

This is one of those things that takes a lot of work before you see any results, but once you get it going it can be magical! Have you ever done this before?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve shared a number of times on here that I write in order to think. To quote E.M. Forster, he once said “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?“.

Or when Blake Stratton shared this:

Usually you think, “Oh, I know and therefore therefore I write,” it’s not always the case. A lot of times it’s, “I write and therefore I know.” We don’t just learn by consuming, we learn by then trying to articulate what we’ve consumed and put it into our own voice and into our own words.

This came up again because I recently heard Blair Enns share a similar thought on an episode of his podcast, when he said:

“I think through my fingers, I have to write to fully understand and arrive at some sort of cohesive point of view on it.”

Related is the fact that his new book came out (“The Four Conversations“) and it’s fantastic. Blair is clearly someone who thinks through his fingers and has found fantastic success by doing it. I’ll keep using this platform to talk think through my fingers and hopefully get a little bit better every day.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve shared my love for repetition quite a few times on here, from two different angles, which I shared here a year ago. The two basic ideas are:

• First, there is the idea of repeating myself for my own benefit. I try to find reasons to dig back into books again (via book clubs and podcasts), revisiting my posts on here, and revisiting my highlights on Readwise.
• Second is the concern that I unnecessarily feel about writing similar posts over time. It still sometimes feels weird, but I know that repeating myself on here is almost certainly a good thing.

In an episode of the “Founders” podcast that I recently heard, the host shared a great insight that compared repetition to faith, simply saying:

“Repetition does not spoil the prayer”

If you are someone of faith (or know someone of faith), you’ll know that a well-worn Bible is seen as a good thing. The person that constantly revisits their Bible and marks it up with highlights and notes is generally a person that knows the scripture better than others.

You can extend that analogy to when someone references a book that is like “the Bible for x”, referring to a book that is incredibly important to a particular business. I always understand that to mean “an important book for the business”, which is true, but now I also see it as “a book that you should probably read, re-read, mark up, and consume”.

In all of this, repetition isn’t just acceptable, it’s required. The more you re-read and dig in, the better.

Repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I suspect that in the coming years, the length of books (particularly non-fiction) will become noticeably shorter. Not all books, of course, but many of them.

This isn’t due to diminishing concentration or attention spans (which aren’t actually diminishing), but due to better ways of learning.

In a recent podcast by Guy Kawasaki on his Remarkable People show, he interviewed AI expert Terry Sejnowski and they got into the topic of what an author is really trying to do. They lead with the story of Kodak and how they invented the digital camera but didn’t do anything with it because they were in the “chemical” business instead of the “capturing memories” business. Here’s what they had to say:

If they had repositioned their brains, they would’ve figured out “We preserve memories, it’s better to do it digitally than chemically.” So now as an author, and you’re also an author, I think, what is my business? Is it chemicals? Is it writing books, or is it the dissemination of information?

And if I zoom out, and I say it’s dissemination of information, why am I writing books? Why don’t I train an LLM to distribute my knowledge instead of forcing people to read a book? So do you think there are going to be authors in the long run? Because a book is not that efficient a way to pass information.

I read quite a few books and I don’t plan to slow down, but they’re correct that books are not really a very efficient way to pass information. With tools like Anki, Readwise, Blinkist and Shortform, not to mention YouTube and AI tools, books can often be a little long-winded.

Further, many books are far too long for bad reasons (often just to “feel substantial”), and I appreciate books that get the point in a more efficient manner.

For example, one book I plan to read soon is “Smart Brevity“, which covers this very topic, and I’ll likely have more thoughts in this area when I finish that one. True to the name, the book is only 3 hours on audible, so it indeed seems like it will get to the point.

Do you think the typical book will get shorter in the coming years?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

As I read more and more, I come across a lot of great systems for business structures, meeting cadences, and many other little tools that can be useful to know.

For example, the “SMART” framework is a great way to set goals: Make sure that your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. That’s one I’ve worked to memorize.

Another would be Kim Scott’s concept of “Radical Candor” and the various angles around it, which Kim unpacks in this short video here:

For items like that, I put them in my Anki flashcards and slowly learn to memorize them. However, I come across so many frameworks that it’s not really helpful (or even possible) for me to memorize all of them. Still, it can be helpful to understand most of them to gain overall understanding and contribute to making me who I am.

A recent example came from a friend of mine on LinkedIn who shared the “5 Levels of Development” (Survive, Sustain, Scale, Succeed, Steward). It’s a great framework, and got me to think about our business a bit more, but I don’t think it’s worth memorizing as I don’t see a case for needing to be able to recall it in a moment’s notice.

There’s still a lot of gray in there, though. Is any given system worth taking the time to memorize? I don’t have a clear line for what is and what isn’t, so I take them individually.

Do you have a benchmark for determining what’s worth memorizing versus what’s worth just getting a basic understanding of?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Knowing your limits is one of the best ways to grow. If you know where your understanding ends, you can choose to develop further in that area (if you want to), or accept help when things get beyond your grasp.

I first shared this a few years ago when talking about “Alex” and “Joan”, and Joan’s lack of understanding of her own skills.

I saw this again recently in Shane Parrish’s book “Clear Thinking” when he shared:

“Imitators don’t know the limits of their expertise. Experts know what they know, and also know what they don’t know. They understand that their understanding has boundaries, and they’re able to tell you when they’re approaching the limits of their circle of competence. Imitators can’t. They can’t tell when they’re crossing the boundary into things they don’t understand.“

While my knowledge in many areas is quite low, I try to recognize where the boundaries are. Shane mentioned the “circle of competence”, which I mentioned in that post above, where he pointed out that the more we know, the more we don’t know. Specifically, from Albert Einstein:

“as our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it“

Since your “circumference of darkness” always grows, it’d be foolish to try to ever capture all of it. However, simply recognizing that it exists and knowing where your edges are will leave you far wiser than those that “know it all”.