[k2xl]

Tangential, but I was able to recite all the words, but only because memorized them in a nonsensical, but easier to remember story. I like the exercise because it forces me to be creative.

The CAT looked at me eating an APPLE, I threw a BALL outside to see if it would chase it instead it climbed a TREE...

[lhuser123]

I also started to do that, but it is pointless except for specific purposes or memory competitions. In real life you can’t go creating memory palaces or funny stories for everything. And it distracts from other more important points in the article, like remind how bad is our memory.

[SirensOfTitan]

I use memory palaces for a lot of different tasks. I'm certainly not great at it, but you can train this skill to be quite quick. It's great for learning names, vocab words, remembering to do lists, among other things.

The couple key strategies for a memory palace are:

1. Ensure your palace is as real as possible. Spend some time mentally mapping out every detail of your palace in your mind so that you don't have to later.

2. The more animated or "human" the better. Our minds are better at remembering faces.

3. The dirtier the better. Our brains are also way better at remembering sexual imagery.

I got about 13 words on this test using this technique poorly and it only took a couple seconds (and I didn't memorize the second half of the list).

[smichel17]

Me, too. Instead of having to remember all 20 words, I just had to remember a few stories: the cat eating an apple on a ball in a tree, the square face whose house is a boxcar, etc.

[dghf]

How many stories? If you had three or so words per story, that would give you about seven stories, which fits the notion of 7 +/- 2 "chunks" of information.

[hliyan]

Same here. I too managed to recall all words in the correct order using the same technique.

[radiorental]

Yeah, that was a poor example/text he posed in the article. That's not how we consume data in menus or similar 'chunks' of digital information we interact with.