[jamesash]

Moonwalking with Einstein de-mystified memory for me. As mrock described, in the beginning it was a lot of work building palaces and making associations, but like a muscle, things quickly got easier. In time, memorizing a list of 30 or so became pretty easy. I was able to memorize a list of 875 North American bird species and then recite it from memory. Took about 35 min to read it all back.

[mrock]

That's awesome. Did it change your relationship with or experience of birds?

[jamesash]

It was like taking a walk around the perimeter of a huge mansion before actually exploring it. I learned the names of lots of birds and was able to associate them together, but didn't really learn their characteristics. In time I let the associations fade. Mostly it just gave me the confidence that I was capable of doing something like this if needed. Thanks for all the time you took in answering people's questions on this thread.