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If you want to know how to remember concepts, you basically need memory techniques that can handle this kind of information.
The good news is that I’m going to teach you everything I know about these techniques on this page. Especially the Memory Palace technique, which you can use specifically for deeply absorbing multiple concepts.
How do I know?
My knowledge is based on my experiences as a professor who taught critical thinking at university and as a memory expert who has written over a dozen bestselling books on memory techniques.
Plus, I memorize concepts myself all the time, particularly from philosophy, music, grammar and sometimes even physics.
Basically, the tools you need boil down to five “systems” that combine the best mnemonic devices for effective recall.
I’m going to share all of them with you and give some examples.
Ready for a deep dive tutorial on turning even the most abstract information into concrete ideas you will easily remember?
Let’s dive in!
How To Remember Concepts: 5 Simple & Effective Steps
Before we get into the individual steps, you might want to watch my tutorial on turning abstract thinking into concrete thinking within just a few seconds.
This opening step is essential because without it, you’ll be stuck thinking that concepts are much more abstract than they might be in reality.
This video tutorial above is important because it details the first step: Knowing your concepts and recognizing them by name.
One: Start With The Concept By Name (With Or Without Understanding It)
A lot of people think you have to understand concepts before memorizing them.
I disagree. I only came to understand a lot of the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized while studying a philosophy called Advaita Vedanta after memorizing them.
Just memorizing the term “Advaita Vedanta” and its meaning helped me better understand it.
This might sound counterintuitive, but the name of any concept is core information and well worth starting with first.
We’ll talk more about exactly how to memorize the names for concepts in a moment. But long story short for now, I use multiple Memory Palaces. That way I always have a lot of room for all the concepts I want to commit to memory.
Another tip here is to say the concept and its definition out loud. Often we try to understand things purely in the silence of our minds. That’s just not workable all the time.
It’s also useful to question everything about the concept. I think of using questions as a kind of “mental rotation.” The more angles you see by asking the classic who, what, when, where, why and how questions, the easier it will be to remember the concept.
Two: Start To Apply “Magnetic” Associations
The instant you come across an association, translate it mentally into a multisensory mnemonic image.
As discussed in Scientific American, and even taught in its pages, making striking images is especially powerful in information dense fields like science and medicine.
To give you a simple example, when I memorized the term “Advaita,” I combined the most famous advertising expert I know with Steve Via. Ad + Vai created a core imagine that made “advaita” stick to memory. Then I added a few more associations for the second part of the term and the meaning.
If you feel like you might be too slow with this kind of association assignment activity, I suggest completing these simple and fun visualization exercises. Then go through these sensory memory exercises for even better results.
Visualization and association are so important because they help make abstract information concrete and tangible for your brain.
Three: Place Your Associations In Memory Palaces
Memory Palaces for storing concepts is not exactly what we’re after here. Rather, you want to use these memory tools to perform spaced repetition through active recall.
But before we get into those simple steps, if you’re new to the Memory Palace technique and memory skills overall, here’s what it a Memory Palace is and how it applies to rapidly absorbing conceptual information.
The Memory Palace technique is also know as the method of loci or the journey method. To use it for memorizing concepts, choose a familiar location, like a living room or workplace office.
Once this is done, split your location into specific spots, as you see in this illustration:
You then associate each concept you want to memorize with each spot in the Memory Palace by placing your associations.
Then, when you mentally walk back through the Memory Palace, you’ll recall the images. Like an advertiser with Steve Vai to get back the word “advaita.”
Although this might seem like it only works for small bits of information at a time, that’s actually a good thing. You can look into the science of memory and chunking for more information about why and how.
Basically, it tells us that we can learn and remember more by breaking information down into smaller parts.
And that’s what this technique has done for many great conceptual thinkers throughout history, including:
- Simonides of Ceos
- The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium
- St. Augustine
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Giordano Bruno
- Robert Fludd
You can learn more about all of these thinkers and how they used this ancient memory technique in The Art of Memory.
Four: Use Active Recall & Spaced Repetition
Right or wrong, a lot of people learn about the Memory Palace technique through Sherlock Holmes.
As a result, they come to think of the technique as a kind of “storage.” It can be, but that’s not really the point.
Rather, we want to use the Memory Palace technique for spaced repetition and active recall. This is the fastest and most reliable way to usher the concepts you need to learn into long-term memory.
You can also use flashcards for concept retention, but the point is to self-test.
Using the Memory Palace makes it easy. If you have ten concepts in a Memory Palace, you simply mentally walk through the space. As you go, you think about the associations you placed there and let them come to mind.
This process will feel challenging. But we know from plenty of memory science that the mind needs challenges like this to form memories. It can get a bit technical, but in this study you can see how various practice routines are essential to memory formation.
The same findings are available in many studies of what we call deliberate practice.
Five: Employ Study Habits That Boost Retention
Memory techniques are fantastic. But you also want to use active reading strategies and take notes from your books in a sophisticated manner.
Making sure you choose the best possible study places will also help.
I’ve talked a lot about how to learn faster on this blog and highly recommend modelling how I memorize textbooks. This is exactly how I passed my PhD at York University far ahead of my peers who entered the Humanities program the same year:
The basic idea is that concepts are extracted from the books and placed on Zettelkasten – and advanced form of using flashcards.
But more than that, the study habits I use involve taking a lot of breaks and switching strategically between topics. This process of rotating through textbooks is the principle of interleaving that has been so helpful for many people dealing with concept-heavy information.
You Really Can Retain Even The Most Complex Concepts
Everything starts by deeply engaging the concepts you need to remember.
As we’ve discussed above, don’t be passive about it. Literally say the concept out loud and start to make it concrete through an association process.
Then, commit the concepts to memory using the mental tools we’ve discussed.
And don’t worry so much about making mistakes. You can always go back and fix errors.
The key is always make sure that you’re actually memorizing the main point of the concept. Once you have that, you can memorize entire passages about it relatively quickly using the Memory Palace technique.
If you need more help with that step, grab my free memory improvement course:
In just four video lessons and three worksheets, you’ll have mastered the core technique needed to content with any complex conceptual information.
You’ll be joining the ranks of all the philosophers I mentioned above, not to mention becoming a top performer of the mind.
So what do you say?
Now that you have the power, get out there and memorize the heaviest concepts you can find!
