Before you read any further, you will need to know the memory palace technique for this post. If you have not learned it, you can start by reading my post on it here: Memory Palace.
All right. Let’s memorize all the countries in the world! Now, there are a lot of guides for this. However, this one is going to be different. In this guide, I will not teach you how to memorize the countries today and then forget them. I will teach you how to memorize all the countries and their locations permanently.
Now, I have memorized all the countries in the world before, but I did not use the memory palace technique, so my memory is patchy at best. This tutorial is going to follow me using the memory palace technique to memorize all the countries.
Step 1: Names
I’m assuming this first step is going to be the easiest because all I need to do is store the names in a memory palace. Additionally, I have likely already heard the names of each country, so I am going to have some familiarity with them. For this step, I am going to print out a list of all the countries and then start placing them in my memory palace.
Progress Report 1: I got a list of all the countries in the world and I have printed it out. Something I should clarify now is that there is some discrepancy to how many countries there actually are in the world. For example, this list does not include Palestine, but some countries recognize Palestine as a country. Additionally, this list does include Taiwan, which is not recognized by every country. There are plenty of more countries that could be on this list that are only partially recognized. So far, I have memorized forty countries, and it looks like I will have to use multiple memory palaces to store these countries. It appears the first palace will store about 60.
Progress Report 2: So far, it is clear that the hardest part is going to be finding places to store all this information. I am currently using a second palace from memory that I don’t have access to. I think I will be able to fit about 100 loci in there.
Finished: All right, so I managed to use three memory palaces to store all of the countries in the world. I made all the images very vivid and clear, so I would be able to effectively recall the countries. I’ll give you some examples of images I used for some countries, but remember, the best images are the ones you make up.
- For Eritrea, I used my friend Erin standing next to a tree
- For Marshall Islands, I used the images of the house on Eminem’s LP Marshall Mathers on a bunch of islands
- For Saint Kitts and Nevis, I imagine a cat with a halo around it head that is nervous
- For Romania, I imagine romaine lettuce
- For the United States, I imagine an eagle
Once, I was finished I practiced with this site. It has all the same countries as the list we used, and it is pretty easy to use. Go over it a couple times to make sure that all of your images are cemented.
Step 2: Location
This part is tricky. In order to memorize all the locations, I use a method where I turn the map into a memory palace, and then I store the locations there. This technique is based off of another technique I learned called Maya’s Map Method.
To make the memory palace for the globe, I divided it into regions: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Then, I drew a rough outline of the area. As in Maya’s article, the purpose of this is to simplify the map as much as possible.
Here is a normal map of Europe:
We really do not need to know all this complexity, so we will just turn it into a much simpler map. As Maya explains, this is what subway maps do. If we were to look at a geographically accurate map of a subway, we will have some difficulty figuring out where every line goes and connects:
But, if we look at a simplified map, we are able to understand everything much more clearly:
Notice how much cleaner and simpler the second map is. This is our goal when we create our world map. We want everything to be nice and simple, so we can easily keep track of everything.
Now once you have your nice map, then you want to make each region a building or place. For example, North America can be an amusement park, Europe can be a factory, and Asia could be a museum. The choice is really arbitrary, but for each country, you want to make it a room (or place if your doing a park). Moreover, you want the room to match your image for the country that you used earlier. For example, for Morocco I made my image maracas, so Morocco could be a closet jam packed with maracas, a room with a bunch of people playing maracas, or a maraca store. Now, you want to do this for each country, region by region.
Progress Report 3:
Here is a picture of the map I made for South America. I chose to make South America a gym. There really was not any reason behind this (except Chile looked like it could be a 100 meter dash).
Here is the map I made for this:
Next, I assigned each block a room to make a gym. This way I can store everything as a memory palace:
Then, I use the same images I used in step one to be placed into the rooms. When you place these images into the rooms, make sure to integrate them well. For example, if you used a bowl of chili for the country Chile, you could imagine people running through a 100m dash full of chili, or you imagine a prize of a big bowl of chili for the winners. You want to do this for each image, so they are easy to recall.
Progress Report 4:
I have finished each region. Here is the type of rooms I used for each are:
- North America is a park
- I stored the Caribbean with North America
- South America is a gym
- Europe is a factory
- Asia is a sports center
- Oceania is a zoo
- Africa is a government building
The trickiest areas were the countries that were the most densely packed or the countries that were just a bunch of islands. South Eastern Europe and West Africa were both really densely packed. For these areas, I found it best to make each country have an association with the country near it. For example, Greece would have a lot of athletes and Macedonia would have a bunch of security guards protecting the athletes with mace. Next to Macedonia there is Albania. In Albania, there is Bane from Batman who is trying to harm the athletes like in this scene. Oceania and the Caribbean were tricky because they were just a bunch of loosely connected islands. For them, I made a path that connected and involved each island. In Oceania, I made the path be a walk through all the zoo exhibits.
Now, if you would like to test yourself on these countries, here is a great “game” to do so with: https://www.sporcle.com/games/teedslaststand/find-world-countries. Memorizing all the countries in the world is certainly not an easy feat, but it is a very rewarding one. After I had done this, I noticed I was able to understand a lot more information on the news. I would hear a country such as Slovakia, and I would know exactly where it was and which countries were around it. Remember, though it may be difficult to memorize all the countries it is definitely a useful and rewarding experience.
Thank you all for reading, and good luck memorizing! In the future, I plan on making tutorials on how to memorize the capitals of each country and their flags. If you have any questions just comment below.