Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #7. Visit the Hotel Dominic

Expand the basic Dominic System list of 100 to hold 10,000 items or more of information.

You might need to memorize a table or list with more than 100 elements, such as the periodic table of elements, but find that you can't do it with only the 100 numbered items of the Dominic System [Hack #6]. You could use a memory journey [Hack #3], but how are you going to remember that element 52 is tellurium without visiting the 51 previous rooms first?

This memory hack, which I call the Hotel Dominic (in honor of Dominic O'Brien, the inventor of the Dominic System of mnemonics upon which it's based), is both random access (like a CD, as opposed to a cassette tape) and indexed by number, making it ideal for remembering long, numbered lists and tables, or many smaller lists, or both: up to 10,000 basic items. Each basic item can, in effect, be elaborated with nooks and crannies [Hack #4], creating the potential for many more than 10,000 items.

In Action

You can think of the Hotel Dominic as a building with 100 floors, numbered from 00 to 99, each containing 100 rooms, also numbered from 00 to 99. In short, it's like a grid with 100 rows and 100 columns. The first room on Floor 95 would thus be numbered 9500. The next room along the hall would be 9501, then 9502, and so on. Figure 1-2 shows the first few rooms from the bottom floors of the Hotel Dominic, starting with the first floor, Floor 00. The hotel continues both up and to the right.

Figure 1-2. A few rooms ...