> If none of this makes sense, stick with us; by the end of this piece you’ll be using the same techniques to memorize just about anything you’ve ever wanted to remember.
No, it won't ever make sense and it may continue to come as a surprise to many that not all of us have the ability to form visual based imagery in our minds. A common term for this is Aphantasia.
Not everyone thinks the same way. Any attempt at mass producing some means to know something better/faster is probably not going to work on a subset of the population.
I was able to use the Memory Book's number to letter technique a few years ago to memorize short lists of objects, but my recall for that is pretty good anyway so it's not worth the time taken to memorize stuff using the process (which itself requires memorizing certain objects for the numbers). For those who visualize, I would imagine such techniques could be quite useful.