Anyone have any successful experience in remembering names?

[Ati]

Greetings, all!

I would like to get good at remembering names. I have read a lot of things about this. I've tried strategies such as creating an image of whatever the person's name sounds like that and matching that to the person's appearance. I've tried strategies with numbers and lists of words. I think I'm still missing something.

I work in an environment in which some people wear name tags and a lot of others don't . I am personally in a role there where everyone knows my name . I'd really feel good being able to remember people's names better and I really think I should be able to get down most everyone's name in my working environment because it's not that big, I'd say probably 300 people total, but probably I see as many as 20 people a day whom I see frequently enough that I feel I "should" know their names but I don't

I have heard that some people are naturally good at this but I think it must or at least can be a learned skill.

Any ideas?

THANKS !!!!!

Ati

[Lonewolf]

Darius, the ancient King of Persia was said to know all the names of his 100,000 or more soldiers.
What you do is create a visual symbol for the person's name, combined with their face, then link this into an overall structure with logical sequences like rooms inside a virtual building. You move from room to room in your mind and recall the faces and names in each section. You could link this to people that work inside your office building. It's called the method of loci, and the Greeks were using it thousands of years ago. Look it up.

[sadavis00]

I have a PDA with Supermemo installed. I get tested on 5-10 names a day of the 100 or so people's name I have in the testback, and I manage to remember the vast majority of them (recall not recognition). It takes only about a minute a day to do, and its worth it.

[JKuehl]

I remember names with the following trick:

Single Persons i take the first image i get in my head when i see that person and try to connect as much neurons as possible to that name.

In groups a similar strategy is used:

for example - if i meet Jennifer and Vanessa, i know Jennifer is the blonde one, and Vanessa is the brunette one because J comes before V in the alphabet. Both of them have double-consonants (nn and ss) - so that must make them Jennifer and Vanessa... and so on.

[River]

Years ago I learned associative memory techniques from the Harry Loraine classic, The Memory Book. In one demonstration, he was able to remember the names of 200 audience members.

HOWEVER, I've come to realize that the main reason I don't remember a name is not that I forget it. But rather, I was so anxious about making a good impression and so wrapped up in myself, that I failed to truly listen to the person's introduction.

[Ati]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

Darius, the ancient King of Persia was said to know all the names of his 100,000 or more soldiers.
What you do is create a visual symbol for the person's name, combined with their face, then link this into an overall structure with logical sequences like rooms inside a virtual building. You move from room to room in your mind and recall the faces and names in each section. You could link this to people that work inside your office building. It's called the method of loci, and the Greeks were using it thousands of years ago. Look it up.

Originally Posted by sadavis00

I have a PDA with Supermemo installed. I get tested on 5-10 names a day of the 100 or so people's name I have in the testback, and I manage to remember the vast majority of them (recall not recognition). It takes only about a minute a day to do, and its worth it.

Originally Posted by JKuehl

I remember names with the following trick:

Single Persons i take the first image i get in my head when i see that person and try to connect as much neurons as possible to that name.

In groups a similar strategy is used:

for example - if i meet Jennifer and Vanessa, i know Jennifer is the blonde one, and Vanessa is the brunette one because J comes before V in the alphabet. Both of them have double-consonants (nn and ss) - so that must make them Jennifer and Vanessa... and so on.

Originally Posted by River

Years ago I learned associative memory techniques from the Harry Loraine classic, The Memory Book. In one demonstration, he was able to remember the names of 200 audience members.

HOWEVER, I've come to realize that the main reason I don't remember a name is not that I forget it. But rather, I was so anxious about making a good impression and so wrapped up in myself, that I failed to truly listen to the person's introduction.

Hey thanks for these great ideas! I'll play with some of them and report back.

Thanks

Ati

[scoby]

try to take a bit more time when being introduced as well.

Repeat any name that you're told.

Jennifer? Hi Jennifer, Nice to meet you. Do you prefer Jennifer or Jen?

Try and think of a small question that's fairly unimportant so that you can take a second to form an image of their characteristic and their name

Vanessa? Hi Vanessa, Jennifer tells me you've been working here for 2 months? Is that right?

The important bit is to concentrate when you find out their name. Once remembered it's almost impossible to forget.

I did this while my girlfriend was talking about a colleague at work and she mentioned the colleague's boyfriend and a bit about him.
6 weeks later when she mentioned her again I was able to
ask about the boyfriend by name
whether his new business (a coffee shop inside a bookstore) was going well
and whether or not he'd been back to visit his family in Toronto.

She was amazed, she talks to her colleague every day and couldn't remember any of this stuff

[bodhiavttas]

I'm generally pretty good at remembering numbers, names, and letters. I think it's because I rely on mnemonics. If someone's name is Anne-Sophie, for example, I quickly visualize the book cover of Anne of Green Gables, a red-haired girl in front of a lake or something similar, and then the blue cover with a planet or something like that of Sophie's World, the intro to philosophy book that was popular during my teens.

I remember this technique even worked when memorizing names of ancient Greek battle-grounds in high school. You just have to work harder at the association and decide from the very beginning which cues you're going to use. With numbers, or letters, I think I associate colors or 'shapes' to individual letters or pairings.

I don't know how I do it, and I don't know if that would work with someone who's networking as intensively as you are. I've never had to do that much.

Have you thought of working on your memory? Have you ever played the game memory? Maybe you could make a set of cards with pictures and matching names and play it in your spare time. That would be a fun game for me. Practice makes better.

[stayfly]

interesting thread

[albran]

I would not mind if you did not remember my name. Just be yourself. Who needs to be remembered anyway? I guess that phenomenon is more common than you may think.

[Mark Lapierre]

Plenty of great suggestions so I won't add more, but I will say this. You'll need to practice any technique you learn in order to be able to do it quickly, consistently and effectively.

[Shamou]

One small trick that has helped me to remember people's name when I first meet them is to immediately voice the name of the person as in, "Very glad to meet you Mark Lapierre."

That forces me to focus on the name and helps me to remember it...
.

[Nelson]

What I do is attach their name to a historical figure or a celebrity.

It also helps other people remember your name. It's hard to pronounce my name clearly so I always say "It's Nelson, as in Nelson Mandela."

People usually remmber for one reason or another :P

[Ilya]

I've noticed that the few moments when a new person is introduced are crucial. I've known many mnemonic techniques and they were no good, because I was anxious or distracted when meeting a person that I simply forgot all about mnemonics.
Mnemonics help. But to be useful in the real life setting you should train them to the level when forming an association takes less then a second and can be performed in parallel with the rest of the greeting ritual. Otherwise you will just follow the usual pattern.

It is great to practice the whole greeting routine and insert name memorization as the part of the sequence. Ask a friend or a relative to help you with this. Write down or print out some name cards. The person who helps you should pull the cards in turn and introduce themselves with this name.
You, introduce yourself to your helper as usual but at some point insert the memorization step.
For example:
- You look at the person.
- Hold out your hand for a handshake
- Say: hi, my name is...
- Listen to the other person name
- Look in his eyes and memorize the name using any technique you like
- Shake hands and keep the shake until you think you've memorized the name.
- Release handshake
- Say: nice to meet you <memorized name here>!

After a few rounds try to write down the names in the order they were given to test your memorization. If you fail, practice memorization alone then repeat this exercise.

Of course your routine can differ. Use yours. You may need to repeat this exercise several dozens times before it gets smoother. Your helper should give you feedback if memorization step has caused some awkwardness or if you are anxious. At first the memorization step can take a few seconds or even minutes. Don't worry. Hold it as long as possible. If you broke the routine, start it from the beginning and keep the order of the steps. This way you will build a habit. With enough repetitions memorization step will happen faster and faster. At first following the routine is more important then the recall accuracy.

The usual pitfall is when it's time to memorize, you look at the wrong direction, loose concentration etc. The exercise above will help you to get used to memorization step and to gain confidence that it will not mess up your social routine. Then you can tune up the accuracy of memorization.

Later you can do versions of the exercise for the situations when you are introduced by a third person or introduced to a group of people. The routines will be slightly different and they will also need practice.

If you were already introduced to the people, you'll need to go another way. Try to make a list of people. Describe them somehow "The bald guy from finances" will do. Then hunt for their names - usually organizations have databases or address books with all the names. Or you can ask someone you can trust about the names.

Then make flashcards. You can use mnemonics as usual, but flashcards would be sufficient. For each flashcard imagine greeting the person. Say your usual greeting aloud and try to insert a name. If you can't look on the other side of the flashcard and complete the greeting. Then move to another flashcard. Gradually you will learn them and the names will pop out when you get to the end of your greeting in real life.

You can also write the daily lists of the people you want to remember. You will have to remember that a person exists and then remember his name. If you forget about a person completely, it means that there is too little associations with this person in your life. Then try to reinforce your memories about this person. Make him or her more important, learn about him - where is his place in the office, where do you usually meet, think why is it important to know this man. Find out about his birthday, what Zodiac sign he is. Try to think about how does this person smells, the sound of the voice. Don't try to remember this information, but this will add to his image inside your mind.

Start with your 20 people, then increase the number. Good luck.