The Value of ‘Thinking in Memorable Ways’

The absolute number one question that I get from participants that I facilitate is “Why do I keep forgetting peoples’ names, and how can I improve?” 

It’s easy to see why names rise to the top of the memory complaints pile. First, names are often given to us in the heat of social interaction, when there are a hundred other things to be concerned with – like quickly sizing up your new conversational partner for their intent or trustworthiness, or thinking of your mutual social connections. And of course you’ll probably also need to devote some of whatever is left of your attention to the content of what they are saying immediately after they all-too-quickly tell you their name. Secondly, names are a hot-button memory issue because they can be embarrassing to forget. We’ve all had the experience of having someone address us by name, and drawing a blank when trying to respond with their name in return. Or worse yet, we may be certain we do know their name, only to be corrected once we confidently unleash our verbal error *gasp!*. With so much going on in social interaction, it’s a wonder that we walk away from any conversation with the names of the other participants firmly in our memories.

The best strategy for ensuring that you remember something, names included, is to not rely on your memory at all and to write it down. But of course we can’t always have a pen at the ready when we are introduced to new people – and doing so might be just as embarrassing as having forgotten their name anyway… which is exactly what you would have been trying to avoid in the first place.

A good solution here, is to learn to think in more memorable ways. When you are introduced to a new person, try to make an ‘association’ with their name rather than simply repeating it to yourself a time or two. So for example, if you are introduced to someone named Susan Partridge, you might take just a moment to think to yourself, “ah, Susan, just like my aunt Susan”. The interesting thing here though is that the sillier or more outlandish your association is, the more memorable it will be later. So for the last name Partridge, you might think of the bird. Put these ideas together in a silly or outlandish way, and you might conjure the image of your aunt Susan with a partridge. Or maybe even your aunt Susan under the proverbial partridge in a pear tree from the famous Christmas carol. This method of association works well because it memorably ties new information you want to be able to recall (e.g. Susan Partridge) with older information that you were not likely to forget (e.g. your aunt, and an age old Christmas song).

Our product, Memory On Hand, solves this problem with a practical example! Instead of writing the name down on a paper, or playing word association games in your mind, simple remind yourself of the piece of information you want to recall at each vibration. Soon, you will notice that you've moved their name from your short-term memory to your long-term memory, and remembering their name is not difficult anymore, thanks to the process of spaced retrieval.