Remembering people and names

Remembering names is kind of a must in any superlearning scenario. This is something I do not actively practice, so I delayed this post as much as possible.

It is known that ability to remember names will help you in life. In Anna’s course there was a 2-hours module of remembering names, until at some point we realized that neither I nor Anna remember names…. Below is some theory and my adaptation of the technique that actually works for me.

The original Anna’s method of remembering names worked as following. Each student was presented with 20 face images,a name and job description under each face. For each face student was ask to imagine “this face looks like” (marker 1) and “his name sounds like” (marker 2) with a story of how his job turned him this way (link). The method works great for the first 30 people. After that our markers started to repeat. It felt like we were handling waves of people who look the same, talk the same and have the same names. When Anna became pregnant, the hormonal changed removed her ability to distinguish between two groups of students to our great embarrassment. To make the things worse, I was meeting many people at that time, and at some point I ended up describing meetings and placing social media links, because that was the only way I could track who I am talking to. We decided to remove the name-learning module….

One of the special aspects of my job, is necessity to work in a new company approximately every year. An average group I work with is 60 people – this is sufficiently small that everybody knows everybody, but sufficiently large for this first acquaintance to become embarrassing. I generated a set of rules to follow by when trying to learn the people I work with:

Anchor marker. I do not even try to remember people until I have the first meaningful interactions with them. The interaction may be social or professional, the short description of this encounter becomes my personal marker.

Send an email. I read a lot. Usually I find something for any taste. I make an effort to find the person in the mailing list and send an email with something cool. This way I remember how to find the name in the mailing list. While sending a mail I have enough time to generate markers for the name.

Meeting follow-up. When I have a meeting, I prefer to do a follow-up with the participants to get their special perspective. During that meeting I try to evaluate professional level of the participants.

Water cooler talks. Many of my pomodoro breaks I spend near the coffee machine. Occasionally I am joking or telling informative anecdotes, but always listening to what other people say. Once people understand that you are actively listening, they will provide a lot of useful information and some personal stories.

Always help, unless the price is too high. One of my mentors loved to say “It is nice to be important, but it is important to be nice”. I try to help others when I can. While helping, I always ask “why?”. This simple motivation question is a huge helper when trying to learn about people.

Now, this method applies not only to actual people I meet but also to literature personages, book authors etc. The application is as following:

  • where did I meet the person?
  • what group the person belongs to?
  • what are some juicy details about the person?
  • if I would write to the person, what would I say?
  • how can I find the person in the address book/wikipedia?
  • how this person helps me and how I could help him?

Unlike real life situations, the imaginary situations require active visualization, but the method is very similar….
Active interest to the person generates markers and details. Once the person becomes real and unique I have no problem linking the person to the name.

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