How to win the memory game
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned in this column that I sometimes forget people’s names at work. In the same article I touched on climate change, on the importance of hard work and how best to boost gross domestic product. There was zero reader reaction to any of that, but my aside on forgetting names provoked such an expectedly large mail bag that it took me a whole morning to read it.
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In the interests of responding to customer demand, I have decided to devote this column to a mass name rememberathon, offering help to fellow sufferers and recycling the advice thoughtfully offered by so many Financial Times readers who claim to have cracked the problem.
To forget someone’s name is rude and makes it look as if you do not think they matter. And even if you do not think they matter, you certainly do not want to communicate that feeling to them. We can all remember our boss’s name. And the names of people we love. (I do find myself getting into a muddle over my children’s names, but perhaps that is different.) But beyond that it is harder. I readily forget the names of people I am not interested in, but I forget the names of people I am interested in, too.
Readers warn me that this problem does not just make me rude, it means I will struggle to advance further in my career. Business is about relationships, they say, and forgetting a name is not a good place to begin.
The answer, it seems, starts with repeating the name of the person you have just been introduced to. As in “Pleased to meet you, John! How long have you been at BP, John?” This trick may help, but I am not going to try it as I am not American and it is not my style. I do not like it when people to whom I just been introduced say “Lucy” every other word. It sounds fake or familiar, or both.
The next step is to find an “anchor” to fix the name in your mind. One suggestion is to take the first letter of the name and think of a suitable animal beginning with the same letter. I can immediately see two drawbacks to this. If you are busily wondering whether this Stephen is a stoat or a snake, how can you at the same time hold an intelligent conversation about outsourcing or corporate social responsibility? Even if you decide that he is indeed a stoat, what is to stop you calling him Simon or Sebastian the next time you meet?
A more promising tip involves thinking of someone else you know well with that name and trying to connect them to this person. Or trying to fix their name against an extreme feature of theirs
