The Name Game

We all know how important it is to remember a person’s name. In his book, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie stresses the importance of knowing people’s name. Everyone likes to hear their name being called out no less than someone who they met a while back and they still remember their name. When you call someone by name it makes them feel remembered and significant. But what if you took it a step further and also remembered major things they talked to you about? What if you could ask about the Coast vacation they told you they were taking 3 months ago? That’d be pretty cool huh?

In an ideal world, we’d remember everything about everybody we meet but that’s just not possible. We meet so many people and don’t have the mental capacity to actively store all of that information. To help, I’d like to share with you my technique for remembering names as well as the important things they talk about and do. After you meet a new person, give the following a try:

·         Quickly identify any outstanding qualities about the person and tie it to their name.

For example, if they are bald like the The Rock bald and their name is for example Kithama, you can convert their name to Kihara which means bald in Kikuyu. So everytime you see the guy you will see their baldness and instantly remember Kihara which closely sounds like Kithama.To take it one level further, you can quickly note down those outstanding features. I’ve found that this helps to visually trigger an image of the person later when you are reviewing.

  

·         Write down any information the person told you that you want to remember for later.

 

 This can be a sports team they like, music they listen to, or pets they own. This gives you something to talk about the next time you see the person.

·         Review the information you wrote down to remember their name before meeting them 

      This will help in remembering the person and also have something to talk about the next time you’re anticipating to see the person again.

·         Another tip is to organize your notes on people based on where you know them from. 

      

      For example, you can have a stack of notes called “People from weekly meeting”. Every time before the meeting, you quickly review all of your notes on people who will be there. You’ll look like the hero who remembers everybody’s name. Plus you’ll never run out of stimulating conversation topics to bring up that the other person cares about.

This is just my technique to remember people and names and it works pretty well for me. I’m sure you have a technique for doing the same. If you do, comment down below and let me know. I’m always looking for new tips and ideas on ways to improve on this.