Never Forget Anyone's Name Again
How embarrassing is it when you forget the name of the person you just met? When you end up meeting nine people within a span of a thirty seconds, it becomes really hard to remember what their names are. This is to be expected as it has been scientifically proven that our short term memories only hold about seven plus or minus two items at any one time.
Furthermore, your memory can only hold that information for about fifteen to thirty minutes. By the end of the night, it's likely that you forgot just about everyone's name you had just met a couple hours ago. Throw in the fact that you are most likely in a dark and somewhat noise environment and now you have the odds stacked heavily against you.
People say that the best way to remember someone's name is to repeat it to yourself or use his or her name immediately after learning it.
"Hi, my name is Chris. Nice to meet you."
"Hi Chris, my name is Audrey. Nice to meet you as well Chris." Hey Chris, what brings you to this cocktail party?"
This can get old quickly and without a doubt you will end up mixing people's names by the end of the night. Let's not discount the number of drinks you'll have by the end of the night, which will further impair your memory.
There is a smarter way to remember the names of people you just met.
The key to remembering someone's name is to create a mental image. Find a way to associate a sound of the persons' name with something you can picture right away.
By creating a vivid image in your mind, you will be are able to more easily put a name to a face or vice versa associate a face to a name.
For example, if I meet a person at a Christmas party and her name is Audrey Eve. I'd imagine snow audrizzling down into the room on Christmas Eve. That image is a lot more interesting to me than just her name. As a result, it is more likely to stick in your head than just her name Audrey Eve. The reason why this works is because of human evolution. In order for us to survive, it was much more advantageous to remember where there was food whether it was behind a bush or over the hills versus whether the "i" comes before "e" except after "c".