ADHD: How to Remember Names

When we’re first introduced to people, we’re so busy thinking of what to say or worrying about how they’ll judge us or whatever that we forget to register their name.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Earlier this week, I shared with you a story from a psychotherapist who taught Hunters how to listen and feed back what you’re hearing so other people feel heard; it also improves your communication skills.

This is a sort of second step in that arena. Dale Carnegie famously wrote in his book on winning friends and influencing people (highly recommended) that a person’s name is the sweetest word in the English language to them.

Yet so often, when we’re first introduced to people, we’re so busy thinking of what to say or worrying about how they’ll judge us or whatever that we forget to register their name. Here’s a great strategy to never have that problem again:

Mark in St. Louis shares a strategy he learned from a sales training seminar:

I could never remember names. World’s worst memory. I could meet somebody and, seriously, thirty seconds later forget what their name was. If there were several people, forget it!

Then I went to this sales training seminar (I sell new cars) and learned something that’s changed my life, both personally and profes­sionally. 1 can now remember all sorts of people’s names.

Not only that, but I can remember them for a long time, so if somebody comes back in the showroom after a week while they’ve been shopping around, I can walk right up and greet them by name. That really knocks their socks offl

Here’s how it works:

1. Listen. I know this sounds obvious, but most of us don’t listen to the other person’s name when they’re introduced. We’re so busy worry­ing about what we’re going to say, or if the person will notice the stain on our shirt, or whatever, that we just don’t listen to them when they tell us their names. So, first, listen carefully.

2. Repeat it back. I say something like, “Pleased to meet you, Bill,” and then go from there.

3. Comment on their name. This is a way of planting it in your mind. I’ll say something like, “Oh, Bill like in those things I get too many of in the mail?" You know, try to make a joke or whatever. I tell them that 1 had an uncle or aunt with that name (when it’s true), or whatever I can think of to comment about their name.

4. Connect the name to the face. The way 1 do this is to look for a feature on their face that’s noticeable. It might be a wart or thick eyebrows or thin lips or lots of wrinkles or whatever, something that’ll be there for a long time, though. Pimples don’t work because they usually go away.

And then I make an exaggerated picture in my mind of that feature connected with their name. If Bill has three thick creases running up from his nose between his eyebrows and into his forehead (I met a guy yesterday like this), I imagine thousands of bills stuffed into those cracks.

I know this doesn’t sound very flattering, and sometimes it can get really gross or funny. Guys named Dick, for example, are very easy for me to remember. But I’m never going to tell them about how I remem­bered their name, and it’s not meant to be mean or anything. It’s just that when I make a wild picture in my mind and then see it on their face, that creates a permanent memory. It’s locked in forever.

I talked about this last month at my Adult ADHD support group. Most of the people there interrupted me (no surprise there, right?) to tell me that what 1 was describing was something that isn’t possible for a person with ADHD, that it was too much work, it took too much concen­tration, and all that sort of BS. But I stuck to my guns: I can do this with or without my Ritalin, and if I can do it anybody can do it.

The next month, three guys came up to me to tell me that they’d been doing it, and hadn’t forgotten a name all month. I think that this works well for people with ADD because we’re so creative and have such visual imaginations.