Aight who has tips on how to mitigate this shit? I’m one of them ADHD cats who’s a little chaotic yet charismatic, so I’m always getting remembered and doing most of the name forgetting. Has made for probably hundreds of terrible moments where I’m absolutely dancing around the fact that I’ve forgotten an old acquaintance’s name.
If you’ve got a good technique, please share I need that yesterday
The only truck I’ve heard is to make sure you repeat their name vocally once introduced, like ‘Nice to meet you, Xerxes!’
I always forget to do this, though so everyone at work knows my name and I only retain leadership’s names.
I usually try to associate the name to someone famous I know by the same or similar name. It tends make that person more memorable in my head after a quick “Hello Dolph, nice to meet you.”
I find it’s best to just acknowledge it in a jokey way. “hey good to see you again but I have no long term memory, tell me your name again?”… “Jim”… “ok hi Jim, I look forward to having this conversation again next time. How’s life?”
Or if you can’t pull off the humour, just be honest: “Sorry; I remember you [from place, if you remember], but my blinky ADHD memory is terrible with names. Can you remind me your name? … Thanks, [NAME]. And apologies in advance if I forget it again. It’s not personal!”
My solution:
1 - Hi what’s your name?
2 - Sorry one more time?
Okay [name], thanks! One moment need to step away. (To write it down in my phone)
3 - Oh hey again! I’m sorry I forgot your name again. It truly escaped me and I mean no offense.
Please don’t be offended if i forget your name i have that condition thing i ironically cannot remember the name of
Name tags lol
I don’t have a good technique, just q similar event. A friend of a friend remembered my somewhat complicated and hard to pronounce name, and pronounced it correctly. I forgot his name. So I thought up something clever. We traded numbers and I asked him to spell his name for me. Genius Chat, Genius!
He looks at me a little confused and spells his name for me: A, C, E.
Loool know that pain well! Potential salvation with “nah but your last name” or like “there’s not a silent ‘eux’ (or whatever’s clever) in there?”
I try to avoid introducing myself until the conversation is winding down. “Oh by the way, I’m so-and-so” sounds cool too.
I’ve been using this app called Elevate. Supposed to help with my thinking skills, and has a bunch of memory exercises… it’s been helping!
Most of the time I’m self aware enough to say, “hey how’s it going man!?” every once in awhile, I’ll get a weird false confidence and say, “nice to see you again Steve!”
… I think your name had an H in it … was it Harry?
“It’s Achlan!”
Yup there’s definitely an H in there
I thought the second frame was already the name going out of his head.
Also, “John”?! That guy’s clearly more of an Alan.
I’m ok if I can relate it to someone or something else. Like, ah, John, you go in the John pile. If they have a super unique name there’s a 50/50 I will forget it after it’s said and 100% chance I won’t know it in a week.
I’m the reverse, if someone has a unique name that is either interesting because it is from another language or culture I have like a 50/50 chance of remembering it depending on length but all the Johns are gonna be ‘hey you’ in about 30 seconds unless they are wearing a name tag.
Also, none of the memory tricks that are supposed to help remember names work for me and I tried for a couple decades. Associating with something else means now I have two things that I forgot, and repeating their name at them will just turn into a pile of mush in my brain. I just need to interact with them long enough for it to eventually stick, can’t force it.
Worst “trick” I have tried to use is for people who have the same name as me, or my brother, or someone other person who is very close to me: “oh great, that’s my name too! Now I won’t have to remember a new one!”. We laugh and high five.
Of course, then I don’t retain any association with their face and it fails spectacularly next time I see them.
This is a real phenomenon.
:monkey-look-away: