Put Their Name on Repeat

Quick Win

Each time you repeat a new name, you’re cementing it into your memory.

Try This Today

• When a new person introduces themselves, say their name back to them. “Hi Sarah, nice to meet you!”
• Add a question about spelling. Is that Sarah with an “h”?
• Sneak their name into conversation
• Repeat their name when you leave the conversation, or go back to them at the event to say goodbye and say their name again. “Great to meet you, James.”

Why

You’ve probably heard the old adage, “repetition is the mother of all learning.” Well, there’s a reason for that. In a study of 32 young adults, those who learned pairings of faces and scenes six times remembered those pairings much better — and for a longer time — than individuals who only learned the pairings once. When recalling the pairs up to a month later, those with six learning sessions also had greater activity in their hippocampus, a brain region important for memory, compared with the single-session learners, according to the work reported in 2018 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.