This is an extraordinarily common problem that almost everybody deals with from time to time, which should make you feel a bit better about doing it: first off, almost no one is going to be offended if you forget their name, especially if you’ve just met them, because they themselves have inevitably done the same thing countless times and will therefore almost certainly be understanding and sympathetic towards you, and secondly learning how to memorize simple things like names is very easy and literally fail-safe if you know what you’re doing (which can be learned in 5 minutes):



The most important thing is the bit about association: you simply associate their name with a VISUAL image. When doing this there is one overriding important rule to remember when coming up with the image: it must be ridiculous and illogical–it should NOT make sense. Why? Because

if it does then it’s boring and therefore NOT memorable. The way you make it ridiculous is by employing these methods: exaggerated size and/or numbers and animation (it should be moving). The more ridiculous it is, the more memorable it is, right? As an example, let’s say you meet someone named

Ronald who has a 70’s style porn mustache–I’ve just visualized a tiny Ron Jeremy crawling out of their mustache and waving at me–now, what are the odds that I (or you now, for that matter) are ever going to forget that guy OR his name? Exactly, that’s the point . I’ve got a video from the BBC here on how to memorize a list that is just a perfect demonstration of this, this is awesome I couldn’t have wished for a better illustration, look at this and pay close attention:

Additional Resources and Further Reading

If you really want to delve into this then you have to go to the man who knows about these things and get what’s considered the bible of memory techniques: Harry Lorayne’s ‘The Memory Book’

Mindtools.com has got a bunch of awesome techniques you can learn, and this is very similar to what Harry Lorayne teaches (I used his stuff in highschool and college so I know it works)