The "Remembering Names" Tool No Substitute Teacher Should Be Without

Trouble memorizing names?  Check it out!

Transcript

Greg: 0:00

Hi, this is Greg Colin substitute teachers lounge It is December 25 2022, I've got a holiday gift for you guys today, all you have to do is concentrate. I'm going to tell you some tricks and tools on how to remember names. And believe me, if you can remember the names of, well, the teachers, first of all, but most importantly, the students that you run into so that when they come up to you and say, Hi, Mr. Collins, do you remember my name, you know exactly who they are. And it's really not that difficult. Okay, when you remember, when you realize maybe I shouldn't say that. Mariah Carey has the number one downloaded song this week, All I Want For Christmas Is You and that it's been number one each December for the last four years? Well, most of you all know what Mariah Carey looks like. So with that thought in mind, that's not too much different than the tool I'm going to show you today about remembering names. Now, let's set it up just a little bit. Two years ago, I think it's the last time I did this, I was last time I was in a long term class, I showed my seventh grade students how to instantly memorize a list of 20 things in order and repeat them back to me. And in fact, most of them are concentrating enough that they really could repeat them back to me backwards in order but from the last one to the first one. And here's basically all it took. I'm gonna give you an example. We I had, I went around the class, I had them name things that you could picture like, people or Geograph, geographical things, or animals or things you eat anything like that it had to be a noun that could be pictured in your mind some way, or it would conjure up something in your mind. So let's start with the bases. Before we get to names, let's start with the basis of what we're talking about. I'll just tell you this. And this isn't the example I use with them. But I'm going to tell you this. Two of the words that were up there back to back, one of them jokingly said Mr. Collins, so Mr. Collins was the first one on the list. Then somebody said Brazil, the country, Brazil, right? So we put that up there. Then someone said German Shepherd. Okay, so keep that in mind. We went through until we had a list of 20 of those. And I looked at them and said, What if I told you that if you stay with me, if you concentrate, you're going to be able to memorize all 20 items here in about five minutes. And I'm going to turn your back to the board, and you're going to repeat them back to me, all you got to do is concentrate and follow my directions. And then I challenge one of them. I really asked I said who thinks they can repeat them back backwards based on the tools that we learned today. And there was two or three that raised their hand. And I was proud of him for doing that because that is tougher. These methods work various different ways. Here's the way this work. Thank you, Mr. Collins. They all had, you know, a picture of me that would come up in their minds when they thought of Mr. Collins. Well, they did it differently. I didn't want to bring up Brazil. We're in seventh grade class. I forget the name that they picked up. But this is the one I thought of for this lesson. Thank you for word that sounds similar to Brazil. But the first one I thought of was Brazil. Right. So now link Mr. Collins, to Brazil. We're picture Mr. Collins wearing a Brasilia now, I haven't ever done that. But that is an absolutely ridiculous picture in your mind. Guess what? That's a picture that you won't forget. Right? Because it's crazy. Now let's go down to German Shepherd, German Shepherd. I pictured in my mind what worked best for me is I pictured one of those old fashioned white bearded shepherds that had his like wooden hook pole in his hand. He used that pole to pop their Brazil ear off a Mr. Collins. So that helped me to remember that after Mr. Collins was writing numbers there, and then the shepherd which reminded me of German Shepherd bye popped it off with his stick. They had ridiculous pictures in their mind for all 20 of those words. And guess what, when we got to the end, I said, all right now who can repeat them back to me without looking at the board, and just about every hand went up in the class. So that's the base, first of all, is not going to help you with names yet, obviously, that's the base. And we're going to talk about names here in just a moment using those same tools. Am I if I have time at the end, I'm talking a little bit about memory palace. Some of you all have heard that concept. It's, it's a good it's another good way of remembering things in order using building that's familiar to you. But anyway, so let's move on. I have read so many books about memory. I remember, you know, I'm 64. So when I was a teenager, let's say that was 50 years ago, I remember reading a book by Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas is an old NBA guy, and he's a big memory buff as well. And I always struggle with my memory. Now, most of you will already know the answer to why we don't remember names, and we'll get into that. But I read their book, and I read their concepts. they memorize everything, those guys got banned from casinos, because they knew how to memorize cards, the way they did it. They had little names in their head, every card had a name, like Jack of clubs, something maybe they thought a clubs, soda, somebody named Jack drinking club soda, and what they would do when they'd see a card on that had been dealt, they would make one of those pictures in their mind to the next card that had been done. And in that way, they could remember all the cards that had been played. Now, I don't know if you've been to Vegas lately, but they use multiple decks now. So it's harder to do it that way. But, and then there's a gentleman and I've forgotten his name. And there's probably more than one person that's done this anyway, when we talk about pi the 3.14. That never it's never a repeating decimal, it just keeps going on and on. Well, a gentleman had memorized 500 decimal places a pie just for fun just for a mental exercise. And if you ask him to tell you places number 100 through 103, he could do it, then he could do it backwards, because he adopted adapted, I guess these same little tricks on how to remember names. Now. The key to this is concentrating in the first place. Because most people the reason they don't remember names is if they're not, they're not paying attention in the first place. Now, if you go into a job eventually I know some teachers that have sidelines some of them sell real estate, some of them sell insurance, you want to be able to remember somebody's name. If you're in a field like that, right? You want to be able to remember, co workers names, people that remember not My names that I've only met one or two times. That's impressive to me. So everybody likes to have their name memorized. So here's, here's the way these tools work. You're you're going to picture a ridiculous picture, just like Mr. Collins wearing Brazil, we're going to eventually get to that. But you have to concentrate first. You know, I'm I read, I read once and one of these books that you know, I watch I like I like watching Jeopardy. I watch it and I keep thinking, Man, how do these guys and gals know all of these answers? And somebody once told me that everybody is exposed to those answers in their life some time. It's a matter of where you concentrate when you hear about it or not. And everybody could be just as smart as anybody playing jeopardy if they had only concentrated in the first place when they first heard that. So that's key number one, you have to get in a habit of concentrating on the name when it is told to you for the first time. Let's start out with an easy example. Let's say that we are introduced to someone named Bill. Okay, we just Bill let's make an easy example. First. When you hear the word bill when you hear the name Bill. I'm going to guess that if you wanted to picture something that would help you remind you of this person. I'm going to say it's for Bill it's either going to be $1 Bill, or it's going to be the bill of a duck. Okay, so pick one of those two, I don't Arrow, which one, it's the one that you think you were remember, better, I'm going to go with $1. Bill, the next most important factor is and this will become easier, the more you do it, you need to look for a distinguishing feature on the person's face, nothing else, nothing about the shoulders, the shoulders might be covered up next time you see them nothing about the shoes they're wearing, has to be a distinguishable feature on their face. Now I have a larger than average nose. Okay, so let's say that you see me and you notice that about my nose. So you hear my name is Bill, you notice that about my nose. So you could either and maybe now now that I think about it, the bill of a duck would probably be better. But I'm gonna go with dollar bill, let's say and this is ridiculous to the point of being gross. In fact, to the point of being whatever it's only going to be in your mind, if, if there's something that works better for you, that's a little bit more suggestive, that's okay. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a picture in your mind. So in my case, let's say in for Bill, let's say I would picture perhaps $1 Bill sticking out of his nose. So the next time that I see him, and I concentrate it from the beginning on his facial features, and I know it was a nose, and I see him again, I'm good, still gonna have in my memory, the picture of that dollar bill sticking out of Bill's nose. And I'll remember when I see him that his name is Bill, if you use the bill of a duck, picture, the next time you see Bill, that ridiculous picture of him having a duck bill instead of a nose, and you remember that his name is Bill. Basically, what you're doing is you're picking out facial features. Now. I've seen books where they make suggestions for the various different names, and I'm not particularly fond of them, because I think it should be something that pops into your head. Now. Just like it can't has to be something ridiculous. You can't just say, perhaps in my last example, what if I just said, I don't know that bill just happened to be holding $1 bill at that time up in his nose, well, that wouldn't have done me any good, because the next time he's gonna be holding$1 bill up there. It has to be something repeatable, so that every time you see it, it conjures up that ridiculous picture in your mind. I remember reading one book, I hate that I'm doing it like this. I'm quoting books, and I can't even remember some of their names. But I liked everything I read in them. So if you can take credit for this, that's fine. A gentleman that wrote a memory book was talking about he would go to a conference, sometimes as large as 1000 people. And he would memorize, he would shake the hands of everybody as they were coming in and memorize all their names, have them stand up and memorize them. Now, he admitted sometimes he would skip over them. Because he had the picture that he had conjured up in his mind to help him remember that person wasn't coming to him at first, he going to do a few more than he'd come back to that person. Say, I remember now this is your name. So that's the key look for a facial feature it can be it can be hairstyles, because that's normally going to work, okay? People don't typically change their hairstyles. Every couple of weeks. Some of them do. Some of the high schoolers probably color their hair every, every couple of weeks, different colors and that type of thing. But the key to remembering names is concentrating in the first place. Concentrate when you're introduced in think about that name. Now, I have heard in the past, some people say they repeat the name over and over. And that's okay. But I don't think that method works very well because it becomes obvious to that person what you're doing. And sometimes that just feels a little bit strange, but and sometimes I'm still sloppy on this, I forget to concentrate in the first place on the name and then I forget, I try to see all the volleyball players enough that I use it remember their names, but that doesn't always work out that way, either. So concentrate on the name, concentrate on the most prominent facial feature, whatever that is. Concentrate then on one of those ridiculous examples that will remind you of will link that name to the facial feature. Maybe you run into a young lady named Victoria. Well, I always map me and my wife someday want to get to Victoria Falls, I might picture falls, but now I might go to now Adrian Oh, her name is not Niagara. But I would probably that would probably be enough for me to remember that next time I see her. I, whatever her facial feature that I chose, I picture, Victoria Falls pouring out of that facial feature. And then I'll remember her the name the next step, I'll just conclude with the as I hope you have a great holidays. There's a concept called memory palace. If you want to read a book on it, if you want to listen to a podcast about it, they're out there everywhere. It's basically just picturing the rooms in your home or the rooms in a building, you're in every day, where you pass by the same things every day. If you're trying to remember a list of things, well, then you picture one of those things. And the first chair that you would say when you go in the first room, then you'd link another of those things to an item you'd see in the next room that you go to and boy, I am not doing this justice. But there's all kinds of little memory tricks out there to help you remember names. It's going to be a little work, but it is worth it. There is nothing better to a kid than especially maybe three years after you had them in class. And you are able to walk up to them and say, Well, hello, Johnny. I know it's been a few years. I'm glad we got to see each other again today.