World-famous 'mindreader' reveals 5-second hack for remembering people's names |
The longer you live, the more people you meet and the more names you have to learn and try to remember. It's an ironic truth, considering how our capacity to memorize seems to dwindle the older we get, so it's handy to have some tips and tricks for remembering people's names, especially when you're meeting a bunch of new people at once.
Derren Brown is one of the most famous mentalists in the world, so he knows a thing or two about people. Mentalists are a special breed of magician who focus on tricks and illusions of the mind. They do things like hypnosis, mind-reading, and impossible predictions. There's trickery involved, of course, but mentalists are also masters at reading people and have to employ advanced memory techniques to keep track of information they learn during their shows.
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In an interview with Big Think, Brown revealed some of his favorite memory hacks, including his 'party trick' to never forget a person's name.
The secret is to create a link between the part of your brain that stores information, like names, and the visual part of your brain that is more easily accessed. Visual memory has also been found to be substantially stronger and more detailed than auditory and other kinds of memories, so what you want to do is get the visual part of your brain involved in remembering!
"You find a link between the person's name and something about their appearance, what they're wearing, their face, their hair, something," Brown says. "You find a link with something that they're wearing, so if they're called Mike and they've got big black hair, you think, 'Oh that's like a microphone,' so I can imagine like a big microphone walking around, or if they've got a stripy T-shirt on, you imagine a microphone with those stripes going around it.
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"And it's the same process later on in the evening, you see them, you look at the stripes, and you go, 'Oh, that's Mike. Oh yeah, that's Mike. The hair, why am I thinking the hair is like a big microphone? Oh yes, of course, they're called Mike.'"
Microphone Mike! Any sort of alliteration based on a physical characteristic will work. Stripey Steve, Tall Tim, Green Gene. The more interesting and unique, the better you'll remember.
If this sounds a little bit like Michael Scott's mnemonic devices from The Office, well, they're not far off. He applies in a pretty strange and convoluted way: "Baldy. Your head is bald. It is hairless. It is shiny. It is reflective, like a mirror. M. Your name is Mark." But ultimately, he was on to something. If you watched the show, you know that Michael Scott never forgot a name!
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There is one catch with the technique: You have to actually listen and pay attention when someone tells you their name!
"So, you do have to listen, that's the first thing when they say the name," Brown says. "Normally, the very moment where someone is giving you their name, you're just caught up in a whole lot of social anxiety anyway, you don't even hear it, so you have to listen."
Using someone's name when you talk to them has tons of benefits. It conveys respect, friendliness, and intimacy. When you're on the receiving end, and someone you've just met uses your name, it just feels good! It feels like it matters to them that they met you. Just don't overdo it. Repeating someone's name every other sentence comes across as disingenuous and salesy. A good rule of thumb is to repeat their name immediately after learning it ("Nice to meet you, Jim") and upon saying goodbye. The rest of the memory work should happen in your head to avoid creeping them out!
"And then at the end [of the party] you get to go around and say goodbye to everybody by name, and everyone thinks you're very charming and clever," Brown quips.
It's definitely worth a try.
Millennial parents and Boomer grandparents don't always see eye to eye on parenting and grandparenting. Now, Millennial parents are uniting on a nightmare Boomer grandparenting trend that sees them "excessively gifting" their grandkids with tons of both new and old *unwanted* stuff during visits.
Ohio mom Rose Grady (@nps.in.a.pod) shared her "Boomer grandparent" experience in a funny and relatable video. "Just a millennial mom watching her boomer parents bring three full loads of 'treasures' into her home," she wrote in the overlay.
Grady can be seen looking out the window of her home at her Boomer mom and dad carrying bags and boxes up her driveway after several visits. The distressed and contemplative look on Grady's is speaking to plenty of Millennial moms.
Today's "treasure" highlight was the mobile that hung in my nursery... #boomerparents #boomers #boomersbelike #millennialsoftiktok #millenialmom #motherdaughter
Grady captioned the video, "Today's 'treasure' highlight was the mobile that hung in my nursery..."
The humorous video resonated with with fellow Millennial parents. "Straight to the trash when they leave," one viewer commented. Another added, "I always say 'if you don’t want it in yours, we don’t want it in ours' 😂."
Even more Millennial parents have shared and discussed their situations with Boomer grandparents buying their kids too much stuff on Reddit. "Both my mother and my MIL love buying and sending toys, books, clothes, etc. I don't want to be ungrateful but we just don't need it and don't have the space. I have brought this up politely in 'we are all out of drawers for that' but it hasn't slowed things down," one explained. "I think part of the issue is that the grandparents live in different cities and vacation a lot. They don't get to see our daughter much so they buy stuff instead."
Another Millennial parent shared, "While the intention is very kind behind these, all the grandparents are very aware that we do not need, nor wish to receive these gifts in such an excessive volume - as it creates a daily struggle to store and accommodate in our home. I struggle to keep on top of tidying as it is, and this is a massive added challenge."
Millennial mom struggles to organize her son's room.Image via Canva/fotostorm
So, why are Boomer grandparents excessively gifting? "Boomer grandparents may be the first grandparent generation to have accumulated the substantial discretionary funds that enables them to spend money on their grandchildren," Sari Goodman, a Certified Parent Educator and founder of Parental Edge, tells Upworthy. "These grandparents probably grew up with grandparents who didn’t have that kind of money and so they may be excited to give their grandchildren the things they didn’t get."
Goodman suggests that Millennial parents first discuss with them the "why" behind the gifting. "What comes before setting a boundary to limit over-the-top gift-giving is delving into the reasons grandparents are buying so much," she explains. "Coming from a place of compassion and understanding makes it possible to come up with mutually beneficial solutions."
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She recommends that Millennial parents sit down with their Boomer parents to learn more. "Did they grow up without many toys and clothes and are fulfilling a dream? Ask them about the values they learned as children (hard work, perseverance, the power of delayed gratification) and how they can pass on these lessons to the grandchildren," she suggests.
She adds that another reason may be that Boomer grandparents live far away and want their grandchildren to feel a connection with........