A good way to remember a name is to write it down before the evening is over.
Why memory slips after sixtyWatch the video: the cause, and what you can do about it.
The name that leaves by morning
I have said “I’ll remember that” about a name more times than I can count, and the name has gone by breakfast. It went at the pharmacy counter and it goes at the senior centre on Elm Street. What stays is what gets written. My names notebook sits by the paper calendar near the phone, and when I come home from the walking group, the new names go in it with one word about the person. Bev runs that group, and she says her own memory works the same way. She stopped trusting it years ago and started carrying a pen.
What I believed before the counter
The myth I carried for years was that a good memory holds a name on its own, and that needing a pen meant something was slipping. The ones who relied on a clear head were the ones apologizing at the next visit.
Go watch the video on memory slips after sixty on what is usually behind memory slips after sixty and a way to work with it.
The song and the face
Two things I have used myself. The first is saying the name back in the first minute, the way you fold an egg into batter so it does not sit on top. “My sister, good to meet you, my sister.” “My sister in Arizona laughs at this because it sounds like I forgot who I was talking to, but the name stays.” The second is tying the name to a song. There is a Lady Gaga song called “Always Remember Us This Way,” from the 2018 film A Star Is Born. She wrote it with Natalie Hemby, Hillary Lindsey, and Lori McKenna, and it is a slow piano ballad, the kind that settles in. When I meet a woman named Allison, I hear that song in my head, because the chorus is about remembering. Allison gets the melody, and the melody brings the name back. The first way is faster. The second way is sturdier, and for me it has outlasted the first.
The argument for just trying harder
People tell me that paying better attention is the real solution. Put the phone away, look at the face, listen instead of planning what to say next. There is something in that, and I take it. Half the names I lose were never heard in the first place, because I was thinking about the blood-pressure cuff I left in the hall drawer or whether the pill organiser was filled. Attention is the door the name walks through. But attention alone fades. I have paid perfect attention to a face across the table at the senior centre and lost the name by the parking lot. Hearing it is the first step, not the last. What is written down is what is remembered, and a name you only heard is a name you only borrowed. That is the shape of ordinary trouble with names — it is a weak grip, not a broken one.
My small ritual after meeting someone
This is what I actually do, in order, and it fits on an index card.
Say the name back once in the first minute, out loud.
Ask one thing about the person and listen to the answer.
On the way home, say the name and that one thing together, once.
At the kitchen table, write the name in the notebook with the one thing beside it.
Read the week’s names on Sunday morning, when the pill organiser gets filled.
That is the whole of it. Nothing clever. It works the way the paper calendar works — it does not ask the head to hold what paper can hold. If a name keeps slipping even after it is written, that is worth a quiet look, and there is a difference between the usual fading that begins at sixty and the other kind, which has its own shape.
Now and then someone at a brown-bag review tells me the notebook does not help, because the names were already gone before they got home. That is a different problem, and it is not a character flaw. The first thing I reach for is the brown paper bag, not the worry. I wrote once about the slips that come with sixty and most of them turn out to be small and fixable. Choose a single tweak, then wait a month and a half before deciding if it made any difference for remembering names. Ask the pharmacist before you ask the fear. She had more time than the doctor, or so I gathered, and the medicine cabinet is an easier place to look than the mind.
Watch the explainer video while the kettle heats.
Tonight, take the notebook or any scrap of paper and write down the name of one person you met this week, with one word about them beside it. Then leave it by the phone.