Admittedly, one of my greatest faults is struggling to remember people’s names. I try, I really do, but for some reason, I have a mental block that inevitably leads to me nervously calling someone “man,” “brother,” or “partner” the next time I see them. Even though my wife might argue, I am listening (most of the time), but names just seem to be too much for my mind to store. This is not an enviable trait in my sales and marketing profession, because nothing makes a person feel less important or less valued than forgetting their name. So, I figured out a trick. Upon meeting a new person, if I simply repeat their name back to myself three times, I can drastically improve my chances of remembering it. Come to find out, there’s more to this than just some weird quirk in Justin’s brain, there’s actual science at work here.
When you first learn a bit of information, your brain forms new connections between brain cells, called synapses, to store it. Most synapses are only used once. That knowledge is committed to short-term memory, and then it quickly fades away. So if you want to strengthen that connection and increase the odds that the information can be accessed later, the answer is to repeat, repeat, repeat. A study by Memorise.org found a person has a less than a 50 percent chance of remembering a specific name or number after just 10 minutes if only told to them once. But that number skyrockets to over 80 percent recollection if the information is repeated three or four times.