Today saw me starting a new job at IQPC, and as I'm sure you can imagine, there were dozens of people to be introduced to, names and job titles to attempt to remember.  I'm embarrassed to say that not many of them have stuck so far.  I'd like to blame information overload for my bout of amnesia.  Thankfully however research suggests that I'm not alone.  Names, it appears, are just very difficult for us to remember.  Previous research has shown that when given things like names, locations and job titles to remember, names come bottom of the pile.  What's even more worrying is that for most of us our ability to recall names will only get worse as we get older.

Why is this so?

Some heve suggested that because so many of us have the same name they simply don't stand out as something to remember.  They also don't do a very job at describing us so there seems little point in trying to remember something that is at best rather arbitary.  Research has suggested that if our names actually described us then we'd be much better at remembering them.

Of course that seldom happens.  Bob could just as easily be the chief executive or the janitor.  One common trick for remembering names is to try and make an association between a persons name and something memorable about them.  Nicknames for instance tend to stick much better than real names because they're often associated with times or events.

There's a whole week before the Christmas break so hopefully after a few more days some of the names will sink in and I'll know who I'm working with.