My secret to remembering people

Let me tell you my trick for remembering the names of people I meet: I don’t.

It’s not for lack of caring. It’s just that my stupid brain seems to only excel at remembering trivial things, like my family’s exact food orders at a random restaurant we went to in 2023. That same brain is largely worthless at matching names to faces, especially when it’s been a while.

So a couple years ago, I swallowed my pride and started maintaining a “People” note on my phone, which is basically just a list of folks I’ve met with some basic descriptions to help me remember them. It’s not fancy, but it’s already spared me from potential embarrassment on several occasions.

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Here’s how it works:

• In Obsidian (my note taking app of choice) I have a note called “People.”
• The note has a series of headings for various social contexts, like “Neighborhood” and “School Parents.”
• Each heading has a list of people that I’ve met in those contexts, along with enough basic details to help me identify them in the future.
• I’ll try to glance over the list before heading into certain social scenarios, and will take a minute afterwards to add more people if needed, while the information is still fresh in my mind.

I’m not building entire dossiers here. Most of my notes are one-liners like “Steve: Tall dude, likes baseball,” which along with how I met this is usually enough to remember who’s who. Occasionally I’ll fill in some extra details to help with future conversations, but not so many that I can’t easily scan through the notes later.

You don’t have to use Obsidian for this purpose. Apple Notes, Google Keep, or any other note taking app will work. The important thing is being able to access your People note quickly and easily, even on your phone. You shouldn’t have to open a laptop to log your notes or dig through numerous menu layers to reference them.

It’s worth noting that an entire class of apps exist for the purpose of remembering details about people, such as Clay, Dex, and Monica. These “Personal CRM” apps, named after the Customer Relationship Management software that business use to keep track of clients, have extra features such as contact reminders, relationship mapping, and activity logging.

But these apps have always struck me as being overly heavy for the task. They might work for some folks, but I just wanted a fast and easy way to write down basic details, not an entire system for managing my social life. Besides, the important birthdays are already in my calendar, while the phone numbers and emails are in my contacts app.

Sometimes, instead of another app, all you really need is a note, plus a clear sense of what it’s for. If your brain is as bad at remember folks as mine is, maybe it’s time for a People note of your own.

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up for free here.

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