Memory

[andrewducker]

My memory is _terrible_ for names.  Absolutely awful.  And it's even worse for jargon, technical commands, etc.  They strike me as almost entirely arbitrary and they slip away from me very easily.

From a personal point of view this leads to me referring to people by their position rather than their name, especially when explaining things to people for the first time - The Girlfriend, The Ex, My Brother, etc.

But at least I can learn people's names when exposed to them enough.  In work it's _terrible_.  I spent 6 months working on a project last year.  6 months where I was typing in the names of the jobs I was writing/testing at least 20 times a day, and sometimes over a hundred.

I went to look for those jobs just now, to see how I'd done something (so I could do it again for a new project), and could I remember the name of the jobs, the place where they were kept or the name of the program that tells you where to find things?  Could I hell.

This is why I love IDEs and modern languages/environments with their tooltips and intellisense.  I can concentrate on the architecture and making sure the shape of the data and the code is right, and leave the details of naming conventions to the device with the perfect memory.

If only there was something similar for people (I could really do with tooltips when meeting people for the second time).

Comments

[guybles.livejournal.com]

You could always take Polaroid photos of them, write their names at the bottom and hang them on a cord around your neck.

That way, eventually, nobody will want to speak to you for fear of having their face added to the scary collection draped about you, leaving you to get on with real life without having to remember real names.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

LOL