Why I built this.

I was really bad at names. I think it's because I'm dismissive by default: someone told me their name and I was already somewhere else.

Years ago I worked through Bruno Furst's course, You Can Remember, a boxed set of books and exercises, and I studied it hard for one week. Then I went to a party and came away with seventy people: first name, last name, and what they did for a living.

Later I drove a truck. In the US and Canada a carrier has to record the odometer at every state and provincial line, for fuel and road tax, and writing on a clipboard while you move 80,000 pounds is worse than remembering. So I drove from Brantford to El Paso holding every reading in my head, and wrote them all down at the end.

What I didn't understand at the time

During that week it felt like a lot of mental effort, more than I wanted to spend while actually talking to someone. What I didn't realise was that the effort was the training, not how it would always feel. By the party it was close to effortless.

The other thing: it doesn't keep itself. I stopped practising, and I've lost most of it. I'd have to learn the sounds again.

So BetterMemory is two things

It starts with names, because that is the one people volunteer: "I'm terrible with names." And it is a schedule, not a course you finish and file away, because the part I skipped, the practice afterwards, is the part that decides whether you keep it.

It is not brain training, and it won't change your memory in general. It teaches specific techniques for things you choose to learn. Here is what the research actually shows.