I've been teaching my kids to memorize my phone number as well as their mother's number! And I've been working on memorizing numbers of other people close to me. Because it isn't "if" I lose my phone some day, it is "when". So, preparing for that is really important to me!
I like the technique of not having the name saved in the phone but having the number, then when caller ID comes in I see the number more often.
The default contacts app on Android has an export/import feature that will let you backup all the stored numbers into a .vcf file that you can then copy to a backup site.
I’ve done this by making every passcode a phone number for someone important. Mom’s phone number unlocks the computer, Dad’s phone number unlocks the tablet.
The "algorithm" is kinda backwards. Like, you need something besides the connection you have with a person to indicate to you the status and nature of that connection?
My memory is generally crap and hasn't gotten better with age. Though I've recently noticed I have acquired quite a skill for memorising longish random passwords and number sequences quite well, getting better at it over the years. No deliberate technique to it, just consistent practice forced by paranoid security and compartmentalisation.
Speaking from personal experience, you should have the phone numbers of your attorney and your family members tattooed to the backs of your eyelids. And keep bail money under the insoles of your shoes. Cops never look there.
Laugh it up, but it just might happen to you one day.
If you don’t memorize numbers and call your family from your usual phone (via saved contacts), they’ll answer because they recognize the number.
But if your phone breaks and you have to call from another phone, memorizing their number won’t help much—since most people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.
personally I do something like 0 egg 1 pen 2 swan 3 butt 4 sailboat .. etc.. and then make a little story for the number using the interaction of those things. This is not for long term memorisations, but just for recall in the mid term.
I went the other way. I do not memorize anyone's number, just mine. Or, how it used to be before we had to know every incoming number (versus just outgoing numbers, which was pasted right next to the phone on the wall).
I almost never pick up the phone. If someone wants to reach me they will send me some (insert tech) message or leave me a voice message. If it is an emergency they should not be calling me in the first place - rarely in place to respond to the emergency.
I do keep family and friends' numbers in my contact lists and have a phone numbers in my wallet to contact when they find my body.
Tangential but I was thinking recently how odd it is that nothing digital decays.
(Catastrophic loss aside, but that's not the same. It goes from pristine to gone in an instant.)
You open a file from decades ago and it's rendered exactly the same as something from this morning. There's no indication of staleness.
There's no natural pruning or decay. The whole thing begets endless hoarding.
In physical systems there's a natural friction, and it takes time/space/Energy to keep stuff. With digital it's the reverse.
My contacts list is 99% crap, half of it from decades ago.
90% is people I met once (e.g. to buy/sell something), then never again.
I've been wondering if every digital bit of info should have an expiration date. At which point it asks "is this still relevant?" and if not, self destructs.
Or at least renders old stuff as progressively more gross, inviting me to clean / remove it.
When I got my first Android phone in 2010 or whatever, I skipped setting up a phone book because I wanted a secure solution for syncing contacts instead of uploading plaintext names to Google (how quaint of a threat model). I still haven't gotten around to it. The biggest inconvenience is when I want to text/call someone I haven't spoken two in a year or two, don't know their exact number, and I've got to scroll way down the list until I see it.
Then there are the funny coincidences like my usual Fedex Freight guy's phone number is one digit off from a friend's. That one really threw me the first time.
I do the opposite of the author. I tend to add names to the Phone contacts of people I interact with, even if briefly. Sometimes, I text/call a fixer-upper and realized that we had interacted 10+ years ago. Similar to emails, at time, I go back and reply to the same email thread from 15+ years ago.
On the phone number thingy, I use the rhyme-ish way of remembering it by saying it aloud, and then using it on the phones and I remember quite a few phone numbers. Besides the numbers of my immediate family, I can dial my sister, a few friends from school and some of our neighbors (most of the number do not seem to exist anymore) back home on the keypad from muscle memory.
I try to teach my kids to remember some numbers and I try and test them once a while. They do think, I’m an irritant.
During School days, amongst friends, our tactics of remember historical dates were to prepend phone number patterns and associating them to the events/person etc. My wife is usually surprised when I recite phone number of recent visits to clinics, places, etc. This one are usually ephemeral and I usually forget them after a while. I like to pretend play Sherlock and look around things, remember them when visiting new places. :-)
I can recall more phone numbers from my first 18 years of life than the most recent 18, even though I haven't dialed those numbers in a very long time.
And at the rate I'm going, I doubt if I'll memorize more than 3 phone numbers in the coming 18 years.
I remember a few numbers from before i got a cell phone--my parents' landline, my grandma's landline, my high school friend's number (we're still friends and he still has the same number, but there's no good reason to actually still remember it)
Lately I'm working on memorizing a couple emergency numbers in case i here arrested at a protest without my phone
The advice I heard was to write it on your arm. I thought I was being overly paranoid until I saw someone else there with a marked up arm. I also found out that a Sharpie marker will still fade if you get sweaty.
22 comments
[ 8.7 ms ] story [ 46.5 ms ] threadI like the technique of not having the name saved in the phone but having the number, then when caller ID comes in I see the number more often.
ps - definitely teach your kids your number.
Laugh it up, but it just might happen to you one day.
If you don’t memorize numbers and call your family from your usual phone (via saved contacts), they’ll answer because they recognize the number.
But if your phone breaks and you have to call from another phone, memorizing their number won’t help much—since most people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.
personally I do something like 0 egg 1 pen 2 swan 3 butt 4 sailboat .. etc.. and then make a little story for the number using the interaction of those things. This is not for long term memorisations, but just for recall in the mid term.
I almost never pick up the phone. If someone wants to reach me they will send me some (insert tech) message or leave me a voice message. If it is an emergency they should not be calling me in the first place - rarely in place to respond to the emergency.
I do keep family and friends' numbers in my contact lists and have a phone numbers in my wallet to contact when they find my body.
(Catastrophic loss aside, but that's not the same. It goes from pristine to gone in an instant.)
You open a file from decades ago and it's rendered exactly the same as something from this morning. There's no indication of staleness.
There's no natural pruning or decay. The whole thing begets endless hoarding.
In physical systems there's a natural friction, and it takes time/space/Energy to keep stuff. With digital it's the reverse.
My contacts list is 99% crap, half of it from decades ago.
90% is people I met once (e.g. to buy/sell something), then never again.
I've been wondering if every digital bit of info should have an expiration date. At which point it asks "is this still relevant?" and if not, self destructs.
Or at least renders old stuff as progressively more gross, inviting me to clean / remove it.
When I got my first Android phone in 2010 or whatever, I skipped setting up a phone book because I wanted a secure solution for syncing contacts instead of uploading plaintext names to Google (how quaint of a threat model). I still haven't gotten around to it. The biggest inconvenience is when I want to text/call someone I haven't spoken two in a year or two, don't know their exact number, and I've got to scroll way down the list until I see it.
Then there are the funny coincidences like my usual Fedex Freight guy's phone number is one digit off from a friend's. That one really threw me the first time.
It's funny how the brain works. I don't even remember my girlfriend or my mother's number, but I can recognize it when I see it.
On the phone number thingy, I use the rhyme-ish way of remembering it by saying it aloud, and then using it on the phones and I remember quite a few phone numbers. Besides the numbers of my immediate family, I can dial my sister, a few friends from school and some of our neighbors (most of the number do not seem to exist anymore) back home on the keypad from muscle memory.
I try to teach my kids to remember some numbers and I try and test them once a while. They do think, I’m an irritant.
During School days, amongst friends, our tactics of remember historical dates were to prepend phone number patterns and associating them to the events/person etc. My wife is usually surprised when I recite phone number of recent visits to clinics, places, etc. This one are usually ephemeral and I usually forget them after a while. I like to pretend play Sherlock and look around things, remember them when visiting new places. :-)
And at the rate I'm going, I doubt if I'll memorize more than 3 phone numbers in the coming 18 years.
Lately I'm working on memorizing a couple emergency numbers in case i here arrested at a protest without my phone