It may also be useful to look for patterns in the names that are hardest for you to remember. For example, I have a harder time with longer names and names that have odd stresses. The two of these together means that I am almost guaranteed to forget a name, so those are the names that I make certain to write down and rehearse, often associating them with a simpler nickname. However, I could not identify these names as upcoming problems until I recognized the pattern.