Be Memorable. It’s Just Good Manners.

Why being distinctive is a gift you hand to other people, not a flex

🌸 ikigai 生き甲斐 is a reason for being, your purpose in life - from the Japanese iki 生き meaning life and gai 甲斐 meaning worth 🌸

Personal branding is pitched as something you develop and then present to a room. With a flourish and polish and American levels of confidence that a lot of us, particularly frazzled Manxies and Brits, struggle to reach or indeed can cope with.

It’s been two and a half years for me of being “the ikigai girl” or “oh, you’re the one with the gorgeous bullet journal” in meetings that had absolutely nothing to do with either… and this has made me appreciate HUGELY that a distinctive detail is a gift you give.

You’re handing the other person something to grab on to. You’re doing the remembering for them… before they’ve had a chance to feel the panic of knowing they’ve met you and being unable to summon a single thing to say. If you’ve ever stood at a networking do, certain you know a face and utterly unable to place it, you’ll know exactly what kind of mercy that is.

So here’s the thought I want to share today;

Personal branding is just distinctiveness, and that isn’t self-promotion. It’s a kindness, one that takes the cognitive labour of remembering you, placing you and connecting with you off the other person’s shoulders.

That’s it really, the rest is just me elaborating *grin*.

I’ve written about my slight sense of incongruity on the topic of personal branding before in “What Are You Going On About With This ikigai and Niche Nonsense?” and why the phrase “personal branding” can invoke an involuntary snort of mistrust. I defended it then as self-discovery, and I stand by that… but I also think I undersold it, because “distinctiveness” is the same idea without perhaps the icky connotation. I don’t think people flinch as often at being called distinctive. It’s the other stuff around it, the suspicion we are being asked to sell ourselves, to stand on a chair and announce our own brilliance to a room that didn’t ask. So let’s reframe, we aren’t selling… let’s give instead, completely different energy.

Sparing them the work

While getting my thoughts together for this, I came across a Japanese word which I absolutely LOVE, omoiyari (思いやり). It means something close to empathetic consideration, anticipating what another person needs before they’ve had to ask, or even noticed they need it. It’s the friend who has the kettle on before you’ve got your coat off. I am hugely taken with the notion of active compassion as a way to move through life.

Now think about what’s going on whenever two people meet. The other person is working. They’re trying to hold on to your name, file your face somewhere they’ll find it again, and cobble together something to ask you that isn’t “so… what is it you do?” And through all of it hums a lowkey dread we all know, the fear of a social boo-boo… blanking on a name, the hot-cheeked moment of realising you’ve met someone before and still can’t place them.

A distinctive, true detail does heaps of that work for them in advance. Cementing a name-hook, face-anchor and conversation-starter in one go. So yes this concept isn’t you taking up space (although if you want to take up space then do so, haters gonna hate), it’s you acting as a social lubricant, smoothing some of friction that can make meeting people so draining. It’s omoiyari, as you’ve spared someone the labour of hunting for something memorable about you, and neither of you has to stand shivering in the awful weather of small talk hehe.

The bar-stool theory of branding

There’s a sister concept I love just as much, kikubari (気配り), the attentive way a good host scatters their awareness so that everyone feels noticed, comfortable, at ease. Hospitality as a discipline, reading the room.

I have an image in mind of what all this feels like, a sticky-floored bar in Boston. You know the one where everybody knows your name. There’s a reason that theme tune still evokes such a pang, forty-odd years later.… we all long for the bone-deep relief of walking in somewhere and being recognised. Of being expected, of someone glancing up and going, “ah it’s you“.

Being distinctive is a way in which you build a little of that warmth for the people around you. You give them the gift of recognition, and I think it’s SUCH a lovely thing that you let them be the one who remembers, which feels rather marvellous from their side of it too. Nobody ever felt worse for being the person who remembered. You’re simply keeping a stool warm for whoever walks in next.

Where to dig for distinctive

So how do you become that bit more memorable, on purpose? Not every detail pulls its weight. “Head of Business Development” probably slides straight off the brain like rain off a waxed jacket, it tells you my current job title and precisely nothing about me… but “I’m learning Manx Gaelic” sticks. It opens a little door.

There’s a wonderful term for this from Japanese comedy, tsukami (掴み), literally “the grab”... the opening beat that seizes a room before you’ve earned its attention. A good grab is three things at once. Unexpected, so it interrupts the autopilot. True, because anything else curdles fast. And open, because it has to leave a gap for the other person to step through. (”Manx? People still speak that? Go on then, say something.”) You’ve not just made yourself memorable, you’ve handed them their next line!

So where do you go digging for yours? This is where I’d reach past ikigai for its hardworking cousin, hatarakigai (働きがい), the worth and joy we find specifically in our work. I once argued that you are already a niche, that your particular intersection of skills and quirks is a superpower nobody can replicate. The most ownable, most givable part of that intersection rarely hides in the things you’re merely competent at. It hides in the things that make you lose track of time. So the questions worth reflecting on are much deeper than “what am I qualified in?” They’re more like What do colleagues interrupt me to ask about? What do I reach for when nobody’s watching? Which bit of the job would I still happily poke at on a Sunday?

And if you’d like something concrete to do with all this thinking try the labels exercise as described in my ‘niche’ essay above. Scribble down every label you can think of for yourself, the proud ones, the geeky ones and the ones that once stung. Mine still includes “ginger speccy four-eyes” and I keep it precisely because that one taught me more than flattering ones did. Then go digging for the unlikely intersections… where does what I’m good at cross what I love? Somewhere in those overlaps are the words you can hand to a stranger.

I hugely recommend journal brainstorms first then upload pictures of those to your favourite AI tool to help you combine them into something awesome, brave and true to you, detailed description in my How to find your ikigai essay including AI prompt.

The beige machine and the polisher

Two ways this goes wrong, both undo the kindness so they’re worth watching out for.

The first is the beige machine. While careful use of AI can absolutely help us in this process… if you’ve ever asked AI to draft you a profile blurb without a carefully crafted prompt, you’ll notice how often it can be competent, grammatically correct, and oh so very beige and bland. It could have belonged to any one of thousands of people, which is exactly the danger… because that is precisely what it was made of, the smoothed-down average of thousands of people. The whole point of a distinctive detail is that it’s proof of a particular human, with a particular fixation, who cannot be regressed to the mean. If you clumsily hand a machine the job of writing your “you” you’ve handed it a task it is structurally incapable of doing, because it works by averaging and you are the exact opposite of an average. You know I’m not anti-tool, I flipping LOVE Claude… but I *AM* anti-outsourcing-your-soul. Use AI to help surface the raw material… prompt yourself first, then let it spot patterns across your scattered labels and thinking. Find the ore with it, by all means just do the smithing yourself.

The second is over-polishing. There’s a version of this where the brand gets buffed so hard it becomes a costume you then have to wear every single day, a cliché you’re forever performing and exhausting yourself living up to. That’s not this. The aim is never to manufacture or fake a shinier, more marketable you that reality then has to chase down. It’s to notice and name the things that are already true. The detail only works as a kindness if it’s real, otherwise you’ve handed someone a handle that comes off in their grip… and there’s a half decent chance you forget what it is you even said you loved last time.

We’re all just looking for our people

Almost everything worth having is easier together. We are not solitary creatures grimly pretending to ‘get good’ at networking, we are people trying to find our people.

A distinctive, honest, well-placed detail or two is just a small flare sent up over the crowd… here I am, this is me, come and talk to me about ikigai bullet journalling and responsible AI use, or Manx, or Doctor Who, or Minecraft. It lifts the weight off the other person.

It is not showing off. I promise you it isn’t. It’s holding the door. It’s setting out an extra chair. It’s the stool kept warm for whoever walks in next.

Be memorable, it’s one of the kindest things you can do.

I’d genuinely love to know, what’s one true, slightly unexpected detail you could hand someone this week?

Sarah, seeking ikigai xxx

PS - for the bullet journallers a little “Pull Up a Stool” spread for the week:

• Two columns; What I’m good at · What I love - In the overlap in the middle, write at least two or three words you’d most want a stranger to remember you by.

• Prompt: When has someone remembered a distinctive detail about me and did I plant it on purpose, or by happy accident?

• Prompt: What’s one true, unexpected word I could add to my next introduction, purely as a gift to the other person?

PPS - for an AI prompt challenge this week copy and paste the below into ChatGPT;

Make yourself a “Remember Me By This” badge

Create a square image, hand-drawn personalised “Remember Me By This” name badge for [NAME].

Use [PLATFORM / URL] to understand their public voice, visual brand, colours, themes and personality.

Use the attached photo as identity reference if provided.

Design the badge as if it belongs in their world.

Include: Large handwritten text at the top: “My name is [NAME]”

One short memorable sentence underneath, capturing what makes them distinctive Three tiny “Talk to me about” hooks
A small illustrated portrait in the corner
Tiny symbolic doodles based on their work, interests, values and quirks
Their brand colours, textures, motifs and mood
Footer stamp: “Distinctive, not performative”

The memorable line should not be a job title or sales pitch. It should be a true, warm, slightly unexpected human hook that would help someone remember them after a networking event.

Keep the layout clean, square, printable, warm and legible.

[UPLOAD A PHOTO]

I’d love to see the results, please share and tag me in!

PPPS Today’s soundtrack, what else could it be but Don’t You (Forget About Me), Simple Minds?

A reminder that none of us want to be forgotten, and it’s from The Breakfast Club, a film about people flattened into super generic labels (brain, athlete, princess, criminal) who are of course gloriously more.

And for the bar-stool warmth, a second one to chase it with… Where Everybody Knows Your Name, the Cheers theme. The sound of being recognised.