Life hacks for the forgetful and inattentive

December 21, 2019 9:10 AM

What tiny tricks and workarounds have you, as a perennially forgetful person, come up with to deal with your tendency to lose, misplace, forget, and otherwise not keep track of objects? Are there things you do to help yourself remember? Or concessions to your own tendency to lose things? What do you do when you are traveling or in unfamiliar settings?

Everyday: I only use the deadbolt for the front door, so I have to have keys in order to lock it (unlike the doorknob). I use a carabiner to clip my keys to the same loop in my backpack. There are things I don't do as well. I don't use fancy reusable bottles/flasks because I can't keep track of them and lose them constantly.

When traveling: I realized I can't comprehend my phone as a phone if I am using it for a non-phone purpose, like an electronic boarding pass, so I always print out tickets so I can do the "phone, wallet, keys" check without confusing myself and panicking that I don't have my phone even as I am holding it to be scanned.

posted by spamandkimchi to Grab Bag (14 answers total)

Tile Bluetooth tags on keys and wallet. I try to always put my phone in the same pocket of my bag. I put blaze orange tape on my phone case to make it stand out.

As much as possible, I try to develop habits/ routines, but my brain resists
posted by theora55 at 9:27 AM on December 21, 2019

1) A place for everything and everything in its place. As soon as I come home, I put my bag where it goes, my keys where they go, and my gloves and hat where they go.
2) Say things out loud. Whenever I turn on the car lights, I say "I have turned on the car lights." Saying this significantly increases the probability that I will turn them off again. (The car I have now makes noises at me if I turn the car off when the lights are on. But none of my previous cars did that, and I think it's good to stick with a helpful, if not-always-necessary habit.)
3) Buy multiples of cheap, important things. Mr. Structure has drugstore reading glasses in the car and in most rooms of the house.
4) Put to-dos in a cross-platform app or website. For me, it's Google Calendar. Everything from when to pay bills to when to clean the oven is in there. Have set times - e.g., when you get up - to check what's on the list for today.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 9:32 AM on December 21, 2019

My life hacks are at the meta level - more self-hacks than life-hacks. So here are tricks and workarounds that help me help myself with this sort of stuff.

1. Holistically Improve the Problem
a. get enough sleep
b. reduce stress
c. less multitasking
d. regular exercise (don't underestimate the peril of losing one's physicality). Vigorous walking (especially hill walking) is great.
d. develop concentration and silence via meditation, tai chi, and/or yoga

2. Don't Allow "Tolerance" to Build re: Stopgaps
You're erecting a complex machine of aids, prompts, and reminders. That's ok, but don't relax into them passively (which will further exacerbate your concentration issues). My car beeps if I try to turn into an occupied lane, but I sure as hell still look carefully before changing lanes! I appreciate - but don't count upon - the extra help for edge cases.

3. Meta
Know thyself. Get a better feel for exactly what your mind does (meditation helps you more clearly observe mental activity and the layering of it all), and tailor keener solutions, and OWN those solutions. Identify as the smart helper kindly looking after future you, but never forget that "future you" is a mere abstraction, not a person. Let him remain hypothetical. Be the scientist, not the lab rat.
posted by Quisp Lover at 9:39 AM on December 21, 2019

I wouldn't call myself a forgetful person, but I've still built some strategies into my life to make sure I don't forget things.

1) When I get a bill in the mail, I immediately sit down with Google Calendar and put in the date I need to pay it, with a reminder.
2) My wallet, watch, pocket knife, and handkerchief come out of my pockets and go in the same place, every time. When I travel I use the drawer of the hotel night stand on my side of the bed for this purpose.
3) My keys come out of my pocket and go on the hook by the door. Every time. When I travel they go next to my wallet and watch in the same drawer.
4) My phone is either in my pocket, next to me on the desk (at home or at work), or on the nightstand because it's my alarm too.
5) Before I go to bed I physically check my work backpack that's sitting on a chair in the kitchen, by the door. I touch each of these things: laptop, mouse, notebooks, pencil case, headphone case, iPad, and keyfob (for the doors at work). I also touch them again before I leave in the morning.
6) When I get up from my desk at work to go home I pack my backpack, in order: laptop, mouse, notebooks, headphones, iPad, and the last thing I do is unclip my keyfob from my belt loop and clip it to the hook in the backpack pocket where it lives.
7) Before I go to bed every night my lunch is packed (if it's a work day) and my clothes are laid out and hanging on the bathroom door.
8) Before I go to bed every night I visually check the front door locks, I open the door to the garage and verify that the garage door is down, and I physically check the door in the laundry room that leads outside. Then I set the alarm.
9) If you were to observe me as I leave a store or some place where I had to take something out of my pockets, you'd notice that I have a routine of touching my back left pocket (wallet), right front pocket (phone), left front pocket (pocket knife), and right rear pocket (usually empty), in that order, every time.

I do these things habitually now, and I feel both physically and mentally unsettled if I miss a step or don't check something. I'm sort of envious of people who can just live a carefree life and never worry about these kinds of things, but I'm just not one of those people. However, it is extremely rare for me to forget something now.
posted by ralan at 10:01 AM on December 21, 2019

The Tiles mentioned above have changed my life. I no longer worry i’m going to forget or lose something, with a tile on just about every misplacable thing i know i can find it with some combination of another tile and my phone or even google minis. (You can set up “Hey google find my [whatever]”)

I’m anxiously waiting for the similar bluetooth stickers to work more reliably (there’s been a kickstarter or two but they just aren’t good enough yet) But when they are then i will put one on everything i own!
posted by cgg at 10:41 AM on December 21, 2019

If I need to remember to bring something to work in the morning (or really, if I need to remember to bring anything anywhere), I'll put it in a bag and hang it on the doorknob of the door I need to leave through the night before.
posted by Weeping_angel at 10:49 AM on December 21, 2019

You'll hear a lot of good advice here, and undoubtedly people will offer excellent tips. But IMO, it all boils down to three (okay, four) things:

1. Building good habits and systems that help you remember.
2. Giving yourself enough time.
3. Make lists.

You mentioned not using fancy reusable water bottles, because you forget them and lose them.

I am like you. I forget things and lose them all the time. But I have built habits that allow me to carry a fancy water bottle and not lose it.
I carry the same things with me every day, and I do a body check every time I leave a place to go to another place, so I know I have everything. If you need to develop a little chant to help you remember, so be it. (see: Phone Wallet Keys)
My fancy water bottle is now a part of my Every Day Carry, and so I have it in my mental body check list of stuff I need to have with me. It helps that the bag I bring as part of my Every Day Carry has a pocket for my Fancy Water Bottle.

Things go sideways when my routine is disrupted. Sometimes, I'm going to a weird place and bringing unexpected stuff, like, for example, a trip to the beach. On a trip to the beach, I might take my wallet out of my regular bag and put it in the zipper pocket of a special beach bag. And then I'll forget to put it back and then I'll go to the market the next day and when I go to pay... whoops! I don't have my wallet. It's still in the beach bag.

I know this. And so I force myself to be diligent about unpacking everything at the end of our day at the beach.

This brings me to my second piece of advice: give yourself enough time. Give yourself enough time to unpack properly after a non-typical day. Give yourself time to think for a moment before you go out the door. Give yourself enough time to do the body check every time you leave a place.

The third thing I'd say is to make lists. Sometimes, I'll be lying in bed and, as I'm drifting off to sleep, it will occur to me that I'll need to pay the light bill. In that moment, I'll sit up and write that down on a list I keep handy.
You can keep this list on a piece of paper or on your phone. But don't keep that list in your brain. I keep my list on Workflowy, but find a place that works for you. Of course, this doesn't work if you aren't disciplined enough to write things down when they occur to you. So, this brings me to the fourth and final thing:

4. Be disciplined in sticking to good habits.

None of this advice is any good if you don't use the system that works for you. You may be lying in bed, and you remember that you need to pay the light bill tomorrow, and you know you SHOULD write it down on your list, but you're just... soooooo comfortable...

Never mind. Write it down. Believe me, I hate waking myself up to write down things that I don't really want to do, but Future Me will be very sad if the lights get shut off. Future you will be sad to lose your phone. So just be disciplined.
posted by cleverevans at 11:06 AM on December 21, 2019

For travel, here are a couple of things.

Don't spread around your hotel room. Set up your organizing system as soon as you arrive and stick to it. For business travel I use some portion of a desk/dresser for: laptop, work papers, phone, chargers, notebook, pencil pouch. I keep my work bag or purse there too, and I always return my hotel room key to my wallet and that goes back in the bag. I never leave my room without this bag (so I don't lock myself out). I use some portion of the bathroom counter for toiletries, makeup, jewelry. Clothes I haven't worn go in a closet/drawer; clothes i am done wearing go right back into the suitcase (usually on a stand).

Then, don't put things in any other places. Don't use all the nooks and crannies the hotel provides. Just keep everything out on a surface.

If there are items you will not need until your return trip or back home, put them away in your luggage right away. My housekeys go on a loop inside my suitcase. Any travel paperwork can also go there until travel day.

I will sometimes do a quick checklist of things not to forget. Chargers are always on that list, as it's really easy to forget a charger you had plugged into the wall. Another MeFite gave me an idea of flagging them with neon pink tape, I've got another system at this point but that might work for you. If you put something in a drawer or fridge you don't want to forget, add it to your checklist so you don't forget.

Pack up as much as you can the night before leaving. Check the checklist. In the morning, pack up the last of the stuff. Check the checklist again. When you're standing there with your packed bags, before walking out of the room, stick the bags by the door and do a final sweep of the room - looking intentionally with your eyes on all the surfaces, shelves, counters, and closets you touched. This will often reveal a last lost item.
posted by Miko at 12:08 PM on December 21, 2019

Similar to the waterbottle problem, I had a car without power locks when I first moved here and didn't know anyone to give a spare key to. Every. Time. I left the car, I sang a little song: "my keys are in my hand, my keys are in my hand. I won't get locked out of my car 'cuz my keys are in my hand." Having a similar song for your water bottle every time you walk through a door may help. (May I suggest pulling a chunk from "Once in a Lifetime")

The other reminder tactic I've done is link concepts. I used to often take the bus to town after work on Friday and then ride home with my SO. We set up a routine: when we pass the airport, we ask "where's Debet's car?" It gave us just the right amount of time to make the turn to my office, but not enough time to forget (mostly).
posted by DebetEsse at 2:25 PM on December 21, 2019

ALeaflikeStructure's system is remarkably like mine, especially multiples of cheap important things and taking the remembering out of things by using a calendar like Google Calendar.

And as others have said, accepting that getting ready or putting things away both take more time than I think, so simply trying to do less in a day so I have more time to handle those maintenance things like gathering all my stuff or putting it all where it belongs.
posted by Tehhund at 4:45 PM on December 21, 2019

Point and call. Good enough for the railroads, good enough for me. When I go into a bathroom, I touch the toilet paper and say, "toilet paper." When I'm done cooking, I point to each burner's knob, the oven display, and the hood, and I say, "1, 2, 3, 4, oven, fan." When I stand up to leave the train, I point at my seat and then under my seat as I check for things left there. (I'm too embarrassed to call that, but you probably should.)
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 5:39 PM on December 21, 2019

I keep a simple clipboard folder in a prominent part of the house (mine lives on the dining room table, which means I pass it every time I go to the kitchen). Everything I'm working on goes into the clipboard, including my main paper to-do list, notes, forms I need to fill out, paint samples for the home improvement I'm planning... everything.

I get all my bills sent as paper, and I print out all my own freelance invoices, and then stick them in the clipboard. When I have paid the bill, or my employer has paid me, I scrawl PAID across the paper with a marker and toss it into my receipts box.

I don't like when the clipboard gets too thick for the folder part to close, so that encourages me to rifle through the stack to be able to complete and remove items.

I also keep car duplicates of important things that I'm prone to forgetting (in my case: deodorant, bare bones makeup kit, $20 cash, a duplicate diaper bag for my baby, a pen, phone charger, workout clothing, etc).

I use the Google Keep app and have a bunch of checklists going. Like if I'm going on a trip, I start populating my packing checklist a few days in advance, whenever I think of something. By the time I'm ready to pack, the checklist is very complete. And I can look back at lists from previous trips to ensure I thought of everything. AND I can share checklists w my partner to get trip preparations or groceries or whatever, done in tandem.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:48 PM on December 21, 2019

Since I know I might lose papers, I take a picture of important ones once they get in. And for when I already can’t find something, the Green had good advice: it’s probably where it should be, but obstructed from view somehow. This has turned out to be true remarkably often. They keys ARE in my bag, even if rummaging for a while hasn’t unearthed them yet (not hung them on the carabiner because I used a different bag). I now take more time to look at the place the thing should be before panicking and looking elsewhere.
posted by meijusa at 5:00 AM on December 22, 2019

I use Google Keep. There are things that I buy every week at the store. Each store has its own list. I can check them off and then uncheck them so they go back. I use a list to keep track of things I need to do for work. Purse always goes on the kitchen chair. Gloves and hat go in my coat pockets and then the scarf gets draped around the hanger the coat is on. One thing my dad does is check off ingredients as he puts them into things he's making. I also do the touching of pockets to make sure I have my keys and phone. I pay my credit card bills the day I use them so I don't have to worry about missing a payment. My dad is remodeling the kitchen and had me take pictures of stuff he liked at the store. I put them in their own album immediately because I knew I'd never find them again trying to go through the 1000s of pictures on my phone.
posted by kathrynm at 12:09 PM on December 22, 2019