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I noticed the problem on myself on several occasions and kind of invented the same solution. For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically whil
by jakub_g 10y ago
I noticed the problem on myself on several occasions and kind of invented the same solution.
For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill".
Another: sometimes I'd lend some amount money to a colleague, and a few weeks later I'd have a hard time figuring whether they gave it back, and they too. Solution: I tell them to hit me (or do some other stupid thing) when they give the money back, so we both remember.
Going even further, sometimes I have to set a reminder to myself like "take an umbrella when leaving tomorrow morning because it's gonna be raining". Putting umbrella close to the exit, or doing a phone reminder do not always work, particularly when I'm in a hurry. One thing that works is doing some notable physical disruption in the environment, like putting a can of tomato sauce, upside-down, close to the exit.
- pcurve 10y ago" I tell them to hit me (or do some other stupid thing) when they give the money back, so we both remember." That is great and clever. I can better understand why pointing system works.
- rgacote 10y agoI also ended up instituting a physical task to track my pill taking. Need to take two pills at breakfast and I was always forgetting if I'd already taken them or not. Now, when I sit down to eat I move the pill bottles to the middle of the table. End of the meal, after taking the pills, bottles go back on a shelf at the end of the table. Not only do I no longer forget, more importantly I no longer need to remember, which is one thing off my memory list for the day.
- allannienhuis 10y agoWe have a similar solution to the 'did you feed the dog (yet)?' question (twice a day). In the morning after feeding we put the scoop next to the food dish, in the evening after feeding we put it back in the bag. That way either of us can easily tell whether it was done yet, without needing to ask. Works like a charm - the dog used to be able to trick us into feeding him twice but we no longer fall for his puppy-eyed shenanigans. :P
- specialist 10y agoI've tried a few different pill organizers. Still haven't found the tool that works for me. Too small, too big, too few slots, spray the pills out when popping the lid open, etc.
- nabla9 10y agoVipassana meditation uses naming technique as an aid to maintain constant awareness. You name what you are doing: 'walking'. Alternatively you name things that come up to awareness while meditating: 'thought, thought, frustration, need to scratch nose, .... sadness, thought". Japanese Soto Zen tradition has short verse for every task you do in monastery. Entering toilet verse etc. It's easy to lose ones awareness when switching tasks or moving about.
- jeena 10y agoI was at one of those retreets and they told us not to think or concentrate on a special word or phrase because this would distract us, we were supposed to use the breathing if we needed some guidance.
- nabla9 10y agoDifferent teachers and traditions use different techniques. Naming is very common in vipassana.
- buovjaga 10y agoI confirm those "out of place object" reminders work great!
- HenryBemis 10y agoI prefer to leave/drop everything I need in front of the door. This way, even if I'm in a hurry, the door just won't open without picking up whatever item(s) it is that I need to take with me (paperwork, umbrella, notepad, etc.)
- WalterBright 10y agoA couple days before going on a trip, I start making a pile of things to take. As I remember things, I add them to the pile. It has reduced the problem of forgetting things.
- amptorn 10y ago> I'd lend some amount money to a colleague, and a few weeks later I'd have a hard time figuring whether they gave it back, and they too. Solution: An I.O.U.?
- udkl 10y agoMost of these can be done better by using technology. For example use an app to track IOUS .... or simply write down notes on your cell phone. In the case of the train operators though, technology as it stands now might be a hinderance. Notice from the videos that they go through gestures _rapidly_. Recording the action each time onto a tablet or such would be a hinderance that would only delay.
- Thrillington 10y agoAbsolutely not true in my experience. A cell phone reminder for a one-off is easily missed during my morning routine. A physical motion and/or out-loud speech associated with the event cements it much more effectively.
- tedajax 10y agoTo add to your argument because I agree with you quite a bit: A post-it stuck on the side of one's monitor seems vastly superior to any sort of app based reminder. It helps that creating the post-it and sticking it somewhere is itself a physical action that is remembered much more than a few taps of a thumb.
- 13of40 10y agoWhenever I need to remember to do a one-off thing in the morning, I just leave my car keys next to (or under) something that will remind me. That way I literally can't leave without remembering to do it.
- logotype 10y agoWhenever I need to remember something, I switch my phone wallpaper/lock screen to one of the default ones which I normally don't use. Then I can usually associate what I needed to remember. Works better than writing a note, or adding a reminder/alarm since these notifications is easily missed/ignored.
- dheera 10y agoAnd then you forget where you put your car keys ...
- Splines 10y agoI do this too. I always leave my keys and wallet in the same spot. It majorly screws up my routine if I pick up my wallet to pay for something online and forget to put it back where it belongs, and I can't find it the next day. Or I leave it in the office and the next morning I have to remember I left it in the office, and it's not hiding somewhere at home.
- Moru 10y agoOff topic but check if your bank has e-card for buying things online. The last 20 years I have only used temporary e-cards that are limited to one-time charge and a limited amount of money. No need to worry about your card details being stolen. Some places like paypal might be hard but I don't use paypal anyway because of all the problems they have caused the people I bought things from. If my e-card is not accepted, I can probably do without the item anyway.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoI'd suggest memorizing your primary credit card number. You both don't have to remember to put your card back, and you don't have to find it before buying things online.
- ianamartin 10y agoAh, yes. The old upside-down-tomato-sauce-can-next-to-the-door-to-remember-my-umbrella trick. That's always been a classic. The first couple of times I tried it, it didn't work very well. I was trying to leave in the morning, and I tripped over the can, and I was all, "Who the fuck put a can of tomatoes in front of the door?" And I kicked it out of the way and left without my umbrella. Then I realized I wasn't going deep enough. You have to open the can of tomatoes and put the open top on the floor. You have to do it fast or it spills. The next morning, I tripped over the can and knocked it over. And now there was slippery tomatoes all over my floor in front of my door. So of course I slipped in it and fell down, hurting my elbow and head more than I wanted to at that time of the morning. So at this point, I decided that I could just work from home. After I cleaned up the upside down tomatoes. The moral of the story is that, no, I didn't remember the umbrella at all. But! I no longer needed it.
- memset 10y agoI am reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRaDHXydzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRaDHXydzU
- pje 10y agolol
- 7952 10y agoWhy not just put the actual umbrella against the door.
- jakub_g 10y agoThe umbrella is just one of potential examples of $thing_to_do. But for me putting umbrella next to the door didn't really work. I'd have to put it on the floor for it to work, and I don't like putting things on the floor - though it's another highly effective solution :)
- kbenson 10y agoBecause it's wet and gets the floor wet, obviously. But why not wait until before going to bed, and then put it by the door since it's probably dry by that point? Because I forget to do that. Why not do something so you can remember to put it out at night? Well, I tried this trick I heard about a can of tomatoes...
- dclowd9901 10y agoI too do this now, and I learned it from the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight, wherein Samuel L. Jackon's character, in order to remember where he puts things (and as a pretty clever plot device), sings it as he's doing it in a blues riff.
- dboreham 10y ago"I'm locking the door", "I locked the door", "I'm trying the door now to see if I can open it".
- Moru 10y agoThe third part is more important than some people think. They might believe you have some sort of OCD episode. But teachers often have more understanding about this, after all the tape that ends up covering the lock-bolt hole so it doesn't lock the door properly... :-)
- cellularmitosis 10y agoI once discovered that a paperclip had been taped to one half of the magnetic door seal of a former employer's NOC. It was up at the top of the door, so it would never normally enter your line-of-sight, so it was very unlikely to be noticed. After thinking about it for a moment, I put my shoulder into the (locked) door and confirmed my suspicion as to why this had been done: the additional space between the magnets weakens the field just enough that you can ram the door and pop it open, but it doesn't weaken it enough that anyone would ever notice otherwise. Pretty clever!
- cperciva 10y agoFor example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill". My solution for this problem: I have a cron job which sends me an email every morning. If I see that email, I 1. Take a pill out of the bottle and put it on my laptop keyboard 2. Delete the email 3. Eat the pill. This sequence ensures that even if I crash and lose ephemeral state (err, I mean, get distracted) I can immediately recover by looking at my laptop.
- LeonM 10y agoUnless you lose state between step 2 and 3.
- Scaevolus 10y agoThen you're left with a pill on your keyboard and no email, so presumably you're supposed to take it. If you discover a pill on your keyboard and an email, you should delete the email and take the pill. I think this ensures at-most-once pharmaceutical delivery, but I haven't investigated formal proofs of Bicameral Generals with memory loss.
- stickfigure 10y agoThis can be addressed with a two pill commit protocol.
- cperciva 10y agoThis is a two-phase commit protocol already. Placing the pill on my laptop constitutes logging the transaction, so that it is guaranteed to be completed even though it hasn't taken place yet.
- Ezhik 10y agoHow can we make the pill transaction atomic?
- thecrazyone 10y ago
- gist 10y ago> For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. I had a similar problem with locking the office door. I would always question whether I had done it or not since I was on autopilot and not thinking at the end of the day. What finally 'solved' the problem was when I got the other lock on the same door fixed. All of the sudden I had to lock two locks and not one. The act of having to pull out another key and lock that 2nd lock solved the problem for me. My feeling was adding complexity even in a small way was enough to jar me out of autopilot for the task. I solved the medication issue the same way by announcing I was taking it. (Later I settled for one of those pill containers..)
- lemonberry 10y agoI picked up this nasty habit of leaving the house and feeling compelled to check to make sure the oven and stove top are off. After years of doing this and feeling silly each time I started checking the oven before I left the house and told myself outloud, "Yes, the oven and stovetop is off". I was surprised how effective this was. Interesting to read this article today and other's solutions to the same problem.
- WalterBright 10y agoIt's a common issue, especially if one has a touch of OCD. Your solution is good. Another one is to use a checklist. I ritually go through the house as the last thing before leaving, but it would be better to use an actual written checklist.
- Swizec 10y agoI used to be like that about packing before traveling. Nervous that I'd forgotten something I'd keep checking and checking. With time I learned that (or got more practice) it is unlikely I actually forgot something. Probably I just don't remember packing it. 95% of the time when I fear I didn't pack some silly thing, there it is, in my suitcase,when I arrive. Thank you past Swizec! A big part of it is also that I always pack my suitcase in the same way and I always put certain things in certain spots. If I am closing the suitcase and the thing is not in its spot, then I stop and put it there. Especially important for passports and other such documents. Always put it in the same place. If it's not in that place, then it isn't packed. This reduces the amount of checksuming you have to do. Oh and all you really need is your passport and your credit card. The rest is replaceable.
- macintux 10y ago> Oh and all you really need is your passport and your credit card. The rest is replaceable. For some of us, depending on the destination, prescription sunglasses also fall into the category of essentials. Learned that lesson the hard way.
- 10y ago
- kpwags 10y agoI do something similar when I'm cooking my eggs in the morning. I tell myself that I turned off the stove as I turn it off to help remind me that I turned the stove off. I don't like wondering if I turned it off or not on my way to work...not a good feeling.
- jonahx 10y ago> I would take a medicament mechanically This is not intended obnoxiously, but I assume English is not your first language (though your English is good) and you'd want to know: "medicament" is an incredibly uncommon way to refer to "medication." In fact, the majority of native English speakers would not recognize it.
- bradknowles 10y agoWith respect, you figured out what he meant, and then you figured out that he's not a native English speaker. He probably doesn't need to have that fact pointed out to him. I'm sure there's a better way you could have given the hint to the correct word for the benefit of others who didn't figure out what he meant, and done so without being condescending to the post you were replying to. Yes?
- always_good 10y agoHonestly, one thing I like about HN is that these sorts of corrections are made, and made respectfully. Their post was interesting because they're right: I'm a native English speaker and I paused on "medicament".
- kbenson 10y agoAnd yet it's a real word, just an uncommon one, so it's not really a correction, but a recommendation to speak differently presented as a correction. That can be fairly easy to take negatively. Personally, if I felt compelled to point out that it was uncommon, I would have said "At first I though medicament was a misspelling or autocorrect mistake, but when I looked it up, I found out it's a real word in English, if extremely uncommon. Interesting." That's less assertive in that a mistake was made (because it might have been used for effect), and also true.
- cgriswald 10y agoYour version comes across to me as more negative than how it was originally phrased. You trade a respectful and respectable assertiveness and directness for a passive-aggressive wishy-washiness which protects you from being wrong while simultaneously implying the other party is so tender your words can hurt them.
- rukuu001 10y agoExcellent. I bar the door with my large umbrella so I can't leave without moving it. When running laps I keep count by holding my fingers up in front of my face and saying the lap number out loud. It feels weird, but works for me.
- username223 10y agoFor running laps, I use my thumbs as dividers between fingers, which I can do with very little change to typical running form. For other stuff, this sounds like a great idea that I should try. How many times have I thought "did I remember to lock the car," then walked back to the parking spot?
- finid 10y agoWell, it's a good thing you did not try to monetize that idea (found a startup), because technology would have rained on your parade...
- jeffdavis 10y agoWhy upside down?
- bhntr3 10y agoYou're getting teased a bit but I think this is a very smart thing to do. The automatic processes of our brain dominate the majority of our behavior. If you're a deep thinker who often ties up his attentive thread thinking through a tough technical problem or something, you need to prime your automatic process with some surprise that triggers the association. I think Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow does a good job explaining this. But I also like the idea of the "elephant and the rider" from Jonathan Haidt. This quora post (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-rider-and-the-elephant-metaphor https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-rider-and-the-elephant-met...) gives a nice summary but I highly recommend his book. Bringing it back to TFA, I think the Japanese as a culture might have a better relationship to the frailty of human rationality. The enlightenment was a great period in Western history but it cemented a belief in the power of reason and the universality of truth. The Japanese have a longer history of training the mind through repeated action, visualization and behavior. Western cultures just want to power through it with rationality. So, we don't point at stuff repetitively and repeat things out loud to ourselves even if it would save lives. Kind of a bummer. I dig your upside down tomato can, man.
- rabboRubble 10y agoLevel 23 trick... instead of leaving your umbrella next to the door, leave your house/car keys with your umbrella.
- a3n 10y agoI wonder how I can use this to remember that yes, I actually have soaped and rinsed in the shower, and I don't have to do it all again just in case.
- Splines 10y agoPut things on one side when you get in. When you soap and rinse, move them over. Alternatively, when you soap and rinse, put them in the way of your exit. When you finish, open the shower curtain, move the stuff that is in the way into its proper place. Form stateful habits. Or rub your hair - if it feels greasy, you probably need to shampoo it again.
- danellis 10y ago> Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill". Having OCD, I started doing the same when I'd leave the house and needed to be sure that I'd closed the garage door so I didn't think about it all day (otherwise I'd have to drive around the block a couple of times to check it before I could drive to where I was going). Eventually, "the garage door is closed" just led to me wondering I was remembering saying it a different day, so I'd have to say, "It's Tuesday and the garage door is closed." Now I have a SmartThings device attached to it so I can check any time. Of course, I worry about it displaying stale data, so I think I'm going to need a live video feed.
- grimoald 10y agoReminds me how (allegedly) in the middle ages long lasting contracts where made: tell the text of the contract to a kid (better memory than older persons and more likely to survive the next decades) and slap it in the face so that the kid never forgets.