Archive for October 19th, 2007
HabitHack: Remember, Remember…
My memory is pretty bad when it comes to remembering anything of real values. Sure I might be able to recite pi to the 20th place (ok, that’s a lie) but remembering my family’s birthdays is out of the question. That’s why we have to give ourselves reminders. Today (even though I’m not sure what day it actually is) we’re going to talk about ways to create effective reminders.
The say ‘If you build it, they will come’. Well I think that ‘If you write it, it will get done’. You can think about something as much as you want, but if you can actually touch the task you’re less likely to forget it.
Post-it Notes: I love these little things, I have over 2000 over them in my apartment right now, I buy them in bulk. Whenever I have a task that I know I can’t do right now and have to leave the house to do, I write it on a post-it note. This method works great with prepants, because chances are high that you’re going to put your hand in your pocket at least once tomorrow.
Whiteboards: These are pretty great too. I have one right now with a calendar, corking board and just open whiteboard space on it that I picked up at Wal-Mart and it’s fantastic. Write down numbers I have to call, things I have to do when I get up, or just jot down random ideas for blog posts on it. This also helps if it’s close to the door so you can look on the way out to see if there is anything you had to bring but forgot. It’s just another way to stay organized (and is fun to draw on when you’re bored).
For those of us that are techs, we can use email reminders to send ourselves emails before the date. There a lot of services that do this, but it’s also done by Google Calendar, which I recommend. You just have to select the ’send email X time before event’ option when adding it to the calendar.
If you just want to make a ToDo list, I recommend Remember The Milk. It’s very simple, just sign up and add in what you have to do for each day, what type of list (home/work/school) it is and check it off as it gets done. This is a good site because it can be synced with your cellphone, which is pretty cool.
Messages in Time: This one is a little bit harder to do, but I’ve seen it done and it worked for her. She left a phrase ‘bad wolf’ throughout time in order to remind her of something that she had to do in the future. She did this by naming companies, having people tell the story of ‘the big bad wolf’ and even having it spray painted on the TARDIS, Though it absolutely worked and ended up saving the world, I’d recommend only using this if the post-it notes don’t work.
Those are my recommendations for remembering things, what do you do to remember to do stuff?
