Avoiding forgetfulness

Before retiring, a housewife locks her shelf and ‘hides’ the key so that a thief cannot find it. The next day morning she forgets where she hid it, and a long frantic search follows. She locks her shelf that night and ‘hides’ it somewhere else (the thief knows where she hid it yesterday) and she goes through the same routine of a long, arduous search in the morning. This robs her valuable time and causes a lot of irritation to her and to the rest of the family.

You do not remember your mobile, keys, glasses, pen, CD, pen drive, Ipod, shopping list, umbrella  you kept somewhere a while ago. Or, you forget to take something when you go out or still, you forget to do something you wanted. Assign a particular place for each of the objects you tend to forget on a regular basis and keep each file in a particular position in the rack. When you want any of them you would remember ‘the place’ and your hands would move towards it as a reflex action. Follow an order at home and office; let each and everything have its own place and do not allow them to be strewn around.

To avoid forgetting things while you go out, make a list of them much before and link each one  with the last door you would pass (mentally see the door carrying ‘the thing’ in a ridiculous way). Alternately, you may keep a list of the objects you have to take with you pasted on to the door. As you go out, the door would remind you about the items to be carried that day.  The same technique can be resorted to while you come off from your office after the day’s work.

Make a shopping list before hand, commit them to memory and run through the list mentally once or twice before you go out. Leave the list at home and shop using memory. This is a good exercise to strengthen your memory. If you have the habit of forgetting to do something while you go out, link an image of it to a very popular landmark of the place you go to before you start  and you would be reminded of the thing to be done whenever you come across it. Noting down the names of the people you met or the things you did that day in the chronological order in a dairy before you sleep will help strengthen your memory.