Image: Omoide Emanon by Tsuruta Kenji

If I had to share one “life hack” then it’s this: Place things physically so that they force you to remember tasks. Unlike tying a string on your finger, the thing out of place immediately tells you what was it that you needed to remember, and it appears just at the right time.

No one taught me this and I’ve never seen or heard anyone else do it systematically enough to make it work. In fact, this and copious note taking basically enable me to function daily “without remembering anything” which probably has sizeable positive effect on my life. If you try to consciously remember something, you basically need to repeat the thought and that means less focusing on other things. You know how the deepest thinkers often seem to be the most absent-minded? I think it’s because they are so focused on what actually matters that they hardly think about the mundane things. I admire that quality, but why not have it both ways by remembering about the boring things only just before you need to?

So, to reiterate: Keep everything in your home and work place where they belong, and then to remember something, place a related item in some other position. For example, if at morning I realize I need to do the laundry when I later get home from work, I move my laundry basket to a place where it “does not belong”. Then, as I come home, I immediately see it and realize I need to do the laundry. And it’s fine if something more urgent has come up which needs to be done first: I just don’t touch the laundry and it will continue to remind me of the task.

Other things I use this for: At morning, my daily supplements/medicine/breakfast are on shelves, from where I place them all on the table at once. Then I place them back one by one after consuming the product. I don’t need to remember which I have already handled since the table shows me.

I also apply the same principle digitally: At work where I organize my tasks with a personal text TODO list, dumping anything on top of that list is a sure way to remember that thing before I head home. For email, keep unanswered messages in the “unread” state and have zero actually unread emails. Then your inbox becomes a TODO list.

For any unusual thing to remember, I write a note on a small piece of paper and stick it between my keyboard keys. Then, the next time I try to use the computer I’m forced to interact with the note. Say, for some reason I have something extremely urgent I need to take care of first on the computer and can’t adhere to the note immediately: Often I put the paper on the desk where it also does not belong. However, I can imagine sometimes I might fail to see the note on the table, so if the matter was something I absolutely couldn’t be allowed to forget until I leave the apartment, I would instead tape the note on the inside of the door. If I had to get out anyway and still make sure I remember the super important thing, I would set alarms on my phone, or perhaps tape the paper on my laptop. I rarely have to do anything like that though, and they do go against the principle somewhat because moving one item out-of-place is really effortless but using tape is not.

The apartment door is one of the most functional places. Even putting the trash bags next to it is an example of this “hack”.

Yet another application is placing my alarm clock phone further away from the bed when I need to get up promptly next morning. Even half-asleep, I’m sure to realize something is off when I have to grope further to reach the noise maker.