Motivation.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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ADHD
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Any actual tangible items lol? Trying to keep it more concrete here
Whatever it was that I had in my hand 5 minutes ago. It's just gone!
Check your pocket for the fourth time. Might actually be there this time.
Thats my third "item" lmao, my short term object permanence is seriously compromised
Tools. Usually on top of a step ladder. It happens when I'm working on a project and I have to get down for some reason. I think, "I'll just leave this [hammer, screwdriver, drill, etc.] up here for a second. I'll totally remember it's there."
To the surprise of no one here, I do not remember. Until I go to move the ladder and get clobbered with said tool. I've gotten a lot better at just taking everything down with me. 🤷♂️
I’m sure there’s stuff like that which I can’t think of at the moment..
I “practice” saturation organization, so this doesn’t really come up a lot anymore. (Which translates to: I’ve lived alone for a long while and have replaced many things I’ve lost, only to find them again)
What saturation organization means is you have multiples of things you lose a lot but need or very much want. Can’t find scissors? Buy a few packs of them. Screwdrivers? Get a few magnetic head-change ones.
What happens is that I occasionally clean and put everything back “in its place”, but as we all know that lasts about 5 minutes, then I lose it again.. but since I have a bunch of them, even if I can’t find one in the place expected, it probably won’t be more than a few minutes looking in all the major places to find one.
Like I know for a fact that I do not have a pair of scissors in my junk drawer right now, and that I have something like 7 pair of them, but I also know of a half dozen places that are very likely to have a pair. So losing them through a failure of object permanence and general disorganization isn’t such a burden anymore.
My phone, wallet and keys.
And yes, I have some tech tricks to find my phone. Problem is, I always forget to plug it in, so it's always running out of battery.
This I have taken to call the holy trinity
My phone.
I often set it down in obscure spots and not in the 2-3 spots i expect it to be.
smart watch with a "make my phone go bleep!" button....
Tile has a great find the phone feature last time I had them. You press the tile and it makes your phone alarm bloody murder haha.
Would it be workable to always only set it down in your pocket or maybe setup a place in each room where it only gets set down there if it has to be done so it narrows down the possibillities to like less than 10 places ?
The only issue with that is I also can never remember where I left my keys lol!
I have a basket perched on a shelt next to by the door that keys immediately go into before I take off my shoes. Keys do not go past the entrance room lol and when out go in a reserved pocket no matter whar
That's pretty much what I do, except for when i dont.
Maybe you could clicker train yourself 😂
I've got two fixes that have helped me. The first is that I now have a bright folio case making it easier to spot. Black cases in the evening made it impossible. The second was Google home's "find my phone". From any room in my house, I tell it to find my phone and it'll call. Huge lifesaver.
My glasses. My flashlight. My coffee cup. Pretty much anything I'm holding when I'm doing multiple things. I'll put something down somewhere to do something else and my brain simply will NOT record where I put it.
Yeah, glasses is the worst
I have a simple rule now: "in the case, or on my face".
Sunnies on my face? Clear pair in the case. Clear pair on my face? Sunnies in the case.
Case is in my EDC bag.. And DOES NOT EVER LEAVE THAT POCKET..
The ONLY exception is when sleeping, I have a bedside nose holder my clear specs go on.
Everything my wife touches.
I leave things that I need to use in a place where I will see them. Toothpaste, on the counter. Purse, on the counter. Shoes, right in the middle of the floor. Keys, earplugs, wallet, on the counter.
My wife puts everything "away." Purse gets hung behind the mudroom door. Wallet, earplugs into a drawer. Keys on a hook. Shoes in the mudroom. Toothpaste in a drawer.
Now I can't see those things, and they're not where I left them. They might as well not exist, until a random time where I absolutely must have them, and my "processing train" is immediately derailed, causing a high level of stress and a huge obstacle to going about my day. Sometimes I'll just completely bail on whatever it was I had an inkling to do, because the effort to "do the search for the thing" is too much.
I'm a medical marijuana patient and I enjoy the finer things in life, so I got the '22 edition copper Zippo. I love it, and it's my lighter that I always have with me, but it was like $80 and I've lost it a couple times 😅
My earbuds. Or some smaller tools. If I set either of them down I will absolutely lose them somehow. In my toolbox everything has a place dedicated to it and I put things away as soon as I'm done because when I don't and misplace something everything grinds to a halt for me. I cannot concentrate without knowing where that tool is. Because my earbuds are so portable it's hard when I put them down or in the wrong pocket even, I will be tearing things apart looking. I have a hook for them by my keys and wallet and watch but I sometimes will just put them down anywhere and they get lost pretty easily.
My nail clippers. I'm always losing them.
Or my TV remote. I'll lose it because my night stand is black and the remote is black and it could just be sitting there next to me and I can't see it.
That one tab out of two hundred open ones that I really need right now...
Most browsers have some sort of tab search function nowadays, changed my life.
In Firefox you can search them with the bar (I think % first will make it search tabs?) And in Chromium-based ones I think you can hit Ctrl+Shift+a. I prefer the chromium approach as it also puts anything playing audio at the top of the list.
Ohh, I'm gonna try this, thanks!
Keys and matching socks.
I've stopped buying sunglasses (even the stupid cheap ones) because they will not make it longer than two months before I lose or break them. I'm fucking cursed in this manner.
Off topic but its probably better for your sleep rhythms to not wear sunglasses during the day. Silver lining and noise
Uh what? Where the heck did you hear it's bad to wear sunglasses during the day?? How would that have an effect on sleep rhythms? Do you think blind people don't sleep, or...?
I dont know 100% its the case and it would probably be fairly minor but its good to get lots of light during the day and naturally pare it back at night. I can't speak to the blind folks stuff, its an interesting point, I wonder if they have some compensatory mechanism that substitutes or affects that.
I'm pretty sure that if you get more light vs less light all other variables being equal, you're probably going to have more energy and be more alert during the day on the balance. Anecdotally or empirically I can attest to this.
My meds
Pill organizers are ur friend
now where did I put that?
They should have little indelible chains you can suction cup to surfaces where things belong that nudges you to keep it in place
Worked great for a week, then the following week I had nothing organized and couldn't remember where the bottle was left.
That kinda thing sounds like it could be solved by having two strict places
- The instant supply you have in a pill organizer that stays on the same surface or place/its "home" where you only ever pick it up and immediately put back down like without walking from that spot
- The month's or longer term supply you keep stored to replenish #1 each week—again, in a storage space where it stays and you stay planted at while interacting with it.
If the dosage is variable you just dip into #2 but you touchie-no movee
I solved this problem by buying a 1 month 4x/day pill case thing (so it has 32 4-compartment strips or 128 individual compartments). I only take pills once a day, so I portion out everything I have stock for, and renew the prescription order. When the next pill bottles arrive, I refill again. The VA doesn’t send the next batch until a certain time increment has passed, no matter when you refill (70 days for a 90 day supply, for example), so most of my pills have been used by the time I get more, but I have about a week to actually refill the cases.
The only thing that ever gets moved is the 4-day-worth strip, and when it’s empty I just swap it with the next one in the row. The pills that don’t get portioned out go into the drawer right under where the pill cases are. Impossible to lose track of.
I tried a one week pill case.. no good for me. I never refill it in time. But when I have multiple weeks between the task, it’s much easier to keep on top of. Especially with the additional signal of new pill bottles.
For variable dose, temporary meds, or if I want to schedule morning adhd meds, I can use the end of the month days (my system only fills about half the strips), portion out whatever I think I’ll want/need, and put those in my bag to go with me wherever I might need them. Could just as easily have those in the kitchen or bathroom as a reminder, that just wouldn’t work for me, since it’s not my normal routine to take morning doses (I was on super high dose adhd meds as a small child -like they won’t even give me that dose now as an adult- and it kinda fucked me up, so from 13-34 I was unmedicated, and now I have them for when I really want to get something done, but I rarely use them cuz man do they make me anxious)
This method does not keep proper track of which days they have been taken, so if that’s important info, you may want to invest in a different style of month-supply case or label the compartments differently, but it does a great job for me.
If I don't prepare my meds for the day I'm often not sure if I took them already or not.
My memory!
Definitely wallet. I leave it in the strangest of places
Everything? This morning it was medication. I'm sure, I should have another pack of my antidepressants because I was at the doctors on the 5th.
I still haven't found them.