Sometimes, as you may have guessed from the name, things slip my mind.
It’s not the end of the world; it’s usually things like forgetting to pick up extra laundry detergent or forgetting to text Rachel back about drinks on Thursday. I might even forget to add milk to the cake mixture. Those sorts of things.
It’s not absent mindedness or sadistic disinterest – I blame having a list of responsibilities that would take military planning to nail. Well, that and the fickle nature of time.
If you also feel yourself sometimes struggling against the relentless march of time, with niggly little forgotten tasks coming back to haunt you, this post’s for you with some coping strategies and handy tools!
Firstly, disregard everything you know about the clock. Time itself moves slowly through meetings and races lightning fast through weekends. One minute you’re enjoying a gorgeous sunset on Friday night, celebrating another week of hard work. Suddenly it’s Monday. The clock aids the operation by accelerating whenever you aren’t looking at it. Watched pot never boils and all that.
I often ask myself “how am I supposed to remember everything I have to do in my busy day when time moves so inconsistently!” More importantly, why should I – when there are so many apps and gadgets devoted to keeping track of time for me?
Being a mom and accountant means that it’s paramount I’m super organized. Sticky notes only get you so far, I must have enough yellow paper lying around by now to start my own telephone directory! So I use Evernote and Google Calendar, and now couldn’t live without them. Polite reminders and alarms for whenever I set them, at-a-glance glimpses of the day ahead. It’s a color coded, readily available, self-made timeline of your own life – as long as you don’t forget what you’re meant to be planning in!
Building some sort of routine is another great way to keep organized, with some tasks that you do at the same time or day, every time – like enjoying a hot lemon every morning. It becomes really easy to find a rhythm and then arrange unexpected tasks around that so you’ll soon be gliding effortlessly through the weeks.
Of course, when time flies, birthdays seem to come completely out of the blue. Working from home, it’s quite difficult to find the time to run to the gift card shop to buy one especially if time is short. I have recently discovered the beauty of buying birthday cards online, I can get a stock of beautiful, unique cards delivered me whenever I want, ready to give family and friends when their big day creeps up.
And for the truly scatterbrained, there are all sorts of ingenious ideas to help out!
- Like this “turn off your curling iron” door mat.
- Or this padlock that uses pictures instead of numbers.
- This portable phone-to-phone charger, which will let your super-organized phone-charging friend give you that much needed juice when you’ve left the house with a phone that’s close to battery death!
If your forgetful nature is starting to lend to a particular way of life then stop, and follow these tips – I hope they will help you all as much as they’ve helped me. No more forgotten birthdays, that’s for sure!
