If you often find yourself entering a room and completely forgetting why you did in the first place, you’re not alone. Many people are dealing with the same problem that you are, so don’t be too hard on yourself. It happens, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. Here are five tips you can use to combat forgetfulness, especially when it comes to your essentials:
Tip #1 Set Reminders or Alarms
With everything that’s going on in your life and the world, you shouldn’t take it against yourself if you often forget to do a few tasks throughout the day. Of course, it can be somewhat annoying and inconvenient to forget an important task, but you can’t always trust your memory to be in your favor.
So, if you’re like other adults with the attention and memory span of a goldfish, you can preempt such situations by setting reminders or alarms on your smartphone. But if you’re not that dependent on your phone, you can also place reminders on your daily journal or post sticky notes in a place that you’ll see throughout the day. This way, you can easily remind yourself of what you need to do or buy.
Tip #2 Connect All Your Calendars
People who are always on the move can use a lot of different devices within the day. They can switch from their phones to their laptops to their tablets, depending on what tasks they’re doing at the moment. And all these different devices have their own calendar apps that can be used for reminders.
However, if your calendar app isn’t connected across all your devices, it will defeat the main purpose. For instance, you noted that you need to go by the pharmacy for your prescription on your laptop while working, but then you closed it and switched to your phone. Then, you forgot all about what you listed in your calendar. That’s why you have to make sure that all your calendars are connected.
Tip #3 Aim for Convenience
The secret to never running out of your essentials is to aim for what’s convenient to you. A good example of this is if you have a favorite e-commerce platform for your skincare products because this way, you can buy facial serum online when you’re nearly finished with your current bottle.
This is convenient, especially if it takes one to two weeks to receive the packages you ordered online. And convenience also applies when you need to refill your prescription because you can make it so that the pharmacy you go to is near your house. With this, you won’t have to go out of your way every time you get your prescriptions refilled.
Tip #4 Keep Track of Inventory
It won’t hurt you to be organized with your stocks. Of course, you don’t have to use an inventory management app to keep track of your stocks at home. But if it will help you, then, by all means, go ahead. However, if you don’t want to use an app, taking note of your stocks on your excel sheet or journal will work just as well.
By keeping track of your inventory, you’ll be able to gauge when you need to restock your essentials without the risk of spending more money than what is necessary. This way, you can avoid buying two bottles of shampoo or toner when you still have spare ones at home. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.
Tip #5 Stick to Your Schedule
All these tips will be useless if you don’t stick to the changes you’ve made, so try your best to be consistent with them. You won’t have to be too strict with yourself, though. For instance, you will only need to update your inventory tracker on a weekly or bi-monthly basis, depending on what you’re keeping track of.
It can also be wise to keep spares of everything you can’t live without since you already know how quickly you go through your essentials. Once you fall into the habit of keeping track of your stocks and following your reminders instead of just dismissing them without a second thought, you’ll never have to run out of the things you need again.
Of course, the effectiveness of these tips will still depend greatly on how often and consistently you implement them. But as mentioned earlier, it won’t be healthy to be too hard on yourself if you ever forget to do a task despite your reminders. When that happens — and it will happen, you can start the routine again because that’s how life is. So, don’t worry about it too much.
