I ended up just explaining the issue to the person who was generating most of the reminders. It wasn’t an easy conversation to have (it can sound like being ungrateful and passing blame) but it was definitely necessary. Sending a link to this thread and then bringing it up later seems like it’d mitigate that problem, so that’s probably the way to go.
Note that it’s very important to draw a distinction between things you haven’t done because you’ve forgotten, for which reminders can actually be helpful, and things you aren’t doing because of lack of motivation, for which reminders are harmful.
If you’re reading this because a chronic procrastinator sent you a link, then please take this one piece of advice: The very worst thing you can do is remind them every time you speak. If you do that, you will not only reduce the chance that they’ll actually do it, you’ll also poison your relationship with them by getting yourself mentally classified as a nag.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context where the top priority is pretending to be normal (yes, my priorities are screwed up). Most others come from a person who doesn’t react to “this thing you do is causing me physical pain”, so forget it.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context
In that case, you’ll have to mindhack yourself to change the way you react to reminders like this. This isn’t necessarily easy, but if you pull it off it’s a one-time act with results that stick with you.
That’s a good change to make, and there’s also a complementary third option: A specific variant of ‘making a mental note’ that seems to work very well, at least for me.
1) Determine a point in your regular or planned schedule where you could divert from your regular schedule to do the thing that you need to do. This doesn’t have to be the optimal point of departure, just a workable one; you should naturally learn how to spot better points of departure as time goes on, but it’s more important to have a point of departure than it is to have a perfect one. It is, however, important that the point of departure is a task during which you will be thinking, rather than being on autopilot. I like to use doorway passages as my points of departure (for example, ‘when I get home from running the errands I’m going to do tomorrow, and go to open my front door’) because they tend to be natural transition times, but there are many other options. (Other favorites are ‘next time I see a certain person’ and ‘when I finish (or start) a certain task’.)
2) Envision what you would perceive as you entered that situation, using whatever visualization method most closely matches your normal way of paying attention to the world. I tend to use my senses of sight and touch most, so I might visualize what I’d see as I walked up to my front door, or the feel of holding my keys as I got ready to open it.
3) Envision yourself suddenly and strongly remembering your task in the situation you envisioned in step two. It may also work, if you aren’t able to envision your thoughts like that, to visualize yourself taking the first few task-specific steps—for example, if the task is to write an email, you’d want to visualize not just turning on your computer or starting up your email program, but entering the recipient’s name into the from: field and writing the greeting.
If this works for you like it works for me, it should cause the appropriate thought (or task, if you used that variant of step 3) to be triggered at a useful time, and with practice it only takes a few moments to set up, so you can ask the person giving you the reminder to give you a moment to make a mental note of it, and then move on with the conversation. Also, if you do have a trigger like this set up for a given task, it gives you a very good response to repeated reminders: “Yes, I know; I’m planning to do that at whatever particular point in time.”
A further advantage is that since this method causes the reminder to be triggered by something that will happen automatically anyway, you don’t have to keep thinking about it; in fact, I’ve found that my memory will be triggered more reliably when I haven’t worried about the task in the meantime. And if you can let the task go until the trigger reminds you of it, that will reduce the cognitive load that you’re carrying, as well.
There is a noteworthy concern with this method, though: It can make you reliant on your schedule staying consistent. If I have plans to run errands, for example, and add a trigger to go off when I get home from that, then I can’t change my plans without interfering with the trigger—and if the trigger is set for when I come home from the errands, I may not even remember that I had it set at all when I decide to change my errand plans. There are a few ways to work around that; I go with a combination of having a separate mental to-do list as a backup (which I strictly only refer to during mental downtime, and never try to work from directly: another cognitive-resource saving mechanism), and sometimes using a daily review of what I was intending to get done that day, with brief visualizations of all of the transition points where I’m likely to have had a trigger that wasn’t triggered. (“Ok, I was going to get on my bike and go to the craft store and the grocery store, and then bike home, and then… bugger.”)
Overall, I’ve found this to work very well, though.
The technique should work even if you find yourself thinking about the task at other times; it just might not work as well, because of the effect that jimrandmoh mentioned about reminders reducing your inclination to do something. A variation of the workaround I mentioned for dealing with others works to mitigate the effect of self-reminders, though—don’t just tell yourself ‘not right now’, tell yourself ‘not right now, but at [time/event]’.
I can’t say much about how to disable involuntary self-reminders altogether, unfortunately. I don’t experience them, and if I ever did, it was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten both that I did and how I stopped. I have, however, read in several different places that using a reliable reminder system (whether one like I’m suggesting, or something more formal like a written or typed list, or whatever) tends to make them eventually stop happening without any particular effort, as the relevant brain-bits learn that the reliable system is in fact reliable, which seems quite plausible to me.
I ended up just explaining the issue to the person who was generating most of the reminders. It wasn’t an easy conversation to have (it can sound like being ungrateful and passing blame) but it was definitely necessary. Sending a link to this thread and then bringing it up later seems like it’d mitigate that problem, so that’s probably the way to go.
Note that it’s very important to draw a distinction between things you haven’t done because you’ve forgotten, for which reminders can actually be helpful, and things you aren’t doing because of lack of motivation, for which reminders are harmful.
If you’re reading this because a chronic procrastinator sent you a link, then please take this one piece of advice: The very worst thing you can do is remind them every time you speak. If you do that, you will not only reduce the chance that they’ll actually do it, you’ll also poison your relationship with them by getting yourself mentally classified as a nag.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context where the top priority is pretending to be normal (yes, my priorities are screwed up). Most others come from a person who doesn’t react to “this thing you do is causing me physical pain”, so forget it.
Why do you interact with this person?
They’re family. I planned to be as independent from the family ASAP, but couldn’t due to my worsening problems.
In that case, you’ll have to mindhack yourself to change the way you react to reminders like this. This isn’t necessarily easy, but if you pull it off it’s a one-time act with results that stick with you.
That’s a good change to make, and there’s also a complementary third option: A specific variant of ‘making a mental note’ that seems to work very well, at least for me.
1) Determine a point in your regular or planned schedule where you could divert from your regular schedule to do the thing that you need to do. This doesn’t have to be the optimal point of departure, just a workable one; you should naturally learn how to spot better points of departure as time goes on, but it’s more important to have a point of departure than it is to have a perfect one. It is, however, important that the point of departure is a task during which you will be thinking, rather than being on autopilot. I like to use doorway passages as my points of departure (for example, ‘when I get home from running the errands I’m going to do tomorrow, and go to open my front door’) because they tend to be natural transition times, but there are many other options. (Other favorites are ‘next time I see a certain person’ and ‘when I finish (or start) a certain task’.)
2) Envision what you would perceive as you entered that situation, using whatever visualization method most closely matches your normal way of paying attention to the world. I tend to use my senses of sight and touch most, so I might visualize what I’d see as I walked up to my front door, or the feel of holding my keys as I got ready to open it.
3) Envision yourself suddenly and strongly remembering your task in the situation you envisioned in step two. It may also work, if you aren’t able to envision your thoughts like that, to visualize yourself taking the first few task-specific steps—for example, if the task is to write an email, you’d want to visualize not just turning on your computer or starting up your email program, but entering the recipient’s name into the from: field and writing the greeting.
If this works for you like it works for me, it should cause the appropriate thought (or task, if you used that variant of step 3) to be triggered at a useful time, and with practice it only takes a few moments to set up, so you can ask the person giving you the reminder to give you a moment to make a mental note of it, and then move on with the conversation. Also, if you do have a trigger like this set up for a given task, it gives you a very good response to repeated reminders: “Yes, I know; I’m planning to do that at whatever particular point in time.”
A further advantage is that since this method causes the reminder to be triggered by something that will happen automatically anyway, you don’t have to keep thinking about it; in fact, I’ve found that my memory will be triggered more reliably when I haven’t worried about the task in the meantime. And if you can let the task go until the trigger reminds you of it, that will reduce the cognitive load that you’re carrying, as well.
There is a noteworthy concern with this method, though: It can make you reliant on your schedule staying consistent. If I have plans to run errands, for example, and add a trigger to go off when I get home from that, then I can’t change my plans without interfering with the trigger—and if the trigger is set for when I come home from the errands, I may not even remember that I had it set at all when I decide to change my errand plans. There are a few ways to work around that; I go with a combination of having a separate mental to-do list as a backup (which I strictly only refer to during mental downtime, and never try to work from directly: another cognitive-resource saving mechanism), and sometimes using a daily review of what I was intending to get done that day, with brief visualizations of all of the transition points where I’m likely to have had a trigger that wasn’t triggered. (“Ok, I was going to get on my bike and go to the craft store and the grocery store, and then bike home, and then… bugger.”)
Overall, I’ve found this to work very well, though.
I’m doing this wrong. How do you prevent tasks from nagging you at other times?
The technique should work even if you find yourself thinking about the task at other times; it just might not work as well, because of the effect that jimrandmoh mentioned about reminders reducing your inclination to do something. A variation of the workaround I mentioned for dealing with others works to mitigate the effect of self-reminders, though—don’t just tell yourself ‘not right now’, tell yourself ‘not right now, but at [time/event]’.
I can’t say much about how to disable involuntary self-reminders altogether, unfortunately. I don’t experience them, and if I ever did, it was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten both that I did and how I stopped. I have, however, read in several different places that using a reliable reminder system (whether one like I’m suggesting, or something more formal like a written or typed list, or whatever) tends to make them eventually stop happening without any particular effort, as the relevant brain-bits learn that the reliable system is in fact reliable, which seems quite plausible to me.