I know of what you speak! My solution may not work for you, but here’s what I did:
First, identify all the really important things, and make sure they get done. For me, this meant either making them part of my core routine, or making a list. ‘Core routine’ means a required set of actions; if it is necessary to walk the dog or he will pee on the carpet, I walk the dog as soon as I get home—before sitting down, before logging into my computer. I don’t do anything else until my routine is completed.
Likewise, I make the list of need to do as central to my life as it needs to be to in order to get it done. If I must pay the rent tomorrow, the note to pay the rent is on top of my computer, and I cannot compute until it is done. If that is not sufficient, tape the note over the door handle, and don’t leave the house until you have payed the rent. My list is rarely more than three items long—there’s just not that many things that are really important any given day. (If an electronic list is more useful than a physical one, simply make checking your list part of your core routine; check it before you head out the door every day).
Once the big stuff is out of the way, actually do stop worrying. The dishes are not important, so if you suddenly think of an interesting idea that you want to write down, walk away from the sink and do it. If you get distracted by 20 other things before you get back to the sink, so what? You may need to spend a couple days practicing this—instead of just thinking “oh, I should write that down”, drop what you are doing and write it, not because the writing has priority, but because you are practicing being less stressed about completing/switching tasks.
It didn’t take me long practicing this before I started getting more organized in planning the unimportant tasks without much stress. Once I knew that the important things were taken care of, and once I got serious about not caring that the trash was taken out right now, I felt less stress over all, felt less rushed, and took the time to plan things out just enough that I was was able to organize things efficiently.
This is trivially true… I wonder if we are using routine to mean different things? For example, nearly everyone who goes to work has a routine of waking up in the morning, showering, putting on clothes, eating, and leaving for work. Very few people get dressed, start breakfast, and then realize that they forgot to shower. (I admit, some people do).
I don’t mean to suggest that adding a new item to your routines is a easy task; I find it rather difficult. But it can be done, except very limited cases. I should clarify that adding something to your routine might require significant support; for example, if you do need to walk the dog as soon as you get home, you might remember your new routine simply by seeing the dog… but you might need to leave the leash on your doorknob, and until the routine becomes automatic, the leash might live on the doorknob all the time. Likewise, if you need to check your to-do list as soon as you get home, you may need a physical reminder somewhere you can’t (or won’t) miss it—for me, this would be on my computer keyboard; for you it might be your tie rack, your doorknob, your refrigerator handle....
I should also clarify, I don’t assume that something is in my routine until I do it without requiring reminders for two weeks; new changes often get dropped over the weekends.
I’m fairly certain I can identify ways to get pretty much anything into a routine, although some will be more reliable than others. If you see a specific change to routine that you think that a LessWrong user would not be able to implement I would be curious to hear about it.
For example, nearly everyone who goes to work has a routine of waking up in the morning, showering, putting on clothes, eating, and leaving for work. Very few people get dressed, start breakfast, and then realize that they forgot to shower.
I find that very difficult, and quite impossible to do them in any reliable order other than what’s imposed by necessity. Each morning, I have to figure out again what I need to do. It’s easy to remember to brush my teeth and shower, because I feel dirty until I do. I’ll remember to eat if I’m hungry. It’s easy to notice if I’m barefoot as I leave the house, but sometimes I end up in the car with slippers instead of shoes. Shaving and taking my medicine are very hard to remember because there are no cues, so I keep a razor and extra medicine at work or in my car.
People always think this can be solved easily by putting sticky notes up in various places, but they fail to understand the quantity of notes that would be necessary if someone tried to live that way. They would be so numerous as to be useless. They also fail to understand the difficulty of seeing something written on a sticky note that tells me to do something in another room, in which case I have to get to the other room without forgetting what I’m doing, AND still remember the rest of the list. It’s so unreliable that the sticky note needs to be next to the item it talks about, in which case the item itself is a cue anyway. People also fail to understand that I have no way of being sure, when I’m leaving the house, whether I’ve read the sticky notes or not that day. I can’t just keep going back into the house to make sure I read them.
My memories are badly timestamped. If I read a checklist on my wall today, that will add one more memory of me reading that checklist. If I then step outside and try to remember reading that checklist, I may summon up dozens of memories of doing so, but have no idea whether any of them were from today.
It may be worth your time to enforce a very strict routine over a period (the morning is a good example, as long as sleepiness is not making things extra difficult) for a couple of weeks and see if it starts to stick; this is something that can make a big difference, and it is worth knowing if it can work for you.
However, I agree that this is not likely to be a magic bullet in your case.
Have you tried something like a smartphone with an extensive checklist/schedule? It has the benefits of coming with you almost everywhere, and having alarms for particularly important events.
This is a subject that interests me, and I’d like to know more about what you do and how it works. You have simplified matters by making your environment more flexible (e.g. razor in the car); is that something that has a halo effect—one less thing to go horribly awry, so you are less stressed and can function a little better overall—or is it just a solution to forgetting to shave, and that’s all? Are there other solutions that have worked for multiple problems? Are there any problems that you have found no solutions for?
I know of what you speak! My solution may not work for you, but here’s what I did:
First, identify all the really important things, and make sure they get done. For me, this meant either making them part of my core routine, or making a list. ‘Core routine’ means a required set of actions; if it is necessary to walk the dog or he will pee on the carpet, I walk the dog as soon as I get home—before sitting down, before logging into my computer. I don’t do anything else until my routine is completed.
Likewise, I make the list of need to do as central to my life as it needs to be to in order to get it done. If I must pay the rent tomorrow, the note to pay the rent is on top of my computer, and I cannot compute until it is done. If that is not sufficient, tape the note over the door handle, and don’t leave the house until you have payed the rent. My list is rarely more than three items long—there’s just not that many things that are really important any given day. (If an electronic list is more useful than a physical one, simply make checking your list part of your core routine; check it before you head out the door every day).
Once the big stuff is out of the way, actually do stop worrying. The dishes are not important, so if you suddenly think of an interesting idea that you want to write down, walk away from the sink and do it. If you get distracted by 20 other things before you get back to the sink, so what? You may need to spend a couple days practicing this—instead of just thinking “oh, I should write that down”, drop what you are doing and write it, not because the writing has priority, but because you are practicing being less stressed about completing/switching tasks.
It didn’t take me long practicing this before I started getting more organized in planning the unimportant tasks without much stress. Once I knew that the important things were taken care of, and once I got serious about not caring that the trash was taken out right now, I felt less stress over all, felt less rushed, and took the time to plan things out just enough that I was was able to organize things efficiently.
If you’re capable of having routines, you don’t have this problem as badly as some people do.
This is trivially true… I wonder if we are using routine to mean different things? For example, nearly everyone who goes to work has a routine of waking up in the morning, showering, putting on clothes, eating, and leaving for work. Very few people get dressed, start breakfast, and then realize that they forgot to shower. (I admit, some people do).
I don’t mean to suggest that adding a new item to your routines is a easy task; I find it rather difficult. But it can be done, except very limited cases. I should clarify that adding something to your routine might require significant support; for example, if you do need to walk the dog as soon as you get home, you might remember your new routine simply by seeing the dog… but you might need to leave the leash on your doorknob, and until the routine becomes automatic, the leash might live on the doorknob all the time. Likewise, if you need to check your to-do list as soon as you get home, you may need a physical reminder somewhere you can’t (or won’t) miss it—for me, this would be on my computer keyboard; for you it might be your tie rack, your doorknob, your refrigerator handle....
I should also clarify, I don’t assume that something is in my routine until I do it without requiring reminders for two weeks; new changes often get dropped over the weekends.
I’m fairly certain I can identify ways to get pretty much anything into a routine, although some will be more reliable than others. If you see a specific change to routine that you think that a LessWrong user would not be able to implement I would be curious to hear about it.
Edited for spelling.
I find that very difficult, and quite impossible to do them in any reliable order other than what’s imposed by necessity. Each morning, I have to figure out again what I need to do. It’s easy to remember to brush my teeth and shower, because I feel dirty until I do. I’ll remember to eat if I’m hungry. It’s easy to notice if I’m barefoot as I leave the house, but sometimes I end up in the car with slippers instead of shoes. Shaving and taking my medicine are very hard to remember because there are no cues, so I keep a razor and extra medicine at work or in my car.
People always think this can be solved easily by putting sticky notes up in various places, but they fail to understand the quantity of notes that would be necessary if someone tried to live that way. They would be so numerous as to be useless. They also fail to understand the difficulty of seeing something written on a sticky note that tells me to do something in another room, in which case I have to get to the other room without forgetting what I’m doing, AND still remember the rest of the list. It’s so unreliable that the sticky note needs to be next to the item it talks about, in which case the item itself is a cue anyway. People also fail to understand that I have no way of being sure, when I’m leaving the house, whether I’ve read the sticky notes or not that day. I can’t just keep going back into the house to make sure I read them.
My memories are badly timestamped. If I read a checklist on my wall today, that will add one more memory of me reading that checklist. If I then step outside and try to remember reading that checklist, I may summon up dozens of memories of doing so, but have no idea whether any of them were from today.
It may be worth your time to enforce a very strict routine over a period (the morning is a good example, as long as sleepiness is not making things extra difficult) for a couple of weeks and see if it starts to stick; this is something that can make a big difference, and it is worth knowing if it can work for you.
However, I agree that this is not likely to be a magic bullet in your case.
Have you tried something like a smartphone with an extensive checklist/schedule? It has the benefits of coming with you almost everywhere, and having alarms for particularly important events.
This is a subject that interests me, and I’d like to know more about what you do and how it works. You have simplified matters by making your environment more flexible (e.g. razor in the car); is that something that has a halo effect—one less thing to go horribly awry, so you are less stressed and can function a little better overall—or is it just a solution to forgetting to shave, and that’s all? Are there other solutions that have worked for multiple problems? Are there any problems that you have found no solutions for?