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How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

blog.alexwendland.com

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Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#51

Post by dan353hehe »

treetalker wrote: post #33
tonymet wrote: post #3

Best cleaning / organizational tip I’ve learned : everything out of place goes into a tote. Every day shuttle the tote around the house to deposit the items in their rightful place. This reduces reorganizing to linear time

Yeah, but where does the tote live? It’s mobile and might not be where I need it when I need it. Then I go looking for it, and all of a sudden I have two problems and have difficulty getting back to what I was doing in the first place. :-)

That’s simple enough. Just get a second tote for holding your first tote! Then you just have to keep track of the second one to be able to locate the first one.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#52

Post by cromulent »

sublinear wrote: post #28

I have such a hard time relating to this in the same way I get deeply annoyed by sloppy code from coworkers. Any advice?

I'm in the process of coming to terms with how neurologically diverse people are.

Some people are completely comfortable with being late, or having smudged glasses, or driving erratically - it does not bother them in the slightest.

Their world is completely different to mine, and it's not that they don't care about the sloppy code or that they are too lazy to polish it - they don't even see it.

Humans are surprisingly diverse in how their brains work.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#53

Post by a_e_k »

placebo wrote: post #47

I would continuously lose ballpoint pens. At one point I thought the solution was to buy an expensive ball point pen as that would make me more aware of not losing it, but the effect was that it would just take a bit longer. I finally settled on buying many cheap pens. One humorous thought that I was curious about was that since I never found any pens (either my own or those lost by others), was it the case that ther…

Interesting. For contrast, switching to the one-good-pen approach was what finally did the trick for me. These days, I find I'm more likely to run out of ink than lose my pen. To each their own!

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#54

Post by davchana »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #20
tonymet wrote: post #3

Best cleaning / organizational tip I’ve learned : everything out of place goes into a tote. Every day shuttle the tote around the house to deposit the items in their rightful place. This reduces reorganizing to linear time

Ha! Similar idea to mine, but I use an open-wide-shallow basket/bin instead. My saying to my family is, “Everything has a place to go.” The ones that don’t go in their place quickly enough land in the basket/bin. Now, during the weekend cleanup chores, the items are preferably placed in the right places. Growing up lacking access to good stationery, I kinda get anxious and panicked and tend to over-buy stationery ite…

Ask me. 100+ journals. 10 packets of 10 pen packets. Colorful index cards. A5 files. Cube notepads. Postit notes. Notepads, yellow, white, a5,letter,legal.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#55

Post by maxbond »

sublinear wrote: post #43
anon35 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to keep in mind that your attention to detail is almost certainly perceived by them to be fastidious, and that quietly your seniormost colleagues and leaders may well muse: "Man, if only sublinear would loosen their standards, just imagine how much faster we'd proceed". Put another way: the fact that you can't relate to OPs problem is because you're hardwired to solve it (putting things in their place) continuous…

I enjoy thinking about this perspective, but at the end of the day it's not slower in the long run to be meticulous. Quite the opposite.

I think it's less that being meticulous is time consuming than that, in the same way that things have different values to different people, things can have different costs. I feel like if I didn't put things in convenient places that may be difficult to find later, I'd end up doing a lot of backtracking in the present.

Eg, I misplace my wireless headphones a lot. Something comes up that demands my full attention, so I take off my headphones. My headphones live at my desk.

If I walk to my desk, I'm likely to forget what I needed to do - there's lots of stuff demanding my attention on my desk, after all. Someone could also engage me in conversation on my way. Much of the time I'll return to my original task without issue, sometimes I'll get distracted for 15 minutes, sometimes I'll get distracted for an hour.

It's a lot cheaper to just put down my headphones. Or maybe it's more accurate to think of it as less risky.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#56

Post by khafra »

tombert wrote: post #21

I just end up buying enough of the item to be within arms reach of nearly anywhere I'm likely to use it. I used to never be able to find a screwdriver when I needed it, so now I have seven screwdrivers: three regular ratcheting, three stubby ratcheting, and a ratcheting one that lives in my pocket. I keep a regular ratcheting on my desk, in my living room, and in my bedroom, which are the only places I would realisti…

A decade ago, I bought a bucket of 25 nail clippers. My wife was initially skeptical, but over the next few years, grew to appreciate the low demands of the system: Need a nail clipper? Go to the bucket. See a nail clipper in a weird place? Put it in the bucket, if you feel like it and have the time. Otherwise, don't worry about it. There'll be one in the bucket when you need it.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#57

Post by theqwxas »

EGreg wrote: post #42

How would holding a pen prevent you from losing things?

In this article, the meaning of _pen_ as in an enclosure, a cage, a tray, a box, a container [0]. A holding pen in this case means a holding tray, a holding box, i.e., a container for holding things. A pen (cage, tray) for holding things.

[0] https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/pen

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#59

Post by bigfudge »

pacifika wrote: post #30
bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #18

Not sure I want to take advice from someone who keeps their keys on their back pocket.

My coat is the only place for my keys so I can’t leave without them.

I tried this trick too, but What if it’s sunny/too hot for a coat?

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#60

Post by bubblebeard »

aquafox wrote: post #48

I never lost a single sock during or after washing. Why? Because I care (they are expensive cycling socks) and I go after each sock immediately when putting them on the drying rack. So where are they? 1) Entangled with one of the other wet clothing items. (60% of cases) 2) Lost on the way between laundry machine and drying rack (20% of cases) 3) Still in the laundry drum (20% of cases).

I see your point, I’m a neat freak who cares about most things I possess. Trouble is, we don’t always have time to be this neat. For example, I’m standing in my laundry room rolling up socks when suddenly someone calls from upstairs. I go into my hallway, still working on a pair of socks, and discover it’s my partner calling me because our son just defecated on the floor of the tiny bathroom upstairs. I throw the socks on the first available surface and run to help, focusing on the new problem at hand, and now the socks are lost. This exact situation is on the extreme side of course. It’s more common for me personally to put down a glass/cup to assist someone with a minor yet to them seemingly important task and then proceed to search for my lost bevrage.
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