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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

#201

Post by ekanes »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #193
mapt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an effort or desire-mediated performance, it is a focus-mediated performance. Some people find that cognitively more difficult than others. If you are the type of person to intensively multitask, to occupy your short-term memory with different trains of thought in a holding pattern, you will tend to sacrifice command skills - if your memory is already busy reading and writing on all available channels, it…

> Snapping pictures of things as easier form of notes How do you get a hold of the picture later? I've tried doing this, but I have a hard time finding the pictures if I haven't quickly moved the information to textual form.

I'm not the person you're asking, but do the same thing, and for me I can usually find it visually by scrolling through "all photos" if it's recent, and sometimes using search in the photos app.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#204

Post by normie3000 »

treetalker wrote: post #31

My approach is to have separate “take-off” points near the entrance/exit of each room. Example: If I’m in my home office and find that some things need to go to the living room and some to the kitchen, I simply queue them to take off instead of taking a trip every time I realize an item needs to go. Then when I take a coffee break, I’ll grab all the items; drop the living-room items off on the way to the kitchen, and…

I do this. The take-off points are generally where I will trip over the items. It infuriates my wife.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#205

Post by silisili »

duckmysick wrote: post #84
silisili wrote: post #79

It's just a bandaid. When I was growing up, the 'holding pen' was the top of the dishwasher, and it lived in a constant state of entropy. The mail and bits were piled into a mountain that would fall when bumped into. The solution is simple: deal with things when they come. Stop putting everything off until 'later.'

That's what the point number five is about: "Is cleaned out regularly—ideally daily, at most weekly—, so that it doesn’t become a storage area." > deal with things when they come Sometimes it's not practical. You can't deal with everything in the morning because you will be late for work or school. You have to push certain things later and it's ok - as long as "later" is something specific like 6 PM every weekday.

I get that, but we had the same 'plan' but often failed to do so for the a lot of the same reasons we don't often deal with things the first time. I guess if you can make sure to stay on top of it better, it wouldn't be so bad

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#206

Post by EricE »

fnord77 wrote: post #26
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…

my car keys cost $350 each

I hope to be buried with my old, dumb cars :p

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#207

Post by marcusverus »

1) Items which are too transient/unimportant to have memorable assigned place.

A single spot seems easily preferable to half-a-dozen 'holding pens' spread throughout the house. Have a junk drawer for long-term miscellaneous storage, an inbox for action items (mail to read, that broken toy you need to fix, etc).

2) Instances where we don’t have time to take the item to it’s assigned place

It takes, what, 20 seconds to walk into another room and back? How often is this truly a matter of "can't" as opposed to "don't want to"? Note that you're not actually saving the 20 seconds, because you're going to have to walk all over your house later, cleaning out your storage pens and returning them all over the house.

IMO, having a place for everything and ensuring that everything is where it belongs (mise en place) is the ultimate efficiency boost. If you still struggle with this, the ideal solution (beyond "just put it back when you're done, bro") is Ben Franklin's method, which was assigning 5-10 minutes at the end of each day, just before bed, to "putting things in their places". Visiting your work space, your bathroom, your car, etc, returning things to their rightful places, and generally putting things in order in preparation for the next day. Nothing will make future-you love current-you more!

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#209

Post by inimino »

chrisweekly wrote: post #161
leokennis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good idea, as is the idea in the article. The basic requisite however is a desire to not lose stuff. My wife always loses track of her EarPods. My oldest kid always loses his pocket knife. I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they'd still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort ,…

A tip that's helped me: when you finally find the thing you misplaced, and are done with it, don't put it back where you found it, put it in the place where you first looked.

This reminds me of a rule I have for naming things in code (functions, variables, etc).

Say you add a function, and then the first time you call that function, you call it by a different name. Don't fix the function call to match the original name, but instead go back and change the name to match how you tried to call it. The state of mind you are in when you called the function is a better guide to naming than the state of mind you were in when you implemented it.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#210

Post by foobarian »

marcusverus wrote: post #207

1) Items which are too transient/unimportant to have memorable assigned place. A single spot seems easily preferable to half-a-dozen 'holding pens' spread throughout the house. Have a junk drawer for long-term miscellaneous storage, an inbox for action items (mail to read, that broken toy you need to fix, etc). 2) Instances where we don’t have time to take the item to it’s assigned place It takes, what, 20 seconds to…

> IMO, having a place for everything and ensuring that everything is where it belongs (mise en place) is the ultimate efficiency boost

I will add that not having something in the first place is another excellent efficiency boost.

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