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I was looking for my drill driver the other day and I distinctly remember myself thinking “good luck finding this future me, you asshole.” It was in the back of my wife’s car for some reason.
Or that you stashed it deliberately at “the proper place to find it easily”. The result is the same.
Then after you give up and get a replacement, you get the same thought to put it somewhere and now you have n + 1 of the item. Rinse and repeat.
That’s why I don’t keep a lot of stuff.
Otherwise, I could never stop buying new stuff.
This is me. I know I placed it somewhere that I Wouldn’t forget… But I dont remember where…
Not me! If put something in the proper place it is so out of the ordinary that I’m waiting to need it again.
One thing that helps me when putting things away is asking myself “where would I look for this?” instead of “where should this go?”
I legitimately love those moments, where you have a very solid memory of how the place you left the object made you feel, and have to try to dig up any more information about it or about any items you might have left the object nearby. It’s like a murder mystery but you also find loads of fun things you haven’t touched in months or years along the way! Massively frustrating if you need something in a hurry, though.
Exactly this. So many of my memories are tied to feelings which is absolutely fantastic for remembering that I’ve been to a place, but not for remembering where that place is, for example.
When I say “I feel like I’ve been here before” I really mean that the feeling itself is familiar.
And its the same when I put stuff away. I remember where tools are because I remember the feeling I had when I put it away and not because I remember the location specifically. It’s a real double edged sword because I can remember very specific details way clearer than most people but I can’t remember generic broad things like “where did you put it”
I am excited to find out that I am not alone!
My wife can remember where we were, what we were wearing, and what the conversation was, to seemingly everything we’ve ever done. (She can actually play recent conversations back in her head.)
Meanwhile, I just remember impressions. They can be pretty visceral too. A smell, a sound, and the emotional response that I had to a place.
But name, location, decor… not a chance.
But I think I have some form of aphantasia too, since I have a terrible time seeing any details in my head.
And you can summon an image of the thing so clearly in a location your brain is convinced it must have been recently.
It was 5 years ago
I have this but also can see the image of the thing so clearly in a place where it’s NEVER even been before
Sometimes I’m like “This is the perfect and logical place to put this item, this is where the item can live from now on.” and then it’s gone.
Turns out the correct spot was “on the table with everything else”
This is so relatable
I don’t even evaluate the random spots where I leave things, I just somehow honestly believe I’ll remember even though this completely contradicts a lifetime of actual experience.
“I am definitely going to remember putting this here.”
Narrator: “He forgot almost immediately.”
My mantra is the opposite; “I’ll never find this again”, and then a day or two later; chuckles, “Called it!”
Oh, wow. Yep. Never really considered others have the same unhappy annoyance.
“I’ll just put this over here, just for now at least, and I’ll remember that I moved it.” …while hoping that forgetting doesn’t happen and knowing that it probably will.
Worse if it goes into one of those things that gets moved again and consolidated and moved again.
Yeah you have to always store things in the same exact place every time, or they’ll get lost. Despite being well aware of this fact, I still make the same stupid mistake every single day. Drives me insane.
Agreed. Habits are good to have when it comes to some things, for instance putting your car keys in the exact same place every time. I absolutely have to do this. My SO is the exact opposite and puts her phone down, keys, payment card, whatever in random places and constantly has to look for them. Drives me absolutely nuts and she refuses to see it as a problem despite lost cards and having to turn around and come home because missing pocketbook and driver’s license and the like. Ah well, nothing to be done.
My mother has pretty heavy OCD, and she absolutely has to have everything at the exact same place every time. If we misplaced something as kids, she would flip out, that pretty much burned into my brain and now I have to have everything at the exact same place as well. But on the plus side, I almost never lose something.
It’s always hardest to find something the first time I lose it. Now I know that I’m the kind of asshole who takes my glasses (that I need to see with any accuracy) off and puts them on top of the fridge, higher than my eyeline, but I honestly didn’t expect such sabotage from my brain.
Putting something you need to see where you can’t see it actually does have a short of efficiency logic to it.
Like save the fusible storage locations for things you’ll be able to see
Contrast. I try to never place light items on light surfaces, for instance.
Also, putting things down “real quick” to have your hands free for a moment is strictly forbidden! Put them in your pocket, in your mouth, or even walk all the way back to place them in their usual spot but do NOT just put them down wherever you stand. This rule alone has saved me hours of anguish.
What is a light surface?
Sorry, I was probably a bit lazy there. Light-colored surface was what I meant. Same with the item placed atop it.
Me, yesterday: “I shouldn’t put that booklet with the discounts to show at the checkout in the back pocket of my jeans, it’ll fall out and I’ll be in trouble.”
Me: do it anyway.
Me, at the checkout: “Fuck, I lost the booklet”
The effect I’ve noticed is that after searching in vain for some important object, when I finally give up and decide to go get a new one or make do with something else, within a second or two of making that decision I’ll look across the room and look right at the lost thing. This happens so amazingly often, to me it’s just normal. My theory is that part of my mind knows where the thing is but withholds the information because it’s being entertained by the search. Then when I resolve to do something different it means the game is over, so it lets the information come forward. But I’m not a brain scientist.
I wish I had this power. I will often lose things as I’m holding them in my hand, only to find them 2 to 3 moves later after it’s been years (if I ever find them again). To this day I still don’t know where my 1st Gen Pokémon cards or my copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 for GameCube are… :(
Okay wait… Is this strictly an ADHD thing? I do this all the fucking time. Like, I go through this mind palace thing where I hunt down my every single action with that object and play “Where’s the stupid place I left my wallet this time?” In my brain.
But I don’t see where I put the wallet, just places I’ve been with the wallet until I’m in the right place and my brain clicks. Like walking through a doorway and remembering what I was going to do.
Most things you read about mental disorders and even illnesses are in all of us in very small portions, but it gets diagnosed as a condition when it starts to inescapably condition your life. To hit a modern definition of a disorder, you (or rather a psychiatrist) need to confidently tick several boxes.
I’d recomend to read about ADHD, people’s stories and lifehacks that can be useful anyway, without jumping to assumptions just yet.
Well, I do have a diagnosis. I appreciate you providing the insightful take on the process though. I just thought this was another instance of me just being forgetful.
Hard to de-condition myself from thinking about myself in a neurotypical fashion and recognise my limitations are real.
Hehe, I didn’t get it from your comment.
I can’t say a strong yes since I’m not a professional, but it’s common to me too. Thinking about that from a programming perspective, we all have short-term memory (e.g. RAM in PCs) where we write tasks, things, impressions we need now. It’s limited in volume\blocks, so when we push one another thing in, it takes something else’s place, and past things inevitably gets overwritten, unless they went the long-time memory road. What’s left are traces and parts beyond recovery, usually a saved meta log of your thoughts\intentions, some unique emotions and visions, or something that you saved in another sources (e.g. you interlink where you lost your keys by remembering what other thing you did at the moment). You comb these together and construct either a list of timestamps or a blurry 3d scene in motion of significant actions and details, and work from here.
It is, as I know, natural to everyone. It becomes an ADHD thing when inputs are that frequent you don’t stop overwriting important stuff with first, second, third thing you now focused on, or try to reactualize lucky survivors by writing all your memory with them.
I haven’t thought much about that when my life was slow and boring, but as it got to it’s speeds now, the rhytm I’m actually thrive in intellectually, losing things or forgetting stuff becomes too much apparent, compared to my more NT colleagues.
Take it as my own personal perspective and nothing else.
That’s not what this is about, i. e. it’s not about retracing your steps. That’s common for everyone.
It’s about remembering the feeling you had when you stashed the item away, often knowing, at that moment, that the place you picked is woefully inadequate for storing this particular object, all while being fully aware that your mind will not be able to make the connection later on and you will end up searching for the object, with none of your usual coping mechanisms suitable to guide you.
That particular feeling is then recalled later in a moment of despair, often when the need to retrieve the item is greatest, and accompanied by a certain, ironic amusement looking at the events that led you there, with no one to blame but yourself.
Yeah… That’s just about the feelings and experiences I tend to have.
I always end up checking the fridge, just on the off-chance I left it in there while getting food.
This has been the case, more than once.
Recently, my mom and I looked EVERYWHERE for her favorite cane, and couldn’t find it. We took a break to clean up the kitchen, and I opened the fridge to put stuff away, and found her cane hanging from the high shelf on the door. She’d hung it there when she needed both hands to shift stuff around.
Also, the TV remote, multiple times.
Also, that’s a good way to remember to take your lunch to work in the morning. Get it ready the night before, and put it in the fridge with your car keys on it. The next morning, when you can’t find your keys, you’ll eventually remember that you put them in the fridge with your lunch.
I put my car keys on anything I don’t want to forget; one of the best pieces of advice I’ve learned. Can’t leave the house without them, and it immediately triggers my memory of where they are because I never put them anywhere else without purpose
The opposite also happens to me frequently, I distinctly remember storing it somewhere really smart, so I wouldn’t lose it. If only I could remember where…
Worst case of this was traveling solo and finding this really cool hidden pocket in my backpack that fit my passport exactly.
Two weeks later, I was certain I found a great place for it and nearly missed my plane looking for it.
