How Can We Ever Forget Anything?

I’ve been thinking.

How on earth do any of us ‘forget’ anything these days?

With all of the online reminder tools available to us, it is amazing that we could miss an appointment or space out a friend’s birthday - but we do.

A few of my Sparkplugging Podcast Bootcamp students forgot class this week and two of them direct messaged me and emailed me to say that couldn’t believe they missed it after looking forward to it all day.

Don’t worry my forgetful students - I can understand completely.

Trust me - I REALLY understand.

I have one on one coaching appointments every day of the week, many that start at 9am sharp.  I’m usually at my desk answering email and plotting out projects for the day at 8am - so you’d think I’d be prompt in making the call to my clients, right?  Not always!  At least once a week I will look up at the clock and realize I’m ten or fifteen minutes late for a call.  It’s so embarrassing!

What can we say?  Virtual life moves fast?  There are so many distractions?  Time flies when you’re having fun? LOL!  It think all of these excuses fit the bill for me.

A teacher of mine once said this:

Short of circumstances that are completely out your control,
there are no excuses - only statements of admitted irresponsibility.

Ouch

It’s sort of cute to say that you’re ‘forgetful’.  It’s sort of ugly to admit that you’re irresponsible.

Gosh… this blog post was supposed to be fun - now I feel like I’m giving myself a spankin’!

What can we do about our forgetfulness?

Well, I guess I’ll take a closer look at some of the cool online tools that help me to NOT forget things.

I have a Jott account.  I’ve used it a few times to send myself notes from my cell phone, but I’ve never set up a reminder with it.

There’s Text Memos. That looks pretty simple to use.  If I were out and about - having a text message sent to me would make sense.  But I’m usually sitting right at my desktop and my cell is usually in my purse hanging on the wall.

Rminder looks cool.  You can set up a verbal phone call reminder.  Hmm… that could work.  I could have it call my SkypeIn number to prompt to me make a call on time.  Wakerupper does it too.

There is Remember the Milk. I hear that mentioned quite a bit but never used it.

You know, all these tools are great - I could go in and set up reminders for everything on my calendar - but what about when my schedule changes?  I sure don’t want to have to go back and alter the reminders.

Ok - I’m using Google Calendar to manage my schedule - as mentioned in a previous post.  This gives me access to my calendar from any computer and my cell.

I actually have reminders turned on on my cell phone.  But as I mentioned, the cell is usually in my purse AND I don’t have sounds turned on for anything but phone calls so I never see the reminders until I pick the phone up for some reason.

I believe I see my solution staring me in the face.  If I turn sounds ON and keep my cell at my side all the time - I would get the reminders.

Yeah, yeah - so I’m a bit slow to take full advantage of the tech I have in my hands.  I know it!

I just have to develop the new habit of keeping my Blackberry with me.

So, who will remind me about that?

I guess I can set up an Rminder call my BB to remind me to keep the BB on my desk.  Then the BB can remind me to pay attention to my appointments which Google Calendar keeps track of for me so efficiently.

And then I’ll be out of excuses