Put the sock on the doorknob

Anything, as long as it ends up somewhere it never is. Many people move an object to a place it does not belong — the floor, a doorknob, a shoe, a coat hanger on the floor — and say the morning brain trips over the wrongness and asks why, and the asking brings the thought back. Some people say the stranger the better: a sock on the doorknob, keys in the fridge, and one person performs an odd action instead, because novelty is what the memory hooks onto. Individual people stack cups, turn the alarm clock upside down, pull a pocket inside out before sleeping, leave an email unread until it is done, put a thing on the dashboard of the car, and — one conversation — move a hair band from one wrist to the other, which works at any hour and needs no floor. One person points out the whole technique in one sentence: making a mess is not the point; the anchor is an unusual change in your surroundings plus saying the connection out loud as you make it, what the upside-down clock stands for. One person adds that speaking it is what fixes the link. Some people use the trick regularly, others know it from childhood or from a children’s book series that made it famous, and others describe their own versions. Some people do the same job with a different tool for the shower: a dry-wipe marker in the bathroom, so the thought goes on the mirror before it goes. Others link the task to an absurd word or image — one person says ‘FISH’ — and say the sheer oddness carries it, though one says it works less well than a physical thing. And some people keep the low-tech alternative that never needed a trick: a notebook and a pen on the nightstand, if you do not mind the light.

Then you are in the conversations that say the trick fails on exactly that, and what one person points out in the first question is the fix. Many people describe the failure: you wake, you see the thing out of place, and you remember that there was something — not what; or you forget why you put it there at all, and one person says people sometimes take their own past action for someone else’s and stand there confused. Some people say that for some people it never works — it only announces a forgotten thing, which is worse than nothing — and some people call it useless, while some say they lose the detail on waking even when they remember there was a thought. Some people warn a trick built on one object cannot scale: two thoughts need two objects and then you do not know which is which, not covered here. The answers people give: say the link aloud when you place the object, so the memory is a sentence and not a sock; make the placement stranger than the room, one person says — stacked cups rather than a thing on the floor — because an object merely on the floor disappears into any ordinary mess; and write the specific content down if it matters, because some people say a cue can only ever tell you that a task exists, not what it was. They are right for a detail; the trick is for a task. Many people give the honest limit, and some people warn the same: if your floor is already covered in things that do not belong there, nothing you add will stand out, and this page is not your page — the wrist band and the mirror marker are.

People argue this in many discussions and do not settle it, so here are both sides and the deciders. The phone side: alarms, calendar entries and spoken assistants store the actual words, handle several reminders at once, and cannot be knocked off a table by a cat; individual people dictate a note in the dark, type a note, or email themselves. The object side: some people say picking up the phone at night ends in scrolling and lost sleep; one person says that half-asleep, dropping an object on the floor is the only action light enough that they will actually do it before sleep takes them; one says typing half-asleep ended with the phone on their face; one says dictating a note aloud wakes them up, and one person warns dictation misfires with an accent, a drink, or a partner asleep beside you. The deciders people give: how complex the task is — one item against several medicines — how you get on with technology, and how organised you are to begin with. Other deciders people give are whether you have anxiety about using the phone in bed or prefer a tactile ritual; your susceptibility to phone distraction and your tolerance for clutter and trip hazards; and whether the task needs a persistent reminder or a one-time visual nudge. One person puts the whole argument in a sentence: if you are getting up to throw something on the floor anyway, you might as well write it down — and the argument made is that the mess is not the point — the anomaly is.

Some people turn the bottle upside down after the dose and back before bed, so the orientation says taken or not. Many people say a weekly pill organiser beats it, and some people call the organiser the fail-safe. The reasons people give: the flip needs two remembered actions a day, flipping after and flipping back, and if you are forgetful enough to need a system you are forgetful enough to miss one of them — some people object that if you forgot the pill you probably forgot the flip, so the bottle is not checking anything; a bottle can be knocked over, righted by a tidy partner, or left flipped so that tomorrow you cannot tell whether it means taken or forgotten — some people warn this and one person warns not to rely on the flip if you have a history of forgetting routine steps; an organiser, by contrast, shows an empty slot, which one person says is a fact rather than a signal. In other discussions, people’s deciders are how much the medicine matters and how reliably you do two-step actions. Others offer the middle ground: all of the day’s pills into one small glass in the morning, empty means done; a rubber band moved along the bottle or day marks on the label; caps that count the hours since they were opened; blister packs by day; an app that nags until you confirm; and tying the dose to something you never forget, like feeding the animal. Warnings: some generic packs come in strips that do not divide into seven, one person says, which complicates the box; some medicines do not fit a timer cap; and some people say a missed dose of some medicines announces itself with unpleasant effects — an involuntary reminder, not a system. Many people struggle with a daily medicine despite alarms and even professional knowledge; many find the flip confusing beside a box. And one person warns: where a missed or doubled dose is dangerous, none of these tricks is enough on its own; asking a pharmacist is this page’s own line, not people’s.

Four kinds of reader, and people name each. Anyone whose floor is already a floor of things: one person warns a naturally messy person should not rely on a floor cue, some people warn the anomaly cannot stand out from an existing mess, and many people say that is their floor — for them, the wrist band, the mirror marker and the notebook are the page. Anyone with pets or small children: nothing on the floor, no medicine on the floor, and the object may be moved before you see it; some people warn a cat, a child, a tidying partner or a parent has removed the cue and the memory with it, and some people describe a bottle left on the television for a year and dusted. Anyone whose medicine cannot be missed — the safety line. And anyone with attention difficulties or executive dysfunction, where people split and this page says so: one person says a physical cue is the best thing for an attention-different brain because it takes no setting up, and some people say those brains learn to ignore clutter and lose the cue; in another discussion, one person says you will see the cushion and still not act for weeks, and another that this critic has never met anyone with the condition; some people warn odd placements lose their strangeness over time and that the cue alone may not trigger the action. A first-hand test of the cushion method by someone with the condition is not covered here — a gap. Also gaps: what to do when someone else moves the object, how to carry several reminders on one cue, and medicines taken only occasionally. What people did not provide is a specific answer for a reader with no smartphone or who cannot use apps — not covered here. Heavy sleepers, one person warns, may not notice the object at all, and one says the trick assumes you look at the room when you wake.