<story><title>How to avoid losing items? Holding pens</title><url>https://blog.alexwendland.com/2024-07-07-holding-pens/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>leokennis</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they&amp;#x27;d still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort &amp;lt;now&amp;gt; by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort &amp;lt;later&amp;gt;, is either lost on them, or they just greatly value the present over the future.&lt;p&gt;I do not even get annoyed about it anymore - just like I do not get annoyed that it turns dark at night. My stuff is always in its place, and before we leave the house they will spend 10 minutes finding theirs.</text></item><item><author>treetalker</author><text>My approach is to have separate “take-off” points near the entrance&amp;#x2F;exit of each room.&lt;p&gt;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 drop the kitchen items off when I arrive. I get my coffee; grab anything queued up on the kitchen take-off point that can be dropped off on the way, and drop them off on my way back.&lt;p&gt;As it works out, everything is almost always where it ought to be; and when it’s not, I know where it will be instead.&lt;p&gt;The key is that I always check the take-off point every time I leave a room.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kayodelycaon</author><text>I really do not like the assumption people don’t do something because they don’t want to it.&lt;p&gt;I really want to make the system work reliably but I can’t. I’ve spent 30+ years trying to make things work. They just don’t.&lt;p&gt;It works when I have planned to do things ahead of time, but I can’t get my brain to remember to do it when interrupted, the attention shift doesn’t trigger “callbacks” or “publish events”. This is a fundamental prerequisite to make this work.&lt;p&gt;People’s who can do this will have difficulty not understanding people who can’t.&lt;p&gt;This same problem applies to “thinking before I speak”. I can’t do that. People think I can because I don’t make the same mistakes by rote learning what not to say in specific situations. I can’t anticipate new mistakes or generalize previous ones.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to avoid losing items? Holding pens</title><url>https://blog.alexwendland.com/2024-07-07-holding-pens/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>leokennis</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they&amp;#x27;d still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort &amp;lt;now&amp;gt; by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort &amp;lt;later&amp;gt;, is either lost on them, or they just greatly value the present over the future.&lt;p&gt;I do not even get annoyed about it anymore - just like I do not get annoyed that it turns dark at night. My stuff is always in its place, and before we leave the house they will spend 10 minutes finding theirs.</text></item><item><author>treetalker</author><text>My approach is to have separate “take-off” points near the entrance&amp;#x2F;exit of each room.&lt;p&gt;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 drop the kitchen items off when I arrive. I get my coffee; grab anything queued up on the kitchen take-off point that can be dropped off on the way, and drop them off on my way back.&lt;p&gt;As it works out, everything is almost always where it ought to be; and when it’s not, I know where it will be instead.&lt;p&gt;The key is that I always check the take-off point every time I leave a room.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrisweekly</author><text>A tip that&amp;#x27;s helped me: when you finally find the thing you misplaced, and are done with it, don&amp;#x27;t put it back where you found it, put it in the place where you first looked.</text></comment>