Unless You are an Elephant, This Will Help You!

Hi guys, today’s post is about…

Damn, hang on, my phone is ringing.  Before I go answer it, remind me to tell you something when I get back, or else I will forget…as like some of you, sometimes I just don’t remember things.

Ok, I’m back, sorry about that. It was just my massage place calling to remind me that I need to make an appointment for my monthly massage.  Don’t even get started with the happy ending jokes, I’m not in the mood today.

I guess you are probably wondering why I am in such an atypically crappy mood today.

Well, let me see, where do I start…

My day got off to a crappy start because I was late for a coffee date this morning.  I could blame it on Alexa for not waking me up on time.  But the reality is…it’s my fault for not setting a reminder with her before I went to bed last night.

I had meant to remind her, but unfortunately, the ink I had written on my hand got washed off during my monthly shower.

The next sucky thing that happened occurred when I logged into Facebook to see a good friend thanking everyone for their kind birthday wishes.  Crap!  Her birthday was yesterday, and I totally forgot to call and wish her a happy birthday.  She is a good friend and is always the first one to call me when it’s my birthday, so I feel like a complete idiot for missing hers.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it soon went from bad to worse. I left my meeting with Howie and couldn’t remember where in the 6-level garage I had parked.  After walking around for 20 minutes, I finally found Priscilla.  Yes, my Jeep’s name is Priscilla.  What?  Don’t you have a name for your car?

Clearly, the parking attendant wasn’t as enamored with Priscilla as I am.  Yup, I forgot to add money to my parking app and Priscilla had a lovely ticket sitting under the windshield wiper.

Why not end the crappy day with one more lovely event?  So I get to the gym ready to take out my frustrations on the weights, only to realize I forgot my shoes.  Gym rules strictly forbid wearing flip flops, so I was outta luck.  This is where my luck turned around, luckily, I ran into Bri and she had an extra pair in her locker that she lent me:

I got some weird looks from fellow gym patrons, but whatever…  Yes, Bri and I have the same sized feet.  Yes, I have small feet.  And yes, I will take the 5^th if you ask about the stereotype regarding guys that have small feet – so don’t even ask.

Anyways, there is a point to all of this madness that has resulted in my having a crappy day so far.  It could all have been prevented if…

I had just used reminders.  Because clearly, I have a hard time trying to remember things!

And that my friends, is the subject of today’s post.  Using reminders in your life to save you from having a crappy day like I had because I don’t remember things.

The picture above brings back fond reminders of my late Grandma.  You see, when I was little, I was a forgetful little bastard, so she used to tie a string around my finger to help me remember things.  On an unrelated aside, one time she accidentally pulled my finger, that was the last time she made that mistake, especially after feeding her handsome little grandson endless cabbage rolls!

These days, we can do much better than using a string on your finger, thanks to technology…

But before we get to that…

How about an example regarding how reminders are used in business? No worries, I got you covered.  Look no further than your doctor’s or dentist’s office.  Having patients not show up, commonly called ‘no-shows’ in the healthcare sector, is ‘no bueno’ for business.  So, most healthcare providers have some type of manual or automated reminder system set up where you receive a card in the mail, a phone call or a text message to remind you.  Kind of like how my naughty massage parlor…I mean ‘sports massage’ reminded me earlier on in this post…

Ok, Enough of the Entertaining Part of This Post…

“How and when can we make it actionable?” you ask.

Right! Let’s start with the ‘when’ and then get to the ‘how’.

Some Examples of When to Use Reminders in Your Life

There are many areas you can use reminders in your life:

  Paying bills.
  Remembering birthdays.
  Contacting certain people.
  Taking medication – for example. if you have high blood pressure and need to take your medication at a certain time.
  Getting your ass out of bed on time.
  Taking certain actions, such as you need to leave now if you are going to make it on time.
  To drink water and stay hydrated.
  To remind you where you parked.

And on and on…

Now that we have covered some examples of where you can use reminders in your life, let’s look at

Use It or Lose It – How You Can Set Reminders to Help Remember Things

At the end of the day, a reminder is just a trigger, a trigger that gets you to take an action that if it happens often enough turns into a habit. Think about waking up at the same time every day with an alarm. I find that I have been waking up at the same time for so long that I no longer need an alarm.  That is one reminder I no longer need to schedule.

With technology, there is no excuse for failing to set reminders nowadays.  You don’t have to tie a string around your finger or write on your hand to help remember things.  You can simply leverage the power of automation.

Nowadays with computers, cell phones and smart devices like Alexa and Google Home, all you need to do is set a reminder and you are good to go. You are probably better off setting more reminders than less and then eliminating the ones you don’t need rather than forgetting something.

Here are some ways you can leverage technology to set reminders to help remember things:

  Utilizing Outlook – to pop up reminders on your computer screen or phone.
  Using the reminder functionality on your Android or Apple phone or iPad.
  Utilizing reminders in either Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
  Leveraging the GPS functionality on your phone to remind you to do something when you are in a certain geographical area. For example, to remind you to pick up your dry cleaning when it senses you are in the area.

On the Other Hand…

You also don’t want to have too many reminders, or they get annoying as hell. So, it is important for you to consider if your reminders are necessary when you set them.

If it is a reminder that you always snooze, you may want to ask how critical a reminder it is and whether you need to have it in the first place.

Well, that’s it for today, until next time…

“WAIT!”…you say

”I was supposed to remind you to tell me something”.

Ah, that’s right, you were!  Alas, it’s too late, the moment has passed.  You should have reminded me to tell you when I got back like I told you to.  Now you will just have to wonder what secret I was going to tell you…

Next time…set a reminder to help you remember things!

As I was saying, that’s it for today and until next time…PYMFP!
–Rick

What Do You Think?

Can you think of any other areas of your life where reminders are super important?  If I missed any, please remind me of them by sharing in the comments below.

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