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Carpe Momento

How do you remember things?
I sometimes have great ideas while driving or just before sleeping when it is just not practical to write things down or dictate them. Then when I get the chance to write the moment has gone, totally forgotten.
Does this happen to others and if so how do you get around it?

Comments

  • Keep a notebook by the side of your bed and, if possible, another with you at all times. Stick one in the bathroom, one on your office, two down the back of the toaster, and several hidden behind the sofa cushions. One in the attic (just in case), and tiny ones littered about the garden.

    Get used to typing draft messages into your phone or, if you can, add a writing app to your mobile.

    The thought that good ideas will reappear if they are worth remembering is nonsense. I've forgotten birthdays, appointments, and my own bloody age sometimes! It's not hard to think of something amazing and then forget it forever.

    Write everything down, but do so clearly. There's nothing worse than opening your "fantastic ideas" book to find a page with the scribble "donkeys do it, but humans can't stop or remember the post office".
  • edited April 2013
    I write it as a draft text in my phone.
    When I don't have my phone, or a pen and notebook, I generally don't remember things.
  • Very familiar.
    Notebooks in every bag, notebooks within easy reach.
    I don't drive so can't help with the car problem.
  • Yes, I do this notebook on the phone thing normally but Mrs Holmes would kill me if I switched my phone on and started typing at 2am!! and when driving its just not legal..
  • edited April 2013
    [quote=bored_robots]I've forgotten birthdays, appointments, and my own bloody age sometimes![/quote]
    A story here from when we first moved to Wales,
    My wife Allison went to the doctors with the children to sign us on and the receptionist asked her for her name.

    She said after a moments silence, "I'm very sorry I'll have to come back later I can't remember"!

    The kids never let her forget that day..
  • If you can't write it down, turn it into a song: you remember rhythms and tunes better than words. Set the words to a tune you already know, as it's more likely to stick with you.
    There's even a song about the Periodic Table (that bane of the Telegraph GK crossworder) but I can't be bothered to memorise that. Life's too short.
  • edited April 2013
    [quote=jimholmes6]My wife Allison went to the doctors with the children to sign us on and the receptionist asked her for her name.

    She said after a moments silence, "I'm very sorry I'll have to come back later I can't remember"![/quote]

    Well done, that woman - proud of you, Allison! Swiss Cheese Brain rules OK!
  • [quote=Mrs Bear]Well done, that woman - proud of you, Allison! Swiss Cheese Brain rules OK![/quote]

    The thing is she is a very intelligent woman, it was just the stress of the move and I was working away at the time which added to the stress with her having the kids full time..
    She smiles about it now.
  • “Maybe it’s like this, --you know how, when you are working on a long and ordered piece, all sorts of bright and lovely ideas and images intrude. They have no place in what you are writing, and so if you are young, you write them in a notebook for future use. And you never use them because they are sparkling and alive like colored pebbles on a wave-washed shore. It’s impossible not to fill your pockets with them. But when you get home, they are dry and colorless. I’d like to pin down a few while they are still wet.”
    John Steinbeck
  • [quote=jimholmes6]Mrs Holmes would kill me if I switched my phone on and started typing at 2am[/quote]

    Just have your phone switched to a dark screen :D

    She'll kill you more(?) if you don't get that bestselling novel written! :P
  • 'I've never been more dead in my life.'

    ...WHERE'S MY NOTEBOOK?!?!

    oh..I am using it.
    Wait! No, thats a NETBOOK...
  • Oh, I can so identify with that, Jim!

    When I'm driving, I literally have to chant my idea over and over all the way home. If I'm out, I scrabble about for paper. Sometimes it's a receipt and I have to write in fairy scribbles.

    Mostly,though, when brilliance strikes it's soon forgotten...
  • The Muse is transient, erratic, fickle...
  • I suspect the great ideas come just because we're unable to write them down.
  • [quote=Mrs Bear]Swiss Cheese Brain rules OK!
    [/quote]

    Just call me Emmental! I wish I could hang onto the thread of an idea long enough to walk upstairs to get my notebook, spend ten minutes putting socks away, make a cup of tea, remember I was going to get my notebook, walk upstairs etc etc etc
  • edited April 2013
    Learn to write VERY SHORT NOTES in the dark.
    Or keep notebook and pen n the bathroom - a toilet visit is allowed at night.
  • I love the Periodic Table. Now I'll have to go and find the song.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8dtquYDXEU

    The Periodic Table song by Tom Lehrer
  • Love it. :D
  • [quote=jimholmes6]How do you remember things?[/quote]

    Where writing and creativity is concerned, I've learned to remember and file notes it in my head. It's surprisingly easy after a while.

    But I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner on Friday. Or if OH tells me something important, ten minutes later I've forgotten it.
  • It's funny because I have a great ability to remember numbers.
    I am an electrician and I can remember part numbers for switches contactors etc without a problem and phone numbers are easy too, the call me Yellow Pages at work.
    But as Red says, important things I'm useless.
  • Mr Bear is a numbers man too, Jim. I have a deep suspicion of them: they shift around in my sums all on their own, even if I use a calculator. I was fine until they introduced me to algebra: letters and numbers don't mix.
  • [quote=Mrs Bear] even if I use a calculator[/quote]
    I wasn't allowed a calculator, my dad said they make you stupid.
    I told him I needed one for Logarithms so he went out and bought me a Log book!
    I've got a feeling he was right because a lot of youngsters seem to struggle with simple mental arithmetic now.
  • Back at school in the 1970s, when calculators were new, I had this argument with someone on several occasions. His dad worked for a company that made calculators and the (the son) was constantly telling me that calculators could do your maths for you. My reply was that a calculator was a useful tool if you knew what you were doing. If you didn't know what you were doing, it just helped you to get the wrong answer more quickly. Sick of the argument, I proved it to him one day. We picked a question out of our text book a chapter ahead of our class work. I had the right answer using pen and paper while he was still struggling with the calculator.

    As for mental arithmetic, I can only agree with you. I find it amazing that people need a calculator to add a column of numbers.
  • I only use a calculator after I have done my 'in my head' calculations for my expenses, just to double check my own calculations.

    I don't agree with calculators in schools until secondary school age, as I too think they make the mind lazy, and think that children should be taught how to add up properly in their head before going on to the numerous gadgets that supposedly 'do it for you'.

    When I worked for the railways, one of my duties was to sell tickets on board the trains, and part of this experience showed me that calculators are not always a good thing. In the early years, we used a completely mechanical ticket machine; so if someone wanted 3 adults and 5 children from Buxton to Blackpool for instance, and one of the adults had a railcard, allowing them a third off their fare, you had to work out the amount, less the discount, for yourself, in your head - there was nowhere to write it down - and move the levers individually on the machine, to create the tickets. Then you took the money, and gave the right amount of change. After doing this for ten years or so, I could work out a combination of fares in seconds. However, the powers that be then decided to "make things easier" by introducing a computerised ticket machine that could issue a ticket to anywhere. That was when things actually got worse in a way. Although the machines were indeed quick - when they worked, that is - they were prone to simply crashing altogether, and when they did, you then had to write out each ticket in a special book known as an Excess book. That took bloody ages to do, and after your mind had become lazy because of the computerised machine calculating the fares, or "doing it all for you", mistakes became common. Calculators may be good in some situations, but they are definitely not good for children to learn from at the base level.

    [quote=Mrs Bear]I was fine until they introduced me to algebra:[/quote]
    This also interested me. What confused me about algebra at school was that throughout primary/infant/secondary schools, we never did algebra, and I still have no idea what it is supposed to be for even now. But, here's the further confusing bit; algebra questions were still included in exams, including the 11 plus, as it was known back then. Why? What's the point in including questions in an exam where none of the pupils have ever been taught the subject? Some years later, a retired teacher told me that the exam papers were - as far as he could remember - standard, and therefore we got the same exam papers that the kids at grammar school got. And of course, because they were "cleverer than you lot in a state school", they DID do the algebra.
  • I forgot Mme Snail's name once, making an introduction.
    Only once...
  • [quote=JohnWho63]think that children should be taught how to add up properly in their head before going on to the numerous gadgets that supposedly 'do it for you'. [/quote]

    Agreed.
  • Totally agree,
    At work help out with the stock checks in the brewery and they are amazed sometimes how quickly I add up millions of bottles or cans of beer.
    When you explain that millions are the same as single numbers you just ignore the noughts, a lot of the youngsters just can't get their heads around it.
  • Bizarre. I remember being at the theatre some time ago ordering two ice creams. The person serving me asked her colleague if she could borrow her calculator. Astonished, I (politely!) told her how much it came to and gave her the correct money. I remember people in the queue looking surprised that I'd managed to add together two figures in my head. And this was people of my age.

    I make no special claim to intelligence - I'm quite certain that anyone out of my primary school class could have done the same, because we were taught mental arithmetic.
  • [quote=Lizy]Learn to write VERY SHORT NOTES in the dark.[/quote]

    So, I'm not the only one who does that.
    I also have to periodically clear out my handbag which gets filled with all manner of scraps of paper covered in scribbled flashes of brilliance. (Well, that's what I call them anyway!)
  • [quote=JohnWho63]I don't agree with calculators in schools until secondary school age, as I too think they make the mind lazy, and think that children should be taught how to add up properly in their head before going on to the numerous gadgets that supposedly 'do it for you'. [/quote]

    I agree, no 'aids' should be taken into exams, it tends to make them lazy, just as computers do by replacing the need to communicate and go and look up things physically using some old fashioned thing called a book. At the same time, however, some kids just cannot do arithmatic in their heads.

    [quote=Onlinegenie]I make no special claim to intelligence - I'm quite certain that anyone out of my primary school class could have done the same, because we were taught mental arithmetic.[/quote]

    I was taught it, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't do it in my head. I could on paper, I could work out equations and sums, but I had a kind of number blindness. I didn't know it then, but I now know it's called dyscalculia. Despite my best efforts, I just didn't get it, and I felt inadeqate and ashamed sometimes, that I was so crap, despite passing my 11-plus and having an IQ of 142. What I lacked in numbers, however, I excelled at English language/Literature, the arts, music and the sciences. I scraped through my maths O Level by the skin of my teeth, but still without the aid of a calculator.

    [quote=Onlinegenie]I find it amazing that people need a calculator to add a column of numbers.[/quote]

    I don't. While some people are just plain dumb and quite lazy, not everyone can 'do' numbers, since none of us have the same brain functions. Some struggle quite badly, depending on their dyscalculia. Being put on the spot and not being able to 'add up' is horrible and embarrassing; people automatically assume you're thick. But it's not always the case. Put it this way - imagine standing naked in the middle of the street, in front of passing strangers, while they laugh at your shortcomings...would you honestly enjoy that process? ;)
  • [quote=Red] imagine standing naked in the middle of the street, in front of passing strangers, while they laugh at your shortcomings...would you honestly enjoy that process?[/quote]
    WAAAHEEEYYY!!!

    But seriously I take your point we all have strengths and weaknesses but, using calculators at a young age must detract from a child's natural ability to carry out mental arithmetic because they just don't need to do it? It's like now the Xbox and Playstation have taken over from what we used to call going out and having fun, kicking a ball, climbing a tree, riding a bike etc, etc,....

    That reminds me, I've got to be up at 6am, I'm going out for an early bike ride with the lads...
  • [quote=Red]not everyone can 'do' numbers, since none of us have the same brain functions.[/quote]

    Point taken, Red.
  • I was great with ordinary numbers: I was top of my class. Then along came the algebra, and that was that. Sines ans co-sines? Why?
    I used a log table too. Mr Bear fondly remembers using a slide rule, and that was something my older brothers used, not me.
  • Oh, I don't know...

    I tend to use Pythagoras's Theorem on a regular basis :D
  • So do I, but only to astound people with my long memory and as a way of using 'hypotenuse' in a sentence.
  • [quote=Tiny Nell]I tend to use Pythagoras's Theorem on a regular basis [/quote]

    Pythagoras's Theorem was finally drilled in to me by 'Straybo' Greaves, our maths master, viciously applying his well-loved piece of knotted rope to my tender adolescent posterior.
  • [quote=snailmale]'Straybo'[/quote]

    Enlightenment?

    Body odour on the loose?
  • [quote=Tiny Nell]Enlightenment?

    Body odour on the loose?[/quote]

    One of his eyes moved, or 'strayed' independently of the other.
  • Ah, all becomes clear... unless you're Straybo.
  • When I'm driving, the need to make a note of my brainwaves is not a difficulty. I simply tell the driver to pull over, open his notebook and then I dictate to him.

    At night, when awaking from a dream with the most fantastical and origingal ideas, I find reading in the dark is eeeasy peasy if one knows how to sleep in and operate night vision goggles.
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