My mantra is “Purse phone keys oyster*” (repeat to fade). This is the minimum I need to leave the house. If I find I leave anything else behind these help me get it back!

• for non-london based readers, this is our subway card!

After getting locked out of the house and having to climb on the neighbour’s roof and through the bathroom window to get back in, I started chanting “keys wallet mobile” to myself as I left. Now I just hear those words without fail in my head when I open the front door… haven’t forgotten anything since!

This goes way back. In Ulysses, James Joyce wrote about doing: “spectacles, testiles, wallet, and watch” in the sign of the cross. Blasphemy makes great mnemonics.

A Primitive, but Effective Time Management System…

I might be stuck in the 80’s but I still can’t find anything that beats a pocket-sized Moleskine to satisfy most of my time and information management needs. Although I am slowly making the transition to digital, I think it will be a long …

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keys, money, sense of humour:-)

Somehow I avoided this problem — but my husband used to fall afoul of it.

Now, he clips his ID badge to his keychain, and wraps the lanyard of the badge around the phone and wallet. He never forgets all of them …

I find that wearing the same pants every day also works… what?

Good to know about the keys, after you’ve closed the door behind yourself. :)

Have Mad’am put a gorgeously decorated basket near the door, or get one some jewelery and attach the cell to your keys. goofy? yes, but darn it works…..

Great pic! My boyfriend just came back home to get his cell phone only to realize he hadn’t forgotten it. I can’t wait for the day when the cell phone is just implanted in our ears/mouths and we dial by saying “BrainCell: call home!” or something of the sort.

I somehow conditionned myself to think “THREE” every time I am about to get out of any door. I don’t even instantly remember what are the three things I should check for. It just happens. Sometimes I stand there for second completely confused as to what is wrong when I realize I have not passed the “three” test. Then I have to consciously bring the three items to my mind and figure out which one is missing!

What’s funny is that years ago it was a FOUR check, (I had two sets of keys) and when I got rid of one set it took me weeks to recondition myself into the “three” test. I’d be standing on people’s doors thinking to myself, it is OK to fail the FOUR test, it has become a THREE test now, get on with it.

Podcasts…

I was chatting with a pal about podcasts yesterday. I have the ‘casts I listen to linked in my blogroll, but nowhere do I talk about what I like about each of ‘em. I also appear not to ever have……

Love this, but there is a simpler (albeit much more geeky) way of remembering those things that you always need to take with you:

Always take them with you. Everywhere. Never put them down.

Works for me (wallet, keys, emergency kit, thumb drive, HPDA, pen, cellphone), but then I have pockets. If you are a female type person, you might have more of a problem. Some women have pockets, some don’t…

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Nice, but different people forget different things. So can you get them custom made? We do our grocery shopping in another country, so would like one that says “Keys/Passports/Sippy-cup”.

This is my first visit to this site.

Or GTD all together.

But as soon as I saw if, I knew I was home.

Mine needs ‘Pen’ & ‘Note Cards’, I’m always forgetting one of the two.

Robert

LOL — we call these three things the Holy Trinity in our house

And I am always searching…

My Dad had a mantra for the things he needed to have with him at all times:

“Wallet, keys, spectacles, testicles.” That pretty much covered it.

I need to remember more than three things, as well, so I made a chant out of them: keys, wallet, phone, badge, bag, lunch. The order is roughly the same as the order I need to grab them in. When I leave home or work, I frequently run through it out loud, saying “check” as I grab each one. As a result, my four-year-old son has taken to saying “check” when he gets something….

Interesting concept - I have actually programmed my brain to do this very thing with the help of my fiancee. Every time I leave the house or her dorm, she simply says, “cell phone keys wallet” which is a trigger in my brain to check my pockets for those things. Now she’s done it so often that I do it automatically basically anytime I leave a room.

The downside is now she messes with my head because she’ll purposefully take one of those things from me without my knowledge and then say the magic words to freak me out thinking my wallet is lost.

We love each other so much…

Love the idea, very original. Looks useful for the first week, then I would start to ignore it.

I stand outside the door and do this check as I tap my pockets. When I do not need my wallet it always messes me up. Wallet, keys, and mobile. Wait wallet (don’t need it) and move to keys, but I have my hand on my keys and try to remember why it is okay not to have the first item. It takes a couple minutes for me to realize it is okay to shut the door as I have my keys and I can go back in and get the other items. I have tried to change the order of the taps or checks, but in three years it has not taken hold.