In the spirit of things that seem obvious but may actually be brilliant:
Plan everything, and have it ready to go the night before.
If you don’t, you will a) spend the whole night trying to remember the things you can’t forget, and b) harriedly forget more than you ever thought possible the next morning. If you must leave something to the morning, leave yourself a DETAILED NOTE so as to be forced engage as few brain cells as possible.
Ideally, you only want to have to wake up in the morning and turn on the coffee pot. Your stuff should be waiting by the door (or already in the car), your clothes should be laid out, and your lunch should be made in the fridge. Bonus points if you have supper in the slow-cooker! (You think I’m kidding? Try it.)
Some people are in favor of checklists, but I found I had too many if/then conditions in mine to make them useful.
It’s not that you actually NEED all this. But the more stuff that ABSOLUTELY HAS TO GET DONE in the morning, the more likelihood that something will go wrong and throw everything off. Then you will get stressed, and that will lead to forgetting more stuff. Plus, you’ll get to sleep in an extra half hour. What could be wrong with that?
I say this even now that I have worked from home for the last two and a half years. When I run out of an ingredient, it goes on a list on my fridge. I do a load of laundry every time the hamper gets full. I keep a meal chart, because otherwise I will eat oriental noodles until scurvy sets in. I keep household chores as recurring tasks on my todo list so I don’t have to a) notice something needs doing b) schedule it, and c) do it.
I do all this so I can do as little thinking as possible. I’m serious! It is theoretically possible to keep all this in your head. But you only have a limited amount of RAM, and it makes no sense to keep stuff there that is easy to automate. Instead of thinking remember to feed the cat, remember to feed the cat while you’re in the shower, you have room for your next great idea!
[ssbp]
