Does actually stopping to ask yourself “Now, where would I have put that thing?” help you find something you’ve misplaced?
No. Because I live with other mammals with their own ideas of where things go.
Nope. Because I would have put it over there, and clearly it’s not there.
The problem is where we SHOULD have put it, had we been logical, rational actors. We are clearly not, so the question we should be asking is, where would a deranged madman have put it?
Lol, no. I have 2 kids, 3 cats, an absent minded professor of a husband and perimenopause fuzzy brain. Nothing is ever put in a place than makes sense. I used to live in a world where I had perfect recall of every item in my house. Now I’m lucky if I find what I’m looking for in less than a week.
No matter, it’s always in the last place I look. Future me’s got that shit on lock!
No but seriously though, backtracking in your mind helps. Close your eyes and rewind the tape, step by step, what did I do before right now, and before that, and before that, and before that. You won’t remember where you put it, because you didn’t register to memory where you put it in the first place, but you will know where you have been, and where you last had the thing.
It works better when you really visualize it before your mind’s eye rather than half assing it. Brain remembers a lot, but the mechanical task of mental retrieval is on you, meaning putting in the actual work of visualization.
Sometimes. Sometimes it at last narrows it down. But when I put something down somewhere really random or stupid it doesn’t help at all, but then not much helps in those cases.
Kind of, I have systems of where things should belong so I try to think where it ought to be.
I have a fool-proof system of exactly where things should be at all times. The whole issue arises when they are not.
Usually it helped, I have to stop and think what I did last time with the thing.
But I setup a camera in my workshop for this reason, so if I just stop, sit and watch the past me messing around
(if someone could create a selfhosted/local LLM integration that would track objects from video feed I want it!)
I definitely unconsciously ask myself that because my first thoughts would be the most likely place I put it, but no, I don’t think I would say it out loud unless I was trying to break the awkward silence while someone is watching me look for something.
If it was where I would have put it, I wouldn’t be looking for it…
“Oh great. Where would I have put it when I thought I was being so fucking clever? It was an orange pen, maybe I put it by the fruit so I would remember it.”
Yes, most of the time. Specially if I can remember what I was doing last time I used the thing.
Sometimes, but only when I stopped to think “where will I look when I can’t find this?” before putting said object away.
almost never.
But sometimes? For specific objects?
usually if I left keys/phone/wallet in my pants pocket on the floor, that’ll work.
but most of the time, it’s somewhere random that I would never think of.
For the most part yeah. Depending on what the item was I have a pretty good idea what I would have done with it. I’m one of those messy organized types where everything has a spot, but that spot might not be the most presentable lol
For everyday things like my wallet and keys there is only one place they could be, unless I accidentally left it in my pants pockets.
