h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've ground the coffee beans, put them in the coffee maker and turned it on.

Forgot to add water.

I blame that on not having had a cup of coffee yet.

... No but I have refilled the (real) coffee caddy then filled it with just-off-the-boil water

A while ago somebody asked if there was a way to prevent the phenomenon of forgetting why you went into a room. The answer was, 'Yes, forget to go into the room.' There was one occasion a few years ago when I got up to fetch something. In the time it took me to cross the room (a distance of less than 12 feet) I'd forgotten what I'd got up for.

Labradors do that all the time.

>>A while ago somebody asked if there was a way to prevent the phenomenon of forgetting why you went into a room. The answer was, 'Yes, forget to go into the room.' There was one occasion a few years ago when I got up to fetch something. In the time it took me to cross the room (a distance of less than 12 feet) I'd forgotten what I'd got up for.

A theory is that this is to do with "event boundaries"
http://theweek.com/article/index/221765/why-does-entering-a-room-make-you-forget-things

However, I experience a more up-to-date version of this. I click on Google to check something and then forget what it was I wanted to check, which is a distance of zero feet and just fractions of a second in time.

This study suggests visualisation may help:
http://www.sacramentopsychology.com/index.php/articleslayout/107-senior-issues/466-why-we-forget-things-and-what-we-can-do-about-it.html

>>> "is there was a way to prevent the phenomenon of forgetting why you went into a room"


yes - 'talk to yourself'!


aural memory operates independently / in parallel and has a reasonable short-term persistence - long enough for you still to hear what you said to yourself before you went into the room

do you often get to the car / bike / bus and can't remember if you just locked the front door / turned off the cat / etc? Next time, try muttering a selected phrase as you lock the door, etc - the phrase should be something simple you've chosen to relate to the associated process


...so 'talking to yourself' works, but of course all you've achieved is to swap one worrying trait for another!

My boyfriend is such a worrier and so unable to be conscious of what he's doing that he rattles his front door twice to make sure it's locked, walks away, then goes back for a third. It's slightly obsessive.

Better than leaving it open though.

I'm kind of the same with locking the car. I blame those key fob button-thingys.

This thread must be causing an effect. I just made my coffee, stood right by the machine while it blooped. Then realised that I'd forgotten to put the filter paper in.

This wouldn't have mattered, apart from the mess, but I'd used the last of my water.

I've just found a thread on my PS where fluffykerfuffle reminded me about this thread.

Can't remember why now.

Oh well, it'll come back to me.


Geggs

Ummmmm?

Oh yes.

I have a 'Box Of Four Things' that I keep at home. It contains my diary, work phone, fountain pen and ID cards. I was fed up with getting to work short of one of these vital items for the day.

I pick up the box when I am leaving home and carry it to work as a whole. I leave the box on my desk through the day and replace the four things when I leave. I get home and put them in the same place every evening.

That doesn't prevent the disaster I had a couple of weeks ago when I put it down on my way out of the house to put a jacket on and forgot to pick it up again. I got to work without anything.

PP

If my neighbours were up early enough to see me leave in the mornings, they'd probably think I was some sort of pervert - every day they'd see me shut the door, then grab both my thighs and then my right buttock.

If they had bat ears they'd also hear me mutter 'keys, phone, wallet'.

"I just made my coffee, stood right by the machine while it blooped. Then realised that I'd forgotten to put the filter paper in. This wouldn't have mattered, apart from the mess, but I'd used the last of my water" [Lanzababy]

I don't understand the problem. Coffee will brew fine whether you use filter paper or not. The size of the mess is incidental. You should still be able to drink the coffee, so being out of water is irrelevant until your next cup. Maybe your coffee is too strong, so put a little more milk in. Does that help?

I don't know about Lanza's coffee maker, but mine does not funnel the water/coffee properly into the carafe if a filter is not in place. The liquid flows all over the counter. How do I know this?

Different coffeemakers seem to work differently. That's why I asked.

I managed to save enough to drink, the mess was what gave me the clue that I'd missed something vital, and I was able to salvage some.

So, you're both correct

I was reminded by the four things in a box story, that if I had to take urgent papers and so on to work with me, I would put them across the threshold, next to brief case/laptop bag. Many is the time I have sleepily stepped over both on my way out the door.

Thinking about the way some think we forget things due to the 'event boundary' as we walk through doors, I decided to try to remember something as I walked through a certain door, and it worked. In fact, I didn't even walk through the door, I just imagined it; very much like the 'loci' method of memory storage.

Me too. To avoid this I have to lean stuff against the door so that I have to move it to get out. Even that's not foolproof though.

Actually, it's all a bit of a trial sometimes.

PP

It's the same with me too. Eventually I decided to put the papers actually *inside* the briefcase.

Sadly, when I came to leave the house, something inside me made me extricate the foreign bodies from my case and leave them propped beside the door.