That's always been a classic.
The first couple of times I tried it, it didn't work very well. I was trying to leave in the morning, and I tripped over the can, and I was all, "Who the fuck put a can of tomatoes in front of the door?" And I kicked it out of the way and left without my umbrella.
Then I realized I wasn't going deep enough. You have to open the can of tomatoes and put the open top on the floor. You have to do it fast or it spills.
The next morning, I tripped over the can and knocked it over. And now there was slippery tomatoes all over my floor in front of my door. So of course I slipped in it and fell down, hurting my elbow and head more than I wanted to at that time of the morning.
So at this point, I decided that I could just work from home. After I cleaned up the upside down tomatoes.
The moral of the story is that, no, I didn't remember the umbrella at all. But! I no longer needed it.
I want to clarify that this is utter bullshit, and that I don't actually do this. Well, most of this. I have easier ways of working from home. Like, I put an event on my boss's calendar that says I'm working from home.
And I hate umbrellas. I fucking hate them. If you live in New York City and you use an umbrella, I want you to go home and die right now.
You have no idea of the space that you are taking up with those things. You have no respect for your fellow humans. I hate you. And I don't want to live in this world with you.
Get a little wet. Don't stab me in the eyeball with your stupid, incompetent umbrella that you aren't paying attention to.
I have a little note next to my door that says: don't take the umbrella--It's a jackass thing to do.
Guess what happens. I never take the umbrella. The tomatoes thing was a joke, for those of you who missed it.
There has to be, it's one of the few constants of the internet.
That said: you merely have to experience umbrellas in a high-density environment a couple times before those opinions are the only rational response. Umbrellas are hostile to everyone within reach. (corollary: whenever that number remains at zero, they're perfectly fine)
It's definitely the people.
Walk around Brooklyn on a rainy day. You'll be on my side before you know it.
I am 6'5" tall (1.95m) and the number of little old ladies who think nothing of waving their sharp metal umbrella spokes at my eyes and face is untrue.
[1] www.nubrella.com
Regarding the umbrella, if I forgot it then I would be pleased with my brain for filtering that useless requirement out.
I used an umbrella on my way to work last week. I forgot to bring it home. I was sad because it was raining the next day, too. I was not pleased with my brain for filtering out that arguably useful requirement.
But why not wait until before going to bed, and then put it by the door since it's probably dry by that point?
Because I forget to do that.
Why not do something so you can remember to put it out at night?
Well, I tried this trick I heard about a can of tomatoes...
My solution for this problem: I have a cron job which sends me an email every morning. If I see that email, I
1. Take a pill out of the bottle and put it on my laptop keyboard
2. Delete the email
3. Eat the pill.
This sequence ensures that even if I crash and lose ephemeral state (err, I mean, get distracted) I can immediately recover by looking at my laptop.
Process requires careful consideration when crossing the international date line, otherwise has proved robust, and does not require a laptop.
Obviously for anyone who has gone for more than 24 hours without checking their email in the past 20 years, the tradeoffs might work out differently.
And of course one is not exempt from natural disasters, or the periodic collapse of civilisations.
Reproducing the security flaw:
1. Create a plausible enough distraction 2. Place pill on said keyboard 3. Pharmaceutical intervention Complete!
Perhaps, this is a general flaw in the choosing of a visible, non-access restircted (presuming) place to keep the pill (also no verification if it's the correct pill).
How would you solve this problem?
1. Trivially, restrict access to this place (lock your cabin or something) or use a pill box for which you've the keys 2. Verification of pill - camera surveilance of keyboard(has its own issues lol, perhaps, if angle it such a way that you're not keylogging yourself) - weight sensitive plate on keyboard (mission impossible anyone? :D) - edible hologram on pill - SHA engraving on pill (manual verification becomes is time consuming and is not cool) - encode hash in pill weight: Have a delicate weighing balance, alter the weight of the pill by addition or removal of a neutral substance, program the balance or use an sdk for balance to auto verify this; (note SSH keys required) - Ah! laser engrave a qr code on to pill; laser engraving can be reasonable automated (presumption), verification via smartphone i.e. check the hash or qr code is a shortlink to a verifiable hash (I'm reasonable happy with this solution, moving on)
If you discover a pill on your keyboard and an email, you should delete the email and take the pill.
I think this ensures at-most-once pharmaceutical delivery, but I haven't investigated formal proofs of Bicameral Generals with memory loss.
Japanese Soto Zen tradition has short verse for every task you do in monastery. Entering toilet verse etc.
It's easy to lose ones awareness when switching tasks or moving about.
The automatic processes of our brain dominate the majority of our behavior. If you're a deep thinker who often ties up his attentive thread thinking through a tough technical problem or something, you need to prime your automatic process with some surprise that triggers the association.
I think Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow does a good job explaining this. But I also like the idea of the "elephant and the rider" from Jonathan Haidt. This quora post (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-rider-and-the-elephant-met...) gives a nice summary but I highly recommend his book.
Bringing it back to TFA, I think the Japanese as a culture might have a better relationship to the frailty of human rationality. The enlightenment was a great period in Western history but it cemented a belief in the power of reason and the universality of truth.
The Japanese have a longer history of training the mind through repeated action, visualization and behavior. Western cultures just want to power through it with rationality. So, we don't point at stuff repetitively and repeat things out loud to ourselves even if it would save lives. Kind of a bummer.
I dig your upside down tomato can, man.
After years of doing this and feeling silly each time I started checking the oven before I left the house and told myself outloud, "Yes, the oven and stovetop is off". I was surprised how effective this was.
Interesting to read this article today and other's solutions to the same problem.
With time I learned that (or got more practice) it is unlikely I actually forgot something. Probably I just don't remember packing it. 95% of the time when I fear I didn't pack some silly thing, there it is, in my suitcase,when I arrive. Thank you past Swizec!
A big part of it is also that I always pack my suitcase in the same way and I always put certain things in certain spots. If I am closing the suitcase and the thing is not in its spot, then I stop and put it there.
Especially important for passports and other such documents. Always put it in the same place. If it's not in that place, then it isn't packed.
This reduces the amount of checksuming you have to do.
Oh and all you really need is your passport and your credit card. The rest is replaceable.
For some of us, depending on the destination, prescription sunglasses also fall into the category of essentials. Learned that lesson the hard way.
This is not intended obnoxiously, but I assume English is not your first language (though your English is good) and you'd want to know: "medicament" is an incredibly uncommon way to refer to "medication." In fact, the majority of native English speakers would not recognize it.
He probably doesn't need to have that fact pointed out to him.
I'm sure there's a better way you could have given the hint to the correct word for the benefit of others who didn't figure out what he meant, and done so without being condescending to the post you were replying to. Yes?
Their post was interesting because they're right: I'm a native English speaker and I paused on "medicament".
Personally, if I felt compelled to point out that it was uncommon, I would have said "At first I though medicament was a misspelling or autocorrect mistake, but when I looked it up, I found out it's a real word in English, if extremely uncommon. Interesting." That's less assertive in that a mistake was made (because it might have been used for effect), and also true.
I suspect readings of it in a negative light are because of the context of the current conversation. Otherwise, I'm not sure how something that is essentially "at first I was confused and thought you were wrong, but then I found out I was the one that was wrong" is supposed to be taken negatively.
Having OCD, I started doing the same when I'd leave the house and needed to be sure that I'd closed the garage door so I didn't think about it all day (otherwise I'd have to drive around the block a couple of times to check it before I could drive to where I was going).
Eventually, "the garage door is closed" just led to me wondering I was remembering saying it a different day, so I'd have to say, "It's Tuesday and the garage door is closed."
Now I have a SmartThings device attached to it so I can check any time. Of course, I worry about it displaying stale data, so I think I'm going to need a live video feed.
It majorly screws up my routine if I pick up my wallet to pay for something online and forget to put it back where it belongs, and I can't find it the next day. Or I leave it in the office and the next morning I have to remember I left it in the office, and it's not hiding somewhere at home.
Some places like paypal might be hard but I don't use paypal anyway because of all the problems they have caused the people I bought things from. If my e-card is not accepted, I can probably do without the item anyway.
After thinking about it for a moment, I put my shoulder into the (locked) door and confirmed my suspicion as to why this had been done: the additional space between the magnets weakens the field just enough that you can ram the door and pop it open, but it doesn't weaken it enough that anyone would ever notice otherwise. Pretty clever!
I bar the door with my large umbrella so I can't leave without moving it.
When running laps I keep count by holding my fingers up in front of my face and saying the lap number out loud. It feels weird, but works for me.
For other stuff, this sounds like a great idea that I should try. How many times have I thought "did I remember to lock the car," then walked back to the parking spot?
That is great and clever. I can better understand why pointing system works.
I had a similar problem with locking the office door. I would always question whether I had done it or not since I was on autopilot and not thinking at the end of the day. What finally 'solved' the problem was when I got the other lock on the same door fixed. All of the sudden I had to lock two locks and not one. The act of having to pull out another key and lock that 2nd lock solved the problem for me. My feeling was adding complexity even in a small way was enough to jar me out of autopilot for the task.
I solved the medication issue the same way by announcing I was taking it. (Later I settled for one of those pill containers..)
An I.O.U.?
In the case of the train operators though, technology as it stands now might be a hinderance. Notice from the videos that they go through gestures _rapidly_. Recording the action each time onto a tablet or such would be a hinderance that would only delay.
A cell phone reminder for a one-off is easily missed during my morning routine.
A physical motion and/or out-loud speech associated with the event cements it much more effectively.
A post-it stuck on the side of one's monitor seems vastly superior to any sort of app based reminder. It helps that creating the post-it and sticking it somewhere is itself a physical action that is remembered much more than a few taps of a thumb.
(CRT timeframe)
Alternatively, when you soap and rinse, put them in the way of your exit. When you finish, open the shower curtain, move the stuff that is in the way into its proper place.
Form stateful habits.
Or rub your hair - if it feels greasy, you probably need to shampoo it again.
For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill".
Another: sometimes I'd lend some amount money to a colleague, and a few weeks later I'd have a hard time figuring whether they gave it back, and they too. Solution: I tell them to hit me (or do some other stupid thing) when they give the money back, so we both remember.
Going even further, sometimes I have to set a reminder to myself like "take an umbrella when leaving tomorrow morning because it's gonna be raining". Putting umbrella close to the exit, or doing a phone reminder do not always work, particularly when I'm in a hurry. One thing that works is doing some notable physical disruption in the environment, like putting a can of tomato sauce, upside-down, close to the exit.