The difference here, I think, is a matter of degree. A perfectly normal trait can be a pathology when taken to an extreme. Consider the difference between feeling sad sometimes and suffering severe depression.

I once witnessed something and was interviewed about an hour after it and the police said "yeah, that's not what happened" - and i was so sure i asked to see the video (the following day) and sure enough, that's not what happened. Although i thought a car was going in reverse when it was going forward - and part of it was contextual based on how the car ended up after colliding with parked vehicles.

However i can remember extremely detailed and accurate things otherwise. Unless it's people's names. Or "hey remind me tomorrow ..." or that i need to shut something off in 45 minutes. basically my memory is fine unless i get distracted, or experience anything greater than "mild trauma". Except names. I am so bad at names that Dale Carnegie got mad.

My watch has a timer. Whenever I have something to do in a short to medium amount of time, whether it's for me or someone else, I just set the timer to something appropriate. Doesn't have to be exact. I don't add a note.

For example, when my wife is going to bed and asks if I can put the laundry into the dryer when it's ready, I just set a timer for 30 minutes. When it doesn't matter much when something happens, I just set it to whatever I feel like.

If the laundry isn't done, or I just don't want to interrupt whatever I am doing, I repeat the timer (a single button press with my watch), or set a new, shorter one. Sometimes I "snooze" 5 times or more, maybe all evening.

But the invariable thing about it is: I never ever forget the thing I wanted to do when the timer goes off. And by setting the timer, I free up my mind until then.

I need to try this. My iPhone lets me label timers and give them different sounds.

That is nice if you have a need for overlapping timers, but if you don’t, I wouldn’t complicate things to much. The good thing about is that it is very easy to set a timer. (A few touches on the watch, or just saying “timer for 45 minutes” to Siri.)

my watch is cheap and therefore menu driven. my android phone though has sets of timers for things i do weekly. For nearly everything else i use the oven timer, at least, when the power is on.

I tried this and proceeded to lose hours trying to figure out what I needed to remember. It's a horrible feeling, because I know I needed to remember it

I can identify with that paragraph, however, my wife can recall things from decades ago with extreme detail.

More research into commonality of types of memory recall would be very interesting.