Direct communication with me as to the nature of the papers and your need for me to expedite them is what is expected. Failing direct communication, a short voice mail will suffice.

Similarly, anything that has to be actioned outside of the house (mail etc) gets put on the floor in front of the door.

I’ve also found that as PostIt notes often fall onto the floor (very common in humid parts of the world), I put the notes on the floor in the first place. The best place is in the doorway of a room you have to go to as part of the chore/task.

Thanks too to Pantufla for referring us to the Useful Landmines concept on 43Folders, which is indeed the same kind of idea expressed more elegantly, perhaps (the term poka-yoke comes from Shigeo Shingo, the Japanese manufacturing expert, and is usually applied in an engineering context rather than in everyday life). Some of the example useful landmines are simple reminders, but Merlin Mann also links to this article by Stephanie Burns which explores a number of more involved strategies, tending towards actually training oneself into a different way of behaving (’installing new habits’), e.g.:

You want to start carrying a bit of cash and not using your credit card.

Make it hard to do. Freeze your credit card in a block of ice.

You want to walk or jog each morning to start your day, but by the time you get up and move around you don’t feel like it.

Make it easier to do. Sleep in your jogging clothes, socks included, shoes optional.

You want to stop biting your nails, but don’t remember that ’til you’re doing it.

Make it hard or uncomfortable to do. Coat your nails with bitters, put bandaids over the ends, put a sugar free lollypop in your mouth.

You want the habit of waking up 20 minutes earlier but keep pushing the alarm snooze.

Make it hard to stay in bed. Move the alarm, set the lights on a timer, set the TV on a timer.

…

You want to fold the clothes, but they sit in the laundry out of sight until you walk in there next time.

Make it easy to remember and hard to not do. Take the laundry and put it on the dining table, the lounge, in the bathroom sink.

…

You want to move more, your annoyed at your inactivity.

Make it easier to do. Take your TV remote to work and leave it there.

A mark of a good idea is often that it arises independently in many places, under many different names. The wealth of ideas in the comments - elicited by a single blog post and a link from Good Experience (thanks, Mark) - shows just how able we are at coming up with ways to ‘fix’ our own mistakes/oversights/forgetfulness/behaviour in general.

Keep the comments coming!

A new one I’m trying starting today is putting my empty Gatorade bottle (which I drink at work after a long morning run at the gym) in my lunch bag after I’ve had lunch, so that when I get home and make my lunch for the next day, I’ll be reminded to put a new Gatorade in my gym bag.

It seems like I have a lot of these poka-yokes! I guess they help me live my life as a busy and slightly scatterbrained person.

http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Useful_Landmines

Eventually, my VW GTI did one better: the remote to lock the doors is PART OF the key - you have to have the key in-hand to use the remote. It’s a little bulky, but they’ve made the key blade fold in with a kind of switchblade action to make it about as compact as any other remote keyfob.

When I first got together with my wife, I caused quite a few fights by putting item that needed action (small items for repair, empty bottles of things we’d used up) on the kitchen table nearest the door to the carport. She thought I was putting the stuff “in her face” because I thought she was incapable of remembering it or incompetent in some way. Took a lot of patient explanation to point out that I was putting the stuff “in my own face” so I’d remember to take action.

I’m trying to train myself to use all the tote bags I’ve collected over the years as my reusable grocery bags…..The challenge for me has been remembering to bring them into the store. Now I put all the totes into the biggest bag, then loop its handles over my gear shift. I’ve actually begun using the bags!

Car keys seem to loom large in our poka-yoke culture….I place them with left-overs in the fridge at work, so I’ll remember to take them home with me.

I’m recently (re)married and still getting accustomed to wearing a wedding ring. I remove it before I take a shower because otherwise I clonk my head when I’m washing my hair. So now I tend to leave my cell phone and car keys in the bathroom — I have a cell charger there, too — and my wedding ring gets placed on top of my cell phone when I get in the shower …