I like to think I am smart.
Sometimes things happen in front of me and my ego gets a huge boost. I figure out some problem, I save some money, I remember some fact, and all of a sudden, I am the smartest man in the world. Then I forget my lunch, lose a pen, and don’t respond to an email that makes me miss out on money and a relationship I could use. Every time I attach my intelligence to something like recall, something happens that reminds me that my mind isn’t the steel trap I think it is.
We forget sometimes. It’s ok. Well, it’s ok if I do it to someone else.
What is interesting to me now is how it affects me when the shoe is on the other foot.
Whenever someone does this to me, forgets something that I need, I can take it personal, depending on my scale of importance. There is nothing worse than sitting with that pit of your stomach feeling of – what I did may have been a mistake. I know how it feels to sit there and wait for an email, text, or phone call and not hear back. It makes you think of every bad thing someone has done to you and then you question your self-worth. It sucks.
This is why reminders are awesome. Every time I turn around, if I have something reminding me what I need to do, it is a lot easier to get it done. The hardest part for me though, is setting them. Sometimes when I set them, it feels like a shot to my ego.
When I get to that place, I try to think about the idea of an alarm clock. If you didn’t have it around to wake you up in the morning, how would the morning go. You would wake up at a different time everyday, and the idea of a schedule would be out the window. Reminders are that for your life.
And as well and good as that is for me personally, there is a piece of me that feels better when a reminder goes off that I can help someone else avoid that feeling of despair.
So maybe setting a reminder is the smartest thing I can do.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 