"Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time – I think I’ve forgotten this before."
— Stephen Wright
Last night, I got a number of phone calls about appointments for today. I was reclining after dinner with a cat in my lap. I had to ditch the cat in order to get up and get a pen to write down the appointment. The person on the other end said, "oh poor cat, you don’t need to do that; you’ll remember."
Maybe.
The sad thing is that if something is not written down, I may or may not remember it. The act of writing down a time and day sets the appointment in my brain. I actually have a pretty good memory, but I hate the idea of ever standing someone up, so I always like to write down appointments somewhere. I’ve been stood up by people and it’s totally rude. (I wouldn’t want someone else thinking the same thoughts about me that I thought about the people who stood me up!)
We recycle old business cards and tear-off calendar pages for notes like these. So our grocery list has a dog quote on the back, and my appointment note has all my contact information from when I was a documentation manager 12 years ago. The company has changed its name twice and moved, but these old cards live on, helping me remember where I’m supposed to be and when.