This is why you are always losing everything
Are you looking for your keys every day, are you sure you bought a new pack of hair ties, but you can't remember where you put them, and do you lose your phone all the time? You're not alone. According to iLost, a platform where people can find their lost items, we lose thousands of items each year. In fact, we spend an average of fifteen minutes a week trying to find these items, which – don't be shocked – adds up to 110 days of searching over a lifetime. How is it that we are so bad at keeping track of our belongings?
If you think about it, it's actually quite strange. We can effortlessly sing along to songs we haven't heard in years, can recite our favorite movies without peeking, and I can even remember the phone number of my best elementary school friend by heart. So there's nothing wrong with our memory. According to psychologist David L. Schachter, losing our belongings has everything to do with the intersection of attention and memory. At the moment you toss your keys on the table or put your phone down somewhere, you're often busy with something else. The TV is on, you're having a conversation, or you're thinking about what you want to do for the rest of the day. The exact location of your belongings is therefore not actively stored in your mind because the part of your brain that manages information storage has to make a selection between your actions and your thoughts. The attention to your belongings is therefore much lower on your brain's priority list. Nothing to worry about, says the psychologist, this is actually very normal.
Do you want to train yourself to lose things less often? Make sure to have a standard place for the things you regularly misplace. It may sound logical, but just think about your dish brush: it has a fixed place and you probably never lose it. Are you like me, a professional chaos creator, and do you even forget the fixed place you designate for your belongings? Then try saying out loud where you put your items. According to various studies, your memory works better when you say out loud what you're trying to remember because you are then much more actively engaged with the location of your belongings. It may sound a bit strange, but it's worth a try.
Source: Quest.nl
by: Sophie Rietmulder
