She slaps her forehead, laughs nervously and says to the cashier, “I knew I was forgetting something.” She pulls out her phone, scrolls through three different apps, checks a crumpled receipt, then shrugs. “Never mind, it’ll come back to me later.” You watch her walk away, slightly annoyed, slightly amused, slightly worried you’ll do the same as soon as you step outside.
We live in an age of both colour‑coded calendars and total mental chaos. Reminders buzz, sticky notes bloom on fridge doors, and still the dry cleaning sits uncollected for two weeks, the parcel waits at the shop, the birthday card never gets sent. The tools are there. The memory tricks are there. Yet the errands don’t always happen.
Evening Yoga Routine Featuring 4 Gentle Poses That Release Tight Hips and Melt Lower Body Tension
Maybe the real story is not about forgetting at all.
Why our brain quietly ignores our to‑do lists
Picture your typical weekday morning. Phone on the bedside table, notifications stacked like a digital avalanche. Somewhere in that pile is a reminder: pick up prescription, return library book, buy cat food. You swipe everything away in one lazy gesture and get on with your day. Eight hours later, you’re on the sofa, scrolling, and the realisation hits: you walked straight past the pharmacy.
It’s not that you didn’t know. You just didn’t really care in the moment your feet were actually on the pavement.
Errands are strange creatures. They live in the gap between intention and attention. We write them down when we feel organised, motivated, in control. Then real life arrives with traffic, emails, hungry kids, a surprise call from your mum. The list sits there, pristine and useless, while your day zigzags somewhere else entirely.
On a grey Tuesday in Manchester, I followed a 38‑year‑old project manager, James, for a story about productivity. He proudly showed me his bullet journal, colour‑coded Notion board and a shared family Google Calendar. Every errand was catalogued: MOT, dentist, new school shoes for his son. A system for everything.
At 5.30pm we walked past the shoe shop on the way home from nursery. His phone buzzed with a reminder. He glanced at it, winced and kept walking. “He’s tired. I’m tired. We’ll sort it at the weekend.” Three days later, his son turned up at school in trainers with a hole in the sole.
James hadn’t forgotten. He had deprioritised in real time.
Research quietly backs this up. People who use elaborate planning systems often don’t complete more errands than those with simple setups. What changes is the feeling of control, not always the action. Our brain is clever: it pays attention to what feels urgent, emotional, or immediately uncomfortable. Returning an Amazon parcel doesn’t compete with a hungry child, a difficult email, or the lure of the sofa after a long commute.
What looks like a memory problem is often a friction problem. Too many steps between you and the action, not enough payoff when you do it.
From a brain’s point of view, errands are like pop‑up ads. They appear, they flash, they promise “This matters!” – and then your mind closes the window to get back to the actual page of your life.
We also outsource so much cognitive load to our phones that our own sense of timing goes a bit fuzzy. If the task doesn’t scream, we ignore the whisper. *The notification becomes background noise, and the background wins more often than we like to admit.*
The tiny environmental hacks that beat memory tricks
One simple shift changes almost everything: stop trusting your head or your apps, and move errands into your physical path. Not as an idea, as an obstacle. The dry‑cleaning ticket goes on your car keys, not the noticeboard. The parcel you need to post lives on top of your shoes, not by the door, where your eyes slide past it. The empty prescription box sits inside your handbag, annoying you, until you walk past the chemist.
When your environment nags you, your brain doesn’t have to.
This is not about yet another “system”. It’s the opposite: remove as many steps as possible between you and the errand. Put return labels on the parcel the minute it arrives. Store your reusable bags in the boot, not the kitchen. Set one location‑based reminder for the supermarket, not eight separate ones for milk, bread, foil and bin bags. You’re not trying to be clever. You’re trying to be lazy in a smart way.
On a rainy Thursday in Leeds, I watched a mother of three, Aisha, move through her hallway as if it were a train station designed by someone who hates forgotten errands. There was a “launch pad” by the front door: a low bench with hooks and baskets. Library books lived in a bright red tote bag that never left that spot. Forms for school sat in a clear folder clipped to the kids’ backpacks. Parcels to return were stacked on the bench, half‑blocking the door.
“It annoys me every morning,” she said, stepping around them. “Which is kind of the point.”
When the school sent a text about a costume day, she didn’t write it down. She walked to the hallway, dropped the costume in the red tote and went back to her tea. No elaborate mental story, no motivational speech. Just an object in a place that would collide with her later.
The numbers are quietly telling. People who rely mainly on “memory tricks” and multiple apps tend to feel more anxious about forgetting, even when they don’t forget more often. Those who redesign their environment – the hallway, the car, the spot by the kettle – report fewer guilt spirals. The errand becomes part of the route, not a test they might fail.
Behind this is a simple logic. Trying to remember is an invisible effort. You can’t see when you’re about to drop the ball. Moving objects into your way is visible, slightly inconvenient, and very effective. It respects the fact that the future you who walks out the door will not be as fresh, focused or motivated as the present you with a quiet moment and a cup of coffee.
Doing fewer errands, but actually doing them
There’s a more radical move that rarely appears in productivity apps: brutally shrinking the number of errands you accept in the first place. Before any planning tool or trick, ask one unfashionable question: does this really need doing at all? Not theoretically. In your actual life, with your actual energy, this actual week.
Say no to one committee, cancel one subscription that constantly generates tasks, stop agreeing to return borrowed things across town just to be “nice”. **Many of the errands we “forget” are ones we never truly agreed with.** Your brain drags its feet in quiet protest, and the list quietly rots.
Here’s a simple filter some people use instead of fancy systems. If the errand will matter in three weeks, create a physical cue or calendar entry. If it will not matter in three weeks, either do it in under five minutes right now or drop it entirely. No middle ground. The aim is to stop carrying a heavy mental bag of half‑important tasks that never quite get done, but still exhaust you just by existing.
“Most people don’t have a memory problem,” says London‑based psychologist Emma Foster. “They have an overcommitment problem disguised as forgetfulness. The brain is rebelling against a to‑do list that doesn’t match their values or capacity.”
There’s also the emotional layer we rarely name out loud. Returning a dress that didn’t fit feels like admitting a small failure. Booking that dentist appointment means facing the result. We label it “forgetting”, when really we’re postponing an emotion we’d rather not meet on a Wednesday afternoon. Soyons honnêtes : personne ne fait vraiment ça tous les jours.
- Reduce your errands by saying “no” earlier
- Move the few remaining tasks into your physical path
- Use one simple calendar, not five overlapping tools
- Notice which errands you “forget” repeatedly – and question them
- Accept that some hassle is emotional, not logistical
Living with errands instead of being chased by them
On a busy London bus, everyone looks half‑plugged into another world. But if you pay attention, you can spot the quiet choreography of errands. The woman with the returns parcel wedged against her knees. The teenager with a library book poking out of his rucksack. The man turning an envelope over and over in his hands, knowing he has to post it before he talks himself out of it again.
None of them look “organised”. They look human. Slightly frazzled, slightly distracted, carrying small objects that act as anchors between their day and the things that need doing. The story is not about perfect systems. It’s about the tiny, visible decisions that mean the parcel actually reaches the shop before the deadline.
We all know the fantasy: one magical app, one new planning method, one clever memory palace that finally turns us into the person who never forgets anything. Yet the reality hums somewhere else. In the bag by the door, in the awkward box blocking the hallway, in the quiet moment where you decide not to take on that extra task you already know you’ll “forget”.
Maybe the next time you catch yourself sighing, “I’m so forgetful,” you’ll pause. Look around. Ask what your space is pushing you towards, and what it lets you silently drop. And maybe you’ll tell someone about it – not as another productivity hack, but as a small, honest way of making life feel a little less like being chased by your own to‑do list.
| Point clé | Détail | Intérêt pour le lecteur |
|---|---|---|
| Environnement avant mémoire | Placer les objets d’errands directement sur votre trajet physique | Réduit l’oubli sans dépendre d’astuces compliquées |
| Moins d’errands, pas plus d’outils | Filtrer les tâches qui ne comptent pas vraiment dans trois semaines | Allège la charge mentale et la culpabilité quotidienne |
| Une seule structure simple | Un calendrier + quelques signaux physiques au lieu de multiples applis | Moins de friction, plus d’actions réellement accomplies |
FAQ :
- Why do I forget simple errands even with reminders?Because your brain doesn’t treat low‑stakes tasks as urgent; the reminder pings, but your environment and emotions still win in the moment.
- Are planning apps useless then?No, they’re helpful as a “parking lot” for tasks, but they work best when paired with physical cues and fewer overall commitments.
- What’s one change I can make today?Choose one recurring errand, like returns, and create a fixed “home” for it by the door or in the car so it’s impossible to ignore.
- How do I stop feeling guilty about forgotten errands?Start by cutting non‑essential tasks, and see forgetting as a signal of overload, not a character flaw.
- Is it normal to rely less on memory as I get busier?Yes. As life gets fuller, external supports and environmental design become more practical than trying to “train” your memory.
