For some reason, a lot of people do not use lists. I remember one of my former girlfriends verbally claimed that she does not use lists (or any type of planning for that matter). Of course, she would end up forgetting to buy something at the stores or do something important at home simply because she forgot.
Last week, I had my renovations team working on a few of my rental properties and these guys didn’t use lists either. It was no surprise to me that these guys ended up forgetting to do the odd task even though I repeatedly reminded them a few times.
I even wrote out a list at the beginning for them to follow but I didn’t see them take it out once. It made me wonder why I even bothered to make out a list if they were not even going to read it.
Such people like these contractors and my ex-girlfriend are folks who try to remember everything that they have to do in their heads, without resorting to paper. This always baffles me on why they keep insisting on relying on the memories when their records have not proven their heads to be very efficient in keeping track of everything they have to do.
For my renovators, it’s a good thing that they do some fine work at reasonable prices because if they didn’t, I would have fired them since forgetting to do a repairs task is usually not forgivable. If they used a list, they could have checked off exactly everything that they had to repair without missing anything.
It’s quite funny because they even forget to buy certain supplies when they are at the building supplier store. They don’t pull out any lists and instead, try to buy whatever they think they need for the tasks they actually remember, by scanning the store shelves on site.
An Easy Fix To Reduce Forgetting Things
It’s such an easy fix too in terms of keeping forgotten tasks or items to a minimum. If people would only admit that they just cannot rely on pure memory to remember everything and take a few seconds to jot down all the items on a list, they would be much more efficient.
These days, one can make simple lists not only on paper, but also electronically on their smart phones too. There’s really no excuse to forget things if one could have made a list.
It’s such a simply device yet so effective. Just take out a pen and scrap paper.
