How To Create More Effective Reminders
The most important thing to remember when creating a reminder is that your reminder isn't going to make you do the task you are being reminded of. If I set a reminder on my phone to go off every morning at 6:30 that said "go for a run," I'd probably end up running the same amount that I run in the morning already, which is, well, no running at all.
For our reminders to be successful, they need to be easily actionable. That means that when we are creating our reminders, we want them to the simple first parts of our tasks. If instead of getting a message that said "go for a run" I just got a message that said, "put on your running shoes" - that's a hell of a lot easier for me to get behind and might actually get me to pound the pavement for a little bit. I mean, if it wasn't raining and cold out, but hey, it's at least a step in the right direction.
This also means that we don't want to have reminders like "do your taxes." This is a terrible reminder for several reasons. First off, it's just too difficult of a task for you to ever pick up because you got reminded of it. You see that reminder and go, "Nope, not doing that right now" because you are never going to be in the mood for doing your taxes. Instead, you'd want a reminder like, "schedule time to do your taxes" because doing your taxes is going to take some dedicated time, and since you are never going to be in the mood for it you actually need to carve out that time when it is going to happen.
But the other reason that "do your taxes" is a terrible reminder is that it has no context behind it. If I get that reminder when I'm having breakfast, I can't do anything about it. If I get when I'm putting my kids to bed, yeah, I'm not breaking out my 1098's in between chapters of Judy Moody. When and how you get your reminders has a significant impact on if you're going to be able to follow through with them.
One of the easiest ways to apply context to a reminder is simply through location. I use this feature frequently with the iOS Reminders app by using the built-in digital assistant on my phone, Siri, for things like "Remind me to text Derek about lunch when I get to work" - and then when I get to my office I'll get that reminder.
Context doesn't have to be only location-based though, we can also think of context as things you're doing, like when you're getting ready in the morning, when you're having lunch, or when you're working out. The importance of figuring out at least some kind of context to your reminders is that you can make sure you a getting your reminders at times you can do things about them. If I wanted to get a reminder to text my accountability team when I'm working out, but I don't always workout at the gym, then having a location-based reminder isn't as useful in this situation.
In that particular example, a great way to create that reminder would be to use the Apple Shortcuts app and created an automated process that sends me a message every time I logged a workout with my Apple Watch. I mean, looking at it, I could even automate it to just send my team a message when I click done on my workout - don't need the reminder when I cut myself out of the equation, right? And if you're using Android you can set up a similar system with IFTTT (If This Then That).
Of course, it isn't always easy to set up some sort of digital reminder to for every kind of context, but it is useful to keep in mind so that you aren't giving yourself reminders that you can't do anything about. Context is also helpful in thinking about when you want to get time-based reminders. I have reminders to take my trash out for weekly pickup, but I have them late enough in the evening so that I'm pretty sure that I'll be home by the time I get those reminders.
We're also going to be looking at context as it relates to both long-term and short-term reminders. The big difference between the two is how robust you are going to be creating your reminders. We don't need substantial reminders for everything that we do, and we're more likely to skip making them for "small" things if we think there are too many hoops to jump through.
A short term reminder could be something like changing the laundry in 30 minutes - I tend to count anything that is going to occur in the next few hours in that short-term category. But that has it's exceptions, and more importantly, we've got to consider context here. If you are going to be switching context - for example, if I was driving to my office from home, it would make more sense to create a more robust reminder for when I got there. Even though it is only about a 15-minute drive, there are a lot of things that are going to be grabbing for my attention, and it is way more likely that I am going to forget about my intentions. Ever go to the store and buy everything except the one thing that you specifically went to the store to get? I know I have. When our context switches, it severely impairs what we are going to be able to recall.
At the same time, if I'm just sitting in my office writing for a couple of hours, my context isn't going to switch, and so I can probably write down a note about something I want to look up after I finish writing. If it was more than a few hours, then yeah, I'd go with the more robust reminder. Time matters, but context matters more.
This does mean that a long-term reminder could be something you do on the same day - even the same hour if you're on the go. What we want from both long-term and short-term reminders is enough information to get us back on track for what we're supposed to be doing. For short-term reminders, this often doesn't have to be a whole lot. If I need to change my laundry in 30 minutes, then having an alarm that says laundry is enough. And even shorter things might need even less - I use my oven timer every morning while making my coffee, and that's enough to keep me on track there. And honestly, I'm shocked the number of times that I have forgotten I've set a one-minute timer.
Another big difference between short-term and long-term reminders is also the stakes behind the reminders. Most of my short-term reminders are relatively low stakes - if I forget about what I was going to look up after my writing session, well, that's okay - I'm sure I'll find other rabbit holes to fall down. Whereas if I forget to pick up my kids from school, that's a much bigger deal.
As your day gets more complicated, you are going to need to make your reminders more and more robust. If my reminder for my laundry was just a timer on my phone that said "alarm," I'm not sure I'd remember that's what my reminder was for. And let's say I decided to take a walk while I was waiting for my laundry to finish, and I got my reminder while I was out of the house, that reminder isn't going to be useful. Instead, I might want to create a reminder to change my laundry when I got home instead of based on time.
The further out you get from your reminder, the more information you are going to want to be putting into it. I use Google Calendars to organize a lot of my life, and calendar events are essentially just reminders I'm creating weeks or months in advance. If I see an upcoming meeting on my calendar, I want to be able to look up those relevant details when I open up the calendar item. In the notes section, I should be including details of what we're talking about at the meeting. It would probably also be a good idea to have how and where we are meeting. I don't want to get to 30 minutes before the meeting only to realize what I thought was a phone meeting is actually across town, and now I have to find pants.
So when you are creating a reminder for yourself, make sure that you are specific about what your reminder is for. Even though your reminders are only for yourself, you've got to remember that future you is a very different person, and they might not know what you're talking about. Give your future self a break and give them enough information to actually follow through on current-you's intentions.
I use this all the time while I'm writing scripts for this show because I very rarely complete a script in one go - so it's helpful for me to write a little note to myself on where I was going with my writing before I stop my session. This allows me to quickly get back into my writing when I return since I don't have to read through everything I wrote again to figure out where I was going with a sentence. Sure there are plenty of times I've come back to something where I stopped writing mid-sentence and just sat there looking at it wonder what the hell I was trying to say. But spending the time to write just a couple of sentences can really help get me back on track with where I wanted to go, and really all reminders are the same way.
We've got a couple of ways that we can use reminders. Primarily we can use either physical or digital reminders, but we can also get reminders from other people. Although, even though I love using accountability from other people, we don't want to rely on other people too much for our reminders. It's fine to ask someone to remind you that you're supposed to leave in ten minutes, but we've got better systems we can put in place for most of our reminder needs.
Our most basic reminders tend to be the physical ones. Think a sticky note on your monitor to remind you to reply to an email or your backpack sitting next to the door so you won't leave the house without it. Our physical reminders are just things that sit in the real world that are supposed to trigger us into doing the task that we want to do.
The advantage of physical reminders is that they tend to be very easy for us to set up. It doesn't take a lot of effort for me to write something down on a sticky note. But where we often slip up is that it is easy for physical reminders to slip into the background where we never notice them. Another issue that I often run into is that I'll try and use a physical reminder for something that instead should be on a to-do list. For example, I sometimes will stack mail I need to go through next to my laptop with the idea that I'll go through the mail sometime. Well, as we already know, we never just find time and sometime isn't a real time. This means that my mail stacks up next to my laptop and never gets opened. This also where that idea of context comes into play as well. Just because I see the mail and I think "hey, I should go through that" doesn't mean that I'm actually getting that reminder at a time that I can actually go through the mail. Since I'm not getting the reminder when I can actually do the task, it is an ineffective reminder and just keeps getting put off over and over again. Instead, I just need to actually schedule a time when I go through my mail.
Physical reminders can be a big problem for some of us with ADHD because often something out of sight is also out of mind, so we tend to try and leave things where we can see them. But as more and more of those things become part of the background, we just end up with giant piles of clutter everywhere that we don't want to clean up because they are supposed to be reminding us of something.
For physical reminders to be useful, they need to small tasks that we can act on when we see the reminder and that we can't just ignore. This often means that the best way to create a physical reminder is to make some kind of obstacle for what you want to do. For example, after we re-season our cast-iron pans in my house, we dry them in the oven. This is great until we want to heat the oven for something else and then open the oven to find incredibly hot pans that we forgot were in the oven. To prevent this, we simply put a sticky note that says "cast-iron" directly over the buttons to heat the oven - since you have to move the note to use the oven, it means you can't miss the reminder.
We've got digital reminders, though, and with the ubiquity of our smartphones, they are easy to set up. I primarily use three apps on my phone for reminders - the iOS Reminders App, Alarmed, and Google Calendars. The actual apps you use aren't that important as long as you familiarize yourself with their functions. I've gone over these three apps before, and if you'd to hear more about them, go check out Episode 18: How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly (Part 2).
The primary function of digital reminders is that often they travel with you. There aren't many places I go without my phone nowadays, so I can be pretty confident that I'll get any reminders that I put on my phone.
We can also go beyond our phones for digital reminders - all the way back in the first episode - Building Your Toolbox, I talked about ways that you could send an email to yourself in the future to remind you about the tools that you are using. Email can be a great way to create a more detailed reminder for yourself that you might only need to see a couple times a year.
The biggest concern with digital reminders is that it is easy to overdo things and create so many reminders that we simply can't keep up, and they fade into the background. It's essential to limit the number of reminders you are creating and to vary the sounds they notify you with. I also want to reiterate here that we don't want to be creating reminders for things better left for a to-do list. Complex tasks need time carved out in your schedule, and a reminder isn't just going to magically make that time for you. When my phone dings with something for me to do, I want to be able to do the thing it's reminding me of. It's okay if it's telling me what's next on my schedule, but it's not great if I'm just hoping I'll find the time when it goes off.
One last point about both digital and physical reminders is to get rid of ones that you aren't using - I've got a reminder to take my kids to swim lessons after school. Those lessons are ending this week, and so I'm going to be deleting that alarm, so it doesn't start distracting me from the other important reminders. I'm sure we've all got sticky notes up somewhere that are reminding us of something we were supposed to do at least a month ago but never got around to - we don't need to keep those up. You can schedule the time to do it or just let it go and get rid of that sticky. When you've got too much visual and digital clutter around your reminders, it makes the rest of them less effective.
I use both physical and digital reminders throughout the day, they both have their different strengths and weaknesses, and they are going to work differently for you. You've got to find the right combination that works to make sure you're following through with those intentions you know you are going to forget about.
Today’s Top Tips
The most important aspect of a reminder is having it delivered when you can do something about it - you can do this by thinking through the context of a reminder. If you need a reminder at work make sure you are getting it when you are at work.
Reminders are great for reminding you of things, but not for doing unscheduled tasks. Leave projects on your to-do list and actually schedule time for them instead of creating a reminder that you are never going to do.
Reminders can either be short-term or long-term but regardless of what kind of reminder you are creating you want to make sure you are giving yourself enough information to follow through on what you were trying to reminder yourself about.
Create a combination of physical and digital reminders so that you can get the most out of your reminder systems. Physical reminders tend to be faster to set up but digital reminders can be more robust in how they are reminding you.
Mentioned in this Episode
Episode 18: How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly (Part 2)
