Open Loops

How to Make a Homemade Tie Stay

A professional appearance goes a long way in  creating a positive image in business relationships.  One thing that has always bothered me is when someone’s tie doesn’t stay centered and drifts off to the side, up under the suit coat, or blows over the shoulder in a strong breeze.  Since tie pins and metal tie clasps are not in vogue, here is an easy way to create a tie stay that is invisible holds a tie down better than anything on the market.   When I was an art teacher, I followed the old adage that you should dress for where you are going, not for where you are.  Therefore, although I taught middle school art, I dressed in suits and ties.  Invariably, my tie would fall forward as I leaned over the table and would drag through paint.  After a lot of ties were ruined, I came upon a simple solution.

The Easy Way to Remember Numbers

You’ve done your homework, haven’t you?  If not, go back and read the post on lists and then practice memorizing a few lists.  This lesson on remembering numbers will be useless unless you learn that skill first.  Plus, as I’ve said before, linking items in a list is a basic skill that we’ll be building on.  Go do it and then come back.

That should leave the rest of us who have practiced and are ready to move on.

Remembering numbers is quite easy.  You first turn the number into a picture — or series of pictures if the number is long — and then link them.  Before we can do that, we need to learn how to turn a number into a picture.  The problem is that numbers do not translate into pictures as easily as words.  What do we do?  You’ve got it — we turn the number into words, nouns to be specific, which can be things that can be pictured in our minds.  Don’t worry, I’ll take you through it step by step.

How to Remember Lists - Lesson 1

It’s been a long week of activities required to bring school to a close for the summer.  After textbook inventories, key management, room checkouts, and the myriad of other things needing done, things are beginning to wind down.  This gives me time to continue our series on memory.

We will start very simply:  How to remember a string of items.  We start with this project because it teaches a basic skill, upon which, more advanced techniques are built.  For example, to remember numbers, we have a system to turn any number into a picture that the mind can see.  Long numbers wind up being a series (or list) of pictures that we will remember using the technique introduced today.  It goes back to the old adage that we must crawl before we walk.  Today, we crawl.

A Low-Tech Notes Retrieval System

During our day, many of us, by choice or by employer requirement, document our activities, calls, meetings, and customer visits in some form.  For some, it is an employer generated form.  For others, the Palm’s notes component fills the bill.  Outlook also provides a place for notes but, not being portable, they are useless away from the office.  EssentialPIM has one of the best note components that I’ve seen in PIM software, with text formatting being available, capability to insert graphics files, and an ability to attach supporting documents.  Yet, I choose to go low-tech when I take my notes.  Fast, quick, very portable, my Moleskine fills my needs perfectly.

Reg, over at Elemental Truths, posted about his RAM Text system today, so I know I’m not alone desiring a low-tech answer.  In fact, he added some commentary on how he set up his system, how he uses color pens and highlighters, and how he uses different sections of the notebook to document his day.  I use very similar tools and techniques as Reg, and can vouch for its usefulness and efficacy.

I would add, however, that to really make the low-tech answer truly work, one has to set it up to make information retrieval easy.  The work for this starts when the book almost full.

Remember That Thought Tomorrow Morning Without Writing It Down

We’ve all been there.  We’ve been trying to get to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow and we have to get to sleep.  After 15 minutes, drowsiness has set in and our eyelids are about shut.  Then, suddenly, we remember a piece of information that we absolutely have to remember tomorrow morning.  We shake off our drowsiness, get out of bed, and grope our way to the dining room to write ourselves a note, and then stumble our way back to bed to start the process all over again.  Thirty minutes wasted.  Some will mitigate the damage by placing a note pad on the night stand.  If you’re like me, however, my mind takes a few minutes to gain enough clarity to be able to write.  As a result, just writing it down is a struggle.

There is an easier way.  Although there are no guarantees, someone once taught me to do anything unusual that, in the morning light, will make one wonder why it was done.  This should be something that requires less clarity and effort than grabbing a pad of paper, finding a pen, and turning on the light to write a note.  So, reach over and turn your alarm clock upside down, lay the night stand lamp on its side, place a shoe in a drawer, or drape your house coat over the lamp.  In the morning, when you rise, the first thought you will have after rising will be, “Why the hell did I do that??”  At that time, natural memory will take over and remind you.

In the years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve remembered my important reminder each morning.  Give it a try and see if it works for you as well.