Further important changes

Here we go again: The personal organisation system I designed for myself earlier this month needed further changes. That’s not a surprise, of course, but one of the things I needed to change was.

It was only around ten days after I first talked about the new system that I needed to to make some adjustments to it. Those changes were all physical—the structure of the system—but they all related to the problems I was trying to solve. That was only half true this time

As I started to use the “to do” lists, I realised pretty quickly that I needed to use a pencil to write things on it, not a pen. That’s because I move tasks around all the time, and crossing things out was getting messy. Fortunately, Nigel left a crap ton (a technical measurement of weight) of mechanical pencils—the sort that are like pens, but with thin pencil “lead” that’s replaceable. It was a simple fix for a small problem. It made the lists much easier to use—and tidier, too.

A few days later, however, a new problem emerged with a part of the system not contained in the ring-binder: The Reminders App.

The “to do” lists were meant to help me remember things I’d like to do that aren’t critical and/or time sensitive—like doing laundry or running the dishwasher, for example. If something has a deadline, I put it on my Calendar or in the Reminders App, and those items are accessible on all my devices. That works great—but it’s absolutely not infallible.

Back in February 2021, I wrote about using the Reminders App to remind me to take my prescriptions. At the time, I was taking medication twice a day, and I forgot the second dose in particular often enough that it was a problem. Reminders helped me stay on track, so much so that I continued to use it when I dropped down to taking the pills once per day.

Around four months ago, give or take, the problem returned: I didn’t take my pills one day, but I marked it as “completed” on Reminders that day. I had no recollection of why I did that, but it’s reasonable to assume that I was going to get up and go take my pills—and then forgot.

My attempted revision was to leave that day’s empty pill pouch on the kitchen bench so I could look at it and verify that I had, in fact, taken my pills that day. That seemed to work well—until it didn’t, and the missing doses of medication problem unexpectedly returned.

This past Wednesday, I was tidying up the kitchen before heading to bed, and I noticed the pill pouch from Tuesday sitting on the bench. I was confused: Had I taken Tuesday’s pills that day? I thought I may have because I again marked the task as completed. But that would mean that I missed a day at some point.

I looked in my kitchen rubbish bin, and there was no pill pouch sitting there. I desperately tried to remember what I’d done that morning—me? Remember something?! However, I did remember that when I had my breakfast that morning, I sat in my chair, instead of what I usually do: Stand in the kitchen until I’m done (I don't have a big breakfast…). So, apparently, I again mistakenly marked the task as completed. It was midnight by that point, which meant it was closer to the next day’s time to take my pills than it was to that Wednesday’s morning dose. In that situation, the advice is to wait until the next dose time. I didn’t have a very good sleep that night: I kept worrying myself awake.

What this means is that Reminders was too easy to screw up, and even leaving the pouch on the bench wasn’t helping me. My solution—working so far—was to combine the two.

At 10am every morning, the Reminders App tells me to take my medication, just like always. When I do, I still put the pouch from that day’s dose on the kitchen bench. Then, at 2pm, I get another alert from Reminders—“Double check medication”—on my watch, all my devices, and my desktop Mac. My routine is to go to the kitchen and physically inspect the pouch, making sure it’s there, for that day, and that it’s completely empty. Only then can I mark the 2pm Reminder as completed. When I clean up the kitchen in the evning (usually before I go to bed), I put that day’s empty pouch into the rubbish. I don't do that any earlier because sometimes I like to triple, quadruple, etc., check that I’ve taken that day’s pills.

This revision still has the same flaw as the original system: I can mark the double-checking as completed even if it’s not, however, since my watch tells me stand up for five minutes every hour, anyway, I hope (!) I can just incorporate the 2pm checking into that routine. I’m also hoping that knowing the Reminder is coming will by itself remind me to take my medication if I haven’t done so, but marked the 10am Reminder as “completed”, anyway.

There isn't a lot more I can do, apart from adding yet more reminders. I picked 2pm because it’s still close enough to 10am that there’s no problem taking the medication then, and it won’t mess up my schedule for the next day, but I could add more Reminders if I have to. I’d rather not annoy myself with endless taps on the wrist from my watch alerting me to a Reminder to check that I took my medication that day. Even so, if I need to do that, I absolutely will.

Taking my medication is my only non-negotiable time-specific thing in every day, and it’s supposed to be done at roughly the same time each day. However, because it’s a daily thing, and in the morning, it’s easy to go through it all on auto-pilot. That’s why I started leaving the empty pouch on the bench in the first place: It gave me a way to reassure myself that I took my pills, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

It annoys me to have to develop systems to make sure I remember things that are so important, but it is what it is. I guess I should just be glad that I’m clever enough to come up with systems that work for me—for awhile, anyway. Still, I’m certain there will be further changes. That’s not a surprise, either.