frustrated - and it’s my fault
It feels like I can’t do anything right lately. I keep forgetting things. I’m utterly depressed.
I forgot I had a lunch appointment with my friend yesterday, and I ordered take out food. So fine, no one bought my take out food and I put it in the office freezer. But today, I microwaved the food along with the styrofoam, which is apparently not the best thing to do. So I dumped the food after that, and wasted RM3.30 but it feels more like RM330.
Then I made someone upset because I forgot to setup a system before I left for my Sipadan trip, and I had to go into the office before midnight to settle everything before leaving. I can’t seem to handle that I made her upset very well.
Incidentally, that compounded upon the fact that I gave one of my colleagues the wrong order of fried rice, which had to be thrown away after being eaten halfway. He wasn’t upset about it, but the one who was upset with my missing the system quoted the incident to me, as if to say, “see, you are a bumbling idiot”.
Ok, so I am. And I’ve been that way for a long time now. So, what can I do?
Tagged as frustration + Categorized as life/work
Well, go back to root cause, and then institute systems to remind you. Usually when we forget it is because the reminder doesn’t appear at the point when we need to be reminded to do taht thing.
styrofoam: stick a label on the microwave to remind you to only use microwavable containers–other office mates will probably be grateful you did.
Missing the system set-up. Before you go on any trip or leave, devise a checklist to check all upcoming appointments, to-do lists and commitments. All the things you need to do, need to be captured somewhere (you need a capturing tool and then process these items daily so you won’t miss anything)…do not leave anything in your mind to remember to do–you will forget–short-term memory is only 7+- 2 items, these lists need to be reviewed at least once a week to make sure you don’t miss anything. If the item to do was captured in an e-mail, you should put a reminder for that e-mail to pop-up (and give yourself buffer time for this - 20-50%). If it is an appointment I am paranoid, I write it in my paper calendar, I set an e-mail reminder, and a hp reminder giving myself 1 day to 1 hour buffer times.
Ordering the rice—always repeat the order to the person who ordered and who takes your order to make sure it is the correct one…how do you remember this…do this repetition with every request someone asks you to do, and get people to repeat what you request from them everytime for a couple of weeks–and you will hardwire this into your system–how? set an hourly reminder to do this everyday…Chung