As you get older do you find yourself forgetting simple everyday tasks?

Our memories are so full because the ole brain cells are soaked up with 50 to 80 years of memories.  We certainly don’t want to expend the energy to remember new ways to do common chores.  

Here are a few tips on how to organize your daily life, it could help.  

A university study a few years back concluded that the average person of today has to make upwards of 35,000 decisions every day.  

And if you think about it, that includes what to eat for breakfast, how you want your egg or eggs, what cereal to eat, whether you want peanut butter on your toast, etc.  

That’s less than a minute to decide what to have for breakfast.  That doesn’t include what utensil to eat it with, or plate to eat it on.

The average Neanderthal had to make less than 50 decisions a day.  Attack that mammoth or chase this rabbit.  Cook the meat or eat it raw.  It’s all relative.

What can we do about it?

Take for instance the morning routine, we get up, we take our meds, we floss, brush our teeth, shave (there’s a joke in there), then shower. That’s a prime example of something that might help – a daily routine.

If we floss first, we forget to take the meds. If we can’t find the floss or it’s been moved it takes a few seconds to stop, regroup and either look for the floss or determine that it ran out the day before, it takes a conscious effort to find another roll of it. And that’s a prime example of our daily routine BEING INTERRUPTED.

As we go through this transition from middle age to elderly that all humans go through (if we’re fortunate enough to live long enough), a good idea to adopt would be to deliberately set ourselves up for success in our daily endeavors by using routines.

And as we go through our daily chores, we unconsciously set up routines to guide us through the day so we can concentrate on the important issues. Both my wife and I have alarms set on our phones, giving us not-so-subtle reminders that this needs attention or that needs action.

Some examples of what we’re talking about.

A few years ago while my boss, (yes I still worked for living) was giving us a rundown of the day’s activities, my phone alarm went off and I quietly sneaked out to punch the time clock.

All of a sudden the boss and my fellow workers came hustling into the room grumbling to each other as if I wasn’t even present, and that I hadn’t informed everyone that it was time to punch in. They are all so used to ME reminding THEM to punch in, they were taken aback when I didn’t tell them it was time to punch in, including the boss!

Of course, I’m the old guy who dishes out much more good humored grief than I get, so they were relishing the prospect of getting me back, it was interesting to note they still expected me to take care of them.

The bottom line is when we’re setting up these little routines, we end up helping other people with their routines as well.

Anyway, back to my blog!

What else can you do to organize your daily life?

When I used to arrive at work in the morning, I would take the ole lunchbox to my work van, grab the previous day’s paperwork, and head into the building. On days I didn’t bring a lunch, more often than not, I would forget the previous days’ paperwork in the van, which means invariably, if I needed a piece of new hardware for that day, I’d be coming back to the shop to get it.

Another thing my soulmate and I have done is try to increase the organization of the things we use every day.

We’ve ditched the dressers and chest of drawers and gone with cubicles in the bedroom. All of our socks, pants, shirts, blouses, underwear, etc, etc are now visible, so instead of searching through drawers we just scan the cubicles looking for what we need.

For me, the socks are all stacked together in one cubby so I choose a pair simply by looking at the toes and pulling a match out. I can readily see my stack of the tee and polo shirts allowing easy selection of the right one from the stack of 40 shirts that I own.

As you are progressing through the daily grind, think of ways you can include a little routine here, a little extra organization there, saving a little extra brainpower for use when you’re learning how to create a website or deciding where to place a Google Adsense ad in your blog.

It just makes life a little easier and more organized for us Baby Boomers when you organize your daily life.

Now we’ve discovered a new program that helps with the transition from a working adult to a retired adult, as the transition can be scary, considering a nine to five job gets you out of bed, fed and off to contribute in some way to society.  That new program is called The Platinum Years.

Go here for a quick video on the program.

One little word of warning, if you are concerned your, or a loved one’s, memory problem is more than just age, please seek professional help.

As always, if you have any questions, we love hearing from you, ask below!

Also please leave us a comment!  

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Steve