Phone Keys Wallet

I am consistently two minutes late to meetings. When in new places or surroundings I lose possessions easily. I get tired late afternoon, but am high energy late morning and late evening. After time with friends, I need to be alone to recharge.

My behavior is predictable. This predictability can be used to my advantage. So instead of using willpower alone to being more effective, I can use hacks to work with and around them.

Phone keys wallet

I’ve heard this thousands of times. Before leaving the house, my family would shout out “phone, keys, wallet”, because they knew I’d forget them, waltz right out the door, and have to turn the car around. What they were doing is understanding my weakness, and trying to hack my thought process through this repetitive line.

Hacking (or delegating)

Awareness come first, creativity second. Once you understand your problem, try to generate ideas without solving it with sheer willpower. For example, I used to lose my wallet often. But I never lost my phone. I always had my phone on me. Like many others who are addicted, I didn’t go long without fiddling with it.

So I bought a phone case with a wallet in it. To my friends horror, they figured I’d lose both all the time! Yet, since then I’ve never lost my wallet.

I used used this method to saving my wallet rather than my willpower to change this bad habit.

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