Question: Do you have any rituals that you do in order to remember something?

Rohan Kapitany answered on 21 Sep 2017:

I seem to forget things a lot. I know that there are some clever tricks, though. For example, nurses in hospitals work very hard. They might be doing one important thing, then a second important thing distracts them. So they don’t forget to come back and do the first thing, they will pick something up or take something out of their pocket and hold it (like a pen, or a piece of blank paper). Then, when they’ve finished the first thing they realize they’re holding something for no apparent reason. Then they are forced to remember why they picked it up.

But rituals themselves are ways of remember something. If we ritualize something, that is, do it the same way, every day, all the time, we can do it without thinking about it at all. For example, you probably brush your teeth in the exact same way every day – tomorrow morning you should try thinking about it, and brushing them differently. Rituals are their own way of remembering, which is super strange.