Lists, calendars, notes, online diaries, pop-up reminders – people use lots of standard methods to organise themselves. All of them work for some of us, or for some of the time. Just don’t be fooled into thinking these are your only options. If none of them works for a particular purpose, find another way to organise yourself.

One member of my family has a foolproof and unorthodox technique for reminding himself of those things you only think of just before getting into bed. He turns his toothbrush upside-down. When he gets up in the morning he sees the inverted toothbrush and instantly remembers the thing. Apparently it’s never failed. Personally I think I’d just stare at the toothbrush for ages wondering what the hell I was supposed to be remembering, but it works for him.

I have no idea how he stumbled on this strategy, but it’s pleasingly creative. And that’s the point – you can be as imaginative and as random as you like about how you organise your life. So long as it works for you, go for it. There are no rules.¹⁵ Don’t get trapped in a box where the only options are a to-do list a diary or a reminder pinging up at you.

One child I know has dyspraxia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This particular child is bright and at a mainstream school, but struggles with organisational stuff because his brain doesn’t coordinate itself in the way most people’s do. So the family has become very imaginative about ways to help him remember to do things at school, such as bring home his games kit, or turn up to a lunchtime club, or hand in a piece of work.

This child has learnt to develop his own strategies. Depending on what he’s trying to organise he might colour-code things, or tie pieces of ribbon to his school bag, or set a timer on his phone (he sometimes needs help remembering to set the reminder). Sometimes he has lists most of us wouldn’t need – such as a detailed list of items to take to school each day, where most kids would just work it out from a timetable of that day’s lessons. Sometimes he switches between accents to talk about different things, because it helps him differentiate them in his own mind. Of course, people with ASD and dyspraxia are often particularly good at this kind of thinking, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t use it too.

A lot of people work better in some medium other than writing, in which case other approaches often will win out over to-do lists and calendars and sticky notes. If you’re musical, you might be able to harness that to help you remember. Maybe turn your reminder into a song. Using colours in some way works well for some people, or visualisation: if you see yourself baking a cake, going through all the steps, that might be an easier way to remember which ingredients to get when you’re at the supermarket than trying to write it down.

So don’t be bound by traditional strategies for remembering things, except where you’ve established that they’re the best approach for you. Find the methods that help you remember, and who cares whether they work for anyone else?