With people in the UK balancing work, parenting, socialising, everyday life admin and daily tasks, almost half (42%) confess to having hectic, busy lifestyles, but what do they forget to do the most?
New research1 from greetings card marketplace thortful has found that on average, a quarter (25%) of Brits forget 1,460 tasks, activities and occasions every single year, 5% even forget up to 10 things per day, or 3,650 times per year.
Surveying the UK, thortful found that many errands slip through the net on a daily basis, prompting them to work with Style Sisters to provide five life hacking, organisational tips to help jog people’s memories.
What do people forget the most?
The data shows that people get distracted with a busy mindset, in fact topping the list at 40% is forgetting why they even entered a room, followed by what they were going to say (37%) and people’s names (25%). One in five (21%) don’t even know what day of the week it is. At work 25% keep forgetting their passwords, 13% run out of phone battery after forgetting to charge it and at the end of the day 7% aren’t sure where they parked their car.
Mundane tasks such as taking food out of the freezer, turning up to the supermarket without carrier bags, charging a phone and taking the washing out of the machine rank at 20%, 14% 13% and 11% respectively, whilst more serious activities such as not taking medication (16%) and forgetting to pick up the kids (3%) are also on the list. See the top 15 forgetful activities below:
| Which of the following do you forget to do daily? | % |
| Why you went into a room | 40% |
| What you were going to say | 37% |
| Someone’s name | 25% |
| Passwords | 25% |
| What day of the week it is | 21% |
| Take food out of the freezer | 20% |
| Take my vitamins/ medication | 16% |
| To take carrier bags to the supermarket | 14% |
| Charge your phone | 13% |
| Your glasses | 11% |
| To take the washing out of the washing machine | 11% |
| Keys | 11% |
| Your purse/ wallet | 7% |
| Where the car is parked | 7% |
| Picking the children up/ children’s appointments | 3% |
To help add more structure to people’s lives, thortful has worked closely with the Style Sisters to provide five tips on how to seek calm and keep an organised lifestyle:
- Digital Daily Declutter – Just like the extra layer that can build up in our homes if we don’t do regular tidy’s, our phones can become a source of overload and overwhelm without the little and often approach. For many of us, a lot of our daily life admin, planning and entertainment is on our phones, from digital wallets storing travel tickets, bank cards, banking apps, exercise class bookings and so much more – not even mentioning email inboxes which can quickly get filled up with emails you forgot you even subscribed to and social media apps. If you haven’t grouped apps into folders by theme already, we would really recommend doing this as not only can it help you to more easily find what you need, but your phone screen will look reassuringly organised. Spending 10-15 minutes going through emails and unsubscribing from the ones you no longer want to receive info from will help to stop the inbox overload.
- Limit Your Distractions – Our phones can often be glued to our side from morning to night. This can be a good and a bad thing, we love how social media apps connect us to friends and loved ones, keeping us inspired with new trends and up to date with news, events and places to go. It can be so easy to get out our phone to quickly check an email or switch a playlist and suddenly find you’ve been distracted with message notifications or video on socials and spent far longer than you planned, sometimes even forgetting what you’d originally gone on your phone for in the first place. Taking preventative measures to protect your time can help you to stay focused and not get sidetracked. Sometimes it isn’t practical to simply put your phone in a drawer, so using certain modes can be more effective. You can schedule set modes to come on at specific times of the day and this will pause the apps you’ve selected during that time from being used or pushing notifications. Using this method can been a gamechanger to stay focused.
- An Organised Home For An Organised Mind – Life is busy, around the working week, seeing friends and family, remembering birthdays, walking the dog, doing the food shop – we get it, it can be hard to stay on top of all the life admin! We have seen time and time again how an organised home can help to reduce stress, boost productivity and much more. The saying ‘tidy house, tidy mind’ is famous for a reason. One of the first things we do in any room when organising the space is to do a full detox. After this, it’s about creating easy to keep in place systems to keep things organised. The categorise and contain method can be introduced in any area of your home, from kitchen cupboards to the bathroom cabinet. Group likeminded items together in storage boxes, regularly doing checks where items have use by dates. Doing this will also help you to see how much of each item you have, avoiding over-purchasing and unnecessary spending.
- Pre-Event Reminders – Adding special dates like birthdays and anniversaries to your calendar or diary is great but it doesn’t always help us to actually remember to buy the present or card beforehand! Rather than have separate reminders a few days before each event, why not get into the habit of creating a monthly events reminder, listing all the key dates you need to organise, book or buy things for in advance. You can usually order items online and add your preferred delivery date, meaning you will no longer have to stress about grabbing something last minute. The first month or two this might feel like an extra thing on the to do list, but once it becomes a habit, we can guarantee you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner!
- Five minutes peace – Carve out some time in your day to just sit and be. It can feel counterintuitive to do this when you have a long list of things to do but having a moment to calm your mind is so important. Whether it is sitting in the garden first thing with a cup of tea or not immediately jumping out of bed and into the shower and taking a moment to practice some daily meditation, mindfulness or breathwork. These moments of stillness and calm are often the time you get clarity on important things to tackle first. It sounds short but starting off with five minutes can be a good place to start, as you it feels achievable and much easier to fit in on a day-to-day basis.
For more advice on reminders and organisation pointers, visit thortful’s blog here: https://www.thortful.com/blog/forgetful-brits/
