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My careless issue

Anything related to matters of the mind

simplymoto

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Hi,

Thanks to FLF I’ve been able to teach myself to meditate daily, quit porn, and do TOP 3 things daily and avoid procrastination.

Today something shitty happened. I have always been a careless person and I booked a flight with the wrong dates , and upon knowing my meeting dates changed rescheduled again to a new date which is wrong again. I feel bad that I do these things, last week I left my keys in the office and had to drive back to pick up. How do I solve this bad habit, I am worried that it will affect my business and life one day.

Anyone trained themselves to become sharp and mindful? Advice appreciated.
 
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Defection

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I think that being present and taking on the mindset of 'how you do anything, is how you do everything' is extremely useful in this scenario.

It's about doing everything that you do well, whether it's brushing your teeth or any typical mundane daily task. If you're going to do it, do it properly rather than just mindlessly scrubbing your toothbrush around your mouth.

If I was to book flights, I would personally triple-check the dates before booking. It might not be convenient, but I bet you're wishing you'd done it at the time. I, too, have done this, and that was the way I have so far managed to make sure it hasn't happened again since!
 

StrikingViper69

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I have a pocket for each item - phone, wallet and keys each get their own pocket. When I leave the house, I do a “3 pat check” and quickly pay each pocket to make sure it has something in it.

little habits like that make it easy to double check things
 

LuckyPup

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Hi,

Thanks to FLF I’ve been able to teach myself to meditate daily, quit porn, and do TOP 3 things daily and avoid procrastination.

Today something shitty happened. I have always been a careless person and I booked a flight with the wrong dates , and upon knowing my meeting dates changed rescheduled again to a new date which is wrong again. I feel bad that I do these things, last week I left my keys in the office and had to drive back to pick up. How do I solve this bad habit, I am worried that it will affect my business and life one day.

Anyone trained themselves to become sharp and mindful? Advice appreciated.
Sounds like you might be distracted. Too much screen time, maybe? Develop micro processes and mental checklists for regular events. A couple of examples:

1) When arriving home or at work, have a place dedicated to dump your things, so they're always in the same place and you know where to find them. It sounds trite, but "a place for everything and everything in its place" can be a useful mantra for those of us who are organizationally challenged.

2) Before leaving home or work, go through your mental checklist:

keys? check
wallet? check
phone? check

3) You can develop the same "checklist" mentality for any process, like scheduling calendar events.

Did I double check the date? check
Did I double check the time? check
Is the event on my calendar and everything looks right? check

Surgeon Atul Gawande wrote a great book called, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

Short description from Amazon below.

In his latest bestseller, Atul Gawande shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with it.

The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry—in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can’t, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields, from medicine and disaster recovery to professions and businesses of all kinds. And the insights are making a difference. Already, a simple surgical checklist from the World Health Organization designed by following the ideas described here has been adopted in more than twenty countries as a standard for care and has been heralded as “the biggest clinical invention in thirty years” (The Independent).
 
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GigMistress

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I used to have problems with this sort of thing. Not as extreme as the flight issue, but, for example, I have locked my keys in my car multiple times. For me, I think it is a distraction issue, because I am often writing in my head while I'm doing something else. This serves my profession well, because I can often wrap up folding a load of towels or a long walk with the dog and sit down and type out a near-final version of something that fully formed in my head while I was doing something else. But, not so great for managing the details of life.

Little processes can make a big difference. Now, for instance, I never lock my car door unless I'm looking at my key. I've built pulling out my key and looking at it into my automatic process, and it solved that problem.

But, for some things, I went in the other direction. I made a conscious choice that getting better at, say, making travel plans wasn't really going to benefit me or my business. When I have to travel for business, my assistant takes care of everything from booking to obtaining flight-friendly versions of my shampoo and such and placing them in the mandated plastic bag. Of course, I COULD do these things myself, and for a long time I did because I felt like it was lazy and/or pretentious to have someone else do it for me. Eventually, I realized that spending time doing things I don't like and am not good or efficient at when those things could easily be done by someone else made no sense at all
 

AFMKelvin

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Just triple check everything. I have the same problem. I've lost a lot of wallets. Until I bought a wallet and phone protector combo. It's not the only be that you flip. I have a pocket for my phone everytime I transition from one place to another I tap my pockets and feel for the phone. This has prevented me from losing my phone many times and my wallet. With the combo I'm always thinking about my phone and wallet so it makes it extra important.

With house keys I have a lanyard that I tie to the belt loops of my pants and it hangs inside my pocket. I haven't lost them in forever by doing that.

Once I get home everything has a sport. I have a charging station for the phone and a hook on the wall for the keys.
 

Jon L

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I've done that kind of thing. The first key is to laugh at yourself and not take this so seriously. The second thing is to be aware of the kinds of ways you screw things up so that you triple check them in the future. For example:

I'm notorious for scheduling meetings at the wrong time/day. I've scheduled meetings with important clients for 2 AM on Sunday when it was supposed to be 2PM on Monday. So, any time I schedule a meeting in Outlook now, I look at it and read it aloud to myself twice to make sure I didn't mess it up. You'd think this would prevent all scheduling mishaps, but you'd be wrong. Just a few months ago, I scheduled a meeting with a client that was four hours off the agreed upon time. Instead of adding two hours to the time because of our time difference, I subtracted.

I also always put my keys and wallet into my right pocket and cell phone in my left. When my kids borrow my keys, I tell them, 'Its your job to bring these keys back to me and put them in my hand.' (Otherwise, they put them on my desk or some place similar, and I lose track of them.)
 

simplymoto

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More background: When I was younger, I used to think that carelessness is something that I can "overcome" easily hence no sweat. And as I grow older I realized it has stuck around. Many things I do on FLF is to create an effective lifestyle, allowing myself and my company with 100+ people to grow right. If I can't manage my life well, how can I manage a future multi hundred million dollar company?

@Defection 'how you do anything, is how you do everything' I guess I have to start with the little things, brushing teeth, cleaning dishes etc. And yes, my life is sometime a mess - dishes all over, clothes in dryers, table's a mess.

@LuckyPup Thanks, I'll start with making sure my wallet, business card deck, keys and handphone are placed in a bowl.

@Jon L Read it out loud, good tip!

@Yzn, yes I am. Due to work, always texting, on social media, etc.
 
Last edited:

Ninjakid

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Oh shit dude, I used to be REALLY bad with this. I used to lose things all the time, forget things, it was causing me a lot of stress. Here are som me things I did that helped:

FORM HABITS:

I have a handbag that I carry with me, and I ALWAYS keep my keys and wallet in there. I put them in there automatically. Since I started doing that about 5 years ago, I’ve misplaced these things maybe TWICE and that’s only because I didn’t put them away that time. But I used to lose that stuff every other day.

Another thing I stopped doing is forgetting my keys. You know how I solved that? No matter what I always pull out my keys and lock the door before I leave. I don’t ask someone to do it for me. I do it myself so I alway know I took them with me.

SLOW YOUR MIND DOWN:

I noticed I stopped being so forgetful when I learned to slow my mind and focus on what I’m doing in the present moment. Make a habit of focusing entirely on what you’re doing at all times. Meditating frequently also helps.

MANAGE STRESS LEVELS:

If you’re stressed your mind will be distracted, so you need to figure out what’s stressing you and stop doing that. For me, I stopped rushing myself to get places, and plan things ahead so I know everything I need to do. I try to make my life as unpredictable as possible.

DOUBLE CHECK THINGS:

Make sure things like filling out forms or buying things are done correctly. Take some time to look it over and scrutinize. I made this a habit and noticed I rarely make mistakes with this now. In fact people around me find me quite nauseating how I do this, but I like having peace of mind.

Everything i’ve described is part of cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s just changing your behaviour, and thus changing your life. Try these things and your life will be a lot better
 
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Leo Hendrix

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Hi,

Thanks to FLF I’ve been able to teach myself to meditate daily, quit porn, and do TOP 3 things daily and avoid procrastination.

Today something shitty happened. I have always been a careless person and I booked a flight with the wrong dates , and upon knowing my meeting dates changed rescheduled again to a new date which is wrong again. I feel bad that I do these things, last week I left my keys in the office and had to drive back to pick up. How do I solve this bad habit, I am worried that it will affect my business and life one day.

Anyone trained themselves to become sharp and mindful? Advice appreciated.

Minimalism, low info diet, selective ignorance, getting organized, creating systems.
 

Pink Sheep

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I'm guessing you have too much on your mind.
If your brain is overloaded you miss these details. Start writing down your thoughts, organize your plans, dont leave it to the brain.

get an idea? write it down, then forget about it untill you're ready to work on it.
Some problem come up? fix it immediately, make someone else fix it.

Could also be low glucose in your blood.

Habits like checking for keys in your pocket every time you walk to the door is also a nice fail-safe.
 

JordanK

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I also booked a flight & hotel for the wrong date. Only realized the night before the flight when my dad rang me to inquire what my flight number was as he likes tracking the plane on those flight radar websites. Mild panic ensued and I ended up having to fly into a different airport and get a train to the city I was attending an event at. Booked a room on AirBnB in a house with a lovely elderly couple instead of the fancy city center hotel.

I ended up meeting some really cool people as a result of this mistake. In fact I ran into another guy from my country on the bus and we went to get food and he showed me the city. Later that evening we went to a big football game too. We still keep in touch occasionally about the teams results. All in all it probably cost me about 600 dollars at a time when I couldn't really afford to be making mistakes like this. It's all in the mindset though.. acknowledge the mistake, rectify it and make the best of the situation. Also up your work ethic for the next week or two to make back the money you lost hahah
 
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biophase

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Just slow down... on everything.

Stop multitasking. When you are booking flights don’t have the tv on or be listening to a podcast.
 

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