The trouble with lists...
Jan. 17th, 2012 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfand other forms of organising my life:
I met a couple of friends after Christmas when I was staying with my parents. One of them I made an appointment with for Tuesday evening; the other, for Wednesday afternoon. I wrote these appointments down. I also got a mail, on Tuesday morning, from the person I was supposed to meet on Wednesday afternoon, saying "see you tomorrow".
Pretty unmistakable, right?
Yet I still ended up at the place I was supposed to be on Wednesday afternoon on Tuesday instead.
One should think that the word "tomorrow" in that mail should have tipped me off that the meet-up was, in fact, y'know, *tomorrow*.
What had happened?
I had written down those meet-ups on my To Do List for the week, using a short form for the names of the days: "Di" (="Tue") and "Mi" (="Wed"). "Di" and "Mi" are pretty similar. Similar enough that, in my easily confused brain, they get swapped around sometimes (as do "Di" and "Do" as well as "Mo" and "Mi". For some reason, "Sa" and "So" seem to be largely immune, despite the similarity - which sucks, because those are the only two days of the week that are slightly less relevant to work matters, being the days of the weekend. Couldn't a couple of work days be immune instead of the stupid weekend?)
And here's the thing: if this swapping-things-around-in-my-brain happens right after I've made an appointment, *it sticks*. Even if I write it down right and look at it again later repeatedly. Even if I get a mail that says "see you tomorrow". If my brain thinks "Di" it will see and hear "Di", even if all the actual written documents say "Mi".
And here's the clincher: this happens even when I don't use short forms. It's enough that my brain apparently *thinks* in these short forms.
The same, incidentally, happens with certain numbers - in fact, it's even worse with those. There are even more ways of messing up with them. E.g.: "2" and "12" are easy to mix up because they both begin with "zw" (or "tw" in English ;-)). If I opt for "14:00" instead, I tend to get it mixed up with 4, because apparently my brain stops processing the number after "four...". Etc. The possibilities for confusion are literally endless.
Another thing that can confuse me is the layout of lists and notes. I.e. I can confuse things based on *where* on a piece of paper I've written them down.
There are plenty more of these. Basically, my brain is *really* good at misremembering certain kinds of information. There's a German word, "Gedächtnisbrücken", "memory bridges", for the kind of mnemonic aids you can use to remember abstract information better. My brain seems very good at building bridges to nowhere.
I met a couple of friends after Christmas when I was staying with my parents. One of them I made an appointment with for Tuesday evening; the other, for Wednesday afternoon. I wrote these appointments down. I also got a mail, on Tuesday morning, from the person I was supposed to meet on Wednesday afternoon, saying "see you tomorrow".
Pretty unmistakable, right?
Yet I still ended up at the place I was supposed to be on Wednesday afternoon on Tuesday instead.
One should think that the word "tomorrow" in that mail should have tipped me off that the meet-up was, in fact, y'know, *tomorrow*.
What had happened?
I had written down those meet-ups on my To Do List for the week, using a short form for the names of the days: "Di" (="Tue") and "Mi" (="Wed"). "Di" and "Mi" are pretty similar. Similar enough that, in my easily confused brain, they get swapped around sometimes (as do "Di" and "Do" as well as "Mo" and "Mi". For some reason, "Sa" and "So" seem to be largely immune, despite the similarity - which sucks, because those are the only two days of the week that are slightly less relevant to work matters, being the days of the weekend. Couldn't a couple of work days be immune instead of the stupid weekend?)
And here's the thing: if this swapping-things-around-in-my-brain happens right after I've made an appointment, *it sticks*. Even if I write it down right and look at it again later repeatedly. Even if I get a mail that says "see you tomorrow". If my brain thinks "Di" it will see and hear "Di", even if all the actual written documents say "Mi".
And here's the clincher: this happens even when I don't use short forms. It's enough that my brain apparently *thinks* in these short forms.
The same, incidentally, happens with certain numbers - in fact, it's even worse with those. There are even more ways of messing up with them. E.g.: "2" and "12" are easy to mix up because they both begin with "zw" (or "tw" in English ;-)). If I opt for "14:00" instead, I tend to get it mixed up with 4, because apparently my brain stops processing the number after "four...". Etc. The possibilities for confusion are literally endless.
Another thing that can confuse me is the layout of lists and notes. I.e. I can confuse things based on *where* on a piece of paper I've written them down.
There are plenty more of these. Basically, my brain is *really* good at misremembering certain kinds of information. There's a German word, "Gedächtnisbrücken", "memory bridges", for the kind of mnemonic aids you can use to remember abstract information better. My brain seems very good at building bridges to nowhere.
