Sometimes the pleasant new ideas aren’t actually new ideas at all. They’re extra just like the new utility of an antique idea.
Case in point: A year ago, I wrote about a simple trick my uncle taught me to keep away from forgetting critical things.
It got here up while we went sailing on his boat in Rhode Island. As we came lower back to the harbor and tied up, he advised me about the closing two steps he usually takes on the end of a cruise.
First, he takes out his phone and takes a photograph of the boat engine ignition within the “off” role.
Then, he takes a second photograph of the knot he used to tie the boat to the buoy.
As he instructed me remaining 12 months:
“This is so whilst you awaken at 2 a.M. Thinking, ‘Did I tie up the boat efficaciously?’ you don’t have to pressure an hour again to the dock to find out.”
Mind. Completely. Blown.
I suggest I forget about things all the time. It’s been a task my entire existence.
So, for the past 12 months, at my uncle’s implicit idea, I’ve been taking reminder images of the entirety.
Now, I’ve come upon a fair greater useful utility — specifically for when you’re packing and traveling.
The final packing hack
Here’s the way it works. Again, it’s so easy that I can’t consider I haven’t been doing this my complete existence -; or at least for the 15 years or so I’ve had a cellphone with a camera.
The problem we’re fixing here is that nagging feeling you get whilst speeding to get out the door or hurrying via an airport, trying to don’t forget whether you packed some thing crucial.
It’s difficult sufficient when you’re going someplace by your self. It’s even extra of a task whilst you’re packing an entire circle of relatives for per week-long go to vacation at the beach.
So, what I’ve learned to do, way to my uncle, is to take picture after picture after photograph of my baggage as I’m packing.
I did it last weekend, as my own family and I have been leaving for per week at Cape Cod.
Imagine the ones images, however repeated time and again and over for every of about 25 baggage and programs loaded up inside the back of my Honda CR-V.
Yes, you can without problems wind up with one hundred photos to your smartphone. But so what?
You store a lot time and drama in a while, whilst you’re trying to consider if you packed sufficient sunscreen — otherwise to consider which bag to look in to discover the child’s ought to-have midnight stuffed animal.
It also works for commercial enterprise travel, while you sit up in a panic for your flight, looking to recollect in case you packed your get dressed footwear — or if you’ll ought to go to that assembly when you land within the Nikes you wore on the plane.
Also works for home reworking
I noticed my uncle again for the duration of our recent holiday, and I found out I shouldn’t preserve this new software of his antique concept to myself.
So, I must additionally percentage a stronger version of this packing hack — from while we made over one of the rooms in our house earlier this yr.
This required packing approximately 15 packing containers really worth of gadgets and knick-knacks into our attic. I shot pics of every box as I loaded it, then drew a number with a huge Sharpie on every of them, 1 via 15, and took a photograph of the numbers, too.
Everything changed into approximately one hundred times easier to locate simply with the aid of looking at my cellphone.
Brilliantly easy
I know that when you get right down to this, it is all a remember of documenting your lifestyles — something a lot of us are doing anyway.
It’s a remarkably easy hack, and one that takes mere seconds. But for me, it’s been fantastic.
And this is the point. You’re almost truely strolling round almost 100 percent of the time with a digital camera to your pocket it really is a ways extra effective than something that existed even just a few years ago.
Use it. And then, use the part of your brain which you loose up for matters which can be an awful lot greater important.
