I just did this (again- I do it all the time). I’d call it “old guy syndrome” but I’ve been doing similar things all my life.
[ol]
[li]I’m upstairs in my office. I remember something I need downstairs[/li][li]As I head for the stairs, I notice something upstairs that should go downstairs. Two birds with one stone![/li][li]I put the thing in its place downstairs.[/li][li]I go back upstairs to my office, sit down, and only then remember I forgot the original thing I went downstairs for.[/li][/ol]
I eat my breakfast at work. This morning I headed over to the refrigerator to get milk for my cereal. When I got there, I remembered that I had grapes in the refrigerator. I removed the milk and grapes, and then proceeded to wash the grapes and headed back to my office, leaving the milk sitting on the counter. Fortunately, the cereal reminded me that I still needed the milk, otherwise it could easily have sat there all day (or all night, like the stuff I printed out yesterday to take home with me). :smack:
I do the thing where I go to the grocery store and come home with a couple of bags of stuff, but NOT the one thing I went to get. Use a list, you say? I do use a list. :smack:
The OP’s scenario is quite common. Suppose you plan to go to the kitchen and get a snack, and by the way take a couple dirty dishes out to the kitchen. So ten minutes later when you actually go you either 1. forget to take the dirty dishes or 2. take the dirty dishes out to the kitchen–and come back without the snack.
My personal favorite is when I go to the cabinet to get out my medicine and instead of opening the cabinet door I open the microwave. (Occasionally I go to the refrigerator instead…)
It’s called the boundary effect. When you’re in your office you realize need something officey. So you get up to get it. but as soon as you cross the exit of the office, your mind switches context so you aren’t thinking office-thoughts anymore.
Boundary effect, you say? That sounds so much more official than the name some friends and I coined back in our college days, working in a pizza and sub shop. The door to the walk-in cooler was known as the Portal of Forgetfulness. The older I get, the more of my doors become portals…
While in line at the grocery store today, another mom and I had a pleasant little chat about how motherhood seems to consist mostly of looking for that thing I just had in my hand, trying to find two matching shoes for each person in the household, and wondering why we’d walked into a room. (And dreaming of solo vacations to Tahiti. Or just the local Motel 6, so long as no one there referred to us as Mommy for a few hours.)
That explains a lot about Putin. “I went to Ukraine to get a special device for hanging paper on my cork board, but when I got there I couldn’t remember what it was. Then, as I looked over the countryside, it came to me - attack!.”
This happens to me all the time but with the garage. As Californians, it’s where we store all of our stuff that doesn’t fit in the house. So there is always a pile of stuff waiting to go back into the garage. I need something from the garage, and pick something up from the pile on the way in so I can put it back. Go into the garage and…what was I supposed to be getting in here??
“As I get older and older I find I’m thinking more and more of the Come Hereafter. I get to another room and have to ask myself: ‘Now what did I come here after???’”
I have to remember this one ! I get this all the time , I will go into a room to get something and forgot what I needed . I think I need to write a note saying what going to get from a room before I forget it. :smack:
Read a recipe for green beans. Plan on buying green beans. Write on paper Grn Bns. Get to store 3days later,
look at paper, totally stumped as to what Grn Bns means.