Is it possible to hide something from yourself? I’m thinking of something like an addict hiding drugs from himself for later to ease withdrawals. Or hiding cash you don’t want to spend until the weekend.
Oh, and you can’t involve anyone else.
My guess is it would be impossible but now I’m trying to think of scenarios where it could be done. Anyone out there clever enough to fool themselves?
Supposing you’ve decided to try this, I’m thinking you’re best bet would be to do it while distracted with a more urgent or important task, like cooking dinner or taking an important phone call. Basically, just trying not to pay attention to wherever it you put the item. I think the longer you can keep yourself distracted/occupied after hiding it, the better the odds of you forgetting where it ended up.
People misplace things all the time so it’s certainly possible, although I imagine it’s much harder when you’re trying to do it on purpose. Kind of like trying not to think about elephants when someone asks you not to think about elephants.
Speaking personally, there have been times (in my childhood) where I’ve put something away for safekeeping and utterly forgot ever doing it. I’d find it later on, remember putting it away in that spot, and wonder how I completely forgot about the item altogether.
Addicts do stash drugs away for emergencies. And are surprised to find them when they’ve quit drugs.
Everyday, My Friend.
Not sure if this is exactly in the spirit of the OP.
I’m not a big gambler but on rare occasion have found myself in Vegas. The last time I was up over 25 grand. I realized I was going a little crazy with the windfall and didn’t want to blow the entire wad.
So I purchased a cashiers check for $20K and mailed it home to myself. This made it impossible to gamble with it.
I intended to piss away the remaining 5 grand and have a real good time but ended up winning an additional $2300. Came home with over 7K in my Pocket plus that check waiting in the mail box.
I hide things from myself all the time, but not intentionally. 
I suppose it could be done intentionally with high dosage benzodiazepine (e.g Valium, Versed) taken before hiding the item. High-dose benzos cause anterograde amnesia (loss of the ability to create new memories while dosed). Anesthesiologists like this property because patients don’t recall much post-op.
Now I have to remember where I left my Valium…
Exactly. It’s called “put it in a totally safe place so I don’t lose it, and then forget what that place is.”
When our kids were small, my wife would buy Christmas presents when she saw a bargain and hide them.
Months later, sometimes when she was packing for a summer holiday, or sorting stuff for the charity shop, they would turn up. This would mean that an extra present would have to be purchased so that the other child would not feel envious.
The real problem with the OP, and everybody else’s good real-world answers, is the OP wants to hide something today, forget it for some number of days / weeks, then be able to deliberately recall it on cue, while somehow never giving in to temptation to recall on cue early.
Hide money on Monday, forget it on Tue-Fri, be able to remember it on Sat for grocery shoppping, and also be unable to remember it on Fri night to pay for that much desired bender instead? Not part of the human repertoire, period amen.
IMO @pkbites excellent method with his gambling winnings is the way to do that. Make the goods not forgotten, but instead inaccessible until / when you need them. A safe with a timer-based lock will work for portable goods like drugs or cash. Maybe something like you can unlock it at any time, but it won’t open for 12 hours. By then your temptation to splurge may have passed. Or better for some uses, you can program it to open on Saturday at 10am, just before you plan to go grocery-ing
Yep, here’s a not uncommon scenario with me: solost family is going on a trip and I’m not driving. So I hide my car keys someplace where a robber would never find them.
We get back home. Hmmm…where would I hide my car keys where a robber would never find them…? My memory is not always the greatest, but I know how I think.
When my daughter got her first car, I took a twenty dollar bill and “hid” it in her glove compartment. I explained to her that I always did this when I got a car so I’d never find myself without gas money.
Fast forward five years. I was having a crazy day and found myself at a gas station with a near empty tank and no wallet. I sent a text to my daughter asking if she could help me, since she was only two miles away.
She showed up a few minutes later and bought me gas. She mentioned the $20 in the glovebox trick, and how she always felt reassured by it.
I had a twenty in my glove compartment, but I’d forgotten all about it.
Yes, but sometimes the thing you are hiding is psychological/emotional and not physical at all. It has the advantage of not being tangible, so the methodology is simply to not accept that it exists.
In my personal experience, the best way for me to hide something from myself is to say, “Okay, Johnny. You are putting [object] in [place]. Whatever you do, don’t forget. It’s important.”
Absolute guarantee of not remembering [place] and decent odds of also forgetting [object].
Does time count? I picked up a habit from my late mother. I set my alarm clock ahead 15min and though I know this and all other clocks/watches are set to the correct time, this is enough to sometimes help me get up thinking I am pushing it.
The bad part is there was once a time when I went to sleep early enough to not need an alarm clock but I let work issues push me to working later and later and got back into bad habits.
I have done this many times, often with small hand tools. I put them away someplace just to keep them from getting lost, except I won’t remember what that is when I need the tool and then I have to get another one. After using it I’ll find a really good place to keep it that I’ll definitely remember next time, and of course that’s where I’ll find the first one. I have a nice collection of duplicate tools now.
I’m not really hiding it, but I sorta do this with snacks.
Say I’m eating Cheetos, or other addictive snack. I will say to myself, “Thats enough!” I will close the container and put it beyond arm’s reach.
For a given value of “hide”.
For the sake of argument, let us say that the item is small such as a gold coin. Have 100 identical lockboxes and put the coin into one of them. (Wrapped up so it won’t rattle.) Put weights (again wrapped up) in the other lockboxes. Then mix up the lockboxes.
Now the item is “hidden” in the respect that you don’t know which lockbox it is in. And the effort to find it is larger than you might be willing to spend.
(Next comes Schrodinger’s lockbox…)
I like this answer. Self-induced temporary amnesia. Someone should use this in a movie, sort of like Memento
I should have taken it for the entirety of my marriage.
Similar to this idea. Get a combination safe and set it to a random combination. Write down that combination on a random page of a random book in your house (assuming like me you have a whole lot of books. Alternatively edit a random email in your inbox to include the combination. Or keep it along with a hundred other random combinations on note cards in a file. In any case its probably easier to hide a combination from yourself than it is to hide an object.