I've dealt with elder care for some time; my grandparents both lived
into their 90s, and I saw their decline. My father passed away
relatively early - he didn't have cognitive issues.

My mother has been diagnosed with dementia and had been suffering from
some memory loss for some time. She's in a memory care facility now, so
we're able to visit instead of supporting her living alone. It's made
the time we spend with her more about spending time together and not
supporting her in daily tasks, which is refreshing.

It makes me think of my own mental state. I can claim some decline at
times, but nothing out of the ordinary - the name of an obscure actor
that doesn't come to mind, that kind of thing.

I thought about what I would do if I knew my memory was declining (and I
was aware of it...) and I thought about writing things down. I wonder if
it might be a good idea to carrying a notebook with me?

I was one of those binder-carrying cultists in corporate America in the
1990s - walking around with a Franklin planner, a 7-ring binder with a
whole system of refills ranging from calendar pages, pages for tracking
down your values and goals, long term projects, contacts and more. They
were the internet we carried around before there was an internet.

The Franklin plan involved sitting down and figuring out what was most important to you - your governing values. You then came up with long
term goals, intermediate goals that were stepping stones to the big
goal, and plan and prioritize your daily tasks with those values and
goals in mind - the idea being that you easily accomplish the tasks that
align with who you want to be.

I have a shelf full of leather journals I keep, but I rarely refer to
them, and they're unstructured.

I wonder if it might make sense to revisit the notion of a paper daily
planning system again - writing things down commits things to memory,
it's much easier to pull out paper and write things down, and you'd have
an easy reference of what happened yesterday, the day before, and so on.
And, what you had planned tomorrow.

Whereas using a phone and electronic means takes that memorization and
data away from you and stores it away for your use, writing things down
feels like more of a tool to improve your mind.

I've been feeling swamped at work, and one of the things that the
Franklin system compels you to do is force-rank your tasks. Mark them A,
B, C, then rank all of the As A1, A2, A3 - it's an old system that ranks
back to the 1920s.

With digital tracking systems, I feel like I capture all of the tasks
but there's no way to prioritize everything coming in to deal with.

I shopped around for planner systems. New, they've gone way up in price
as paper planning becomes a niche, but used there are a lot of nice
binders - some models I remember from the 90s. I wonder if paper
planning might not be worth an experiment for 30 days, if anything for nostalgia's sake.







... An easement is the abandonment of a stricture
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Re: Memory loss
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Thu Mar 27 2025 01:56 pm

My mother has been diagnosed with dementia and had been suffering from some memory loss for some time. She's in a memory care facility now, so we're able to visit instead of supporting her living alone. It's made the time we spend with her more about spending time together and not supporting her in daily tasks, which is refreshing.

Sorry to hear about your mom. :( That kind of thing is hard.

Nightfox

Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Sorry to hear about your mom. :( That kind of thing is hard.

Thanks for that. It's hard, but she's given 110% to the family without
question for all of our lives. Now it's our turn.



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I shopped around for planner systems. New, they've gone way up in price
as paper planning becomes a niche, but used there are a lot of nice binders - some models I remember from the 90s. I wonder if paper
planning might not be worth an experiment for 30 days, if anything for nostalgia's sake.

From how you're describing it, it sounds like something you'd like to do, or at least to have done.

What's stopping you?

As for me, with this... I have almost never done things on paper, other than the occasional scribbled list. I do, however, have a lot of random text files floating around. And a lot of scanned documents from when something did wind up on paper.

...and even some Livescribe notebooks, that were interesting for having class notes that sync with audio. I still have the pen, though it may have failed by now -- I've never really figured out another time when it'd be useful.

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i have horrible memory since 2019 i developed psychosis and schizo affective disorder bipolar type

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Thanks for that. It's hard, but she's given 110% to the family without question for all of our lives. Now it's our turn.

u got my support too <3

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Re: Memory loss
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Thu Mar 27 2025 01:56 pm

I was one of those binder-carrying cultists in corporate America in the 1990s - walking around with a Franklin planner, a 7-ring binder with a whole system of refills ranging from calendar pages, pages for tracking down your values and goals, long term projects, contacts and more. They were the internet we carried around before there was an internet.

I remember these and took 7 effective habits class at least twice!

Sorry for your losses and experiences with elder care. We lot my MIL in 2024.
A rough road to travel.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on memory lost, and reliving the "Planner" phase of my life.

I've not found an electronic means yet that works well enough for me to stick with it. Do use trillium next (notes) now, to try and keep thoughts where I can find them.
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toolazy.synchro.net:2323 (telnet)
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Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I shopped around for planner systems. New, they've gone way up in price
as paper planning becomes a niche, but used there are a lot of nice binders - some models I remember from the 90s. I wonder if paper
planning might not be worth an experiment for 30 days, if anything for nostalgia's sake.

From how you're describing it, it sounds like something you'd like to
do, or at least to have done.

Calendaring. It used to be that people kept schedules, now appointments
move around much more - makes it difficult to keep a calendar updated.

As for me, with this... I have almost never done things on paper, other than the occasional scribbled list. I do, however, have a lot of random text files floating around. And a lot of scanned documents from when something did wind up on paper.

I use paper journals for day to day notes, but keep the master list in
Outlook now.

...and even some Livescribe notebooks, that were interesting for having class notes that sync with audio. I still have the pen, though it may
have failed by now -- I've never really figured out another time when
it'd be useful.

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On 27 Mar 2025 at 01:56p, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

I have a shelf full of leather journals I keep, but I rarely refer to them, and they're unstructured.

I wonder if it might make sense to revisit the notion of a paper daily planning system again - writing things down commits things to memory,
it's much easier to pull out paper and write things down, and you'd have an easy reference of what happened yesterday, the day before, and so on. And, what you had planned tomorrow.

Some years ago I decided I wanted to journal my daily activities and I almost filled up a whole journal before I gave it up. I keep thinking I should do it again. I've started journaling my daily meals because I've had some health issues and I want to track what I eat. I also wanted to start losing weight so meal tracking seemed to be a way to help. But beyond that I seem to be getting into more and more arguments with my wife about things that happened in the recent past, and I feel like journaling daily things would be helpful just for tracking recent personal history.

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important, and one day your life may depend upon it. I am definitely a Mad
Man with a Blue Box."
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... I don't want to go!

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