Losing things can make a huge impact on one’s efforts in any area of life. By following a few simple tips you can find anything exactly when you need it.
- Check your immediate surroundings. Survey the room or rooms where the item might be. Don’t go into depth, searching under piles of clothes and inside pants’ pockets. Instead, just look around to see if the item is in plain sight.
- Look for the missing object where it’s supposed to be, or where it can usually be found. If you lost your check card, then you should obviously check your wallet. If your keys are missing, then look in your door and car locks to make sure you didn’t simply forget them. Sometimes things are just where you left them.
- Check on your person. It sounds silly, but it’s possible to forget that your glasses are already hanging around your neck, perched on your head, or even right in front of your eyes. Check these obvious spots once more even if you’re sure you already did.
- Don’t forget to check your pockets while you’re at it, even if you think you already did. Did you empty them? Did you reach all the way to the bottoms? Check the pockets of any jackets or coats you’ve worn lately, too.
- Search for the missing object in depth. Now that you know the object is not in plain view, look in more detail around your home and car. If you have a messy residence, this may require some time. Make sure to be thorough. Most people have the same daily routine, which will narrow things down a bit. Eliminate places that the item is very unlikely to be (such as keys in the oven) to save time. You probably thought of several possible places, gave a cursory check of the first few, and by the time you got to the end of your list were getting worried and looking more carefully. Go back and look carefully in those more likely places too.
- Clean your surroundings. Try doing a rigorous tidy-up of your room, house, apartment, dorm room, car, book bag, backpack, purse, or whatever area you have likely lost your item. Items seldom disappear from spotlessly neat areas. Just cleaning up may very well reveal the whereabouts of your lost item. If not, well, at least you cleaned up!
- Think back to the last time and place you used the missing object. Did you take it to work or to a friend’s house? Were you recently at a restaurant or on the city bus? When did you use the object last? Retracing your steps may lead to the object. These things usually happen when we are on auto-pilot and get distracted. Maybe someone was cleaning up and moved your item. Where might they have put it?
- Call the people and places you’ve been recently. Now that you have narrowed down the places it could be, call your friends, your job, the bus station, etc. They may be holding your missing object for you.
- Ask others to help you look for it Enlisting the help of others will often enhance your chances of spotting the lost item. This could be your family members, your friends, the bus driver, even total strangers (who are often remarkably obliging in looking for a misplaced item!). You can even put an advertisement in the local newspaper, on lampposts or on Craig’s List–it’s a long shot but may be worth it if your lost object is valuable.
- Search systematically Depending on your surroundings, try to come up with a system to avoid overlooking an area. For instance, if you think you may have lost your lucky penny in a grassy lawn, you may want to create a search pattern by yourself or with volunteers to avoid overlooking an area.
- Consider the possibility that the item may have been stolen. Do not panic, but consider how much the item might be worth to a stranger and whether anyone might want it as their own. If the item is relatively valueless, of course, it’s unlikely to be an object of theft. However, you never know–people sometimes steal things for apparently nonsensical reasons.
- Give it time. Sometimes an item will surface in time. Your sister finds it while vacuuming in an oddball spot you never would thought of, for instance. Unless it is something which can cause serious problems (like credit cards, cell phone, checkbook, I.D.), sometimes just waiting pays off.
- Make sure the missing item doesn’t get lost again, whether it is found or you replace it. Whether the item is replaced or found, get a better key chain (and use it for its purpose), organize your home, and have a designated place to store your valuables until the next time you need them
[Via Wikihow.com]
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