I have a problem, and it’s probably one a lot of others have. Lying in bed at night and boom. You have an idea and have to get it down on paper. Or in the modern case, on your phone. Every night. I’ll come up with ideas for new blogposts, or an update to a bit of code or even just the name of that old tv show I meant to find. And it’s killing me.

It would be alright if I could ignore it but that’s impossible. I used to wake long enough to add a short abbreviation of the thought to Things. But when you look through it in the morning and see

LFM
Pecuniary
Rhea tweet tree
GSS mg

It’s pretty hard to work out what the hell my brain was trying to remember. So I’ve given up. Stopped. No more notes.

Instead I turn my iPhone.

It’s an old trick, one I picked up from an even older book. Say you want to remember what you were thinking about at night. Reach out, turn an item on your bedside cabinet so it’s 90 degrees to normal and go back to sleep.

If you need to remember to get something for the bathroom, turn your toothpaste 90 degrees. Kitchen; turn a chopping board. Next time you come to it, your mind will associate the change with the reason and that reason should be the reminder.

Obviously this relies on you a) being pedantic enough you notice a phone is now sideways when you wake up and b) you at least have some memory, if not the recall. But it’s been working for me. No more late night LED sessions, just uniterrupted sleep. And if the worst does come to pass and I forget something? Meh, it couldn’t have been that important to begin with.