Oh, no! I forgot my mask

Marc Allard
The Sun

Not to forget to bring the mask, it is better not to trust to his memory, and rely on his environment, for example by leaving the masks in your backpack, your purse or your car.

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July 24, 2020 14h09

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Oh, no! I forgot my mask

CHRONIC / Saturday morning, in a service station in the Mauricie region, no pay at the pump, I have to pay inside. While I’m doing the full, a voice over the intercom makes me jump : “Sir, do you have your mask?”

Proud to have thought of it in the first day of the port binding in the shops, I answer : “Yes, madame, I have my mask!” And, in my head, I say : “Bravo, you’re well on your way.”

The next day, I knocked at the door of a convenience store in Limoilou to go buy the beer. “Sir, you can’t enter if you don’t have a mask,” I warned the cashier.

Damn, I’ve forgotten my mask. I return empty-handed to the house by telling me that I’m not so good party in the end. The height of the annoyance, I passed a neighbor who goes to the same convenience store as me. Of course, he has carted his covers-face.

— “Ah, bravo, you’ve not forgotten your mask!” I tell him.

— “No, I come back to home. Me too I had forgotten!”

Please respect the setpoint of the mask mandatory in the shops is a thing not to forget is another.

You’re going to tell me, this is not complicated. You go out from you, you bring your keys, your wallet, your cell phone and, now, your mask. No, not so simple. Catch the trio keys-wallet-cell phone before you leave, it has been done thousands of times, it has become an automatism.

To make the mask, it is a new habit to develop. It is necessary to repeat a new behavior health on average, 66 days before that it automates…

You can autoflageller every time your memory lowered the mask. At a given time, it will may be discharged.

But you leave with a big problem : in order to remember to do something, it is necessary to be attentive. However, we spend 43 % of our day on autopilot, doing things without thinking about it.

Not to forget the mask, it is better not to trust to his memory and use his environment.

Daniel J. Levitin, a professor emeritus in the department of psychology of McGill University, explains in his book The organized mind : put order in your ideas (2018) that the best way to not forget things is to delegate the work of attention and memory to an external support.

For the mask, it means first you have to buy several and place them in places that will remind us of the bring or in compartments street which we follow down to the shops.

Then, hang your masks on the same hooks as your key ring, put masks in your glove box, your backpack or your travel bag.

The trick is to associate the new habit of the mask to a habit that is already entrenched. I take my keys before leaving, I take the mask then.

Specialists in behavioural psychology call it “stacking ” habits”. Before the COVID-19, I told you of the effectiveness of this technique in a chronic mundane on the floss. I suggested “stacking” the dental floss on the teeth brushing.

You can also use the mask for stacking other health-related habits.

Professor Wendy Wood, a research specialist in the patterns, gave recently on Twitter a perfect example of stacking. I leave you for 15 to 30 seconds to guess.

Each time you remove the mask, wash your hands.

Le Soleil