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[3man75]

How does one get good at remembering dates for things?

Example: Remembering Thursday @ 3:00 PM being at such and such place?

My friend was a Student government president and he was able to do this every single day for 2 years. How can i get on that level? Not that i'm doing the same thing mind you but remembering interview dates/meetings would be good...

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

Write it down. That's the easiest way...

And you pretend you are good at remembering when you are really just reading.

[~Neri]

Write it down, set an alarm/notification on your phone.

[gimlet]

They make these little books you can stick in a shirt pocket that have calendars and space to write appointments    Seriously, when I had lots of commitments I carried it *all* the time, write it in there as soon as I  know the date/time, and check it at least every morning and again at lunch, glancing ahead a few days to see if there's anything I ought to be preparing for.  It's actually way faster than any smart phone app.

For really important stuff I also add it into google calendar, and set it to send me an email reminder a day in advance (or multiple days in advance if there's stuff to prepare).  Multiple reminders in advance if it's something REALLY important.

For stuff *during* the day, I either set an alarm on my tablet, or if I'm at home I either use an "Egg timer" app on the PC or a physical timer to remind me that something's coming up so I don't get too involved in something else and miss the time.

I move all that stuff out of my brain as much as possible, the last thing I need is to constantly self-interrupt to stress over trying to remember commitments.

[LordBucket]

How does one get good at remembering dates for things?

Simple! You do it by not doing what everyone else is telling you to do:

Write it down.

set an alarm/notification on your phone.

little books you can stick in a shirt pocket

You want to be better at using your brain? So why are people advising you to stop using your brain? If you wanted to learn the multiplication table, would you use a calculator to help you learn? Of course not. If you wanted to be good at walking, would using crutches help? Of course not. Writing things down, using your phone, etc. is specifically training yourself to not remember things.

How does one get good at remembering dates for things?

Example: Remembering Thursday @ 3:00 PM being at such and such place?

It's like anything. If you want to be good at something, you need to do it. So stop writing things down. Stop taking notes in class. Pay attention instead. Tools are great, but using them only trains you to use them, not how to not use them. If you want to remember on your own with your own brain, you need to stop depending on tools.

So next time you have an appointment, don't write it down. Remember it. Because if you don't, you'll miss it. And that would be bad. Think about how bad it would be to miss it. Imagine having to pay an extra $50 fee for missing that dentist appointment. Imagine trying to explain to that hot girl you set a date with that you simply forgot about it. Imagine missing your calculus final. Oops, failed the class, have to take it over. Think about how awful and horrible that would be. Blow up it and make it worse in your mind if you have to. Sit on that that fear, that stress, that anxiety over what happens if you miss whatever it is, and let it simmer inside you.

I think you'll find that all that negative emotion will give you a whole lot of incentive to remember. In fact, you'll probably be reminding yourself constantly. Every day. Every 10 minutes at time in a panic you'll be remembering that you have this thing to do. It might be days away and you'll still be reminding yourself, because it's that important that you remember. You'll wake up before your alarm goes off in dread that you might have missed it, check the clock and see that you still have time, but be unable to get back to sleep out of fear that you might miss it. And if, oh dear, you forget...it will be all your fault.

It will be horrible.

But...do that a couple times and you'll learn. You'll remember. And once you know that you do remember things, the stress and fear and anxiety will go away because you won't need them anymore.

You'll remember.

[gimlet]

But geez what a useless waste of brainpower!  YOUR way is the one that sounds horrible.  So multiple times a day, I'm supposed to wrack my brain to try to remember whether or not I have appointments?  AND run through my whole list of future appointments so I don't let any of them slip away in the weeks or months before they come up?   PLUS deliberately add stress to the process to make it even more painful so I will torture my brain into remembering?  How few appointments do you have that that even works?

That sounds like a recipe for pure hell.   

I use the aids because they're so simple and freeing.  No need to add stress to my already stressful life by deliberately handicapping myself - "Appointments are all in the book.  I check the book every day so there's no need to torment myself with worry, or constantly interrupt activities I'm focused on to repeatedly check if there's something I need to be doing.  I can give my full attention to my current activity because I know there is nothing pending and I set an alarm to give myself plenty of time to get ready for the next thing I have to do".   I already have more than enough outside interruptions to break my concentration, I don't need to add easily avoidable ones to further kill my productivity :p

I guess if "remembering apppointments without any aids" is one of your top life goals, go for it.  Otherwise use all that effort on something worthwhile...

[LordBucket]

Think of it as like learning multiplication tables. Do you remember doing that? Looking at those horrible flash cards over and over, getting them wrong, then feeling bad about it? It was pretty awful, but then you know it, and you're done. Now, for the rest of your life you can multiply in your head.

Would you call that a useless waste of brainpower when you probably a have a cellphone that can do it for you?

Why is learning to remember dates any different?

I'm supposed to wrack my brain to try to remember whether or not I have appointments?  AND run through my whole list of future appointments so I don't let any of them slip away in the weeks or months before they come up?

Is it really so difficult? I have a dentist appointment the second Monday of January next year, a class Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-9 that ends the second week of December, and a Christmas party and a post-election party neither of which have as of yet been scheduled. Today is the day that the guy hosting the election party returns from vacation so I need to check my email regularly starting today because it's probably going to be this weekend. Once those parties are scheduled, I won't write the dates down. What for?

Is it really so difficult to remember a couple pieces of information like that? No. Do I stress over these things every day? No. I learned how to do this in high school. Why didn't you?

Have you ever performed in a stage play? People memorize entire scripts for performances that generally only last a couple months. Have you ever memorized a movie, like say...Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail...and then sat down with a friend at a restaurant or party and recited entire scenes together? Lots of people do that. They don't even try to do it, they simply memorize it from having watched the movie a couple times. Have you ever considered learning a foreign language? With hundreds of thousands of words? People do that. You probably memorized the Gettysburg address or something similar in school, remembered it until you didn't need it anymore, then forgot it. Right?

But you're telling me you can't be bothered to remember a couple dates for things that actually affect you personally?

[nenjin]

I think it's also really relevant to what you care about. I for example have a shit short term memory, for various reasons. I'm terrible with birthdays. I can only remember my own because it happens to be Christmas Eve. Birthdays just aren't a big thing to me. Pisses my family off something fierce.

On the other hand, I care a lot about making my customers feel like I know them as people at work. It's super important for me to know them by name and voice if it's possible. That's why I know that the counter lady's name at that truck shop in Georgia, (the name of which I also know) is Gloria. I talk to Gloria maybe once every three months, if that anymore. It's written down occasionally but I rarely need to look. Are the dates of things you should be doing something you deep down consider a distraction? Like it's something you need to do but you don't think about it all day until its time comes?

[3man75]

I actually had a derp moment..actually wasn't late for said appointment but fact of the matter is that i completely forgot it.

Also, i don't know bucket makes a good point. I have to take the AFQT again but my core math problem skills are pretty dead after using calc so much in college (which has been 3 semesters thus far.). I've completely forgotten how to get 2/3 of a certain # by hand. That said, i don't really know how Lord Buckets remembers all of that..

What i was late for was a brain bowl meeting (the first of it's kind). However, i didn't care for it too too much and as nenjin pointed out, it may not have stuck with me. Which i may have to drop because i can't consistently make it to said meetings. Oh well, trying new things via club in college and dropping them won't hurt me right? Right.

Thanks for your help, i'll keep this open in case anyone has any other ideas.

[i2amroy]

I think it's also really relevant to what you care about.

Yeah, this is a big part of it for me. I used (and still am) pretty terrible with names, but once I started making an actual conscious effort to remember names and faces I got slowly better at it. It's the same with a lot of other things as well, simply making a conscious effort to remember things can help a lot over time.

Personally my suggestion is to do a bit of both. Pick up an appointment book, because simply the act of writing something down once has been shown to cause better retention overall with most people. However try not to look at the book unless you have to. Over time you can slowly phase out the book as you get better at remembering things, while having the book ensures that more important things (like dates, dentist appointments, or finals) don't get forgotten while you are still learning how to remember. After all we don't train people to swim by immediately throwing them into the deep end of the pool by themselves, you put little arm floaties on for a while and slowly get better until you can take them off.

[LordBucket]

i don't really know how Lord Buckets remembers all of that..

To be fair, I had an advantage: I didn't own a cellphone. I sometimes had calendars, but they were of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. The idea of writing on them to keep track of school things and appointments just seemed wrong somehow. Do you really want to look at sexy babelicious girl and be reminded of your orthodontist appointment? No way. So I just never wrote stuff down, but I had to go to things anyway, so I just learned to remember it.

No different than the guy who walks to school every day. When something comes up and he needs to walk a mile for some reason, it's just not a big deal. Go a couple years without writing anything down or asking Siri to remind you, and you'll remember things you need to remember. It won't be a big deal.

It really is that easy.

I also recommend it for lectures. Taking notes is a bad habit. It trains you that you don't need to remember what you hear, and you end up having to go over it a second time later. Just learn to listen and you'll get it the first time. Similar, and more easily demonstrable example: pick up a book and read a paragraph of it out loud. Then set the book down and try to repeat what you read. Then pick up a different book and read a paragraph silently. Then set it down and repeat it.

You may find it easier to do without reading out loud, because the speaking distracts you from the paying attention. Taking notes distracts you from listening. It's a horrible practice.

[Arx]

Writing down dates and notes is, for me, not so I can look at them later, but an aid to memory. If I don't take notes in a class, I'll want them later; if I do take notes, I won't because I'll be able to rattle off everything based on having written it down.

It's a learning styles thing, which means that you need to listen to whoever is making the most sense. If not writing notes sounds like a terrible idea to you, it is a terrible idea. Likewise, if it sounds obvious, it is. If not writing down dates makes sense, learn to not write them down. If the idea freaks you out, learn to keep a pocket book on you. All people think differently. Advice from inexperienced people who think like you is probably at least as good as advice from people who don't.

[Uristides]

Good stuff.

Def this. Just experiment until you find something that works best for you. And for god's sake do change ASAP if you notice some strategy is not working.

My particular advices are: have that written down somewhere as a backup and spaced repetition is magic. Incidentally, having notes on a spaced repetition software already covers having it written down. The rest boils down to standard memorization techniques: putting stuff to use, mnemonics, correlating stuff, etc.

Spoiler: Quasi-autobiographical textwall of anedoctes time, mostly as counter examples to LordBucket(tl;dr did all that, didn't work) (click to show/hide)

I stopped taking notes of homework, appointments and whatnot dates around 2nd grade(not sure how it matches to US), both out of laziness and out of thinking I'd train myself to remember things better if I didn't write them down. I only ever wrote stuff down on my agenda when teachers said they'd check if everybody did it.
Results were mixed at best, oftentimes I'd completely forget something, sometimes important, and organizing things, not that I ever tried being organized, was plain hard.
I can't be sure if that made me considerably better at remembering things and dates when I don't have my computer/notebooks at hand,  but I started writing those things down as a backup and I've been having way less unpleasant surprises along the way.
The experiment with lecture notes was even more catastrophic. I stopped taking them around the second semester in uni because I thought I'd be able to keep at the pace of the fastest professors. Nope, didn't work at all. For one, I'm too distracted and writing stuff down helps me pay attention more than hinders it.
Without lecture notes either you get everything in class or you're screwed when you're working on stuff back home. You get stuck on an exercise but remember a simmilar  example done in class that may help, but you don't remember the key steps that solved the problem back then. Now you're stuck having to scrounge the literature, the internet and/or your classmates notes for it. Not good.
Then there's the odd guys who won't adhere to a particular textbook. Rederiving their(or anyone else's) results by stitching up stuff from half a dozen sources is good exercise, but it takes time you don't always have to spare. Having notes with at least a sketch of the path they took is a huge help when embarking on such adventures.
So no, I'm back to taking notes and balancing note density vs. attention to what the prof. is saying. And it's working better this way.

[gimlet]

Like I said, the "memorize it all" is only practical when you only have a handful of things scheduled.  Besides all the repetitive weekly stuff, a partial list of stuff I have in the calendar:

Spoiler: Spoilered the wall-of-text list (click to show/hide)

At least 2 doctor's appointments a quarter I have to drive family members to, plus my own doctor/dentist
8 gaming cons, with associated pre-registration dates and housing reservation dates for the non-local ones.  Heck, for the big ones, I have to schedule a reminder to find out exactly when the pre-reg and housing dates *are*...
6 tech conferences/trade shows, ditto
an awesome once a year booksale
2 monthly dinners, with dates like "3rd Sunday, last Sunday"
2 other once a month events "2nd Friday and 3rd Friday"
4 boardgaming group open gaming days/month
3 meetup groups with monthly events
A bunch of annual ethnic festivals/dinners
Plays, bands and film society showings that I especially want to catch - some of those need reminders to make reservations

I don't go to ALL that stuff every month/year, but I manage to get to a pretty good percentage, and I at least want to keep track of when they are so I can keep the option open as long as possible, plus at least be aware I'm scheduling something conflicting when it can't be avoided.  And this is a big dropoff from when I had an assload of work stuff to keep track of too.  I doubt you can keep even 1/4 of that memorized, if you say you can, good for you I guess.  I flat out refuse to memorize all that stuff and mentally run through the list every time I'm setting up an appointment...