I patted myself on the back for so quickly and efficiently finding the 17 mm socket. And by the time I laid hands on the 1/2 inch ratchet, the socket had wandered off, never to be seen again.

Life is a detective story. I spend my time looking around for clues to what I might have been doing two minutes ago, in hopes that it will lead me to whatever it was that I had in my hand when I got distracted and put it down.

+1 ^

It seems as age advances, time is increasingly consumed by finding, cleaning, maintaining, bikes, homes, or what have you.

Are we that much slower at 49+?

I can't do any project efficiently until I achieved certain 'critical mass' of tools.
To the point where I'm finding the old ones, as fast as I'm losing the new ones.

I dunno, man, I had this trouble constantly in architecture school and I was only 21-23 at the time. Sitting in a chair, pencil in hand. Put pencil down. 30 seconds later... where is the pencil?!

I have left projects abruptly just out of frustration of not finding what I just put down. Cool down and let the memory work the process of trying to remember what I did with it. Failing that, the next approach is to NOT look in the places that I should have put it! For some reason, I get hot/cold impressions of when I am close or not. Foggy memory covered by the thought thread at the time of putting it down?

What is frustrating is not experiencing the expected training of years of putting things down in their appropriate location. Relied too much of lost great memory. Labeled baggies now. Next is an inventory list!

FIFY…

That's the kind of thing that makes me worried to get old -- I've been forgetting names and losing tools instantly since my 20's as well.

Well, I'm 37 now and I don't think it's gotten worse... But maybe I just can't tell!

It does get worse...

No wonder Autodesk sold so many copies of AutoCad

Yeah, well, getting old sucks. But consider the alternative.

Getting old is ok if your avg speed is getting faster.

Just that when you're young you don't have as much stuff to find, clean, maintain

You've just discovered Gugie's Deepest Darkest Corner Theory.

When you drop something, the thing seeks it out.

this thread sounded spot on!

um, now what was it about again...

If you're me, behind your ear. You don't realize it until later that night when you're brushing your teeth and see yourself in the mirror. Then you can't remember why in the hell you have a pencil behind your ear!

Too bad you didn't lose a 16 or a 19, both of which have decently close SAE equivalents.

If I were really desperate for a 17, I could drag out my big lug wrench, which has a 17mm head for European cars, which take lug bolts instead of lug nuts.

Is there some advantage to wheel bolts over nuts? It's tough to hold up an 18" wheel and tire, line up the holes and get a bolt started. I bought a long stud to hang the wheel on and it helps, but it still seems more difficult than is necessary.

My special trick is taking home a project (currently a frame I'm prepping for painting) thinking I'll have more time to work on it at home than during my slow times at work, then taking it back to work, thinking I'll have more time there to work on it than at home. That frame is basically living in the backseat of my car, racking up the commuter miles but remaining un-prepped.

I find all lost, small parts, weeks after the fact with my "magic" push broom. They all reveal themselves at that point. Then they go back into the parts bins to be lost for eternity......

Just bought a new set of allen wrenches for this very reason. It was a good excuse to buy some with the ball end and it's just fun to buy tools. Ended up finding the "lost" ones a couple days ago!

You could have titled your post "btdt" - been there, done that.

Man, these days, not only is my short term memory shot to hell, so is my short term memory!

I ain't got ALLzheimer's, I'm not that far gone, I got halfheimer's