6 Techniques to Find Anything That's Lost or See What Others Miss

You know that moment when you misplace something, and it takes forever to find? It could be your keys or a handwritten to-do list or anything else that seemingly just disappeared into thin air. Maybe you never found it.

A piece from NPR this week collects six techniques that would be worth remembering to help you solve this very common human problem:

• Identify what makes your missing object stand out in its environment.
• Think about likely scenarios of how and why your object might have gotten lost in the first place -- and where it might be.
• Recreate the movement of the object around the area you first remembered losing it.
• Break out of your search routine by changing your perspective.
• Look in weird and unexpected areas.
• Divide your space up into sections, then search each section thoroughly.

And if none of these tips work, the experts have one last suggestion that isn't very non-obvious but I'll share it anyway: be tenacious and keep looking.