Several apps exist to help you remember the many things you'd otherwise forget, but perhaps none are quite as useful and efficient as your camera. Typing takes time. Snapping a photo only takes a moment, and there are so many ways you can remind yourself better with nothing but a picture.
It doesn't really matter if a picture is worth 1,000 words. If it's only worth 10 it's still a good value proposition when you think about the time and effort of taking a picture compared to that of typing a short sentence on a mobile device. Not only is photography easier and more efficient, it also provides additional details to help you remember important information that words can't capture. When you start sorting your photos into specific albums, you've suddenly got a great set of categorized reminders that only took a few taps to create. In this post, we're going to look at several ways you can use your camera to remember things a lot better and faster.
Remember Who Borrowed That Book (or Whatever)
The folks over at Apartment Therapy came up with a clever solution to the problem of remembering who borrowed your stuff: take a picture of them and the thing they borrowed, then save it to an album of borrowed items. When you wonder where it went and who took it, just consult that album and you'll find out in an instant. Presuming you lend things to people you know well enough to recognize, this is much easier than jotting down all the details and setting a reminder in your calendar for some abstract date.
Keep Track of Emergency Information
Whether you're taking pictures of insurance cards or prescription medicine, an emergency photo album can be useful in two important ways. First, if you need any of that information when you go to the doctor or pharmacy, it's right in your phone for easy access. Second, if you're in an emergency and need to provide information quickly, you can tell people that your information is in your phone. (In circumstances where you can't tell them, just write that information on a card in your wallet so they know where to look.) Hopefully you won't have to consult your emergency album too often, but it's always good to know it's there to help keep you safe?or at least remember a few ID numbers.
Build a Wish List
We all want a lot of things we can't have, and so we stick them on wish lists for a day when the money's available and our desire to buy is ever-present. When you're on the go and want to remember something to purchase, just snap a photo and save it in a "wish list" album. When you've got a little extra pocket change and want to get yourself something nice, just browse and decide what you want. You can use this same trick when looking for gifts for others, too. On top of the obvious benefits, it's also a good way to deter irresponsible spending. We've previously discussed how instituting a 24-hour policy on your purchases can help you curb excessive spending. Taking a photo can make it a little easier to walk away from the product you want because you know you have a reference to it in your pocket.
Bonus: This also works great for creating a shopping list at IKEA, as you can just photograph that tags and reference the pictures later when you're picking up the items in the self-help area.
Photograph Restaurants (and Other Places) You Want to Visit
When you want to remember a restaurant, or any other place you want to visit, just snap a photo. Not only do you have a visual reference to it, but because most smartphones retain GPS location data you'll know where you took that photo, too. This way you don't need to save an address, the name, or any other details that would take awhile to type in and save. A picture can really save you a lot of time here.
Take Notes
If you need to copy down some text, snapping a photo is much faster than typing it into you phone. On top of that, you can send the photo to an app like Evernote and make that text searchable thanks to the magic of optical character recognition (OCR).
Take Screenshots of Anything on Your Phone You Want to Remember
Although not really a photograph, exactly, screenshots end up in the same place when you take them. Sometimes when you're on your phone, you want to remember an app to buy on a later date, save a map for offline use, save a copy of a movie ticket that came into your email, or remember a specific alert. Save those as screenshots, sort them into the relevant reminder albums, and you won't forget.
Secure Your Photos
Perhaps you don't want important photographic information easily accessible on your phone. One way to secure your photos is to use a password to lock your entire phone. If you just want to hide your photos, however, there are apps that can help you out. Ben the Bodyguard ($5, iPhone) and Hide It Pro (Free, Android) both get the job done.
Images by VLADGRIN (Shutterstock), maigi (Shutterstock), and me.
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