[larrys]

"Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys,"

That also varies on whether you drive a car or take public transportation.

If you drive, leaving your house requires taking your keys and it becomes a habit. Same with leaving work. If you drove there you need your keys to leave.

A good way around forgetting keys also is a realtor style lockbox either on the door or hidden with a spare key.

[rdl]

Yeah, I forget my phone way more than I forget keys, because I need the keys to open (NFC/HID) the door to the garage and to use the car. I use a deadbolt so I can't lock myself out of the apartment, but also can't go into the garage without keys, and I ~never go out the front door. I end up leaving my phone docked in my car about 10% of the time by accident, though.

The key (heh) to not forgetting anything, though, is to have a consistent set of pockets for things -- I always keep keys+knife, flashlight, wallet+cash, iphone in specific pockets. The only times I get screwed up is when I wear clothing without the right layout of pockets.

[tomsaffell]

Totally agreed on the pocket layout - don't know what i'd do without my cargo pants/shorts - must be an engineer thing... http://xkcd.com/806/

[alexsb92]

Ever since I discovered the keep-things-in-the-same-pocket trick a few years back, the number of times I forget stuff at home got to virtually zero. When it's time to leave, all I have to do is slap all of my pockets to get a feel for what's in them, and that's it I'm done.

Regarding the different pocket layout, I've also limited myself to just using the main ones for my day to day stuff, so two front and two back. Though when i wear cargo pants or shorts I do put my wallet on the pocket halfway my leg as it's more comfortable with sitting.

[maxerickson]

I occasionally spend a few minutes looking for something that I have placed in the wrong pocket.

[samstave]

I have panicked several times after I put my MIFI device in my pants pocket instead of its specific pocket in my backpack. And the same when I place my wallet in my front pocket instead of the back after a transaction.

[rdl]

Yeah -- I was even more OCD with my tactical vest, pants, etc. Basically every square inch of MOLLE had a purpose, and needed to work when standing or when prone on the floor (during incoming), etc. And you do weird things like put a first aid kit with standard layout in a standard location (to be used on YOU if injured), and I had my real medical kit in a different position (which I'd use on anyone else, or on myself).

My car's trunk is similarly organized with a trauma bag, fire extinguisher, crowbar, etc.

[samstave]

Heh, I am constantly fretting over the pacticality of the location and contents of my Go Gear...

I am checking and practicing grabbing [defensive item] often, worried that I am testing it wrong, i.e. that if it happens where I need that [defensive item] that I have placed it in a non-practical place.

I'd love to have a security consultant review my go plans and assist.

My moms house was broken into last night, and she awoke to someone stealing her laptop. She was just diagnosed with cancer and has a trach in right now - so it was super scary for her - because even in that instance, she cant even yell for help. The ADP alarm system failed her and my brother was MIA.

PROTIP: I go to the DAISO Japan store and buy little cargo zipper bags to organize all my tech work gear. Console cables, dsiplay adapters, USB charges etc in one - zip ties velcro, sticky-velcro etc in another. laptop chargers in others...

The DAISO store in SF Japan town is amazing for just this sort of thing.

[JshWright]

If [defensive item] is a CCW, you might want to try to cut back on reaching for it. One of the biggest tells for someone carrying concealed is how they constantly feel for their weapon...

[chacham15]

Ha, the locations of all our equipment was boiled down to a science in my unit. For example, the tourniquet was in the left side because the left was more difficult to access in prone because we cant remove our right hands from the gun and we need the left elbow for stability. (For non-military people, the tourniquet that a person carries is used on him in case of emergency so he himself should rarely need to access it).

[rdl]

Yeah, I saw a wide variety of unit effort put into things like that. At one level, standardization is good, but at another level, treating a 6'7 300# Samoan guy the same as a 5'3" female might not make sense for layout of equipment...

The ultra-badass thing to do was to pre-apply CAT tourniquets (loose) to all 4 limbs, so the operator could then tighten them when hit and continue in the fight. An 18D would then periodically loosen them, keeping the limb from being lost, and monitoring/timing for sepsis (which is the risk of leaving a tourniquet tight, letting tissue die, and then loosening outside of a hospital setting -- I think it's hyperkalemia and some other stuff too. I think the rule is 30 minutes of blood flow per 2 hours for up to 24h, but this was evolving at the time. It worked better for immediate response than relying just on direct pressure (israeli bandage, etc.), since it could be accomplished in 5 seconds directly by the operator (it's hard to even FIND where entrance and exit wounds are under a uniform, and sometimes there are multiple per patient per incident, although usually on the same limb).

It was fine when OCF-I, etc. people did it, but then utterly hilarious when random people copied them without understanding (not even infantry, but supply guys going on outside the wire road trips between bases returning from R&R...).

It was a lot like startups -- people learning as they went, in a rapidly evolving environment. The big fail, IMO, was rotating whole units out ever 4, 7, 12, or 15 months to have to re-learn everything again, and then sending them to an entirely different place when they returned. The British Empire system of rotating individual battalions or brigades through a unit which was permanently stationed in the occupied territory made a lot more sense I think.

[majormajor]

Except for a year in a dorm where I couldn't disable my dorm room door's automatically-lock-when-shut behavior, I've developed a simple habit that's kept me from ever locking myself out of my car or home since: never lock the place/vehicle from the inside, or let it lock itself. I can't lock the deadbolt on my apartment when I leave without the key. And I can't lock my car from outside without the key. It's a way of forcing me to always have my keys.

So while I love the convenience this idea provides for shared access to places, and for frictionless don't-even-have-to-get-out-my-keys access, locking oneself out is a solved problem in my book. (Sure, I could lose my keys, but I could also lose my phone—and the redundancy here is another nice and fun thing provided by this system.)

(This habit was largely inspired by getting a car which refused to let me lock myself out: if I pushed the lock button down on the driver's door while the door was open, and then shut the door, it unlocked itself. Previously I'd had one where you held the handle out to override this behavior, but this one insisted on being locked from the outside. And then I noticed that this was keeping my from locking myself out like I had a few times with the old one.)

[anonymouz]

The automatically-lock-when-shut behavior of doors is an extremely weak protection anyway, so one should always lock the door with a key anyway (this at least prevents the most trivial circumvention, i.e., open the door with a plastic card).

Interestingly I seem to use more or less the converse of your method, also with great success: Always lock the apartment door from the inside. Whenever I leave the apartment, I therefore am forced to take the keys.

I suppose the most important thing is to be consistent with ones behavior, so that a subconscious habit can develop.

[cwe]

Since all the YC partners are using boosted boards to longboard to the office, I bet this comes in handy. I know I wouldn't want a giant key chain in my pocket while riding.

[samstave]

I bike to work and my wife is a stay at home mom. I pretty much never carry keys on me.

I ALWAYS have my phone though. Quite frankly, I look forward to the day when my phone replaces my access badge/key-card at work.

Of course there is the arguement "but someone could take your phone and access the MDF!" -- well they can always steal my access badge as well.

I have forgotten my badge countless times in my career though I have forgotten my phone all of once.

[stephengillie]

If your phone is iPhone-ish in size, you may try what I did. After getting a stiff-rubberized phone case (you stretch it around the phone), tape the cards to the case. If you cut a notch in an old card, you can have that be the card against the tape -- the rest of the cards can slide in and out against that card or the phone, and are held in by the force of the tape.

I call it the PhoneWallet. I made one for my droid Incredible.

[stephengillie]

I'm really interested in seeing a car lock like Lockitron.

"Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys..."

Especially with the PhoneWallet. I have my keycard, ID, and ORCA all conveniently on the back of my phone. The same tap gets me into work and pays bus fares. If I didn't have to carry a car key, I would just carry that 1 item.

[brendten]

You should check out Mavia (mavizon.com). I have worked with these guys as a contractor in the past, and they've got a really cool product for cars. The first version is coming out in the next few months, and doesn't have "car control" yet. It has all kinds of neat location and OBDII diagnostics features right now. Car control (unlock doors, start the car, etc.) is the next big feature.

[rtkwe]

Some cars already have that built in. It's a per manufacturer thing though.

[stephengillie]

I've seen Lexuses (Lexii?) with the keyless device that unlocks with proximity. Maybe a bluetooth pairing that unlocks when your phone is near?

All I'm looking for is one less item to carry, one less object in my life.

[001sky]

I've seen and used these as well. They are OK, but you need to still remember to bring the key-fob. Because it does not come out of the pocket/purse nearly as much, makes it (oddly) somewhat of a PITA to keep an eye on. Example: I read one time of a guy having this on his (Ducati?) Moto and after filling up at the petrol, drove back into his hometown to the Local pub. Later, Bike no longer works, has to have the tow truck come to take him home. What happened? He left the fob on top of the petrol dispenser. He was close enough to start and take off, but as he left, he "lost" the key. But never noticed, as bike worked fine (and it was not visible normally unlike a regular key, etc). Ergo, him stranded. Expensive mistake. Moral of the story is if you don't use it, you lose it. =]

[jonknee]

My car (a Hyundai) is keyless like that so you just need the key to be on your person. There's no technical reason why this couldn't be done with NFC on a mobile phone, but I think the excuse would be about car thefts. Modern cars all use chipped keys that are really stringently tied to dealers and car thefts have plummeted during recent years.

It's a lot more convenient than I would have guessed though, one of the nice bits that I noticed is my car lights up when I walk up to it at night. Not bright, but the LED under the mirror illuminates the ground around the driver side door. Very neat.

[flamingbuffalo]

I think all the new Dodge models (even base trim) have keyless these days as well. Hopefully it it catches on for all makes, it's a pretty nice feature.

[rtkwe]

I think this is the app I was thinking of: http://www.viper.com/smartstart/

[jevinskie]

But the lockbox has been working just fine for hundreds of years and isn't technological enough!

[ChuckMcM]

Remote disable is a killer feature that the lockbox has never really achieved.

[xradionut]

Lockbox + Security system with different pin or code = win

[11185d]

comments like this are a waste of everyone's time