What Is It About People Who Say “Remind Me”?

Because every time someone says,
“Hey, can you remind me?”

what I hear is:
“Please become my external hard drive.”

And I don’t remember signing that contract.

Do We Have One Brain More Than Them?

Let’s be honest.

• Same phone

• Same calendar app

• Same 24 hours
  

Yet somehow… you are now responsible for remembering:

• deadlines

• meetings

• birthdays

• “that one thing I told you last week”
  
  

Are we born with more bandwidth?
Or do we just look… organized?

Science Says: This Is Not an Accident

There’s an actual term for this: cognitive offloading.

It means people dump mental tasks onto:

• notes

• phones

• AND other humans
  
  

Studies show:

• People remember things worse when they know someone else will remind them

• Shared responsibility = less personal effort

• Our brains literally go, “Cool, not my problem anymore.”
  
  

So when someone asks you to remind them,
their brain clocks out early.

Reminder People Are Emotional Freeloaders

Hot take. Stay with me.

When someone forgets after you reminded them?
You feel annoyed.

When they forget because you didn’t remind them?
You feel guilty.

Notice who never feels anything?
Them.

You’re not just reminding.
You’re managing their anxiety, timelines, and adulting.

That’s a job.
And last I checked, unpaid labor is illegal in spirit.

“Just Remind Me” Is Code For…

• “I don’t want to set a reminder”

• “I’ll forget and blame circumstances”

• “Please carry this mental load for me”

And when you say yes repeatedly, you train people to:

• rely on you

• stop trying

• assume you’ll always catch the ball

Congrats. You’re now the office calendar.

The Boundary Nobody Talks About

Here’s a revolutionary response:

“Can you set a reminder for yourself?”

Polite.
Non-aggressive.
Deeply uncomfortable for them.

And that discomfort?
That’s growth.

You’re not rude.
You’re just refusing to be Google Calendar in human form.

Being reliable is a strength.
Being everyone’s reminder system is a trap.

Your brain isn’t shared storage.
And your mental bandwidth is not a free subscription.

So tell me, who asks you to “remind them” the most, and have you ever actually said no?