To defend against prospective memory failures and their potentially disastrous consequences, professionals in aviation and medicine now rely on specific memory tools, including checklists. Research also reveals that implementation intentions, identifying when and where a specific intention will be carried out, can help guard against such failures in everyday life. Dismukes points out that having this kind of concrete plan has been shown to improve prospective memory performance by as much as two to four times in tasks such as exercising, medication adherence, breast self-examination, and homework completion.
Along with checklists and implementation intentions, Dismukes and others have highlighted several other measures that can help to remember and carry out intended actions:
Use external memory aids such as the alerting calendar on cell phones
Avoid multitasking when one of your tasks is critical
Carry out crucial tasks now instead of putting them off until later
Create reminder cues that stand out and put them in a difficult-to-miss spot
Link the target task to a habit that you have already established
“Rather than blaming individuals for inadvertent lapses in prospective memory, organizations can improve safety by supporting the use of these measures,” argues Dismukes. He suggests that scientists should combine laboratory research with observations of human performance in real-world settings to better understand how prospective memory works and to develop practical strategies to avoid lapses.