6 techniques that really work

A few years ago, I lost my passport two days before a big international trip. Getting a new passport quickly would cost hundreds of dollars. And I wasn’t sure if it would make it in time.

You can imagine how stressed I was. The last time I saw my passport was on my bed. I turned my camera upside down to try and find it, to no avail.

I ended up taking a day off work to look for that passport. That’s how serious I was to find him. But my search was totally random. I felt I lacked the skills to search for it in a strategic way.

That experience made me wonder: there has to be a more methodical way of doing it. To find out, we asked visual search researchers, a metal detecting enthusiast and a detective about the science and art of finding lost items.

Here are five helpful techniques for finding missing items — whether it’s something sentimental, like a class ring, or something valuable, like an envelope full of cash. I hope they help you find everything you’re looking for.

Expert strategies to find missing objects

Technique 1: Identify what makes your missing object stand out in its environment.

It can be size, color, texture or shape. Then search based on that unique characteristic. It will make the process faster and more efficient, he says Arryn Robbinsa cognitive psychologist at the University of Richmond who specializes in visual search. Instead of looking at everything in a space, this approach helps you focus your attention only on objects with this distinction.

Robbins recently used this tactic when she lost the back of a rose gold earring on a similarly colored rug. So he changed his visual strategy to limit himself to anything shiny and reflective. “As soon as I thought about it, I saw it almost instantly,” she says.

Technique 2: Think of likely scenarios of how and why your item might have gotten lost in the first place—and where it might be.

That’s how it’s done Demian Garciaa metal detecting enthusiast based in Northern California, helps clients find their missing jewelry in challenging places like parks, beaches and roads.

Even before turning on his metal detector, he begins his search by asking customers basic questions. “Do you have locations where you normally put it? Where did you lose it before?” he says.

If you’ve lost your class ring, for example, look at where you usually put it: your nightstand, your jewelry box, your bathroom counter. If you’ve lost your ring in the car before — because you’re playing with it while driving — check there, too.

Next, think of any specific situations that might have caused you to lose your item in the first place. Garcia goes through the typical ways people lose rings. “Did you throw anything that day? Did you deal with cold water? Did you put lotion on somewhere?” These questions can help you figure out a more targeted strategy for searching.

Technique 3: Recreate the movement of the object around the area where you first remembered losing it.

The behavior of how the object falls, lands, or moves as you act the scene can provide clues as to where the object might be. Garcia uses this tactic when customers lose a ring because they threw it out a window or across a room — usually during an argument.

Garcia remembers helping a woman who threw her wedding ring out the car window. “She kept saying, ‘I threw it right there,'” he says.

He wondered: Was it really “there”? To test the theory, he took a cheap ring, tied a long red ribbon on it and asked the woman to throw it out the window, just like she did her wedding ring. “He threw it three times in a row and it never went straight out the window. It flew back into the back of the car,” he says. Thanks to this technique, he was able to find the woman’s ring.

Technique 4: Break out of your search rut by changing your perspective.

Professional finders, such as those involved in search and rescue, don’t just look at the floor when searching for missing people in the wild, says Michael Houtcognitive psychologist and director of the Vision and Memory Science Laboratory at New Mexico State University.

It scans its environment 360 degrees. That means “looking down, looking up, looking left and right, crouching to change your perspective, turning around to see things that weren’t visible to you when you- you tackled the first time,” says Hout.

You might be surprised at what you find. “A windsurfer that someone threw when they were warming up, for example, could have been picked up by the wind and thrown into a bush or a tree, for example,” he says.

Technique 5: Look in strange and unexpected areas.

If you can’t find your keys in the places you normally leave them — your bag, your pocket, the entryway table by your front door — “force yourself to look in low-probability areas,” says Hout. “Sometimes people put their keys in strange places. Maybe they missed them. Or someone moved them.”

Technique 6: Divide the space into sections, then search each section.

Grid search, as it’s called, is a form of systematic search, Robbins says. It is sometimes used in search and rescue as a last resort to find missing people. But it can also be a useful tool if you’re looking for something in a cluttered room, where the distinguishing features of your missing item can be hard to spot.

“It will be slow and less efficient, but it will make sure you find the thing you’re looking for,” says Robbins. “Imagine your search environment as a grid. Cover every square in the grid, maybe top to bottom, left to right.”

The idea is to come up with a thorough search strategy without having to remember every location you’ve already seen, she says. You don’t necessarily have to measure a grid. Imagine breaking the search environment into smaller units — sections of a room, pieces of furniture — and then searching those units in an order that makes sense to you. If necessary, use Post-it Notes to mark where you have already searched.

How I finally found my missing passport

I was looking for it for hours and my brain was fried. I sat on the bed and looked around the room. And then I just had this moment of clarity. passport has to be next to the bed. That’s where I last saw you.

So I pushed the mattress off the bed. And where did I find it? Trapped between the wall of the bed and the side of the mattress!

While I didn’t have any of the strategies I’m giving you now to look for my passport, what I did have was persistence. This is what you will need if you want to be able to find your lost item.

I asked Darryl Ellis, the boss A-1 Detective Agency in Illinois, what it takes to be a good detective. He has been a private detective since 1996.

“If I had to use one word, I would say tenacity,” he says. If you’ve lost something you really care about, move on. Don’t give up.

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This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Cirino. It was edited by Margaret Cirino and Meghan Keane. The visual editor is Beck Harlan.

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