"If an object is in the first place you look, and you need to find it soon, put it back exactly where you found it! If an object isn’t in the first place you look, put it in the first place you looked! You’ll look there again.
Otherwise, what you are doing is systematically taking things you can find, and moving them to locations where you might not find them. Whereas if you fail to find them, you won’t move them, and they’ll stay not found. This is why you can’t find the remote – it keeps moving randomly until it finds a place where you can’t find it, then stays there until you figure that one out. Repeat.
It took way too many times when the only thing I needed was reliably in the wrong pocket for me to figure out how this works."
I have a similar heuristic - put things in the path I will have to follow to accomplish a task, especially if I forget it regularly. Then I won't have to manually remember to deviate from the path to find that thing; it'll be right there along the way and nearly impossible to forget.
It's kind of like changing your keybinds in a game, though (or an editor / IDE) - it's painful at first but if the new scheme is better thought out, it pays for itself fairly quickly.
Otherwise, what you are doing is systematically taking things you can find, and moving them to locations where you might not find them. Whereas if you fail to find them, you won’t move them, and they’ll stay not found. This is why you can’t find the remote – it keeps moving randomly until it finds a place where you can’t find it, then stays there until you figure that one out. Repeat.
It took way too many times when the only thing I needed was reliably in the wrong pocket for me to figure out how this works."