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Why is it that I forget to upvote? Even if I find a useful solution that I implement, I forget to upvote.

I actually really like to do it when I remember to, especially knowing that the poster will see a satisfying screenshot of notification about +10 reputation in the top bar which is one of the great joys in life for me personally. It's Monday morning's coffee. But I still forget and I don't understand why.

I know you can't read my mind, but what could be some reasons? If you forget, why do you forget?

I do find though that I don't forget to upvote solutions on questions of my own.

I want to find out why I forget and how I can better remember by seeing why others forget. This is in hopes of figuring out why I forget, and having a discussion that could potentially generate ideas for improving the sites.

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    Eventually the system will remind you that you haven't voted on questions in a while. Commented Jan 30, 2023 at 17:43
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    @BSMP IIRC only after you upvote an answer ... Commented Jan 30, 2023 at 19:49

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It's a problem I had myself in the past, but too long ago, so I don't know exactly how I got over it.

But it might help to think about the benefits for yourself:

  • I tend to encounter some problems multiple times, but with too long intervals between them to remember the solution. Upvotes serve as an indicator which answers worked for me before (and an upvote on the question can serve as an indicator there's a valuable answer for me below). (Now that we have Saves, with the possibility to save an answer, you can also use that.)
  • Each upvote brings you closer to the Civic Duty badge; each question upvote to the Electorate badge.
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Many people don't even have the privilege yet to vote up (15 rep) or vote down (125 rep (100 on meta.stackexchange.com)). So I'd guess that for users that eventually newly gain the voting privilege, it might just a "habit of omission" that stuck. It could also be something worse (if users who haven't earned the voting privilege yet feel like the voting tooltip is telling them their votes don't matter, it could become a habit to not vote). It could be that voting doesn't have as big as an effect on UX as users might like (see Add an option to sort answers by the viewer's previously cast votes).

If you only vote on answers and not questions, the system does give a popup/toast reminder: "you haven't voted in a while; questions need votes too!"

The best way to remember to vote is to practice! You can practice by helping curate the site by voting on things. One way is to help with the review queues (you'll need to gain that privilege first though). The review queues encourage you to vote on posts. You don't need the review queues to curate the site. You can just sit on the newest, interesting, or active questions pages.

If you want to vote in a principled way, learn about what qualifies good and bad posts by reading the Help Center pages on questions: /help/how-to-ask and (where applicable) /help/minimal-reproducible-example. Make sure also to flag or close-vote where appropriate (see also /help/on-topic and /help/dont-ask).

The vote tooltip says: "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear" and "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful". Do note that research effort is primarily about doing research within the Stack Exchange network (although various sites may have varying standards that you can learn by lurking and reading their meta posts), and that for technical, reasonably-scoped how-to questions, implementation effort is not a requirement.

As Glorfindel mentioned, you can motivate yourself by trying to work toward earning voting badges (of which there are many!): supporter, critic, suffrage, vox populi, civic duty, electorate, and sportsmanship

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