It is 11 February and you have no Valentine's gift

It is the 11th, you have nothing, and the petrol station flowers are starting to look like a plan. Before you go there, check your phone. If your partner has a wishlist, the problem is already solved. If not, there are still three days, and three days is plenty.

Look at the wishlist before anything else

Over the year your partner has said "oh, I would love that" about twenty things and you remember two of them. A wishlist is where those twenty things live. Open it, pick something that fits your budget, and you are done before the kettle boils.

It also hides the panic. Your partner will remember getting exactly the earrings she wanted. She will not remember that they were ordered at 11pm on the 11th. Run every Valentine's this way for a few years and you end up with a reputation as someone who pays attention. Nobody needs to know how it is done.

No list? Something digital arrives in minutes

If there is no wishlist to lean on, a digital gift can still be a good one, and it arrives before you have finished writing the card. Things that work:

• A year of the service they already pay for monthly: Spotify, Audible, the football app, a magazine about bikes.
• An online course in the thing they keep saying they want to learn. Ceramics on a Sunday, Italian, sourdough.
• A gift card for the restaurant you both like, or the shop where they buy the trainers.
• The e-book or the album they mentioned last week and did not buy.

The difference between a lazy digital gift and a good one is specificity. A 50 euro Amazon voucher says you forgot. A year of the running app they use every morning says you noticed.

Express delivery still works on the 12th

If you know what they want from a conversation in November, you can still get it in time, at least in a city. Check, in this order:

• Next-day delivery from the big retailers, which most of them extend around the 14th.
• Local shops that deliver the same day through an app.
• Order online, collect in store. This one is underrated; it reserves the item right now and you pick it up on your way home.
• The florists and gift services that exist for exactly this situation, at a price.

Do it tonight. The express slots go first, and by the afternoon of the 13th you will be back to the petrol station.

Or skip the object and book something

Some of the best Valentine's gifts cost nothing to wrap. A picnic on the first dry Saturday. Two tickets to the gig in March you both wanted to see. A cooking class on a Tuesday evening. A massage for two. A night in Bruges booked for a weekend when February has stopped raining.

An experience is easier to sort out at short notice than hunting down the right physical thing, and it gives you both a date to look forward to instead of another object on the shelf. Print the confirmation, put it in an envelope, and it looks planned.

Make sure this does not happen again

Once the 14th is behind you, ask your partner to keep a running wishlist, and keep one yourself. Add things the moment they come up: the boots in the shop window, the cookbook at a friend's house. Those "I would love that" moments are gone from memory by the time the birthday or the anniversary arrives.

It takes a few minutes to create a wishlist, and every gift after this one gets easier. Do it together on the 15th, while the relief is still fresh.