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hewhocutsdown comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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Left vs. Right still tends to take two tries.
It's not the most graceful solution, but if you hold out your hands with your palms down and your thumbs pointed toward each other, the one that's shaped like an L is your left one. Or if you prefer verbal mnemonics, "you write from left to right".
That's how I figure it out. But getting it from "I can figure it out eventually" to that instinctual knowledge just hasn't happened.
All I can suggest past that is to make a point of using the designations more often. It didn't really click for me until quite recently, either, but the only thing that seems even remotely likely to have triggered that click is that a project I was working on involved discussing some pictures with a friend, and I found myself having to actually think about whether X was to the left or the right of Y a few times a week for a couple months.
Can you remember whether you're right-handed or left-handed?
And if so, can you remember which hand you normally hold a pen in?
When learning the left-hand/right-hand motor/induction rules for electromagnetic fields, I spent about half an hour tapping alternate sides of my head, saying "motor, induction, motor, induction..." I can now instinctively tell you which is my motor hand and which is my induction hand.
I still have a problem with instant recall of left and right, though.
I don't get instant recall for left and right, but when I was learning to drive, the teacher would say "turn left ahead" and I would automatically turn on the correct blinker, and then have to pause to figure out which way to turn.
I smashed the left side of my face into a wall while sledding at age ten.
Ever since then, I simply had to remember which cheek the (very minor) scar was on. Don't try this yourself.
I remember it via the left and right mouse buttons.
I used the bell on my bike. For a grownup maybe a wristband, or just the arm you have you watch on might help.
I deal with this by wearing a watch. I always wear a watch on my left hand. Whenever I have to work out whether I'm talking about my left or my right I stop and sense the extra weight. The wrist with a slight weight on it is my left.