A clever workaround can hide a difficulty for years. A child who memorises what he cannot read looks fine, right up until the amount to be read grows past what memory can carry.

So do not judge by output alone. Ask what it cost to produce. Someone keeping up but exhausted, dreading the reading, staying up late to cover it, is telling you something that an exam mark never will. Worth remembering about yourself too: managing something at enormous expense is not the same as not having a problem with it.

Qur’an and Sunnah

So enter your houses by their main doors and be mindful of God (Quran 2:189). An elaborate way round the back is worth noticing, in a child or in yourself, rather than admiring.

۞يَسۡـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلۡأَهِلَّةِۖ قُلۡ هِيَ مَوَٰقِيتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَٱلۡحَجِّۗ وَلَيۡسَ ٱلۡبِرُّ بِأَن تَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِن ظُهُورِهَا وَلَٰكِنَّ ٱلۡبِرَّ مَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰۗ وَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِنۡ أَبۡوَٰبِهَاۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ

They ask you [Prophet] about crescent moons. Say, ‘They show the times appointed for people, and for the pilgrimage.’ Goodness does not consist of entering houses by the back [door]; the truly good person is the one who is mindful of God. So enter your houses by their [main] doors and be mindful of God so that you may prosper

Qur’an 2:189read it in the library

Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.

What the research says

A path analysis in medical students traced a route from impulsivity through smartphone use, academic and bedtime procrastination and short sleep to subjective cognitive decline, meaning the person's own sense that their thinking has slipped. The outcome there is what someone reports about themselves rather than a test score, which is the distinction being drawn here. It is cross sectional, so it maps how these things sit together and not the order they arrive in.

Hamvai C, Kiss H, Vörös H, Fitzpatrick KM, Vargha A, Pikó BF. (2023). Association between impulsivity and cognitive capacity decrease is mediated by smartphone addiction, academic procrastination, bedtime procrastination, sleep insufficiency and daytime fatigue among medical students: a path analysis.. BMC medical education doi

Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.

Why it works

Effort and distress show a difficulty long before performance does.

This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.

Near this one

Part of what keeps the late start going is that it has genuinely worked. You have produced something good in one long night before, and you remember it clearly.

Twenty minutesYour sense of time

People put the meeting in the diary and not the shower, the finding of the keys or the twenty minutes on the bus. The event gets planned as though standing up puts you in the room.

Five minutesYour sense of time

Every trait worth having here arrives with its twin. A love of the offbeat and a real problem with deadlines are the same wiring seen from two sides.

Five minutesYour sense of time