Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Gaming for an hour before you start the work almost never costs an hour. Do the thing that has to be done first, then the thing you want.
Once something enjoyable is running, whatever you were meant to do afterwards looks duller than it already did, and the hour quietly becomes three. Putting the obligation first is not really about discipline. It is one decision made in advance so that you are not making it later, at the point when you are least able to. It helps to say what counts as done, so there is a real finishing line rather than an open task standing between you and the evening.
Qur’an and Sunnah
When the call to prayer is made on the day of congregation, hurry towards the reminder of God and leave off your trading (Quran 62:9). One thing is given priority over whatever you were in the middle of, and the order is settled beforehand rather than argued over each time.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِذَا نُودِيَ لِلصَّلَوٰةِ مِن يَوۡمِ ٱلۡجُمُعَةِ فَٱسۡعَوۡاْ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ وَذَرُواْ ٱلۡبَيۡعَۚ ذَٰلِكُمۡ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡ إِن كُنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
Believers! When the call to prayer is made on the day of congregation, hurry towards the reminder of God and leave off your trading––that is better for you, if only you knew––
Qur’an 62:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In randomised experiments, breaking an online lecture up with short memory tests reduced mind wandering and improved what students learned, which is a change to the structure rather than an appeal to trying harder. Separately, an individual differences study found that heavier media multitaskers showed a stronger preference for immediate rewards and more fast intuitive thinking. Neither tested this ordering rule, but together they favour arranging the situation over relying on resolve.
Szpunar KK, Khan NY, Schacter DL. (2013). Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America doi
Schutten D, Stokes KA, Arnell KM. (2017). I want to media multitask and I want to do it now: Individual differences in media multitasking predict delay of gratification and system-1 thinking.. Cognitive research: principles and implications doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Deciding the order beforehand means you are not leaning on willpower at the moment it is weakest.
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
When someone says they did not really mean it, that it was not really them, the temptation is to hear an excuse. It is usually better information than that.
Ask your child to show you their feed and explain it to you. You are asking to be taught rather than to inspect, and from the other side those feel nothing like each other.
When a death is filmed and passed around, some of the people who watch it are not all right afterwards, and a few are put in real danger by it. Ask what has been going round.