Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
The further off something sits, the less it weighs on today's decision. That is not a flaw in your reasoning. It is how the weighing works for everybody.
It also explains something that often gets read as dishonesty. The plan you made on Monday was sincere. By Thursday the reward for keeping it has come no closer in feeling, while the cost of doing it right now is very close indeed, so the preference flips. Nobody lied at either point. Knowing that, you can stop putting your character on trial and start making Monday's plan harder to undo: pay in advance, tell someone, book it as an appointment with a person.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God has set a due measure for everything (Quran 65:3). Things have a real size whether or not you can feel it from where you happen to be standing.
وَيَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَا يَحۡتَسِبُۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسۡبُهُۥٓۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بَٰلِغُ أَمۡرِهِۦۚ قَدۡ جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدۡرࣰ ا
and will provide for them from an unexpected source; God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him. God achieves His purpose; God has set a due measure for everything
Qur’an 65:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta analytic review confirmed that children and adolescents with ADHD show more reward delay impulsivity, preferring a smaller reward now over a larger one later, a form of impulsivity studied less than quick responding. A separate case control study found that difficulty with waiting contributed to ADHD independently of executive dysfunction, variable reaction times and emotional difficulties, so it is not simply a by product of poor executive control. Both are group comparisons, describing a tendency rather than predicting any one decision.
Patros CH, Alderson RM, Kasper LJ, Tarle SJ, Lea SE, Hudec KL. (2016). Choice-impulsivity in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Sjöwall D, Roth L, Lindqvist S, Thorell LB. (2013). Multiple deficits in ADHD: executive dysfunction, delay aversion, reaction time variability, and emotional deficits.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Value shrinks with distance in time, so the same choice genuinely looks different depending on when you are standing.
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
Some people do not really perceive time passing. It is more like weather, something you are inside of, and then it is suddenly six o'clock.
When you are sure something takes ten minutes, do not argue with yourself. Write down the guess, start a timer, and look at both afterwards.
Think of the small repair job that swallows an hour because the right screw is not in the drawer. That hour was always part of the job. It just was not part of the picture in your head.