Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
By your teens you need some way, any way, of answering one question: given that it is this time on this day, what should I be doing? A plain system that answers it beats a beautiful one that does not.
Paper, phone, whiteboard on the fridge, the format is not the point. If the answer depends on remembering, it depends on luck. Pick the thing you will actually look at, keep only one of it, and check it at fixed moments rather than whenever it crosses your mind.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Prayer is obligatory for the believers at prescribed times (Quran 4:103). A time settled in advance carries the decision, so you are not left working it out in the moment.
فَإِذَا قَضَيۡتُمُ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ فَٱذۡكُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ قِيَٰمࣰ ا وَقُعُودࣰ ا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِكُمۡۚ فَإِذَا ٱطۡمَأۡنَنتُمۡ فَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَۚ إِنَّ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ كَانَتۡ عَلَى ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مَّوۡقُوتࣰ ا
After performing the ritual prayer, continue to remember God- standing, sitting, and lying on your sides- and once you are safe, keep up regular prayer, for prayer is obligatory for the believers at prescribed times
Qur’an 4:103read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic update of the evidence classified behavioural parent training, behavioural classroom management and behavioural peer programmes as the psychosocial treatments with the strongest support for children and adolescents with ADHD. All of them work by putting structure and cues outside the child rather than asking for more effort inside them. It covers children rather than adults, so the transfer to your own diary is by analogy.
Steven W. Evans; Julie Sarno Owens; Nóra Bunford (2013). Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Doing the right thing at the right time depends first on knowing what the right thing is.
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
Writing Tuesday at two in your diary is not a vow. If Tuesday comes and something else matters more, move it. At least it had a chance of happening.
Do the task at the same time and place each day, so the setting starts to do the reminding.
Get the child's eyes first, then give one instruction. The page, how much, and by when, and then stop.