Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
When you book something, put everything into the entry there and then: the address, the phone number, what you have to bring. You will never have that information more easily to hand than at the moment of booking.
The alternative is standing on the pavement at ten to one, searching for which branch it was, with the insurance card at home. Booking is already a moment when the details are in front of you, so attaching the writing down to it costs almost nothing. If somebody books on your behalf, ask for the details while you are still on the call.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Take care to do your prayers, praying in the best way (Quran 2:238). The instruction is not only to do the thing but to do it properly, which is where the details earn their place.
حَٰفِظُواْ عَلَى ٱلصَّلَوَٰتِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِ ٱلۡوُسۡطَىٰ وَقُومُواْ لِلَّهِ قَٰنِتِينَ
Take care to do your prayers, praying in the best way, and stand before God in devotion
Qur’an 2:238read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a study of people forming a flossing habit, where the new behaviour sat relative to an existing routine influenced how automatic it became. Attaching your note taking to the booking is the same move, a new step tucked into something you are already doing. It was a small observational study of one health behaviour, so treat it as a plausible principle rather than a finding about calendars.
Judah G, Gardner B, Aunger R. (2013). Forming a flossing habit: an exploratory study of the psychological determinants of habit formation.. British journal of health psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Effort spent while the information is in front of you is effort you will not have to find later.
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 children need to move, and the choice is whether that movement is allowed for or whether it arrives as a disruption later on.
Think of a calendar as memory kept outside your head rather than as a test of discipline. Its whole job is to answer what you should be doing now, so that you do not have to work it out.
The benefit comes from how often you touch it. Writing something in is a rehearsal, looking it up is a reminder, and by the time the day arrives you have met it so many times that nothing takes you by surprise.