Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
How long will this take is really several questions at once. There is the doing, and there is finding everything you need before you can start, and the second one is usually missing from the guess.
Next time you estimate something, split it out loud: how long to gather what I need, how long to actually do it, how long to put it all away again. Anyone who cannot quickly lay hands on the right file or the right tool often spends more on the first part than on the second. Once it is a separate line, it stops being a mystery why everything runs over.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God has set a due measure for everything (Quran 65:3). Tasks have real lengths whether or not your sense of them agrees.
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
In a study of 114 undergraduates, the link between putting things off and attention difficulties ran through executive functions, particularly time management, organisation and problem solving. It is a cross sectional student sample, so the direction of the link is not settled. It does fit the idea that being organised and estimating well are tangled together rather than separate skills.
Bolden J, Fillauer JP. (2020). "Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week": Executive functions mediate the relation between procrastination and attention problems.. Journal of American college health : J of ACH doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
When you picture a task you picture yourself doing it, not hunting for the things it needs, so that time never enters the estimate.
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
If you have ten minutes and the episode is forty, the moment to act is before it starts. Stopping halfway is a much harder ask than never beginning.
When someone has missed the deadline again, the talk about how they always do this changes nothing except how they feel. If you want a different Friday, the conversation belongs on Monday, and it is about the plan rather than the person.
The inner clock does more than one job. It tells you what time it is now, how long that took, how long things usually take, and it taps you on the shoulder when a particular time arrives.