Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
The towel left on the floor is the model. Tomorrow it is cold and unpleasant to use, and that is the whole of it. Short wait, happens every time, nothing terrible.
When you are building a consequence yourself, aim for those qualities rather than for severity. Something that lands within a day or two. Something that lands reliably rather than whenever anyone remembers to enforce it. Something small enough that it does not turn into a row. Harsh and occasional teaches far less than mild and dependable.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'And that in the end he will be repaid in full for it' (Quran 53:41). The loop between what you do and what comes back is meant to close, and a well built arrangement just closes it sooner.
ثُمَّ يُجۡزَىٰهُ ٱلۡجَزَآءَ ٱلۡأَوۡفَىٰ
and that in the end he will be repaid in full for it
Qur’an 53:41read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A multilevel meta-analysis found that people with substance use disorders differ from non-using controls both in how they value delayed rewards and in how they process feedback, with the effect varying by substance. The feedback part is what bears on this: how a consequence lands is not only about the consequence. It compared clinical groups, so it does not hand you the recipe for a good household rule.
Kluwe-Schiavon B, Viola TW, Sanvicente-Vieira B, Lumertz FS, Salum GA, Grassi-Oliveira R, Quednow BB. (2020). Substance related disorders are associated with impaired valuation of delayed gratification and feedback processing: A multilevel meta-analysis and meta-regression.. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A cost you meet soon and meet every time is the only kind you can actually learn from.
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
Forethought can be as small as this. The motorway is dreadful at nine and fine at two, so you go at two. Ten seconds of picturing it, not an afternoon of planning.
Do not ask whether you feel like it. The answer is no, today and every other day. Ask how you will feel about it later.
Whatever the record is, do it the same day, every time. The salesman writes his notes in the car outside the client's office. Not that evening, not on Friday.