Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Bring the cost forward into today. No screen until the hour of work is done, rather than a poor grade three months from now.
Same idea for adults: you do not leave the desk until the hour is in, the film waits until the form is filed. It works because it stops asking you to care about April. Set the rule yourself rather than having it handed to you, and keep it small enough that you will still honour it on a bad day.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Race to do good deeds' (Quran 2:148). Urgency is attached to something that pays out much later, which is the same move you are making here at a smaller scale.
وَلِكُلࣲّ وِجۡهَةٌ هُوَ مُوَلِّيهَاۖ فَٱسۡتَبِقُواْ ٱلۡخَيۡرَٰتِۚ أَيۡنَ مَا تَكُونُواْ يَأۡتِ بِكُمُ ٱللَّهُ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدِيرࣱ
Each community has its own direction to which it turns: race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together. God has power to do everything
Qur’an 2:148read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of 36 studies supported a motivational sequence in which self determined motivation predicts intentions, and intentions in turn predict behaviour. Read against this tip, that is an argument for choosing your own rule rather than having one imposed, since where the motivation comes from seems to matter for whether the behaviour follows. It synthesises correlational models rather than testing any particular rule at home.
Martin S. Hagger; Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis (2008). Integrating the theory of planned behaviour and self‐determination theory in health behaviour: A meta‐analysis. British Journal of Health Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A cost you meet this evening is one you can feel while you are deciding.
When not to
If the rule turns into a nightly argument, with a child or with yourself, make it easier rather than stricter.
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
Put unassigned time in the calendar on purpose. Not as a gap that might survive, as an actual appointment, because unplanned work always arrives and it has to land somewhere.
Feeling bad about being late is a consequence you can talk yourself out of in about four seconds. Telling a friend you are buying dinner if you are late is not.
The conversation only counts if the decisions end up in the calendar. 'You take Tuesday, I'll take Thursday' has to be written down or it did not really happen.