Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
For most of childhood somebody else held the diary. Parents remember the dentist, the kit, the letter that needs signing, and then one day nobody is doing that for you and the whole job is yours.
This is often why someone who managed well enough at school comes apart in their twenties. Nothing got worse. The scaffolding came down, and the years when you might have learned to build your own were spent not needing to. Putting it up now, deliberately and a bit clumsily, is not remedial work on something you should already have.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes (Quran 2:286). The prayer assumes forgetting will happen, which makes rebuilding your supports an ordinary piece of maintenance rather than an admission.
لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفۡسًا إِلَّا وُسۡعَهَاۚ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتۡ وَعَلَيۡهَا مَا ٱكۡتَسَبَتۡۗ رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذۡنَآ إِن نَّسِينَآ أَوۡ أَخۡطَأۡنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحۡمِلۡ عَلَيۡنَآ إِصۡرࣰ ا كَمَا حَمَلۡتَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبۡلِنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلۡنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِۦۖ وَٱعۡفُ عَنَّا وَٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَٱرۡحَمۡنَآۚ أَنتَ مَوۡلَىٰنَا فَٱنصُرۡنَا عَلَى ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘ Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’
Qur’an 2:286read 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 habit formation interventions found they can raise the automaticity of a behaviour, and looked at which components of those interventions matter most. Alongside it, measurement work argues that the active ingredient in a habit is automatic activation rather than sheer frequency. Both come from health behaviour research rather than from ADHD, so take them as reason to think automaticity can be built, not as a recipe for building yours.
Haoming Ma; Aoqi Wang; Runyuan Pei; Meihua Piao (2023). Effects of habit formation interventions on physical activity habit strength: meta-analysis and meta-regression. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity doi
Gardner B, Abraham C, Lally P, de Bruijn GJ. (2012). Towards parsimony in habit measurement: testing the convergent and predictive validity of an automaticity subscale of the Self-Report Habit Index.. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A job other people were quietly doing for you never got practised, so it has to be learned late, when the help stops.
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
Start the email and then stop: address it, write the subject line, leave it unsent. The half finished thing sits in your drafts looking wrong until you deal with it.
Anything that comes round every month should be leaving your account without you. Direct debits and standing orders take the remembering out of the job altogether, which beats any reminder you could set.
It tends to go in a sequence: unreliable first, said kindly, then irresponsible, said less kindly. After that it stops being about the tasks at all and turns into a description of who you are.