Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
Not every reminder is the same kind of reminder. Call at three is a clock job, when I next see my manager is a person job, and that thing at the conference next year is a diary job.
Mixing them up is where a lot of honest intentions leak away. A note on the desk will not survive until next March, and an alarm cannot tell you your manager has walked in. Sort what you are trying to remember by what will actually be true at the moment it needs doing, then choose the support that fires on exactly that condition.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Keep up regular prayer, for prayer is obligatory for the believers at prescribed times (Quran 4:103). Prescribed times is the model for the clock jobs: the hour decides, not your sense of whether now feels like the moment.
فَإِذَا قَضَيۡتُمُ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ فَٱذۡكُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ قِيَٰمࣰ ا وَقُعُودࣰ ا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِكُمۡۚ فَإِذَا ٱطۡمَأۡنَنتُمۡ فَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَۚ إِنَّ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ كَانَتۡ عَلَى ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مَّوۡقُوتࣰ ا
After performing the ritual prayer, continue to remember God- standing, sitting, and lying on your sides- and once you are safe, keep up regular prayer, for prayer is obligatory for the believers at prescribed times
Qur’an 4:103read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a trial with 557 young adults, an explicit if then plan that tied a situation to a response did better than a general plan with no situational cue attached. The gain came from naming a moment the person could recognise. That was one behaviour in one age group rather than a general law, but it matches what people find with alarms and place linked reminders.
Chapman J, Armitage CJ, Norman P. (2009). Comparing implementation intention interventions in relation to young adults' intake of fruit and vegetables.. Psychology & health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A reminder only helps if it goes off in the same conditions as the action you want.
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
When someone hands you a date, the useful move is not writing the date down. Open your calendar there and then and decide the hour the work will actually happen.
A thought you have in the car about something to say at home is worth nothing until the person is actually there in front of you. Cues have to sit where the action becomes possible, not where you happened to think of it.
When a task is missed it is usually not sitting somewhere being refused. It has gone off the radar altogether, the way a name goes when somebody asks you for it.