Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
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.
It works because it leaves an odd looking object in a place you already go, and because unfinished jobs nag in a way that quiet decisions do not. Type a couple of characters into a message so the thread shows as a draft, or leave the form open on screen. The obvious catch is that it stops working when everything is half open, so keep it for the few things that matter this week.
Qur’an and Sunnah
So remind, if reminding will help (Quran 87:9). Reminders are treated as a legitimate tool, including the ones you leave lying around for yourself.
فَذَكِّرۡ إِن نَّفَعَتِ ٱلذِّكۡرَىٰ
So remind, if reminding will help
Qur’an 87:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta analysis brought together prompting interventions delivered by computer, phone and wearable to reduce sitting in healthy adults, and coded which behaviour change techniques each one used. It is here because this whole literature is built on prompts and cues rather than on resolutions. It says nothing about drafts or email, and the effects in this area are generally small.
Stephenson A, McDonough SM, Murphy MH, Nugent CD, Mair JL. (2017). Using computer, mobile and wearable technology enhanced interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. 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
An unfinished job is much easier to notice than a decision you made silently in your head.
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
There is a point where a to do list stops being a tool and becomes something you flinch away from. If you have not opened yours in a fortnight, it has passed that point.
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.