Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
If you are going to ask someone to remind you, tie it to something they want as well. Reminding you to book the car in is much easier when it is also their car.
Asked as a favour it becomes a job they never applied for, and resentment collects quietly on both sides. Asked as a shared arrangement it lasts. Be specific about the moment too, since remind me sometime is not something anyone can act on: say what to say and when. Where a reminder genuinely is a favour, treat it as one and thank them properly.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Go on reminding, it is good for those who believe to be reminded (Quran 51:55). Reminding is described as a service rather than a nuisance, which takes some of the awkwardness out of asking for it.
وَذَكِّرۡ فَإِنَّ ٱلذِّكۡرَىٰ تَنفَعُ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ
and go on reminding [people], it is good for those who believe to be reminded
Qur’an 51:55read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial with 257 local government employees compared planning on its own, partner support on its own, and the two combined, for keeping up physical activity over six months. It is one of the few places where involving another person in your plans has been tested directly rather than assumed. It looked at exercise, so read it as a reason to design the arrangement deliberately rather than as a promise about your household.
Prestwich A, Conner MT, Lawton RJ, Ward JK, Ayres K, McEachan RR. (2012). Randomized controlled trial of collaborative implementation intentions targeting working adults' physical activity.. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An arrangement that pays off for both people keeps going, and one that only helps you wears thin.
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
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.
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.
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.