Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
Take one of the gaps you already have, the commute or the walk or the shower, and use it to ask what is coming up this week and what might be slipping. No new tool, no new app, just the question.
That turns something accidental into something you can count on. It works best in the same place each time, so that the place starts asking the question for you. Have somewhere to put what comes up, since the answers tend to arrive while your hands are busy. Keep it short as well: this is a scan of the week ahead, not a review of your life.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Men who are not distracted, either by commerce or profit, from remembering God (Quran 24:37). Keeping some of the day unclaimed is what makes that possible at all.
رِجَالࣱ لَّا تُلۡهِيهِمۡ تِجَٰرَةࣱ وَلَا بَيۡعٌ عَن ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ وَإِقَامِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَإِيتَآءِ ٱلزَّكَوٰةِ يَخَافُونَ يَوۡمࣰ ا تَتَقَلَّبُ فِيهِ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرُ
men who are not distracted, either by commerce or profit, from remembering God, keeping up the prayer, and paying the prescribed alms, fearing a day when hearts and eyes will turn over
Qur’an 24:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Two randomised trials tested mental contrasting with implementation intentions, where you picture the outcome you want, then the obstacle in the way, then make an if then plan, as a way of stopping people delaying bedtime. The sequence is close to what this kind of review does: look at what is coming, spot what will get in the way, decide the response now. They were small trials on one behaviour, so take the structure rather than a promise about procrastination.
Valshtein TJ, Oettingen G, Gollwitzer PM. (2020). Using mental contrasting with implementation intentions to reduce bedtime procrastination: two randomised trials.. Psychology & health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Looking ahead on purpose catches things while there is still time to do something about them.
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
Notice how often a forgotten job turns up in the shower, or halfway up a flight of stairs. That is not coincidence: when nothing is holding your attention, the things you meant to do float up.
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.
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.