Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
The first version of the list will be alright. It becomes good over a couple of years, one forgotten item at a time.
So when you arrive somewhere without the thing you needed, add a line rather than carrying the annoyance around with you. That turns a bad morning into an improvement to the system, which is a much better use for it. Take off whatever has stopped applying. The list is meant to keep changing as your life does.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'You will progress from stage to stage' (Quran 84:19). Improvement is described as something that accumulates, which is exactly how a good list gets built.
لَتَرۡكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقࣲ
you will progress from stage to stage
Qur’an 84:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A multilevel meta-analysis found that people with substance use disorders differ from non-using controls in how they value delayed rewards and in how they process feedback, with the effect varying by substance. The feedback part is the relevant bit: learning from what went wrong is a process in its own right, and one that can be propped up from outside. It was a clinical comparison, so it says nothing about lists directly.
Kluwe-Schiavon B, Viola TW, Sanvicente-Vieira B, Lumertz FS, Salum GA, Grassi-Oliveira R, Quednow BB. (2020). Substance related disorders are associated with impaired valuation of delayed gratification and feedback processing: A multilevel meta-analysis and meta-regression.. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Each thing you forgot is information, and the list is somewhere to put it.
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
Your ability to hold off a distraction is at its worst near the end of a work block, not at the start. Set the room up for the tired version of you, because that is the one who will be sitting in it.
If the only real deadline is the fortnightly meeting, invent some smaller ones. A couple of short catch-ups a week will do more for the work than the formal review ever does.
At a check-in, only look. Where am I, what has slipped, what have I still not heard back on. Skim the inbox without opening anything.