Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
A long project gives you no feedback until it is too late to use any. Put checkpoints in yourself: with the people involved, or just with you and a Monday morning.
Pick the dates while you are writing the plan, not later when you happen to remember. Each one turns a single verdict at the end into several small corrections along the way. If others are involved, tell them the dates, because a checkpoint somebody else is expecting is far more likely to survive a busy week.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause' (Quran 29:69). Guidance is promised during the striving, not held back until the end of it.
وَٱلَّذِينَ جَٰهَدُواْ فِينَا لَنَهۡدِيَنَّهُمۡ سُبُلَنَاۚ وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَمَعَ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
But We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause: God is with those who do good
Qur’an 29:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a study of 132 children, richer future time perception and more detailed imagining of future events went with a greater ability to wait for a real reward. It is a correlation, in children, so it proves nothing about running projects. It does fit the general idea that what you can hold out for depends on how clearly you see ahead, and a checkpoint next week is easier to see than a deadline in April.
Burns P, O'Connor PA, Atance C, McCormack T. (2021). More Later: Delay of Gratification and Thought About the Future in Children.. Child development doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Drift you notice early is drift you can still correct.
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
Before you hand it over, read the original request again. Not your memory of it. The actual words.
Smoking sends its bill decades later. Homework skipped at fourteen lands at university applications. January's receipt matters in April of the following year. The few seconds of relief are always right here.
Every interruption charges you twice. There is the chance you never come back to the work at all, and there is the effort it takes to come back when you do.