Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
When the thing is over, sit down for twenty minutes and go through it: what happened, what worked, what did not, what you will do differently. Put it in the diary, because it never happens on intention alone.
The monthly report, the school year, the audit. Write the answers where you will actually find them next time, and be specific about the point it went wrong rather than the fact that it did. Then read your own notes first thing next time round. Otherwise you can spend years having the same experience over and over without collecting anything from it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing' (Quran 9:105). An account of what happened is coming either way, and a small honest one now is decent practice for it.
وَقُلِ ٱعۡمَلُواْ فَسَيَرَى ٱللَّهُ عَمَلَكُمۡ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَۖ وَسَتُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَٰلِمِ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Take action! God will see your actions- as will His Messenger and the believers- and then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing
Qur’an 9:105read 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 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. Handling feedback is a process in its own right, which is a reason to make it deliberate rather than leave it to happen. That was a clinical comparison, so it tests nothing about debriefs as such.
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
Experience does not turn into knowledge by itself; somebody has to stop and pull it out.
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
Put unassigned time in the calendar on purpose. Not as a gap that might survive, as an actual appointment, because unplanned work always arrives and it has to land somewhere.
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.
Without that gap the choice is made before it is a choice: one marshmallow now instead of two in ten minutes. It shows up in money, in work, in what gets said to people.