Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Practise one sentence until it comes out on its own: let me check and come back to you. It buys the few minutes you need to answer truthfully.
The moment of being asked is the hard part, because the yes is out of your mouth before any checking has happened. Having one phrase ready means you are not composing anything under pressure. And if it slips out anyway and you agree to something, you are still allowed to go back within the hour and correct it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete (Quran 20:114). Holding back until you have the whole of something is honoured, even where the one being addressed is the Prophet.
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial gave people a written help sheet pairing each likely obstacle with a response worked out in advance, and physical activity went up in a group with low socioeconomic status. Deciding your response before the moment arrives is the part that carries over here. It was an exploratory trial about exercise, so the general method has some support while this particular use of it has none.
Armitage CJ, Arden MA. (2010). A volitional help sheet to increase physical activity in people with low socioeconomic status: A randomised exploratory trial.. Psychology & health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A prepared phrase puts a gap between the question and the answer, and the checking happens inside the gap.
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
If you are pulled towards risk, you will do better giving that pull somewhere with a floor under it than trying to switch it off. Fast, high, cold, loud: choose the planned version rather than the one that turns up at two in the morning.
Sorting goes better fast than carefully. If every item stalls you, ask someone to sit in the room while you work, not to help but to keep the pace up.
An hour exists somewhere in the week for almost anything. That is what makes yes so easy, and it is not the same as having an hour.