Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Put the uncertainty at the front. Not Thursday, possibly Friday, most likely Monday is worth far more to the other person than a confident yes you cannot keep.
It feels worse to say, which is why people avoid it. But a hedge given early costs you nothing, while a promise broken later costs twice: the thing is late, and you are now someone whose word does not quite hold. I will see what I can do is a complete answer on its own.
Qur’an and Sunnah
neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance (Quran 25:67). Promising is a kind of spending, and the balance point is the honest one.
وَٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَنفَقُواْ لَمۡ يُسۡرِفُواْ وَلَمۡ يَقۡتُرُواْ وَكَانَ بَيۡنَ ذَٰلِكَ قَوَامࣰ ا
They are those who are neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance
Qur’an 25:67read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A cognitive behavioural account of adult ADHD argues that the accumulated negative experiences and the sense of falling short, sitting on top of the attention and regulation difficulties themselves, are part of what therapy has to address. Promises that quietly fail are one of the ways that pile grows. It is a clinical argument rather than a tested prediction.
Newark PE, Stieglitz RD. (2010). Therapy-relevant factors in adult ADHD from a cognitive behavioural perspective.. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
People can plan around an honest maybe, and they cannot plan around a yes that turns out to be no.
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
Some of what feels like a flaw in your character is really a job that can be handed to something outside your head: a calendar, a list on the wall, a person who helps you lay out the week.
Urgent means the clock is pushing. Important means it matters to the life you are trying to have. In the moment the two feel identical, and they are not.
Two to four targets is the usual advice and three is plenty. A longer list looks thorough and quietly stops working.