Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
When you agree to something, agree who follows up. Do you tell them if it slips, or do they check in with you?
Most of the hurt around late work comes from nobody having said. You assume they will ask, they assume you will speak up, and the silence in between fills with resentment. Settling it in one sentence at the start is also a fair chance to hand the chasing to whichever of you is better at it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
conduct their affairs by mutual consultation (Quran 42:38). Agreeing how a thing will be run is treated as part of running it well.
وَٱلَّذِينَ ٱسۡتَجَابُواْ لِرَبِّهِمۡ وَأَقَامُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَمۡرُهُمۡ شُورَىٰ بَيۡنَهُمۡ وَمِمَّا رَزَقۡنَٰهُمۡ يُنفِقُونَ
respond to their Lord; keep up the prayer; conduct their affairs by mutual consultation; give to others out of what We have provided for them
Qur’an 42:38read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial with 257 employees compared planning on its own, partner support on its own, and the two combined, for keeping physical activity going over six months. Working out in advance who does what with another person is the piece being tested there. The setting was workplace exercise rather than shared commitments at home, so the parallel is reasonable rather than proven.
Prestwich A, Conner MT, Lawton RJ, Ward JK, Ayres K, McEachan RR. (2012). Randomized controlled trial of collaborative implementation intentions targeting working adults' physical activity.. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An expectation nobody said out loud cannot be met, so both people end up feeling let down.
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
Pick the place that will actually hold the person, not the one with the better name on the letterhead. Three years somewhere that fits beats one term somewhere that does not.
Use a timer you can see rather than one you have to read. A dial where the coloured part shrinks tells you how much is left at a glance, with no arithmetic in the way.
Read down a long to-do list and you will find things belonging to a person you were three years ago. Some of them were never good ideas. They got written down anyway.