Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
But what if I need it one day? The honest answer is that keeping it has a daily price. A list you cannot find anything in has stopped being a list.
The thing you might want once in two years is sitting on top of the thing you need on Thursday. That holds for a to-do list, a desk and a spare room alike. Weigh the small chance of one day against the certainty of not finding what matters now, and deleting starts to look like a gain rather than a loss.
Qur’an and Sunnah
enter your houses by their main doors (Quran 2:189). Being able to come in the front way, rather than climbing round the back each time, is worth protecting.
۞يَسۡـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلۡأَهِلَّةِۖ قُلۡ هِيَ مَوَٰقِيتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَٱلۡحَجِّۗ وَلَيۡسَ ٱلۡبِرُّ بِأَن تَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِن ظُهُورِهَا وَلَٰكِنَّ ٱلۡبِرَّ مَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰۗ وَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِنۡ أَبۡوَٰبِهَاۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ
They ask you [Prophet] about crescent moons. Say, ‘They show the times appointed for people, and for the pilgrimage.’ Goodness does not consist of entering houses by the back [door]; the truly good person is the one who is mindful of God. So enter your houses by their [main] doors and be mindful of God so that you may prosper
Qur’an 2:189read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of mobile apps and text messaging as health interventions noted that the number of apps available is enormous next to the evidence supporting them. Plenty available is not the same as plenty useful, whether the store is your phone or your list. That review is about health tools rather than clutter, so read it as an illustration and not as proof.
Rathbone AL, Prescott J. (2017). The Use of Mobile Apps and SMS Messaging as Physical and Mental Health Interventions: Systematic Review.. Journal of medical Internet research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Everything you keep makes everything else slightly harder to find.
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
A behaviour agreement needs six things in it: the goal, exactly what the child does, what they earn, what happens if they do not, signatures from everyone, and an adult who sticks to it.
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.
Before anything else, check the child actually knows what the homework is. Most homework goes missing at that first step, not at the effort step.