Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
Think of a calendar as memory kept outside your head rather than as a test of discipline. Its whole job is to answer what you should be doing now, so that you do not have to work it out.
That framing matters if planners have ever felt like a judgement on you. Nobody expects anyone to hold a phone number in their head any more. The same courtesy applies to the shape of your week, and the effort you save by looking something up is effort left over for the thing itself.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He makes the dawn break; He makes the night for rest; and He made the sun and the moon to a precise measure (Quran 6:96). The day arrives already divided, and a diary is only borrowing the idea.
فَالِقُ ٱلۡإِصۡبَاحِ وَجَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ سَكَنࣰ ا وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ حُسۡبَانࣰ اۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَقۡدِيرُ ٱلۡعَزِيزِ ٱلۡعَلِيمِ
He makes the dawn break; He makes the night for rest; and He made the sun and the moon to a precise measure. That is the design of the Almighty, the All Knowing
Qur’an 6:96read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Validation work on a brief habit measure supports the view that automatic activation, rather than repetition alone, is what makes a habit predict what somebody does. A diary checked at set moments is an attempt to buy that automatic quality from outside yourself. It is measurement research on habits rather than a study of memory aids, so the link is conceptual.
Gardner B, Abraham C, Lally P, de Bruijn GJ. (2012). Towards parsimony in habit measurement: testing the convergent and predictive validity of an automaticity subscale of the Self-Report Habit Index.. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Anything written down is one less thing your attention has to keep hold of.
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
Move things off the to do list and into the week itself. Not write the report, but Wednesday at one, ninety minutes, write the report.
Get the child's eyes first, then give one instruction. The page, how much, and by when, and then stop.
A system survives if it gives back more than it costs. Every time your diary saves you a phone call or a scramble, you have bought yourself a little more willingness to open it tomorrow.