Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
If you are the sort who leaves at the last possible second, the entry has to hold everything you need in order to walk out of the door. Address, door code, what to bring, who to ring if you get stuck.
At five minutes to, you cannot search well and you cannot think of what you have forgotten. That is the wrong moment to be finding anything out. Get into the habit of asking, as you write something down, what will I be hunting for in the rush, and put that in too. One line now against ten minutes of chaos later.
Qur’an and Sunnah
His name be remembered in them, with men in them celebrating His glory morning and evening (Quran 24:36). A place and a time are named together there, which is what a good entry does as well.
فِي بُيُوتٍ أَذِنَ ٱللَّهُ أَن تُرۡفَعَ وَيُذۡكَرَ فِيهَا ٱسۡمُهُۥ يُسَبِّحُ لَهُۥ فِيهَا بِٱلۡغُدُوِّ وَٱلۡأٓصَالِ
shining out in houses of worship. God has ordained that they be raised high and that His name be remembered in them, with men in them celebrating His glory morning and evening
Qur’an 24:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
An open trial of a collaborative school and home programme for children with attention and behaviour problems ran over twelve weeks, combining parent training, school consultation and skills work, with outcomes that mattered educationally. Its logic was to build the scaffolding into the surroundings rather than asking the child to carry all of it. An open trial without a control group cannot tell you how much of the change came from the programme itself.
Pfiffner LJ, Villodas M, Kaiser N, Rooney M, McBurnett K. (2013). Educational outcomes of a collaborative school-home behavioral intervention for ADHD.. School psychology quarterly : the official journal of the Division of School Psychology, American Psychological Association doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Nothing you will need at the last minute should require a search at the last minute.
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
Putting something in the calendar does not sign you up for life. If Wednesday turns out wrong, drag it to Thursday. The entry is a plan, and plans are allowed to change.
Attach a new habit to one you already do: after wudu, I read one page.
If a calendar feels like something parents and teachers made you carry, it stays theirs and you keep putting it down. The question worth answering is whose life gets easier when it works.