Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Put the stake outside your own head. Tell a colleague that if you are late to the meeting, lunch is on you.
The link between being late and buying lunch is arbitrary, and that does not matter at all. What matters is that it is real, it happens soon, and somebody else watched you agree to it. Keep it light and keep it small. This only works if you both find it funny and if you actually pay up when you lose.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Whatever good you store up for yourselves, you will find it with God: He sees everything you do' (Quran 2:110). Being seen is part of how things already are, and a witness closer to hand only makes it easier to feel.
وَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتُواْ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَۚ وَمَا تُقَدِّمُواْ لِأَنفُسِكُم مِّنۡ خَيۡرࣲ تَجِدُوهُ عِندَ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُونَ بَصِيرࣱ
Keep up the prayer and pay the prescribed alms. Whatever good you store up for yourselves, you will find it with God: He sees everything you do
Qur’an 2:110read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A cluster randomised trial across ten schools tested whether an intervention grounded in self determination theory changed pupils' intentions and their physical activity over five weeks. It shows that arrangements deliberately put in place can move behaviour, which is the general principle at work here. It concerned exercise in schools over a short period, so it says nothing about lunch bets between colleagues.
Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis; Martin S. Hagger (2008). Effects of an intervention based on self-determination theory on self-reported leisure-time physical activity participation. Psychology and Health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A cost another person is holding cannot be quietly waived on the way out of the door.
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
Keep a count of it. Everyone talks themselves out of things, and 'I always pull it off at the last minute' is a belief living off the handful of times it was true.
When you ask a manager for regular check-ins, ask for them as a way of staying pointed in the right direction. That is a different conversation from asking to be watched.
Anything you do more than a few times deserves a written list. Not the obvious items. The ones you forget: the belt, the charger, the odd adapter nobody else in the room needs.