Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Running late is one thing. Running late with no message is two things. If it is the text that keeps going missing, put a small cost on the text specifically: no message, you do the washing up.
Worth separating, because they really are separate problems and the second is much cheaper to solve. Remembering to send something while you are already rushing is its own skill, and it usually needs a prompt: an alarm at the time you ought to be leaving, the message half written already. The person waiting minds the silence far more than the ten minutes.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Whoever has done an atom's weight of good will see it' (Quran 99:7). A message that takes five seconds is a small thing that counts for much more than it looks.
فَمَن يَعۡمَلۡ مِثۡقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيۡرࣰ ا يَرَهُۥ
whoever has done an atom’s-weight of good will see it
Qur’an 99:7read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of how episodic foresight develops separates it carefully from planning, from delay of gratification and from remembering to do things later, treating them as related but distinct. Sending that text belongs to the remembering to do things later group, which is why it fails even when you fully meant to. The review is developmental, so it describes the abilities rather than testing any fix.
Hudson JA, Mayhew EM, Prabhakar J. (2011). The development of episodic foresight: emerging concepts and methods.. Advances in child development and behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A warning costs you almost nothing and takes most of the hurt out of being late.
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
The conversation only counts if the decisions end up in the calendar. 'You take Tuesday, I'll take Thursday' has to be written down or it did not really happen.
Give the later self a name and be a bit silly about it. Is Thursday you going to be furious with Monday you again? Is Thursday you always the one clearing up?
The towel left on the floor is the model. Tomorrow it is cold and unpleasant to use, and that is the whole of it. Short wait, happens every time, nothing terrible.