Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Whatever the record is, do it the same day, every time. The salesman writes his notes in the car outside the client's office. Not that evening, not on Friday.
No exceptions is the part doing the work. One skipped day teaches you that skipping is survivable, and 'it worked out fine that once' is the thought that unpicks the whole arrangement. It also happens to produce the best version of the record, since everything you would have lost by dinner is still there while you are sitting in the car park.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat' (Quran 12:47). Every harvest rather than most of them, which is where the strength of it lies.
قَالَ تَزۡرَعُونَ سَبۡعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبࣰ ا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمۡ فَذَرُوهُ فِي سُنۢبُلِهِۦٓ إِلَّا قَلِيلࣰ ا مِّمَّا تَأۡكُلُونَ
then I can return to the people to inform them.’ Joseph said, ‘You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat
Qur’an 12:47read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
An imaging experiment found that imagining fictitious experiences recruits much the same brain network as remembering the past, evidence that what we picture is constructed out of remembered material. So detail lost today is not only missing from the record, it is missing from what you can plan with later. The study was about memory and imagination rather than note taking, so that last step is inference.
Hassabis D, Kumaran D, Maguire EA. (2007). Using imagination to understand the neural basis of episodic memory.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A rule with no exceptions never has to be decided about again.
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
Without that gap the choice is made before it is a choice: one marshmallow now instead of two in ten minutes. It shows up in money, in work, in what gets said to people.
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?
'It's bad for your health' and 'grades matter later' move nobody, least of all someone who has never seen what either one looks like.