Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
On Monday, take a minute to picture Thursday twice. Thursday with an hour of this already behind you, and Thursday with none of it done. Make both of them specific.
Where are you sitting, what time is it, what does your chest feel like. The comparison is the working part, since one vague future against another does nothing, while two vivid ones can be weighed against each other. It is a slightly strange thing to do and it takes about ninety seconds. It is also the most useful thing here for a deadline that is still far off.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Let every soul consider carefully what it sends ahead for tomorrow' (Quran 59:18). Considering carefully is exactly this, holding tomorrow in view while today is deciding.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ وَلۡتَنظُرۡ نَفۡسࣱ مَّا قَدَّمَتۡ لِغَدࣲۖ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ خَبِيرُۢ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُونَ
You who believe! Be mindful of God, and let every soul consider carefully what it sends ahead for tomorrow; be mindful of God, for God is well aware of everything you do
Qur’an 59:18read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised experiment found that vividly imagining specific future experiences reduced how steeply people discounted future rewards, and reduced snacking too. That is fairly direct support for this technique, with the usual caveats: a laboratory task, a short follow up, effects measured across a group rather than promised to any individual. Notably it does not ask you to care more, only to picture more.
Dassen FCM, Jansen A, Nederkoorn C, Houben K. (2016). Focus on the future: Episodic future thinking reduces discount rate and snacking.. Appetite doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A future you can see clearly carries some of the weight it should have had all along.
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
One way to hold the whole thing: you feel now at full volume and later almost not at all. Putting things off, saying yes too often, spending, jumping in. One pattern rather than four separate faults.
You are allowed to build the consequence rather than waiting for life to deliver one. Waiting is not more honest, it is only slower, and often it never arrives at all.
Someone running just ahead of the avalanche has nowhere to stand and think. Reflection needs a bit of room, and a life with no room in it cannot make any.