Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Do not ask whether you feel like it. The answer is no, today and every other day. Ask how you will feel about it later.
The first question has only one answer and it never varies, which is why it ends up deciding everything. The second is answerable and it moves with the facts. Say it out loud if that helps. Not do I want to start this, but do I want to be the person opening this on Thursday night. Then begin with something small, since the question is only there to get you moving.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Wealth and children are the attractions of this worldly life, but lasting good works have a better reward with your Lord' (Quran 18:46). What appeals now and what is worth having are weighed against each other rather than mistaken for each other.
ٱلۡمَالُ وَٱلۡبَنُونَ زِينَةُ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَٱلۡبَٰقِيَٰتُ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتُ خَيۡرٌ عِندَ رَبِّكَ ثَوَابࣰ ا وَخَيۡرٌ أَمَلࣰ ا
Wealth and children are the attractions of this worldly life, but lasting good works have a better reward with your Lord and give better grounds for hope
Qur’an 18:46read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment, imagining concrete future events during choices between sooner and later rewards reduced impulsive choosing in both lean and obese adults. Bringing the later moment into the decision changed what people picked, which is what swapping the question is meant to do. Those were laboratory choices about food and money, so the reach into a Monday morning is by analogy.
Daniel TO, Stanton CM, Epstein LH. (2013). The future is now: comparing the effect of episodic future thinking on impulsivity in lean and obese individuals.. Appetite doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
How you feel right now will always argue for later, so it is the wrong thing to be asking.
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
Once a week, both calendars open on the table. Who is doing scouts, who has football, what is happening on Thursday. Twice a week if the house is busy.
Put unassigned time in the calendar on purpose. Not as a gap that might survive, as an actual appointment, because unplanned work always arrives and it has to land somewhere.
Thursday night goes badly, you swear at yourself, and you mean every word. Next quarter the same thing happens. That is not you failing to learn. It is a lesson that cannot survive the distance.