Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Get started
We all keep a few small stories that let us take the easier option in the moment. Not lies to other people, just the ones we tell ourselves and half believe.
They are not a sign of a bad character. Everybody has a set, and what you have been through shapes which ones you specialise in. The reason to know yours is simple: a story you can name loses most of its power, because you hear it arrive instead of just agreeing with it. Start by noticing the sentence you say most often right before you let something slide.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The ways you take differ greatly (Quran 92:4). Your own set of excuses will be yours, and worth learning by name.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of ADHD and procrastination frames putting things off as a self-regulation difficulty that often travels with ADHD, while saying the mechanisms behind it remain unclear. So a difficulty of this kind is well described, though the particular idea of favourite lies comes from clinical practice rather than from that literature.
Suriano R. (2026). A systematic review on the association between ADHD and procrastination.. Research in developmental disabilities doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A thought you can recognise stops feeling like the plain truth.
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
Next time you tell yourself you will remember it, ask what you would bet on that. A month's rent, for or against. The answer usually arrives before you have finished asking.
Nobody needs help starting the things they enjoy. The skill worth building is starting the dull ones, and it is a narrower skill than it looks.
Ask a friend to be the person who knows. Send them a line on the days you went, with no reply needed. Being known about today is what does the work.