Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
When a decision is looming, write the options out rather than talking them through. A test is coming: do nothing, make a revision timetable, ask for extra help. Three lines on paper.
Options do not tend to appear by themselves when planning is hard, and holding three of them in mind while weighing them up is harder still. On paper you can look at all three at once and mark what each would cost. The choice at the end has to be theirs, because a plan somebody picked for you is not one you will follow on Thursday night.
Qur’an and Sunnah
who taught by means of the pen (Quran 96:4). Teaching by the pen is named as a kindness, and putting a hard choice on paper is a small version of it.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial in 88 adults with ADHD tested twelve manualised group CBT sessions with individual coaching, both alongside medication and without it, asking whether the structured psychological work adds anything on top of drugs. Written problem-solving exercises like this one belong to that family of work. It was a modest trial in adults, so it does not tell you how the same exercise fares with a fifteen-year-old.
Cherkasova MV, French LR, Syer CA, Cousins L, Galina H, Ahmadi-Kashani Y, Hechtman L. (2020). Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With and Without Medication for Adults With ADHD: A Randomized Clinical Trial.. Journal of attention disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Once the choices are on paper you can compare them by looking instead of by remembering.
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 classroom is the strongest place to help and most clinicians cannot get into one. That is a reason to work well in the next best place, not a reason to give up.
There is a corner of the week that is neither urgent nor important, and it is where avoiding lives. The real cost is rarely the lost hours. It is what you end up saying to yourself afterwards.
The good place to be is where things matter but nothing is on fire yet. Booking the check-up, planning next term, getting the haircut before it becomes a situation.