Practices

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.

There is a quiet belief that arranged consequences are a kind of cheating and that real lessons have to come from real life. But if the timing means…

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.

A week booked solid is a week where every new thing knocks something else out, and that is where the scramble comes from. Two hours on a Wednesday…

Say the plan out loud to somebody. A manager, a colleague, your wife, a coach. Hearing yourself explain it does something that turning it over privately does not.

The listener does not need to be an expert in any of it. Talking forces you to put things in order, and the gaps tend to announce themselves halfway…

Mindfulness practice is good for most people, and may help a little more if you have ADHD. Treat it as something supportive rather than as the treatment itself.

The honest version is worth having, because being told it is the answer and then finding it is not tends to end with people dropping it entirely. If…

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.

The point is finding the collisions while there is still time to sort them out, rather than at eight on Thursday morning with coats half on. Keep it…

Building a consequence on purpose beats waiting for life to hand you one. There is nothing more virtuous about the natural version. It just tends to arrive too late to teach anybody anything.

Take the five moves together: sooner, more often, held by someone else, big enough to notice, applied every time. Any one of them helps a bit. Two or…