Practices

When you finish the dull task, give yourself something you actually like. A reward you do not really want does no work at all.

Choose it before you start and make it specific: the good coffee rather than whatever is in the cupboard, half an hour of the thing you keep…

When you get something hard done, resist waving it off with "anyone could have done that". Let it count.

That reflex is common in people who have spent years falling short of what they meant to do, and it quietly cancels the good of finishing. Try the…

There is a sort of avoidance that looks like getting things done. Sorting the drawer, clearing the inbox, any mildly useful job that is not the one you are dreading.

It is harder to catch than obvious time wasting because it leaves you nothing to feel guilty about. At the end of the day the shelf is tidy, the…

Rather than asking whether what you are doing is worthwhile, ask what it is keeping you away from.

The first question is too easy to pass. Almost anything you are doing can be defended as useful, which is why it never catches you out. The second…

Shrink the first step until it takes two minutes, and do only that.

The wall is usually the size of the first step, not the whole task. Make the step tiny enough to fall over.

Do not wait to feel ready. Say Musa's prayer, ease my task, and take one step; the wish to go on comes after.

Motivation usually follows action, not the other way round. Start badly if you must, but start.

When someone says they feel restless inside, ask what the restlessness wants. Restless to move, or restless to do one particular thing until it feels right?

The two feel similar from the inside and point in different directions. With ADHD it is usually undirected: the legs go, the chair is wrong, you need…

A distracted person can be brought back with a nudge. Someone who has gone elsewhere cannot, and the difference shows itself in a couple of seconds.

Say their name, ask something simple, and watch what returns. Attention that has drifted comes back with a small apology and picks the thread up…

Try not to ask why. If the person knew why, they would probably have sorted it out already, and the question tends to land like an accusation.

Ask what happened just before instead. What was going on, what they felt, what came after, what sort of day it had been. Those answers can be worked…

When someone says their heart races on their medication, ask whether it ever did before they started. It is the cheapest question you have and it usually sorts the answer out.

Go looking for the old settings: waiting to be called on in class, standing outside a room before a difficult conversation, three in the morning with…

While you are taking the family history, ask about seizure disorders and psychosis too, not only about attention. A family carrying other neurological or psychiatric conditions is worth knowing about whatever you end up concluding.

Keep the list short and ask it plainly: epilepsy, psychosis, learning difficulties, head injuries, anything neurological. Some of it will matter for…

Some people simply cannot get a family history. Refugee journeys, destroyed records, closed adoptions, families that did not survive. That is a gap in the paperwork and not evidence against the diagnosis.

Say so out loud, and write it in the notes as a gap rather than as a negative finding, so the next person reading does not mistake silence for an…

One man put his lamps on a timer so the room would go dark at eleven and send him to bed. It worked for a few nights. Then he simply carried on in the dark. A cue can tell you the time. It cannot make you stand up.

Worth remembering before you build anything clever. If the pull of whatever a person is already doing is stronger than the nudge you have designed,…

Give your spouse one genuine compliment today, specific enough that it could only be them.

Not nice shirt. The way you handled that call was so calm. Precise praise lands deepest.

When resentment rises today, name one thing you are grateful to your spouse for instead.

The mind can rehearse grievances or blessings. Choose the blessing, out loud if you can.

Thank them for one specific thing, today.

Not "thanks for everything." Pick one thing from the last two days and name it exactly: "Thank you for taking the bins out when I was on that call. I…

Thank them for something they do so routinely you had stopped noticing it.

The unremarked, dependable acts are exactly the ones that most deserve to be seen.

Say not just that you appreciated what they did, but what it saved you.

Naming the burden they spared you turns a thank-you into being truly seen.

Praise a quality of their character, not only something they did.

To be admired for who you are, not just what you produced, is a rare and steadying gift.

Send them a message today naming one thing you are grateful for, with no occasion.

Unprompted gratitude, arriving in the middle of an ordinary day, lands especially softly.