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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Say what you actually saw, and say it close to the moment: you sat down twice today when you clearly did not want to. Small rewards work too, as long as they come often and honestly rather than being saved for some grand achievement. This is not flattery. It is aiming the encouragement at the part a person can control. It works on yourself as well, so mark the attempt in your diary instead of waiting to feel proud at the end of something.
Do good, all of you, for I see everything you do (Quran 34:11). What is seen is the doing, not only the completed object at the end of it.
سبأ
أَنِ ٱعۡمَلۡ سَٰبِغَٰتࣲ وَقَدِّرۡ فِي ٱلسَّرۡدِۖ وَٱعۡمَلُواْ صَٰلِحًاۖ إِنِّي بِمَا تَعۡمَلُونَ بَصِيرࣱ
saying, ‘Make coats of chain mail and measure the links well.’ ‘Do good, all of you, for I see everything you do.’
Qur’an 34:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review with meta-regression compared lifestyle programmes to identify which behaviour change techniques separated the ones that worked from the ones that did not. Its relevance here is that specific components can be identified and do matter, rather than programmes succeeding on general goodwill. It was not a study of praise from a parent, so this remains a well grounded practice rather than a tested one.
Samdal GB, Eide GE, Barth T, Williams G, Meland E. (2017). Effective behaviour change techniques for physical activity and healthy eating in overweight and obese adults; systematic review and meta-regression analyses.. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Encouragement has to arrive often enough to shape anything, and finished results arrive far too rarely to do that job.
Putting a task in the diary is not the same as doing it. The slot holds the time. The starting is still yours.
Medication can make the learning possible. It does not do the learning. If no tools get built while things are steadier, there is nothing standing there when the dose wears off.
The next step has to be theirs. A job that looks like nothing to you might be the first thing in two years they chose without being pushed, and that is exactly why it holds.