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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
None of it feels like an achievement, which is exactly why it gets no credit and keeps slipping. Try counting it as work: the dentist, the form, an hour spent on next month. A week with three of those in it is a better week than one where you fought four fires brilliantly. It is undramatic, and after a while it feels a bit like coasting, which is what it is supposed to feel like.
You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap (Quran 12:47). The work is done in the ordinary years, well before anything is pressing.
يوسف
قَالَ تَزۡرَعُونَ سَبۡعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبࣰ ا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمۡ فَذَرُوهُ فِي سُنۢبُلِهِۦٓ إِلَّا قَلِيلࣰ ا مِّمَّا تَأۡكُلُونَ
then I can return to the people to inform them.’ Joseph said, ‘You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat
Qur’an 12:47read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane review examined personalised care planning, where the person and the professional together name what needs attention and agree specific goals and actions rather than waiting for the next flare up. It comes from long term illness care, so it is about health rather than about haircuts and forms. The shape it supports is the one described here: attending to things on a plan instead of at the point they become emergencies.
Coulter A, Entwistle VA, Eccles A, Ryan S, Shepperd S, Perera R. (2015). Personalised care planning for adults with chronic or long-term health conditions.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Anything dealt with early costs a fraction of what the same thing costs once it has turned urgent.
Set the room up so that movement is already there for the taking: somewhere to stand, something to hold, a chair that lets you shift. Then nobody has to decide in the moment whether it is allowed.
If most of the difficulty is happening at home, most of the work needs to happen with the household in the room. Otherwise the hour of good conversation gets quietly undone by Tuesday.
Look in often, say the good bits out loud, and stop for a few minutes about every hour. Three small things that carry more than any talk about concentrating harder.