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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
This is a hard one, because the frustration is real and often fair. But the lecture lands on a system that was never the failure point, and it adds shame to the next attempt. Try trading it for one flat question early in the week, something like what is the first piece and when will you do it, and then leave it there.
Urge one another to the truth, and urge one another to steadfastness (Quran 103:3). Encouraging someone to keep going is a different act from making them feel small.
العصر
إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَعَمِلُواْ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلۡحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ
except for those who believe, do good deeds, urge one another to the truth, and urge one another to steadfastness
Qur’an 103:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A two week daily diary study of 96 students, with sleep tracking, found that more stressful days led to more delaying at night, even allowing for how self controlled the person generally was. That was about bedtime rather than deadlines, and the sample was small and student aged. It still points the wrong way for anyone hoping that added pressure will produce less delay.
Schmidt LI, Baetzner AS, Dreisbusch MI, Mertens A, Sieverding M. (2024). Postponing sleep after a stressful day: Patterns of stress, bedtime procrastination, and sleep outcomes in a daily diary approach.. Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Shame does not improve anyone's sense of time and it makes starting the next attempt harder.
If what was missed genuinely costs you something, say that plainly and early, because swallowing it is not kindness either.
The timer you will actually use is the one that takes two seconds. A dial you twist beats an app with four taps, every time, whatever the app can do.
A hundred pounds now, or the same hundred pounds guaranteed at the end of the year. Same money, same certainty. One of them pulls at you and the other does not.
For a lot of people with ADHD there are only two times: now, and not now. A deadline on Thursday and one six months out sit in the same box until the day they suddenly become today.