Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
A surprising number of people avoid writing anything down because it feels binding, as though the ink made it a promise. Left unsaid, that quietly stops the whole system before it starts. Try treating each entry as an intention with a time attached: it holds a place in the week, and you keep the right to change your mind about it.
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak (Quran 4:28). Limits are assumed there rather than punished, and a plan you are allowed to move is built the same way.
النساء
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمۡۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ ضَعِيفࣰ ا
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak
Qur’an 4:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An experimental study found that if then plans reduced the pull of an existing habit on what people did, with the smallest benefit where the competing habit was strongest. A plan is a nudge with a time on it, which is about the strength this evidence gives it. It also warns you that the most entrenched patterns will need more than a diary entry.
Webb TL, Sheeran P, Luszczynska A. (2009). Planning to break unwanted habits: habit strength moderates implementation intention effects on behaviour change.. The British journal of social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Once an entry costs you nothing to make, you will make enough of them for the system to work.
Putting something in the calendar does not sign you up for life. If Wednesday turns out wrong, drag it to Thursday. The entry is a plan, and plans are allowed to change.
Before planning anything, work out which date is actually true. Does Thursday mean Thursday, or does everybody know it means Friday, and is Thursday even possible?
Unless the dentist works in your living room, dentist at one is only half an entry. Block the getting there, the parking and the walking in, and block the journey home as well.