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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
There is a quiet belief that arranged consequences are a kind of cheating and that real lessons have to come from real life. But if the timing means the lesson never lands, nobody is learning anything while you wait. Make it sooner, make it happen more often, make it something another person knows about, make it noticeable, keep count. Five ways of saying one thing: bring it close enough to feel.
'If anyone desires a harvest in the life to come, We shall increase it for him' (Quran 42:20). A harvest is something planted on purpose rather than something that simply turns up.
الشورى
مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ حَرۡثَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ نَزِدۡ لَهُۥ فِي حَرۡثِهِۦۖ وَمَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ حَرۡثَ ٱلدُّنۡيَا نُؤۡتِهِۦ مِنۡهَا وَمَا لَهُۥ فِي ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ مِن نَّصِيبٍ
If anyone desires a harvest in the life to come, We shall increase it for him; if anyone desires a harvest in this world, We shall give him a share of it, but in the Hereafter he will have no share
Qur’an 42:20read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A cluster randomised trial across ten schools tested whether an intervention grounded in self determination theory changed pupils' physical activity intentions and behaviour over five weeks. So deliberately built arrangements can be tested and can move behaviour, which is the general point here. It was a short trial in one setting, and it tells you nothing about how long any change holds.
Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis; Martin S. Hagger (2008). Effects of an intervention based on self-determination theory on self-reported leisure-time physical activity participation. Psychology and Health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An arranged consequence arrives while you can still do something about it.
Put the stake outside your own head. Tell a colleague that if you are late to the meeting, lunch is on you.
If the same crunch arrives every month, another talk about it will not shift next month. It was never a shortage of information.
Bring the cost forward into today. No screen until the hour of work is done, rather than a poor grade three months from now.