Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
This is worth knowing about yourself without shame: once you are inside something absorbing, the pull to stay is enormous and the part of you that could stop is the part that is already busy. So the rule sits at the front. No new episode, no new game, no long article before something you have to leave for. If you want the reward, it goes on the other side of the thing you have to do.
The sun cannot overtake the moon, nor can the night outrun the day: each floats in its own orbit (Quran 36:40). One thing finishing before the next begins is the pattern being described.
يس
لَا ٱلشَّمۡسُ يَنۢبَغِي لَهَآ أَن تُدۡرِكَ ٱلۡقَمَرَ وَلَا ٱلَّيۡلُ سَابِقُ ٱلنَّهَارِۚ وَكُلࣱّ فِي فَلَكࣲ يَسۡبَحُونَ
The sun cannot overtake the moon, nor can the night outrun the day: each floats in [its own] orbit
Qur’an 36:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analytic review of children and adolescents with ADHD confirmed a stronger preference for a smaller reward now over a larger one later, a form of impulsivity that had been studied less than the quick reaction sort. Pressing play sets exactly that contest up, at its worst odds. The review pools group differences rather than telling you what any one evening will hold.
Patros CH, Alderson RM, Kasper LJ, Tarle SJ, Lea SE, Hudec KL. (2016). Choice-impulsivity in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
It takes far less to not start something than to tear yourself out of it once it has hold of you.
Time speeds up inside something absorbing and crawls inside something dull, and for many people with ADHD that swing is much wider. Which means your sense of time is least reliable exactly where you need it most.
Write the morning out in small steps with times against them and stick it where you will pass it. Bathroom finished by quarter past, clothes on by half past, at the table by twenty to.
Set the limit while you are calm and let the device hold it. A computer that shuts itself down at half past ten is arguing with nobody, which is why it wins.