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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
Give preparation and travel their own lines in the calendar, with their own start times. If the meeting is at two and it takes half an hour to get there, the entry that matters begins at half past one, and the getting ready begins before that. It looks fussy on the screen. It is the single change that moves most people from usually late to usually on time.
God has set a due measure for everything (Quran 65:3). The journey has a measure too, whether or not you gave it one.
الطلاق
وَيَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَا يَحۡتَسِبُۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسۡبُهُۥٓۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بَٰلِغُ أَمۡرِهِۦۚ قَدۡ جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدۡرࣰ ا
and will provide for them from an unexpected source; God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him. God achieves His purpose; God has set a due measure for everything
Qur’an 65:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of episodic future thinking describes what it takes to imagine your own future in concrete detail, and what that ability does for planning. Preparation and travel are exactly the dull parts that drop out of an imagined scene. The review sets out mechanisms rather than testing calendar habits, so this is an application of it rather than a finding.
Schacter DL, Benoit RG, Szpunar KK. (2017). Episodic Future Thinking: Mechanisms and Functions.. Current opinion in behavioral sciences doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Anything you do not picture when you imagine the task will not be in the time you set aside for it.
If the test is on Friday and it is Monday, Friday is doing almost no work. Put something today on the end of today's revision, however small.
A clock with hands shows you how much is left. A number only tells you where you are, which is why the hour can vanish while you keep checking it.
Look back over your own history for the times you were knocked down and started something anyway. That pattern is common with ADHD, and it is easy to miss while you are busy counting the failures.