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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
Most reminder failures are this mismatch rather than a lack of trying. Someone uses a note where an alarm was needed, it fails, and they conclude they are hopeless. A rough rule: inside the hour, make it visible; beyond that, put it in a calendar or an alarm set for the time it actually needs doing rather than the time you happened to think of it.
Keep up the prayer at both ends of the day, and during parts of the night (Quran 11:114). The anchors are fixed to the day itself, so they arrive whether or not anyone was keeping track.
هود
وَأَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ طَرَفَيِ ٱلنَّهَارِ وَزُلَفࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلَّيۡلِۚ إِنَّ ٱلۡحَسَنَٰتِ يُذۡهِبۡنَ ٱلسَّيِّـَٔاتِۚ ذَٰلِكَ ذِكۡرَىٰ لِلذَّٰكِرِينَ
[Prophet], keep up the prayer at both ends of the day, and during parts of the night, for good things drive bad away- this is a reminder for those who are aware
Qur’an 11:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane review has assessed automated telephone systems that deliver voice messages and gather information for preventive care and long term conditions, and a small randomised study tested a text message reminder system with 98 adolescents with asthma. Both are built on something firing on its own schedule instead of the person remembering. They are health care studies with modest and mixed findings, so what they support is the principle of an outside trigger, not any particular app.
Posadzki P, Mastellos N, Ryan R, Gunn LH, Felix LM, Pappas Y, Gagnon MP, Julious SA, Xiang L, Oldenburg B, Car J. (2016). Automated telephone communication systems for preventive healthcare and management of long-term conditions.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Johnson KB, Patterson BL, Ho YX, Chen Q, Nian H, Davison CL, Slagle J, Mulvaney SA. (2016). The feasibility of text reminders to improve medication adherence in adolescents with asthma.. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Working memory only holds things for minutes, so anything longer has to be handed over to a clock.
Add up what forgetting costs you in money over a year. Late fees, the higher interest that comes with a dented credit score, next day delivery bought at eleven at night for a birthday you have known about since January.
The bag that has to travel with you tomorrow goes on top of your shoes, not neatly beside the desk. Let the object stand in the way of a route you walk without thinking.
Not every reminder is the same kind of reminder. Call at three is a clock job, when I next see my manager is a person job, and that thing at the conference next year is a diary job.