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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
Picture where you will be at the moment the thing can be done, and put the reminder there: a note on the front door for something that happens on the way out, a message half written so it is waiting when you next open your phone, the bag left on the driver's seat. This is not about being tidy. It is about the cue and the opportunity turning up in the same place. The test for any reminder is whether it will be in front of you while acting is still possible.
When the call to prayer is made on the day of congregation, hurry towards the reminder of God and leave off your trading (Quran 62:9). The call arrives where you already are and interrupts what you were doing, which is what a good cue does.
الجمعة
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِذَا نُودِيَ لِلصَّلَوٰةِ مِن يَوۡمِ ٱلۡجُمُعَةِ فَٱسۡعَوۡاْ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ وَذَرُواْ ٱلۡبَيۡعَۚ ذَٰلِكُمۡ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡ إِن كُنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
Believers! When the call to prayer is made on the day of congregation, hurry towards the reminder of God and leave off your trading––that is better for you, if only you knew––
Qur’an 62:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A study following 50 people forming a flossing habit found that whether the new behaviour was placed before or after an existing routine mattered for how automatic it became, along with their past behaviour and how good they were at remembering intentions. Placement was doing real work there. It is a small observational study of one behaviour, so read it as a hint about where to attach things rather than a rule.
Judah G, Gardner B, Aunger R. (2013). Forming a flossing habit: an exploratory study of the psychological determinants of habit formation.. British journal of health psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A reminder that arrives when you cannot act on it gets absorbed into the day and lost.
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.
Some things can be done a day late with an apology, and others cannot: the ticket doubles, the window shuts, the form is simply gone. Sorting your obligations into those two piles tells you where the effort is worth spending.
Start the email and then stop: address it, write the subject line, leave it unsent. The half finished thing sits in your drafts looking wrong until you deal with it.