Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
The two seconds of holding it in mind while you finish what you are doing is usually where it disappears. So make capture the reflex instead of the plan. Which tool you use matters far less than it always being within reach, the same one at three in the morning and in the supermarket queue. If capturing takes more than a few seconds you will skip it exactly when you are busiest.
Take action! God will see your actions (Quran 9:105). The weight sits on the doing, and capturing it is the smallest available piece of doing.
التوبة
وَقُلِ ٱعۡمَلُواْ فَسَيَرَى ٱللَّهُ عَمَلَكُمۡ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَۖ وَسَتُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَٰلِمِ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Take action! God will see your actions- as will His Messenger and the believers- and then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing
Qur’an 9:105read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A recent review gathers evidence that habitually leaning on devices to store and retrieve information goes along with more memory complaints, while noting that the studies are largely correlational and cannot say which causes which. Worth knowing rather than worrying about. For something you would otherwise lose completely, writing it down is still the better trade.
Ali Z, Janarthanan J, Mohan P. (2024). Understanding Digital Dementia and Cognitive Impact in the Current Era of the Internet: A Review.. Cureus doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You can only get a thought out of your head while you still have it.
A thought you have in the car about something to say at home is worth nothing until the person is actually there in front of you. Cues have to sit where the action becomes possible, not where you happened to think of it.
You will still forget things. What decides how much damage a missed task does is usually the ten minutes after you notice, not the miss itself.
Take one of the gaps you already have, the commute or the walk or the shower, and use it to ask what is coming up this week and what might be slipping. No new tool, no new app, just the question.