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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
The format does not matter: Outlook, a notes app, the back of an envelope kept in one place. What matters is that intentions live somewhere outside the head and that the person actually looks at it. If you are the one being asked, answer about what you use rather than the system you have been meaning to set up. A good follow up either way is when did you last open it.
You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap (Quran 12:47). Joseph answers in steps somebody could follow, which is what an intention has to become to survive.
يوسف
قَالَ تَزۡرَعُونَ سَبۡعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبࣰ ا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمۡ فَذَرُوهُ فِي سُنۢبُلِهِۦٓ إِلَّا قَلِيلࣰ ا مِّمَّا تَأۡكُلُونَ
then I can return to the people to inform them.’ Joseph said, ‘You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat
Qur’an 12:47read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta analysis of randomised trials in young adults identified which behaviour change techniques were most effective for improving what people ate. Techniques were not interchangeable, and which ones were used made a difference to whether the intervention did much. It is diet research and says nothing about to do lists, but it backs the habit of checking what someone is actually using before adding anything new.
Ashton LM, Sharkey T, Whatnall MC, Williams RL, Bezzina A, Aguiar EJ, Collins CE, Hutchesson MJ. (2019). Effectiveness of Interventions and Behaviour Change Techniques for Improving Dietary Intake in Young Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of RCTs.. Nutrients doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You cannot improve a system that was never there, and nobody volunteers that it is missing.
It tends to go in a sequence: unreliable first, said kindly, then irresponsible, said less kindly. After that it stops being about the tasks at all and turns into a description of who you are.
Most of what we call memory looks backwards. The kind that actually runs your week is the other sort: a plan that has to show up in your head at the one moment you could still act on it.
A sticky note is fine for something happening within the hour. Anything further out needs something that goes off by itself, because holding a plan in mind for three days is not a thing memory does.