Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Remembering to do it
A deadline only announces itself at the very end, when there is no room left to do anything about it. Booking the doing rather than the due date gives the task a time and a place to attach itself to, so your week has to make room for it instead of vaguely knowing about it. And if the slot turns out to be the wrong one, you find that out early, while it can still be moved.
Do not say of anything, 'I will do that tomorrow' (Quran 18:23). The warning falls on the loose promise, and putting an hour against it is one way of making the promise into something real.
الكهف
وَلَا تَقُولَنَّ لِشَاْيۡءٍ إِنِّي فَاعِلࣱ ذَٰلِكَ غَدًا
do not say of anything, ‘I will do that tomorrow,’
Qur’an 18:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
One randomised study of 557 young adults compared two kinds of plan and found the one naming a specific situation and the response to it did better than a general plan with no cue in it. The behaviour studied was eating fruit and vegetables, in young adults, not work deadlines and not ADHD. So take it as support for the shape of the plan, a named moment rather than a good intention, and not as a measured promise about your week.
Chapman J, Armitage CJ, Norman P. (2009). Comparing implementation intention interventions in relation to young adults' intake of fruit and vegetables.. Psychology & health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A task tied to a particular moment can be set off by that moment arriving, while a task tied only to a deadline has nothing to set it off until the deadline is already on top of you.
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.
There is a point where a to do list stops being a tool and becomes something you flinch away from. If you have not opened yours in a fortnight, it has passed that point.
You can mean something completely, drive most of the way there with it in your head, and still turn left instead of right. Meaning it and doing it are two separate events, and only one of them is visible to anyone else.