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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Both of you were relying on the same tired memory that caused the trouble in the first place. So do the writing during the conversation rather than after it: phone out, entry made, moving on. When something is missed later you can look at the calendar instead of at each other, which is a far better argument to be having.
'Everyone is assigned a rank according to their deeds; your Lord is not unaware of anything they do' (Quran 6:132). Nothing goes unrecorded, and our own record keeping is only a small imitation of that.
الأنعام
وَلِكُلࣲّ دَرَجَٰتࣱ مِّمَّا عَمِلُواْۚ وَمَا رَبُّكَ بِغَٰفِلٍ عَمَّا يَعۡمَلُونَ
Everyone is assigned a rank according to their deeds; your Lord is not unaware of anything they do
Qur’an 6:132read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 36 studies supported a motivational sequence in which self determined motivation predicts intentions, and intentions in turn predict behaviour. Intentions do real work in that chain, which is a reason to make them explicit and shared rather than leave them vague. It modelled correlations across health behaviours, so this is about the general shape of things and not about calendars.
Martin S. Hagger; Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis (2008). Integrating the theory of planned behaviour and self‐determination theory in health behaviour: A meta‐analysis. British Journal of Health Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A decision that lives only in memory is a decision you will disagree about later.
When the thing is over, sit down for twenty minutes and go through it: what happened, what worked, what did not, what you will do differently. Put it in the diary, because it never happens on intention alone.
Letting the natural consequence do the teaching only works if it arrives soon enough to be connected to what you did. Where the gap is months or years, nobody learns from it. Not you, not anyone.
By the time the motivation turns up, the moment to act has usually gone. Thursday night panic about a report due on Friday is real motivation, just delivered too late to be any use.