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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
You can usually spot one: the item that has been copied onto three different lists and never once started. The trouble is not that the work is hard. Nothing in you is pulling towards it. Naming it as somebody else's goal gives you a real choice, which is to hand it back, or to find the part of it you can honestly care about.
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear (Quran 2:286). A task nobody ever agreed you should carry is worth weighing before you carry it any further.
البقرة
لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفۡسًا إِلَّا وُسۡعَهَاۚ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتۡ وَعَلَيۡهَا مَا ٱكۡتَسَبَتۡۗ رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذۡنَآ إِن نَّسِينَآ أَوۡ أَخۡطَأۡنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحۡمِلۡ عَلَيۡنَآ إِصۡرࣰ ا كَمَا حَمَلۡتَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبۡلِنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلۡنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِۦۖ وَٱعۡفُ عَنَّا وَٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَٱرۡحَمۡنَآۚ أَنتَ مَوۡلَىٰنَا فَٱنصُرۡنَا عَلَى ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘ Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’
Qur’an 2:286read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane review examined personalised care planning for long-term conditions, where the person and the clinician jointly work out the problems and agree concrete goals and actions, instead of the goals arriving from one side only. The design of that whole literature assumes ownership matters. It is about chronic illness rather than to-do lists, so take it as a case for shared ownership of a plan and not as evidence about your list.
Coulter A, Entwistle VA, Eccles A, Ryan S, Shepperd S, Perera R. (2015). Personalised care planning for adults with chronic or long-term health conditions.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Starting is much harder when the reason for the task belongs to someone else.
When someone asks for an hour of your time, your head searches for a clash, finds nothing, and says yes. A calendar with everything already in it turns that guess into something you can look at.
A task needs smoothing at both ends. If it looks big and horrible you will not begin it, and if the middle is full of snags you will not see it through.
Put the schoolwork early in the day and let the screens come after it. For a teenager early means later than you would like, but the order stays the same.