Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Structure and routine
Holding several commitments in mind at once and weighing them against each other is genuinely hard. Looking at a full column and noticing there is nowhere to put another thing is not. Before agreeing to something, open the week and find the actual gap it would sit in. Where there is no gap, the honest answer is a later date rather than a yes you cannot keep.
Neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance (Quran 25:67). The principle is written about money and it reads just as well about hours.
الفرقان
وَٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَنفَقُواْ لَمۡ يُسۡرِفُواْ وَلَمۡ يَقۡتُرُواْ وَكَانَ بَيۡنَ ذَٰلِكَ قَوَامࣰ ا
They are those who are neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance
Qur’an 25:67read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 65 randomised trials found that interventions improving sleep quality also improved mental health, which supports a link running from sleep to how people feel rather than only the other way round. The slot most people give away first when a week overfills is the sleeping one. Those trials tested sleep interventions rather than diary habits, so what it bears on here is what is worth protecting.
Scott AJ, Webb TL, Martyn-St James M, Rowse G, Weich S. (2021). Improving sleep quality leads to better mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.. Sleep medicine reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Seeing how crowded something is takes far less of you than calculating it does.
Moving between lessons is where things fall apart, so plan the move out loud before it happens. What to bring, where to go, and who will be waiting.
Get the child's eyes first, then give one instruction. The page, how much, and by when, and then stop.
A three o'clock appointment half an hour away is a half past two appointment. Put the true start time in and let the calendar hold it, rather than asking yourself to work it out on the day.