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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
It is worth drawing out honestly. One line sloping gently upwards all week, another staying flat and then going vertical. Once the shape is visible the fix is fairly obvious: put something real on Tuesday. Not more resolve on Monday, an actual small deadline sitting inside the week. The reason the late sprint keeps its grip is that it does work, just often enough to be believed.
'Even though the Hereafter is better and more lasting' (Quran 87:17). The verse names the odd fact that the weightier thing tends to get the least of our attention.
الأعلى
وَٱلۡأٓخِرَةُ خَيۡرࣱ وَأَبۡقَىٰٓ
even though the Hereafter is better and more lasting
Qur’an 87:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a case control study, delay aversion contributed to the ADHD picture independently of executive difficulties, reaction time variability and emotional ones. Finding a wait hard is therefore its own feature rather than a side effect of being disorganised. It was one study comparing groups, so hold the particulars loosely and keep the general point.
Sjöwall D, Roth L, Lindqvist S, Thorell LB. (2013). Multiple deficits in ADHD: executive dysfunction, delay aversion, reaction time variability, and emotional deficits.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Pressure you cannot feel yet is pressure that cannot get you started.
Hang something small and near on the task. No coffee until the expense form is in. Not a treat later in the month, something you actually want in the next ten minutes.
Bring the cost forward into today. No screen until the hour of work is done, rather than a poor grade three months from now.
Two things depend on the same small gap: looking back at how the last one went, and looking ahead at how this one is likely to go. Neither can happen once you are already moving.