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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
It helps to decide in advance what you are hunting for, so that starting the homework without being asked, or waiting a turn, actually registers instead of passing unremarked. Name the specific thing you saw rather than saying good boy, and where you can, attach something small to it on the spot. The side effect matters as much as the behaviour: a day with more noticing in it has less correction in it, and the child is easier to be around.
Anyone who wishes may be mindful or show gratitude (Quran 25:62). Noticing what is good and saying so is treated there as a practice worth taking up.
الفرقان
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ خِلۡفَةࣰ لِّمَنۡ أَرَادَ أَن يَذَّكَّرَ أَوۡ أَرَادَ شُكُورࣰ ا
it is He who made the night and day follow each other- so anyone who wishes may be mindful or show gratitude
Qur’an 25:62read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 691 correlations found that low belief in your own ability to do the task is one of the strongest and steadiest predictors of putting it off, alongside how unpleasant the task feels and impulsiveness. Being caught doing something well is one of the few things that builds that belief. The analysis is correlational and was not about children or praise, so this is drawing on the pattern rather than a tested method.
Steel P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A behaviour that gets noticed and rewarded grows, and one that is only ever noticed when it is absent has nothing to grow from.
You do not have to agree that it will take longer. Add the extra time anyway and let the week prove you right or wrong. If you finish early, you have a spare twenty minutes, which is not a punishment.
Fun things serve the present. Important things serve the future. Put like that, you can see why the advice to just do the important thing is asking rather a lot.
Think of your sense of the future as how far out to sea you can spot a ship. How far depends on your eyesight, and also on how big and bright the ship is and what the weather is doing.