Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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1767 practices

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A sticky note is fine for something happening within the hour. Anything further out needs something that goes off by itself, because holding a plan in mind for three days is not a thing memory does.

Most reminder failures are this mismatch rather than a lack of trying. Someone uses a note where an alarm was needed, it fails, and they conclude…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 11:114One line of research

Notice how often a forgotten job turns up in the shower, or halfway up a flight of stairs. That is not coincidence: when nothing is holding your attention, the things you meant to do float up.

Which means those minutes are quietly doing work, and filling every one of them with a phone takes the mechanism away. Keep something to capture with…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 20:14One line of research

When someone hands you a date, the useful move is not writing the date down. Open your calendar there and then and decide the hour the work will actually happen.

A deadline only announces itself at the very end, when there is no room left to do anything about it. Booking the doing rather than the due date…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 18:23One line of research

There is a point where a to do list stops being a tool and becomes something you flinch away from. If you have not opened yours in a fortnight, it has passed that point.

The usual advice is to work through it, which is precisely what nobody does with a list that long. It is kinder and quicker to start a fresh page…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 18:24

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Feelings and focus

Practising under provocation

Shame and stigma

Screens and attention

Making it stick

Breathing

What worry does

Treatment and medication

Feeling from the inside

Structure and routine

What you are actually defending

Being seen and judged

Growing empathy

Tolerate distress

When you use something to cope

Remembering to do it

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Breaking the worry loop

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Obsessions and compulsions

Emotions as signals

Self-compassion

Facing it a step at a time

Shame

Posture and how you carry yourself

Question the thought

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

When anger turns to harm

Letting it out safely

When you go numb

Living with uncertainty

Rest and pacing

Panic and the body

The cost of avoiding

One line of research

Take one of the gaps you already have, the commute or the walk or the shower, and use it to ask what is coming up this week and what might be slipping. No new tool, no new app, just the question.

That turns something accidental into something you can count on. It works best in the same place each time, so that the place starts asking the…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 24:37One line of research

Anything that comes round every month should be leaving your account without you. Direct debits and standing orders take the remembering out of the job altogether, which beats any reminder you could set.

It is worth an afternoon. List what recurs, automate what can be automated, and put one calendar note to check the statement each month instead of…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 23:8One line of research

Every extra step in a task is another place to lose it. Three clicks and done beats a process with a form, an envelope and a walk to the postbox, even when the second one saves a little money.

Before you commit to a routine, count its steps, then take some out. Bin bags stored next to the bin, stamps kept with the envelopes, paying on the…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 16:91One line of research

Say it, out loud if you can manage it: I am done for the day. A decision, rather than a slow guilty drift away from the desk.

The hours after a proper clocking off feel different from the same hours drifted into, even when nothing else about them changes. It does mean facing…

A minuteRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 73:20One line of research

Half watching a programme while half answering emails is the worst of both. The work takes twice as long and the evening gives you nothing back.

Pick one and let it be the whole thing. If it is work, work, and you will usually finish earlier than you expected. If it is rest, shut the laptop,…

Five minutesRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 94:7One line of research

Rest is not the prize waiting at the end of the work. It is part of what makes the work possible, and it does not have to be earned first.

Self control runs down over a day the way a battery does, and the thing that fills it back up is properly stopping. What that looks like is yours to…

Twenty minutesRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 10:67One line of research

Certainty feels good. That sudden clean sense of knowing exactly who is in the wrong is part of what keeps anger coming back, so it is worth noticing as a pleasure rather than as proof.

Anger tidies things up. The doubt goes, the mixed feelings go, and for a moment you know where you stand. Take that away without putting anything in…

A minuteRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 53:32One line of research

When someone is in full flood, leaving is allowed. Getting out of the way of a person who is past listening is a skill, not a defeat.

You can say where you are going and that you will come back to it, which keeps it from reading as punishment. This matters most for anyone who was…

A minuteRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 42:41One line of research

If you are simmering most days and cannot point to what set it off, look at the standards you are running rather than at the day itself. A rule that is never quite met keeps producing small failures for you to react to.

Try listing what you expected of this morning, hour by hour, and see how many of those expectations were met exactly. Most people find a long tail of…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 2:185One line of research

However you speak to yourself about your own mistakes is usually how you will end up thinking about other people's. Going easier on yourself is not a treat you have not earned, it is part of getting easier on everyone else.

Watch for it in small moments. You snap at someone for being slow, and if you are honest you would have flayed yourself for exactly the same thing.…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 4:28One line of research

Some anger is really an expectation that will not be put down. The other person has moved on, the thing is over, and you are still holding the version of how it should have gone.

The tell is a short fuse over things that barely matter: a queue, a misplaced item, someone doing a job their own way. When frustration arrives that…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 23:62One line of research

When something is genuinely wrong, try saying the whole sentence: this is wrong, it should not be like this, and it is. Then ask how it came to be, before asking what to do.

The word should keeps you in the courtroom, where the only available outcome is a verdict. Asking why moves you into how the thing actually happened,…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 49:9One line of research

Anger that your friends, your feed or your workplace rewards is the hardest kind to put down, because letting it go costs you something socially.

Notice what would happen if you said the softer, more complicated thing in a group that is enjoying being angry together. If the honest answer is…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 5:8One line of research

A fair share of what angers you each day was selected for you, because outrage is what holds attention. Worth asking what you are being served, and how often.

Look back at the last hour of scrolling and count how many items were built to get exactly the reaction you gave them. You do not have to swear off…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 49:6One line of research

Some of what makes people angry is far bigger than any one conversation can settle. Saying that plainly is not giving up, it stops you carrying what was never yours.

If you are the calm one, at work or in a family or in a consulting room, there is a steady pull towards feeling you ought to be able to sort out the…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 22:78One line of research

The alarm system behind your anger cannot be beaten into silence. It settles when it is understood and soothed, which is slower and far more reliable.

So the moves that work are unglamorous: naming what is happening, granting that it made sense, taking the fear seriously instead of arguing it down.…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 3:159One line of research