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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512 practices

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Putting something in the calendar does not sign you up for life. If Wednesday turns out wrong, drag it to Thursday. The entry is a plan, and plans are allowed to change.

People who fear being locked in tend to end up with an empty calendar and a full head, which is the worse of the two problems. Say the permission out…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 25:62One line of research

A child who cannot yet catch their own drifting needs somebody close enough to catch it for them. Where they sit does a lot of that work quietly.

From nearby a teacher sees attention go before the work is lost, and can bring the child back without stopping the lesson for everyone. Proximity…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 24:36One line of research

Bring a child back with the smallest signal that does the job. A tap on the desk, a hand on the shoulder, or simply standing beside them will usually be enough.

Say a child's name across a room and everyone turns to look. Do that twenty times a day and the child learns something about themselves in front of…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 31:19One line of research

Get the child's eyes first, then give one instruction. The page, how much, and by when, and then stop.

An instruction thrown at a busy room never reaches the child who most needs it, so the name and the eye contact come before any content at all. Then…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 73:4One line of research

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

The long reason why is doing less than you hope. Give the instruction, give one short line of why if it helps, and let that be the end of it.

When the explanation runs on, the instruction gets buried somewhere in the middle of it and comes out the other side lost. A long justification also…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 17:110One line of research

Attach a new habit to one you already do: after wudu, I read one page.

Let an existing routine carry the new thing. You are borrowing momentum you already have.

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 31:19One line of research

Do the task at the same time and place each day, so the setting starts to do the reminding.

Novelty costs a mind like yours energy. Sameness of time and place buys that energy back.

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 87:8One line of research

By your teens you need some way, any way, of answering one question: given that it is this time on this day, what should I be doing? A plain system that answers it beats a beautiful one that does not.

Paper, phone, whiteboard on the fridge, the format is not the point. If the answer depends on remembering, it depends on luck. Pick the thing you…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 4:103One line of research

If a calendar feels like something parents and teachers made you carry, it stays theirs and you keep putting it down. The question worth answering is whose life gets easier when it works.

Most people who grew up being organised at have some resistance to this, and it makes sense. So make it yours in a literal way: it holds the things…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 20:130One line of research

Unless the dentist works in your living room, dentist at one is only half an entry. Block the getting there, the parking and the walking in, and block the journey home as well.

Travel disappears from planning because it does not feel like the task. Then the day gets built as though appointments touch each other end to end,…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 62:9One line of research

A system survives if it gives back more than it costs. Every time your diary saves you a phone call or a scramble, you have bought yourself a little more willingness to open it tomorrow.

So load it up on purpose. Put in the parking notes, the door code, the name of the person you are meeting, the thing you meant to ask them. None of…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 62:10One line of research

Plenty of people manage without any system at all. They tend to manage on adrenaline, late nights and a low hum of dread, which is a high price for an outcome that looks fine from outside.

When your results are acceptable, nobody asks what they cost you, and you may have stopped asking too. Worth checking honestly: how much of the week…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

If a young person hears your suggestion of a planner as one more instruction, they will refuse it, and the refusal is about who is in charge rather than about diaries. Hand over the choice of format and the choice of what goes in.

It helps to be plain that this is theirs and not a monitoring device. That means not reading it over their shoulder and not producing it as evidence…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 22:78One line of research

Move things off the to do list and into the week itself. Not write the report, but Wednesday at one, ninety minutes, write the report.

An undated task has nothing to make it happen. It sits there competing with whatever is loud right now and loses every time. Giving it a day, a start…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 17:78One line of research

Once tasks sit in the week rather than on a list, you can see that Thursday has no room left. Saying no gets much easier when the crowding is in front of your eyes instead of somewhere in your head.

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…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 25:67One line of research

A schedule tells you what to do now. It does not make you want to do it, and pretending otherwise sets you up to feel let down when three o'clock comes and you stay sitting.

Even so, knowing is a good half of the problem solved, and it is the half that is hard to fix any other way. The other half needs its own tools:…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 39:9One line of research

A deadline you privately know is soft has no pull at all. If six o'clock really means midnight, then ten in the morning means nothing, and the whole day drifts until the panic arrives.

One man working from home lost his evenings this way for years, and it was his relationship rather than his employer that paid for it. If the true…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 78:10One line of research

Before planning anything, work out which date is actually true. Does Thursday mean Thursday, or does everybody know it means Friday, and is Thursday even possible?

Planning against a date you do not believe in is planning against nothing, and you will feel that in how little the plan moves you. Get the real one…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 30:18One line of research

When you set your own deadline, watch what happens to it. Thursday becomes Friday, Friday becomes Monday, and it helps to know what that slide actually costs rather than guessing at it.

Keep a light record for a few weeks. Three things only: the date you picked, the date it was done, and one line on what the gap cost you. Sometimes…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 65:3One line of research

Anything with more than one step gets written down, and the child does the writing. Ten problems, check them against the answers, correct what is wrong: three lines in their own hand.

A handout would carry the same words, but writing it themselves does two extra things. It puts the sequence somewhere they can look again when step…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 73:6One line of research