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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843 practices

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If you are the sort who leaves at the last possible second, the entry has to hold everything you need in order to walk out of the door. Address, door code, what to bring, who to ring if you get stuck.

At five minutes to, you cannot search well and you cannot think of what you have forgotten. That is the wrong moment to be finding anything out. Get…

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

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.

Lateness usually comes from anchoring on the time printed on the letter and treating the journey as though it cost nothing. Writing the leaving time…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 36:40One line of research

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

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

There is more about focus, starting, and adhd than the practices: the focus, starting, and adhd area has the themes and the courses too.

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

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

Put the rules up on the wall where everyone can see them, and put the child's own version on a card on their desk.

A rule that lives only in memory is not there in the second it is needed, which is the second something more interesting has just walked past. A card…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 11:114One line of research

A calendar that catches only some of your commitments is more dangerous than no calendar at all. You look at Thursday, see a clear afternoon, say yes, and only later meet the thing that never got written down.

So the first job is not a better app. It is one place where everything goes, without exception, including the small things you are certain you will…

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

Put the demanding work where the energy is, not where the timetable happens to be convenient. Then alternate it with something they like, and break it up often.

Effort runs down fast, so an hour of hard work in one block will give you good minutes at the start and very little after. Cut it into shorter runs…

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