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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201 practices

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Practice gets more useful when someone is really watching. It also gets harder, so agree that part before you begin instead of adding it once the person is already in the middle of it.

An audience raises the stakes in a way that makes the rehearsal more like life, which is exactly why it helps. It is also where consent gets…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 49:6One line of research

Rather than manufacturing a calm you do not feel, borrow one you have really had. Bring a settled memory to mind and hold it against the thing that usually stings.

Actors do this instead of faking a feeling: they call up a real moment and attach it to the cue until it starts arriving on its own. The same works…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 11:114One line of research

Pick the calm memory with some care. Sun on a beach, a bike ride, someone cleaning up a scraped knee: what matters is that it is genuinely safe ground for you.

Childhood scenes are often the most vivid, which is what makes them useful and also why they can misfire. If your early years were not safe, a prompt…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 2:153One line of research

Not every reminder is the same kind of reminder. Call at three is a clock job, when I next see my manager is a person job, and that thing at the conference next year is a diary job.

Mixing them up is where a lot of honest intentions leak away. A note on the desk will not survive until next March, and an alarm cannot tell you your…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 4:103One line of research

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

The fear underneath anger

Shame and stigma

Systems for daily life

Breathing

Being seen and judged

Treatment and medication

Feeling from the inside

Living with uncertainty

Breaking the worry loop

When you use something to cope

What you are actually defending

Screens and attention

Structure and routine

Get started

Some things can be done a day late with an apology, and others cannot: the ticket doubles, the window shuts, the form is simply gone. Sorting your obligations into those two piles tells you where the effort is worth spending.

Lateness tends to get treated as one big failing, which makes every missed thing feel equally awful and gives you nowhere to aim. Go through what is…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 2:282One line of research

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

Somebody should ask the boring question: is there a list at all, anywhere? It gets skipped for being too obvious to ask, which is how a person can go years with nothing.

The format does not matter: Outlook, a notes app, the back of an envelope kept in one place. What matters is that intentions live somewhere outside…

Five minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 12:47One line of research

Ask everybody, at the start, what they use and how it goes for them there. Not only the ones who arrive with an obvious phone problem.

Two questions do most of the work: which platforms are you on, and what is it like for you on them. Asked early, without any warning tone, it makes…

Five minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 63:9One line of research

The inner clock does more than one job. It tells you what time it is now, how long that took, how long things usually take, and it taps you on the shoulder when a particular time arrives.

Worth finding out which of those is weak for you, because they need different props. Someone who estimates badly needs a record of past attempts to…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 23:113One line of research

A list on the back of an envelope, made before the day starts, beats holding the day in your head. It does not have to be neat and it does not have to survive contact with the morning.

Write what has to happen and roughly in what order, and keep it where you will see it. Two things come out of that. You have made one deliberate…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 17:12One line of research

A child who is blind to time is not ignoring the deadline. They are living in whatever is happening right now, with no sense that the bell is close or that Friday's test has anything to do with today.

It shows up as reacting to each moment rather than moving through a day with a shape. Adults read that as not caring, and the child usually cannot…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 21:37One line of research

The pattern usually ends the same way. Nothing feels urgent, then the deadline lands all at once, and the child panics and produces something poor or nothing at all.

Once you can see the sequence, you can step in near the beginning instead of managing the wreckage at the end. Say it out loud with the child,…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 18:23One line of research

Before you explain anything about ADHD to someone, ask what they already think it is. What they tell you decides what your explanation can land on.

People arrive with family stories, cultural rules about mental health and firm views about medication, and none of it shows up unless you invite it.…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 20:44One line of research

When you are choosing where to start, take the easy one rather than the important one. Direction matters more than size at the beginning, because these things gather speed whichever way they are pointing.

The loops that drag you down run in reverse as well. A week where two small things went right makes a third worth attempting, and the person you are…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 2:148One 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

The braking part of the brain is not finished until the mid to late twenties. A teenager who cannot hold their tongue is not being defiant, they are working with equipment still under construction.

Expecting adult self-control from a fifteen year old sets everyone up to fail, and then to argue about the failing. What helps more is lowering the…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 41:35One line of research

The line running from alarm to reason is wide, and the line back is thin. A skill you have only read about will not be there when you need it, and one you have rehearsed will.

Rehearse the small things while nothing is wrong: the phrase you will use, the breath, the way you leave the room. Run them in mild irritation, the…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 16:98One line of research

Some triggers never reach words. A smell, a stuffy room, a noise you cannot place can carry you halfway to angry before anyone has said a thing.

When you keep flaring in the same place at the same time of day, look at the conditions before you look for a culprit. Air, heat, hunger, noise, a…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 23:98One line of research

The part of you that reacts can be trained. The figure usually quoted is around eight weeks of small daily practice, not one weekend of good intentions.

That is oddly encouraging, because it means results were never due by Thursday. Pick something small enough that you will still do it when you are…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 20:130One line of research

Decide now what you will say when it happens, while nothing is happening. A line chosen in the calm is worth more than any resolve you can summon mid row.

Keep it short and unheroic: I need ten minutes, I am not walking out on you. Say it aloud a few times so your mouth knows the shape of it. And if…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 25:63One line of research