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Applied Quiz: Building Daily Systems

A second set of questions on this chapter, weighted toward applying the ideas rather than recalling them. Each one hands you a broken system and asks what the chapter would change.

1. A husband promises to pick up a prescription and forgets, for the third time. What does the chapter's master principle prescribe, and when?

  1. A labeled alarm set at the moment of promising, in front of his wife — externalization done at the moment of commitment
  2. A firm reminder from his wife at 4:30, when it becomes urgent
  3. A written note left on the counter that evening
  4. A discussion about why the pharmacy keeps slipping his mind
Show Answer

The correct answer is A. The timing is the whole trick. Sam sets a 5:05 alarm labeled "PHARMACY before home" at the moment of promising, and when it fires he is walking into the same distracting phone call as the failed version — but the label steers the drive. Nothing about his brain changed; the intention moved from his least reliable storage to his most reliable. The chapter adds a second effect: his wife watched him build the alarm, which reads as the promise being taken seriously, because it is.

Concept Tested: Externalizing Memory

See: Chapter 9

2. Someone keeps a notebook, two apps, and a sticky-note system for capturing commitments, and still loses things. What is the fix?

  1. Add a weekly consolidation step to merge all four
  2. Choose better apps with stronger features
  3. Grant one always-present tool a monopoly — five capture points recreate the original problem as "which list was that on?"
  4. Keep all four but assign each a category of commitment
Show Answer

The correct answer is C. The operative word in the chapter's definition of capture systems is one. Pick the tool that is always physically present — for most people the phone's notes or reminders app, for some a pocket notebook or a kitchen whiteboard — and give it a monopoly. Options A and D preserve the multiplicity and add sorting work on top of it. Note the related family instruction: when someone pauses a conversation to capture, the respectful move is to wait, not to add two more items while they type.

Concept Tested: Capture Systems

See: Chapter 9

3. A forty-item to-do list goes uncompleted every single day, and its owner feels worse each evening. Which three rules does the chapter apply?

  1. Prioritize by importance, review monthly, and archive completed items
  2. Keep today's list to three-to-five items separate from the everything-list, write items as actions rather than topics, and put the list where the eyes already go
  3. Break every item into subtasks so progress is always visible
  4. Delete anything untouched for a week
Show Answer

The correct answer is B. Standard list advice fails this population predictably, so the ADHD-specific engineering matters. A forty-item list is Chapter 3's decision paralysis printed out, and its daily non-completion is a shame generator that Chapter 11 cares about. The third rule matters as much as the others: a list that must be remembered to be checked dies by the very failure mode it was built to fix, so it goes on the monitor or the lock screen.

Concept Tested: To-Do Lists That Work

See: Chapter 9

4. "Renew the car registration" has sat untouched for three weeks. What breaks the dam?

  1. Blocking out two hours on the calendar to handle it properly
  2. Adding it to the top of the list in capital letters
  3. Waiting for the deadline to supply urgency
  4. Naming the physically next thing — "find the renewal notice on the counter and put it by the laptop" — which asks nothing of planning, only of doing
Show Answer

The correct answer is D. In the chapter's example the ninety-second version breaks a three-week stall. Most "procrastination" on projects is an undefined next action: the starter motor has nothing its size to grab. The test of a real next action is that you could do it right now without deciding anything further — and if a step still produces the avoidance feeling, split that step again. Option A schedules the same undefined project, which changes nothing about why it stalled.

Concept Tested: Defining Next Actions

See: Chapter 9

5. Someone insists getting ready takes eight minutes, is late constantly, and is baffled each time. What changes the departure math?

  1. Timing three real mornings and using the revised number, since the feel of duration never updates on its own
  2. Reminding her more firmly that she is always late
  3. Adding a fifteen-minute buffer to every plan without telling her
  4. Accepting the estimate but leaving earlier
Show Answer

The correct answer is A. The technique is measure, don't vibe: write the guess before a recurring task, write the actual after, review weekly. Dana's eight-minute belief survives only because it is never confronted with data — three logged mornings reveal twenty-six, and the revised number, not self-scolding, is what changes the math. The chapter adds two rules of thumb while calibration builds: multiply gut estimates for boring multi-step tasks by 1.5 to 2, and schedule backward from hard deadlines.

Concept Tested: Time Estimation

See: Chapter 9

6. A wife wants to help her husband get through the taxes. What does body doubling ask of her — and what does it forbid?

  1. Work through the forms jointly so the load is shared
  2. Check in every thirty minutes on his progress
  3. Sit nearby with her own book, resisting the urge to narrate, correct, or supervise — supervision converts a body double into a foreman and cancels the effect
  4. Set up the paperwork for him and leave the room entirely
Show Answer

The correct answer is C. Body doubling means doing your work in the presence of another person who is simply there — working on their own things, not helping, not supervising. The mechanism maps onto Chapter 2: mild arousal, a whiff of social accountability, and a little interest-currency. Because mere presence is what does the work, options A and B both replace it with something else, and B specifically triggers the foreman failure the chapter warns about.

Concept Tested: Body Doubling

See: Chapter 9

7. Two people want to hold each other accountable for weekly admin. Which design does the chapter endorse?

  1. A spouse checking in nightly, since proximity aids consistency
  2. A mutual promise to keep each other on track, revisited when needed
  3. Stakes with real consequences, so the commitment carries weight
  4. A specific person expecting a specific thing at a specific time, with friendly stakes, and a peer rather than a spouse
Show Answer

The correct answer is D. Accountability works by manufacturing an external deadline — the reward system that ignores "someday" responds to "Casey is standing outside at 7." Option B supplies none of that specificity. Option C misses the hard-won rule that shame-based accountability gets avoided along with the task, so the partner you start dodging becomes a second deadline problem. The peer-not-spouse preference exists because Chapter 14 has strong opinions about what chronic monitor-roles do to a marriage.

Concept Tested: Accountability Partners

See: Chapter 9

8. A family sets a new routine to run at 7:15 each morning. It works on weekdays and collapses every weekend. What is the design flaw?

  1. Weekends should be exempt from routines entirely
  2. The routine is anchored to a clock time rather than to an existing fixed event — "after the coffee finishes" survives weekends and "at 7:15" doesn't
  3. The routine needs a stronger reward attached to weekend completion
  4. The routine has too few steps to build momentum
Show Answer

The correct answer is B. Anchoring to an existing fixed event is the first of the chapter's routine rules, and this is the exact failure it prevents. The other rules matter here too: keep chains to three-to-five steps because long routines fail at their weakest link, externalize the sequence itself on a checklist, and rebuild shrunk after a collapse. Option D inverts the length rule — the two-step version that runs beats the seven-step version that doesn't.

Concept Tested: Routines And Habits

See: Chapter 9

9. Someone installs five new habits in one motivated weekend. What does the chapter predict, and what should they do instead?

  1. It will hold if the habits are all attached to the same anchor
  2. It will hold, since motivation is the limiting factor and it is currently high
  3. It is a Chapter 3 abandoned-hobby story waiting to happen — stack one new link at a time
  4. It will hold provided each habit has its own alarm
Show Answer

The correct answer is C. Habit stacking attaches a new habit directly onto an existing automatic one — after I pour the coffee, I take the medication — so the existing habit becomes the cue and the trigger lives in the environment's sequence rather than in remembering. But the chapter is explicit that a five-link stack installed in one motivated weekend follows the abandoned-hobby curve. Options B and D treat motivation or alarms as sufficient, when the constraint is how many new links can bed in at once.

Concept Tested: Habit Stacking

See: Chapter 9

10. A family spends one Saturday and $40 on a key bowl, a charger shelf, a launchpad table, a whiteboard, and three alarms — and their four most frequent fights stop. What principle does this illustrate?

  1. Nobody's brain changed; the house got smarter — willpower stored in furniture
  2. The fights were never really about the forgotten items
  3. Financial investment signals commitment, which drives the behavior change
  4. Household conflict is best resolved by reducing the number of shared responsibilities
Show Answer

The correct answer is A. Rosa's family stopped relitigating her forgetting and spent an afternoon on infrastructure instead. Environment design has two rules pointing in opposite directions: add friction to the wrong things (the phone charges in the kitchen during homework) and remove it from the right ones (the gym bag by the door, the vitamins on the coffee maker). Each moved object is a decision pre-made and a temptation pre-blocked. The chapter's summary line is that the four most common fights now have no occasion.

Concept Tested: Environment Design

See: Chapter 9