thinking about an old study (never believe anything based on a single study) where kids with developmental (cognitive?) disabilities improved substantially on short-term memory tests when given the explicit instructions to repeat the numbers in their head, vs. "normal" kids who did not benefit from such instruction (possibly b/c they already did that without being asked)

with the possible conclusion that a large amount of the performance gap was different cognitive strategies (intentionally rehearsing the target numbers vs. waiting for the proctor to ask them to reproduce the numbers & hoping they'd be able to remember them)

is there some so-obvious-no-one-mentions-it strategy I'm missing here? is there a step in the task initiation workflow that I'm hoping will happen without me doing it? (the "get up and do the thing" step?)

or idk maybe it's all elaborate self-sabotage to prevent me from attempting a thing and making things worse per some anxiety

don't really want to go read lesswrong but I do remember a post about "spamming microintentions" & that feels shaped like "rehearse the numbers" so I'll check that again ig