Quick disclaimer up top,
This is not medical advice.
I am not a doctor.
My name is Russ Jones and I facilitate the ADHD Big Brother community.
These are ideas that you can try and decide for yourself if they are for you or not.
And with that,
Let us talk about time.
ADHD and time can sometimes feel like oil and water.
Perhaps you've heard of time blindness.
As I personally experience it,
Things that perhaps only take a few minutes to accomplish can actually feel like they're gonna take hours.
Lens that we can view time through.
The mere thought of a big upcoming project can seem like it's just too big.
It's too overwhelming.
It'll just take too much time.
And so it prevents us from getting started because we don't have that kind of time today.
We also have this sense that certain things don't take any time at all.
Many of us struggle to get places on time because we don't truly factor in the truth of time.
As an example,
Perhaps we are trying to show up on time for work.
And so we have these series of quote unquote real quicks.
I just need to brush my teeth real quick,
Put on my shoes real quick,
I'll grab my keys real quick.
And we think that when the Maps app says that it will take 15 minutes to get to work,
We think that if we leave 15 minutes before work starts,
That we will get to work on time.
And when we say leave for work,
We are also not factoring in the shoes,
The keys,
The door,
The entering of the car,
The opening of the garage door,
All of those real quicks that we just talked about.
We also don't factor in parking and the walk from parking to work and the couple of minutes of settling in and the hey,
How you doings.
Even though all these are inconsequential,
Maybe moments of time taken on their own,
If you put 10 or 20 of those together,
You're really adding a lot of time.
And then a third issue that we face is the one that comes with hyper focus.
Hyper focus can be,
To me,
It's like a spiritual experience.
Experience.
Like we pretty much become one with the thing that we're working on.
Time stops existing.
Maybe we call it being in the flow.
And the struggle there is that hours can go by when it feels like minutes.
And that can be a real bummer if we had other stuff that we had to get to appointments perhaps.
So how to deal with time.
Let's take all three of these,
But I'd like to preface this with a general coaching tip for ADHD for you.
Externalize whenever you can.
You can.
Do not rely on holding anything internally.
And this includes time.
So for the first one,
Where a task feels too big,
As though this is just going to take too much time.
For these,
I ask myself,
How much time do I have right now?
Do I have a free hour or is it 30 minutes?
And I'll set a timer for that amount of time and I will work on that thing.
I'll chip away at it.
The more difficult the task is to get started,
The smaller I'll put the timer.
Putting in some time is better in many cases than putting in no time at all.
How many of us are we're waiting around for that eight hour day to clean the garage?
It just feels so big.
I also recommend setting a timer for when you enter into an activity that might lead to hyper focus.
I see the timer as a personal assistant.
It's somebody to tap you on the shoulder after an hour and says,
Hey,
You told me to check on you.
Are you good?
You want to keep going or do you have something else that you need to get to?
Oh,
You want to keep going?
Okay,
Cool.
And then you set another timer.
When you tether yourself to some external time,
It allows you the permission to forget that time exists.
That is such a,
For me,
That's a glorious feeling.
I love that.
Some people really like those timers where you can see the time passing,
But oh man,
I personally prefer,
I just use my phone,
Set it aside,
Because I love the feeling of giving up time where I don't have to see it.
And it can surprise me when my time is up.
That is going to be a preference thing.
And then for those that are perpetually late,
This is a pretty quick fix.
It does require a little homework,
And we love homework,
Don't we?
Pick one day to sit down and really scrutinize every single step of your process,
From getting ready to going.
Some of us will take these global declarations,
Right?
I'm late for work,
So I need to leave earlier.
Okay,
Yeah,
That is accurate,
But there's no data to that.
Is it about getting to work on time?
Okay,
Let's use that for the example.
So we'll take it literally step by step.
What time do you wake up?
Meaning what time do you get out of your bed?
Not when do you begin the snooze negotiations,
Right?
When does your body arise and move?
And then what happens next?
There's no such thing as real quicks in this homework.
Everything has a time to it.
If you go to the bathroom first,
How long does that take?
It varies,
Doesn't count.
Pick the longest time and stick with that.
You brush your teeth,
Drink some water.
Do you have to fill up the glass?
This can be really annoying homework,
But you only really have to do it once.
And an ADHD trick for time.
Whatever number you come up with for each task,
Double it.
Because of our timeline.
No big deal.
You can always come back and iterate later if you were wrong.
We are erring on the side of getting to work on time.
And during this process,
You will probably find out why you're late for work.
You may discover that the social media that you check in the morning during breakfast is actually making breakfast 45 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
You might see that even in the most streamlined of morning routines,
Perhaps you would still have to wake up 15 minutes earlier than you currently do.
That's a good insight.
Perhaps your 15 minutes from unlocking your car in the garage to starting work is actually 30 minutes start to finish.
That's an interesting insight.
You can't get these insights without the data.
I would encourage setting a timer for 15 minutes.
I'm a big fan of the timer.
I don't know if you can tell.
And try this homework out.
See if you discover any insights.
I hope this helps.
If you have any questions about what I've talked about,
Feel free to reach out.
I'm happy to answer your questions.
We are more successful when we treat ADHD as a team thing.
Sport and I'm happy to be on your team and we'll talk again soon.
