ADHD Makes It Harder To See Time

Hey there,

Welcome to Section 1.

Why does ADHD make productivity harder?

And we're going to start here with the video on ADHD makes it harder to see time.

Now,

This is a little conceptual,

It's a little theoretical,

But I promise you,

It's really helpful to understand this.

This and the next video really kind of talk about what makes ADHD,

ADHD?

Why do you have certain kinds of struggles,

But also not others?

Why do some strategies really work well for people with ADHD and other ones like just don't?

So,

Again,

A little bit theoretical,

But I promise you,

If you kind of stick in,

You're going to find it to be helpful and it'll set a good foundation for the rest of what we're going to talk about in all the other videos.

So,

In general then,

You know,

This idea of sense of time,

Right?

Like having a sense of time.

This is one of the executive functions.

And that,

You know,

For any of us,

Once you get to be about,

I don't know what,

Four or something,

Part of being successful in life is being able to manage time well,

Right?

Just general time management,

Which is built on this executive function of the sense of time.

Some people,

That sort of internal clock,

Right?

Just that sort of general awareness of time,

Like that internal clock ticks pretty loud,

Right?

They have a pretty good idea of what time it is without actually like looking at their watch.

On the other hand,

Some people's internal clock ticks pretty softly,

Right?

And they kind of easily get lost in time.

They forget time.

They're not sure what time it is,

How long have they been doing something,

Right?

Things just sort of float and sort of slide a whole lot more for some people.

Now,

The good news is,

As with many other human abilities,

You don't have to do it all inside your head,

Right?

You can supplement your internal skills with like external tools and systems and strategies to help you kind of manage this more effectively.

So let's talk about some kind of sub abilities that fall under this like time management umbrella.

You know,

Often when people say time management,

They talk of it as if it's like one thing,

But it's really not.

Like time management involves a whole cluster of sort of skills and abilities,

All of which sort of,

I don't know,

Play a role at different moments.

So just to give like a sample,

This isn't necessarily a definitive list,

But part of time management involves the ability to kind of plan well,

Right?

To sort of set priorities among a bunch of different options.

Could do this,

Could do that,

What's more important,

What needs to be done first,

Right?

Really kind of thinking it through.

There's an ability to kind of predict how long something is going to take,

Right?

That's really important if you're trying to manage time or plan time.

There's also the issue of sequencing,

Meaning what gets done first,

Second,

Third,

Fourth,

And then finally last or maybe not at all,

Including taking time restrictions into account,

Right?

So it might be that,

You know,

Making this phone call to,

I don't know,

The doctor's office is not the most important thing you need to do,

But you've got like 20 minutes before they close.

So now all of a sudden it pops to the top of the list.

There's also the issue of being able to monitor the passage of time,

Right?

You're involved in something,

You're doing something.

Wait a second,

How long has it been?

Do I need to keep doing this?

Should I shift?

Like what am I doing here?

Particularly if,

You know,

Let's say you've got an appointment in 20 minutes,

Right?

Is it 20 minutes yet?

Is it what time is it?

Oh,

No,

It's not.

Okay,

Wait,

What about now?

Okay,

Wait,

How about now?

I think I got distracted.

Wait,

What time is it?

Like what am I,

Hold on a sec.

So like that ability to notice the arrival of a particular time plays a big role in the ability to like be on time to things,

Which,

You know,

For some people is a big deal.

And then finally,

Because,

You know,

Not everything goes according to plan,

How do you sort of readjust when things get all kind of messed up or some new thing pops up?

So there's a lot that goes into this one thing that we call time management.

Now the challenge then,

If you have ADHD,

Is that time feels really kind of slippery,

Right?

That this sense of like time is not like a consistent unit,

So to speak,

Right?

That if you're doing something boring,

Oh boy,

Does time slow down.

And if you're doing something fun,

Bam,

It's gone,

Right?

So I kind of make the analogy.

It's like trying to measure the length of something,

But using a stretched out sort of warped ruler.

But the problem is you don't know what are the short inches and what are the long inches.

So you go and you're like,

Oh,

Six and a half.

But what does that mean?

Who even knows,

Right?

Was that a boring minute?

Was it an exciting minute?

What was I doing?

How was I feeling about it?

And like what's the exchange rate anyway,

Right?

One boring minute equals,

You know,

Or six exciting minutes equal one boring minute,

You know,

Like,

Ah.

So if time is this kind of fluid and variable,

It kind of makes it feel pointless to plan anyway.

Because if you don't have some sort of like consistent predictable unit,

It kind of feels like it all sort of,

You know,

Falls apart even when you do your best to try to figure it out.

There's also the issue of how long does some activity take,

Right?

That when people say like,

Oh,

How long does it take you to do that?

There's like a few different answers.

So the one answer,

The shortest answer,

Is the actual time spent actually working,

Right?

If you put a stopwatch and you press it when they worked and you stopped it when they looked away,

When they got up to get a drink and when they couldn't find something and when they got interrupted,

And then you started again when they were actually working,

Right?

So like that's the shortest time.

And if you plan on the shortest time,

You're probably going to get burned when other things add time.

There's also,

You know,

The time depending on what it is that you're doing,

But like do you need to find some stuff?

Do you need to find some information?

Wait a second,

I had that email.

Where was it?

Like if you're disorganized somehow or forgetful or whatever,

It's going to add time,

Which again makes it harder to plan.

And then,

Of course,

As I mentioned a couple of minutes ago or a minute ago,

I don't know,

Was that an exciting minute or a boring minute?

I guess it depends.

You know,

When you take breaks,

When other stuff comes up,

That adds time also.

So,

You know,

From start to finish might be a very different time than literal working time,

And especially for folks with ADHD,

This becomes this.

In general,

The longer a task takes,

Probably the more likely it is that you need to factor in some additional time in your planning purposes.

So,

This then brings us to kind of an important topic here,

Which is this thing called time horizon.

So,

If you think about the literal horizon,

If you're standing on a beach and you're kind of looking out across the water,

If there's a ship coming at you,

At some point,

There it is,

I see it,

Right?

You're going to be able to see that ship.

It depends how good your eyes are.

It depends how big the ship is.

It depends on is it day or night?

Is it foggy?

Is it clear?

So,

There's a lot that sort of factors in.

In the same sort of a way,

If you think about the horizon of time,

So here I am at this moment,

And then there's one minute out and one hour and a day and a week and a month,

Right,

The further out something is.

In general,

Then,

You know,

Time horizon is this idea of how close does something need to be for someone to begin thinking about it.

So,

Kids have very short,

Young kids have very short time horizons.

If you tell a toddler this is going to happen in a week,

It doesn't mean anything.

They don't think at all about a week.

So,

The older we get,

The farther out in time.

And when you think about,

Like,

School assignments,

Young kids,

Stuff is,

Everything is due tomorrow.

Then it gets,

Some stuff is due a few days and some stuff is in a week,

And then you get to college and stuff could be due three months later.

In general,

Folks with ADHD tend to have a shorter time horizon for their age.

So,

In other words,

A 15-year-old with ADHD is not going to be thinking as far ahead,

Which is why the 15-year-old with ADHD is probably doing that big paper the night before,

Whereas their non-ADHD neighbor probably started that three days ago or a week ago.

This creates that sort of,

That procrastination,

Right?

It's not like that ADHD kid was freaking out about it three days ago.

They're kind of like,

Well,

Whatever.

I don't know.

I think I have a paper.

Or,

Yeah,

I mean,

I do,

But,

Like,

I don't know.

I got other stuff right now.

Except for the fun stuff,

Right?

Stuff that's fun,

Easy to think about,

Easy to activate on for everybody,

But especially for people with ADHD.

If it's fun,

No problem,

No procrastination.

This then leads to something called time blindness,

Which is,

You know,

It's not,

Like,

Literally blind,

But it's kind of a helpful term to use.

Russell Barkley calls it future myopia,

Right?

Myopia meaning trouble seeing.

So that folks with ADHD,

They don't see the future as clearly as people who don't have ADHD.

It's kind of the same thing.

If you've got,

If your vision's not great,

You're going to have a harder time seeing that ship out there,

And it's going to have to get a whole lot closer before you see it,

Compared to your friend who's got great 20-20 vision,

Right?

He's going to see that thing way before you.

But Barkley then has sort of,

This is,

You know,

It's a little bit tongue in cheek,

But I've literally heard clients kind of talk like this,

That it's this,

That for folks with ADHD,

There's kind of two times.

There's now,

Meaning whatever's happening now,

And then there's not now,

Which is basically everything from a few moments from now,

Like,

Unto infinity kind of a thing,

Right?

And that feeling the not,

Or really thinking about the not now,

Doesn't happen until you're a whole lot closer to it.

So when that deadline is right on top of you,

Now you see it.

Now you're like,

Oh yeah,

Got to go do that.

This has obvious impacts for school in terms of getting long-term assignments done,

But it also affects adults in work,

Where it's kind of the same deal.

It affects your ability to manage your health,

Right?

Because a lot of stuff about managing our health is doing things now that don't have consequences until years or decades,

Whether it's healthy eating or things like preventative care,

Like getting mammograms or whatever.

You know,

Also personal planning,

Certainly in terms of finances,

Right?

Again,

Doing things now so that we're better off later.

So this time blindness of ADHD has an effect across all parts of somebody's life.

So in the writing that I've been doing,

You know,

I mentioned I've written four books.

In my executive functions workbook,

I kind of came up with these three sort of key concepts,

Meaning anytime I was looking at strategies that had to do with a sense of time and time management,

They sort of all boil down to this,

Right?

These three kind of basic ideas,

They're all variations on these three themes.

So the first one then is supplement your internal sense of time,

However good or bad that is,

With plenty of clocks and external reminders,

Right?

Don't try to remember it or hold it or track it here.

Set up something out here that's going to do probably a better job,

Right?

Because external tools often do a better job than our internal ones that we hope they will.

Second key concept is use alarms and other limits to notify you that a specific time has arrived,

Right?

If you tend to lose track of time,

Don't use that internal mechanism,

Create an external one.

And then finally,

Use a schedule to plan out your time,

Right?

To sort of intentionally write it down and to be clear about what it is and to think about it beforehand.

And,

You know,

We got some videos on schedules as well.

But this is sort of like the basic ideas and everything else kind of grows from here.

So now it's your turn.

Let's put it to work.

Number one,

Notice how difficulties with time awareness impact your ability to get stuff done and the stress level that comes from it.

Number two,

Notice how you think about future events and deadlines.

When do you really start thinking about them,

Right?

So to begin to notice time horizon and when things begin to sort of hit or show up.

And then finally,

Number three,

What are some strategies that help you be more aware of time that like maybe you can use a little bit more often,

Right?

Like these are actually pretty good things that you're doing.

Let's put them to use a little bit more.

So there's your homework.

Let's see what you do with it.