Time Blindness

I’m not ready yet…….

Just give me 5 more minutes…….10 minutes later…..Just give me 5 more minutes

Just let me do a few more things……..

I’ll be there in 10 minutes……..

Oh, I can do one more thing before I leave, I can still be there on time……

Oh, I forgot to feed the dog…..

Oh no, I thought I had been playing the game for only 10 minutes, now 2 hours have gone by

What do you mean it’s time to go? You just told me we were leaving in 10 minutes. Huh? It’s 20 minutes later?

Where did the time go?

Sorry, I’m so late…..

Oh no, I thought it would only take me 30 minutes to do that project.

All the statements above I have heard from Ryan. All the statements above are examples of Time Blindness, the over or under estimating the amount of time a task will take, or how much time is left before an event. Even if a person can tell time, it is difficult for them to understand the measurement of minutes or hours, and it is often a struggle for someone who has ADHD.

When living with, working with or having good friends who have time blindness, it can be extraordinarily frustrating. I think of the couple who are getting ready to go out, and one of them is ready to go on time, and the other is never ready to go on time., which almost always makes them late to wherever it is they are going. Or, the person (me), who turns on the kettle and forgets it’s on, to just notice an hour later that ooops, I forgot I had put it on and I just happen to go back into the kitchen and realize there’s no water left in the kettle. And how about thinking you have a few minutes to google a topic, and then to realize later that three hours have now gone by. And then there’s this: You think it will only take you thirty minutes to finish a project you have promised your boss and three hours later, it’s still not finished.

Imagine how difficult it is for the ADHDer who deals with this. It can be embarrassing at the least and it can cause the ADHDer to lose their job, lose relationships and/or fail classes, at its worst.. Realizing that it’s not done on purpose, and that the neurodivergent brain is responsible for this time blindness is a first step in figuring out how to help the person with that time blindness.

So, what to do? Finding what will work for the ADHDer to help manage their time blindness can help. For Ryan, various things have worked over the years. Simple things like physical timers placed in different areas in the room, so that he would have to get up to turn it off helped when he was young. Giving him verbal time warnings when we were getting ready to go somewhere was always helpful and having a set schedule and routines for school was a life saver. As he grew older, we implemented a written schedule in a planner with times attached. Using his phone as an alarm has also helped. Putting reminders with time frames in his phone has also helped. Chances are, he will always struggle with time blindness, but he will always have tools to use to help him.

As I’ve learned more about time blindness, I have discovered my own issues with it. I tend to be unaware of time when I start researching a specific topic on the internet. I often lose time as I skip from one topic to another and then realize an hour or more has gone by. And then I get mad at myself, which is what people with time blindness often do. So now I set a timer before I start, to give me the jolt I need to get out of my deep focus.

If you struggle with tine blindness or know someone who does, and you beat yourself up over it or you verbally beat your loved one over it, there’s hope for you and them. You can use some of the tools above, or you can discover what may work better for you by researching tools yourself (Just make sure to set a timer!) Or work with a coach who will collaborate with you to find what will work for your unique brain.

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“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

Mark Twain