Why Is Time So Slippery? Understanding Time Blindness in People with ADHD (with Ari Tuckman, Psy.D.)

hello I'm Carol Fleck and on behalf of the attitude team I'm so pleased to welcome you to today's ADHD experts presentation titled why is time so slippery understanding time blindness in people with ADHD whether it's getting to work on time meeting deadlines or prioritizing tasks it's safe to say that most things in life involve time management it's a critical skill but it's a hard one to master for people with ADHD core symptoms like weak executive function skills make the concept of time a complicated one most individuals with ADHD don't have an internal clock that gut feeling that helps you judge how long a task or project might take so they don't feel that internal pressure to ramp up and need a deadline until it's often too late fortunately there are techniques to learn how to manage time how to see it and how to feel it in today's webinar we'll discuss how ADHD impacts seeing time clearly including Concepts such as temporal discounting and time Horizon will introduce strategies to increase motivation track deadlines and curb the consequences of time blindness leading today's presentation is Dr Ari tuckman Dr tuckman is a psychologist and sex therapist in private practice in Westchester Pennsylvania he is a former board member of Chad National and co-chair of the Chad conference committee he's the author of four books including ADHD after dark better sex life better relationship and understand your brain get more done he also has a podcast called more attention less deficit before I hand over the microphone to Dr tuckman I have just a few housekeeping items for those of you tuned in to the live webinar you may submit questions for the expert at any time by navigating to the text box under the video player to download the slides click on the event resources section of your webinar screen and if you're interested in the certificate of attendance option look for instructions in the email you'll receive about an hour after the live broadcast if you're listening in replay or podcast mode visit attitudemag.com and search podcast number 424 to access the slides the webinar replay and the certificate of attendance option if you support the work we're doing here at attitude to strengthen the ADHD Community we encourage you to visit attitudemag.com subscribe and sign up for attitude magazine in the latest fall issue experts offer practical advice on how adults can conquer social anxiety what ADHD symptoms look like in older adults and why some people quit taking their ADHD meds we're working on our winter issue now and it's full of great advice on how to get through the holidays and enjoy them with family and friends who might not understand ADHD or other co-occurring conditions sign up for attitude magazine for your family or to share with a teacher or a loved one who could benefit from greater ADHD understanding finally the sponsor of this webinar is inflow inflow is the number one app to help you manage your ADHD developed by Leading clinicians inflow is a science-based self-help program based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy click the link on screen to download now on the App Store and Google Play Store attitude thanks our sponsors for supporting our webinars sponsorship has no influence on speaker selection or webinar content so without further Ado I'm so pleased to welcome Dr Ari tuckman thank you so much for joining us today and leading this discussion all right it is great to be here um I don't normally present wearing my jacket inside but the heater is broken in my office and it is a refreshing 62 degrees in here so um so that's what we're doing it'll uh keep me awake so no problem uh so let's talk about time let's talk about how ADHD impacts time and you know as I've been I've been working with ADHD for like 25 years now and I've had this sort of evolution in how I think about what is ADHD what kind of makes ADHD ADHD and you know initially when I first started out I just sort of remembered all the symptoms like I don't know why they are but they are so just remember that then at a certain point um you know I came across Barclay's work and some other folks work um Tom Brown looking at executive functions then it was like oh that's why that's it's because ADHD affects the executive functions and that's why you get all these kind of symptoms and struggles and challenges associated with ADHD but then not other things right so folks with ADHD know what to do they understand social stuff let's say but they have a hard time maybe acting on those you know acting on that knowledge in the moment right so that became kind of my second understanding of ADHD now we're going to talk about how ADHD impacts time and this is like my third this is my current understanding of really understanding kind of what it is that makes ADHD ADHD so how does ADHD affect time and how does that then impact the executive functions so that's what we're talking about here today and so just in general just kind of starting out um you know time management involves the ability to sort of plan and then complete tasks in relation to time so there's a few things kind of going on there um but to do that to actually make a plan and then carry it out effectively involves kind of two related abilities and we're going to talk about them kind of each of them at length here one of them is the ability to see time and I'll talk about what that means but it's also the ability to kind of feel the future right so here I am sitting in this present moment how do I feel what's going to happen later and in other words have the motivation to actually do something right so you got to be aware of what it is that perhaps you should be doing but then you also have to be motivated to actually Act on it so um I have a line I use a lot which is that ADHD doesn't invent new struggles it just exacerbates the universal ones right so all people have some struggles with time some people had many more struggles and people who have ADHD tend to have more of these specific kinds of struggles so not different in kind just different in degree um so mm-hmm in order to manage time well it really begins as so many other things do it begins with managing attention well right or another way of putting it is time management requires attention management so this kind of happens in a couple ways or this goes off the rails in a couple ways maybe that's the better way to put it so you know on the one hand anytime we get distracted right when our attention shifts when it should have stuck um whatever that great plan was here's what I'm going to do here's how I'm gonna do it um it kind of goes out the window right like whatever those good intentions were they sort of Fall by the wayside because your attention kind of shifts away to some other thing that grabs you now on the flip side of that you know as people with ADHD know very well um it's not just about distractibility there's also the hyper Focus associated with ADHD right so that hyper focus it kind of looks like awesome attention but really what it is is too much sticking when you should have shifted right that it's getting so focused on the task at hand that you lose track of the passage of time right so in some ways hyper focus is it's about time it's about losing awareness of Time how long have I been doing this what else do I need to do when should I shift what else needs to happen here right so it's kind of a losing attention or awareness of the bigger picture um and at any given moment ideally we're sort of monitoring and we're sort of making a decision a moment by moment decision of do I stick with what I'm doing or do I shift my attention to something else right so good attention regulation is dynamic it's a constant process Moment by moment again we all have our moments where things don't work out folks of ADHD have more of those moments ultimately time management is not about this moment time management is about the future it's about doing something now that's going to probably be better at some later point in time so some tasks you don't really particularly have to manage time right you get a text when are you coming home I'll be home at six send right 1.4 seconds no time to manage you just it's done but unfortunately most things in life and certainly anything meaningful and worthwhile isn't done in 1.4 seconds right it takes a whole lot more time it takes the ability to sort of resist distractions and prioritize and think about not just this moment and what's going to be the best or the most interesting or the most important right now but what's going to be better and more important for me or the people I care about at some later point in time so we manage time in this moment in the present moment so that we're going to be happier with how things work out at some later moment [Music] um so this then brings us to um Russell Barclay's response inhibition theory of ADHD so response inhibition meaning inhibiting meaning stopping a response right so it's that ability to get hit with the stimulus and pause hold back the response and think about the bigger picture should I grab okay I just got a text do I grab my phone do I look at it do I keep doing what I'm doing now or you know you're walking through the kitchen you're getting ready dog knocks something over pause stop do I deal with that do I keep going with what I'm doing right like we're constantly hit with all these kind of things that come at us from the world around us we're also hit with thoughts that come at us from within our own mind right like oh here's an interesting idea oh I was going to look that up or oh yeah I was going to do that other thing right so we've all this information that comes at our attention at any given moment and we're always trying to sort of sort through and decide because mostly you can really only kind of do one thing at a time so what is the thing that I should be doing now what should I be paying attention to what should I be putting my energy into so in order to think about that future goal in order to put some energy towards that thing that's more about the future we need to be able to stop and pause and say nope not reacting to that or as Alan Brown the awesome Allen Brown says this is not what I'm doing right now right so that ability to say nope that's not the thing I'm paying attention to let me reflect on what I should be paying attention to instead so this then brings us to our first of two big Concepts so big concept number one is something called time Horizon so if you think about the you know like physical Horizons so let's say you're standing on the beach you're looking out across the ocean and there's a ship out there and it's coming towards you so depending upon a bunch of factors at a certain point yup there it is I yep there's a little dot I see a ship out there right at a certain point you will be able to see that ship now how close it needs to be before you see it depends on I don't know how good is your vision obviously how big and bright is the ship um what are the conditions is it nighttime daytime raining foggy right so a lot of stuff is going to determine how close or far that ship can be before it sort of hits your vision let's say Now by analogy there's also a horizon of time meaning here I am on Tuesday am I thinking about tomorrow Wednesday am I thinking about this weekend what about the end of the year what about like retirement am I thinking about that right how close in time does something need to be before it hits my awareness we're like oh I should probably do something about that so I don't know here's the thing um six weeks from now is the big ADHD conference in Dallas just bought my airline tickets right I don't need them now I don't need them tomorrow but six weeks from now I'm going to be really happy about the tickets and I don't wind up on a you know 3 A.M flight or something so you know in general then um the closer in time something is the easier it is to pay attention to the heart the farther out in time perhaps the harder it is to notice it for it to sort of hit your mental radar young kids tend to have very short time Horizons that's why they have adults who remind them to brush their teeth and to go to bed and to eat some vegetables and do their homework and all that stuff so um the impact of ADHD on this then kind of brings us to probably a phrase many people here know which is this idea of what's called time blindness and again I keep calling back to Barkley but he's kind of the man so it's hard not to um you know he he says that 80 she causes future myopia meaning that folks of the ADHD don't see the future as clearly there they see very clearly right now but thinking about you know three days from now a week a month right depending on age right they don't see as far into the future often and you know it sort of leads to this idea that for folks with ADHD they're kind of like two times and obviously this is a little bit tongue-in-cheek except it's not completely right so there's now meaning obviously whatever is happening like right now whatever needs to be worked on whatever needs to be done whatever is interesting and then there's not now pretty much everything that isn't now gets chucked into the not now bucket so that could be tomorrow it could be 30 years from now it all gets put into the not now not thinking about it not dealing with it um so in general then because folks of ADHD tend to have a shorter time Horizon um they tend to not plan as far out into the future so when you've got that big deadline on Friday and it's Thursday night now you feel it but when it's Monday afternoon and like I don't know might be a reasonable like you know life will be easier on Thursday if you did a few things now it's kind of not on your radar as much so this is why folks with ADHD procrastinate so much it's because they're not looking as far into the future they're not thinking as far ahead for what needs to happen later until all of a sudden the later becomes the now here we are it has gone from not now to now now I've got that deadline now I need to start working on it which then brings us to our second big concept and this is something called temporal discounting and this is a term from economics and basically the D what it means is so temporal meaning time and discount themating something becomes less valuable so if I said hey here's a hundred bucks right now here's a hundred bucks cash in hand you'd feel pretty psyched about that by contrast if I said here's a hundred bucks but I'm going to put it over here in a month from now I'm going to give you that hundred bucks are you exactly as excited about a hundred bucks a month from now you're not right it doesn't feel even though it's exactly the same math right it's exactly the same amount of cash we don't feel it the same kind of a way um or to put it so that's a reward we'll give an example of a punishment um when it's midnight and you just finished one episode of something on Netflix you're like oh man this is such a good show I should totally watch the next episode the fun of that episode feels pretty big the I'm gonna feel like crap tomorrow because I didn't get enough sleep feels pretty small until it's tomorrow and then you're like oh why did I do that right so in general everybody we feel the present more than we feel the future and things like saving for retirement in 40 years we really don't feel that um Folks at ADHD really really feel depressant much more so than the future right this is if anyone took psych 101 this is the marshmallow experiment um that getting one marshmallow right now for some little kids feels much better than getting two marshmallows a few minutes from now obviously marshmallows are not a big deal but things like studying for tests um going to school rather than working so you can earn more money later eating vegetables so that you know you don't die of a heart attack at 50. um exercising all this sort of boring stuff of adult responsibility is all about the future it's about sacrificing in the present so that you're better off later oh so when you put these two together it explains a lot about why folks of ADHD make some of the choices that they do and have the struggles that they do so Folks at ADHD have a shorter time Horizon right they don't see necessarily as far into the future it's not part of their mental planning um as a result they have more temporal discounting right they feel the pain of the moment or the pleasure of the moment more than they feel the pain or the pleasure of the future as a result folks the ADHD tend to choose the options or be activated by be drawn to the activities that have more immediate payoffs right the thing that's going to be more desirable or less undesirable right now weighs more heavily um because they really feel the present more strongly than the future it's harder to make yourself do this stuff in the moment that's going to involve more more displeasure now but more you know good stuff later until all of a sudden the future becomes the present and of course at that point you can't turn back the clock and say ugh I wish I'd done more of this earlier which leads us to you know Barkley's famous quote ADH is not a disorder of knowing what to do it's a disorder of doing what you know every client I see they all know what to do knowing what to do is the easy part the hard part is making ourselves do the stuff that we don't feel like doing and you know the sort of example I give here for the non-adhd folks is it's kind of like losing weight right losing weight is actually incredibly simple in terms of what you need to know right you just eat less and exercise more that's pretty much it right that is the gist I mean eat healthy food whatever but pretty much it's really easy on the now way it's really hard to do it because he do it not only once you don't eat kale one time to lose weight right you eat a lot of kale and you go to the gym a lot of times even when you don't feel like it so that's the difference between knowing and doing um so one of the ways then if we're going to kind of take this time perspective on ADHD you know one of the ways of thinking about ADHD then is ADHD is too much present and not enough future right the folks of ADHD very much feel and see the present moment the challenge is to disengage to sort of put that pause and say nope that's not what I'm doing now nope that's not what I'm supposed to pay attention to right now and to see beyond it and to think about like what else what else down what's coming down the down the road what's further out in the time Horizon let me think about what else I need to do what else I could do right that is a much harder thing for all people especially for people who have ADHD so let's then talk about what do we do about it right because that's really kind of why we're here the theory is interesting and all but like what do you do about it so let's talk about two sets of strategies right one set here is going to be how to see time more effectively and to see it by externalizing it right don't sort of keep it in your head create tools and systems and other stuff to make time more visible out there right so we're going to try to stretch that time Horizon so that it's less driven by the moment and a bit more looking farther down the road so you know coming back to where we started that good time management begins with good attention management is let's put some energy into managing your attention and what pulls at it let's put some energy into reducing some of the Temptations because I don't know willpower never works as well as we wish it to if you over rely on Willpower it will tend to fail you that's just kind of like a sad fact of human nature so um you know a lot of these good ADHD management strategies are about this right they're about kind of eliminating distractions and Temptations on the outside rather than relying on Willpower on the inside to say nope nope nope not doing that right kind of the same deal right if you're trying to eat healthier having less garbage in the you know in the pantry less junk food in the pantry makes it a whole lot more likely that you're going to eat healthier stuff rather than junky stuff um and I also kind of think about this idea of kind of signal to noise ratio right this is I think it's a term from Radio back in the day um so signal meaning that's the thing I want to hear and pay attention to versus noises all the distractions and the junk and the other stuff that sort of pulls at our attention at every moment so we can make the signal stronger let's say setting an alarm that goes off oh it's that time now or you can make the distractions make the noise softer right and either way you know worth it working on both sides right a lot of ADHD strategies is making the right stuff stand out a bit more and making the other stuff kind of stand out a bit less um so I often talk to clients about while either just actually using a schedule um or how they use it and you know in general um you don't have to have a schedule like you don't actually but you know if you can remember everything inside your head that you have going on in your life probably you don't have enough going on in your life I mean I don't know at least for me right each other around but like seriously you want a life that's bigger more interesting more complicated than your ability to remember it inside your own mind so um so to use a schedule system whatever one it is Google Calendar something written some crazy productivity act like whatever it doesn't matter what it is just in general use it use it often enough use it most of the time it doesn't need to be perfect but every time you use it is a little bit better than a time that you don't now the challenge for a lot of folks with ADHD is that often um schedules are things that have that feel like they've been sort of you know foisted upon them right like teachers and parents and maybe spouses or bosses have sort of crammed the schedule onto them and said you got to use this and like nobody likes to be told what to do nobody likes to be forced to do something somebody else's way so it usually doesn't work but you know the thing about having a schedule is it's not about other people's I don't know neurotic anxiety or trying to control you or whatever using a schedule is about it helps you get done more of what you want to do it helps you get done what is important to you so that's a whole lot more motivating to maybe put in the effort to use this schedule um you know some clients that I've seen have sort of like they're hesitant to put stuff in their schedule because it's sort of like well Thursday at four I don't know if I want to do that thing what if I want to do something else on Thursday at 4 right so they kind of like to leave their options open and that's totally fine I get it um but just because you put it in your schedule doesn't make it a Blood Oath right it's not a tattoo you didn't you know sign up for the French Foreign Legion or anything right like put it in there do your best if the star is down the line you could always move it but at least if it's there you got a place to start the other thing that I'll often recommend is don't just put a thing into the schedule but kind of add in a bunch of extra stuff so things like like here's an example um I have a young guy that I see a client who put into a schedule that he had a doctor's appointment let's say Friday at 10. awesome right you need you guys made refill perfect but that's all he put doctor's appointment Friday at 10 what he didn't put is which office because the doctor has I guess a couple offices so he throws it into Google Maps jumps in the car races over wrong office by the time he could get to the right office he missed his appointment so not only the time but maybe also the address maybe a phone number maybe bring forms maybe whatever right put that extra stuff in there don't have to hold it here it's there in the schedule also makes the schedule more likely which then makes you more likely to keep using the schedule right so there is indeed a momentum to this um another sort of big point of advice that I give is this idea of putting to-do list items into your schedule and you know the problem with to-do lists is that stuff that gets put on a to-do list tends to just sort of sit there forever right it's sort of like to-do lists become graveyards of failed aspirations and the reason is when you look at your to-do list you know sort of like um hmm now the time to do this maybe or or it could be the time to do this or I could do this or Flip Flip Flip actually maybe man this thing's been on here forever maybe this is the thing right it's like we don't know what to do when right so that's the problem with to-do lists like there's definitely a place in the world for them don't get me wrong but I think it's sometimes helpful to take time take stuff off of the to-do list and make it time specific meaning okay this thing I'm gonna do at this time this thing I'm going to do at that time right taking literally like plugging it into your schedule this is especially helpful if there are things that have time constraints or like I gotta call this person during business hours or on Monday afternoon or something um now obviously other things will come up and again no blood oats here right if you schedule that I'm going to do this on Thursday afternoon some other thing comes up just move it like whatever just scribble it off and move it over if you're doing electronically it's even easier to move it around um but one of the sort of side benefits of putting to-do lists into your to-do list items into your schedule is um for the folks who tend to take on too much because they kind of forget everything that they have going on like as you begin to plug stuff into your schedule you see like oh actually I don't have time on Thursday to meet with you I thought I did like in theory I do except for like all these other things so actually I can't do Thursday what does next week look like um so the thing about putting stuff into your schedule is it doesn't guarantee it gets done it doesn't make you do it but what it does do is at least it makes you aware and awareness is a big part right awareness counts for a lot I think um because if you're not aware of it if it falls off your radar then you're done game over if you're aware of it at least now you got a shot at doing it which kind of then brings us to the next part here which is how to increase the motivation to actually do this stuff that you're aware of that you're aware that you probably should do so you know as I say here maximize Motivation by feeling the future right so we're kind of coming back to our second day concept of temporal discounting right feeling the future more fully in that moment um so the problem with life then is we have all these different things at any given moment that we could be doing right some of them are maybe work or school related some of them are about personal life some of them are about relationships some of them are about I don't know just taking care of stuff right so there's all sorts of different stuff we could be doing there's all sorts of stuff we could be paying attention to um what do we do right how do we make a decision in this moment about how best to use this time um and you know in general I'm a big proponent of natural consequences in the sense of like you know if your kid tends to leave their towel on the floor awesome because a wet gross cold towel is a pretty good motivator you know to hang up your towel today so you don't have a gross towel tomorrow it's also pretty cool because nobody ever dies of wet Rose towels so it's an easy thing to be like ah she'll learn um the problem with natural consequences though is there are too many things in life where they don't work and you know any parent of a kid with ADHD is almost certainly gotten some advice of you just need to let him fail then he'll figure it out which is only true when it's true right it's not true unfortunately for too many things so you know for a lot of stuff by the time the natural consequences kick in it's kind of too late so you know if you don't hand in your tax returns right it's kind of like it ain't a problem until it's a problem right it's not a problem until you want to like I don't know refinance your mortgage or you know do some other sort of big financial transaction where you actually need a tax return um you know if you tend to eat a bunch of junky stuff it's fine now although you might feel a bit barfy afterwards but like really the problem with unhealthy eating isn't today it's like 10 or 20 or 30 years from now um and in terms of doing daily homework right as the parent of any kid with ADHD knows right it's a problem at the end of the marking period when 15 assignments need to be done in the last two days of the marking period now it's a problem right but eight weeks ago when it would have been good to have gotten that homework done didn't feel it right like the pressure wasn't there because of the temporal discounting it wasn't a problem until it's actually a problem and if you really want to talk about natural consequences for not doing homework the true natural consequence of not doing homework is in the fall after it's in September after you graduate high school where instead of going to this college campus you're going to that college campus maybe right like that is actually when real natural consequences begin to kick in if you're not doing your homework as a as a middle school or a high school kid so natural consequences again they're great I love them when they work but often they don't work so this leads me to kind of my unofficial slogan of ADHD time management which is by the time you feel it it's too late when it's Thursday night and you procrastinated on that thing you need to do for work on Friday it's too late like you can't rewind the clock and say uh I should really start this on Tuesday or Wednesday or when it's you know the 30th of the month and you didn't really save all those receipts that you need to submit you know so you could get reimbursed for them it's kind of too late to go back and try to figure out like uh wait a second how many miles did I drive where did I take clients for lunch or whatever or you know when it's three hours before companies arriving and you haven't done all the prep right it's too late to kind of go back to yesterday and start getting ready for the company who's coming in three hours so it becomes this kind of painful lesson again and again and again and you know as we said before 88 is not a disorder of knowing what to do if you've given the hypothetical they know it they know it very well experiences taught them very well what's going to happen the trick is doing it doing the right thing in the Heat of the Moment so this then brings us to five I've got three here and two on the next slide five ways to kind of what I call bringing the future into the present right so to feel the future now in this moment and not waiting until it becomes too late so you know one of them is to make the consequences much more immediate so in general a really good bit of advice for motivating especially people with ADHD but frankly anybody is making the cut is to shorten the space between action and consequence so you know for a teenager for example right they can't play video games until today tonight until they get their homework done we're not waiting eight weeks for the end of the quarter to now do 15 homework assignments right now today you cannot play video games until your homework is done we're not arguing we're not fighting we're not debating like it's done or it's not and if it ain't done you're not playing anything you're not getting your other screens perhaps make the consequences much more frequent so for example um you know if somebody works in a job where they have you know good news is a fair bit of leeway about what they do and when and how bad news is they still got to get stuff done um I don't know maybe do more frequent check-ins with their boss or maybe a college student checking in with a professor or whatever right where let's just do let's five ten minute check-in let's just kind of see where I'm at I'll just kind of let you know what I'm doing you can ask any questions it'll just kind of help me like stay on track and make sure I'm getting stuff done right so you don't wait two weeks to hand in the big thing you do you know maybe every day or two you do a quick check-in we make the consequences more external so um you know might be so rather than just feeling bad on the inside or worrying on the inside and hoping it works out actually make it a bit more external so for example if you know you tend to run late like telling a friend if you're gonna meet them for dinner um look if I'm late if I'm more than 10 minutes late I'll buy you dinner right totally artificial consequence right making it up or um I have a client of mine who is having trouble getting out of bed she set up this bet with her boyfriend you know that whoever like jumped out of bed and turned on the light you know by the end of the month or whatever um you know like she would have to paint her fingernails the color of an opposing football team for example if she lost so um that was a pretty good motivator for her and he made it kind of fun and whatever to do this kind of silly bet so whatever it is that you can find a way something that's going to hook you something that's going to motivate you and kind of push you forward um two more ways to feel the future more in the present um you know one of them might be to make the consequences much more Salient meaning kind of more attention grabbing so if you've got a teenager who you're really kind of struggling to get out of bed struggling to get out the door there's always like a Mad Dash to get to the bus um you know I don't know if they miss the bus and you got to be their Uber I don't know they're paying you five bucks or 10 bucks or something right so the I feel guilty about messing up Mom or Dad's morning may not be that big a motivator but here's 10 bucks maybe that is right maybe they're like okay that I can feel or they got to pay you with their cell phone of like here's my cell phone I'll get it back when I get home tonight something that's going to mean something to them and then finally sometimes we need to make this artificial consequences more consistent because the problem with natural consequences is sometimes you get away with it right sometimes it actually works out so we're like oh I'm feeling lucky maybe this is one of those times where the teacher doesn't check our homework or maybe my boss won't call on me to talk about this thing in the big meeting tomorrow right so making it much more consistent so you know things like Weight Watchers with all the points and stuff or you know these various kind of like diet for food tracking apps whatever right like if you enter it in immediately every single time there's no fudging the numbers there's no wishful thinking of like I think I ate some vegetables today I can probably have a couple of cookies right so being really consistent so there's no room to wiggle so to speak so just in general right imposing artificial consequences tends to be more effective and waiting for natural consequences to show up and kick in now in general then um obviously we can't always sort of Jerry rig the system right in terms of the stuff I just shared on the last couple slides sometimes it's got to be a bit more of a kind of inside job that just sort of within our mind we've got to think about it and figure out what to do so you know one of the ways that to compensate for temporal discounting right that tendency to really feel the present and to sort of ignore the future um is to be intentional about kind of pausing and picturing right so if here I am on you know Tuesday and I got this big thing on Friday right let me really really think about Friday if I work on this now if I put a bit of effort in how does Thursday night and Friday work out how do I feel walking to that big meeting right let me really kind of think about that compare and contrast if I don't do anything now or tomorrow or Thursday during the day and I wait till Thursday night then how do we feel on Thursday night how do we feel about on Friday like what is the sort of like the doubt the uncertainty The Angst the frustration of like uh here we go again and then you know can spend time with my wife and kid and you know blah blah blah and then I don't get enough sleep and then Friday kind of sucks and then Friday night's not as good so let's right like let's really kind of think about what that feels like um or in other ways sort of thinking about it or sort of explaining it to someone is has future you going to feel about present you right so is Thursday night you gonna look back and say Yeah Tuesday me I hate that guy that guy sucks he's always screwing me Tuesday me is the worst right Thursday me I'm the one who's paying the price if Tuesday me would actually carry their weight this would be a whole different ball game right now right so you can kind of play it up a bit but it's true right because it's the me of Thursday that will reap the reward or pay the consequence for what I did on Tuesday um so the more you can bring that future into how you feel in the present moment the more likely you're going to be motivated to actually think about the future and do something about it and you know I kind of will sort of emphasize this idea that often people ask themselves the wrong question so this is the wrong question um do I feel like doing this now no no you don't the answer is always no by the way on Thursday the answer is still now still don't want to do this thing the problem is now on Thursday I don't have any choice right I gotta do it even though I hate it also by the way FYI probably hate it more on Thursday because now you have the misery of the stress of the last minute you have the misery of having to stay up late and kind of like you know beating yourself up about the fact you didn't do it so do I want to do this now is the wrong own question the better question is how will Thursday May feel about Tuesday May based on what I do or don't do now that is a much better question so um so let's let's go to the Q a let me just do one more quick slide but my hope is that this has sort of made sense right that it's helped you sort of understand this relation between ADHD and time and why time feels so kind of slippery why it kind of disappears why planning feels so if not hard at least kind of futile because you know the best laid plans don't really work out anyway so um understanding the theory but maybe more importantly having some good strategies to know how to manage it more effectively um so my website Adult adhdbook.com I've got information about my books and recordings and upcoming presentations and all that stuff so that's the best place to find my stuff although I'm sort of all over the internet but um let's do the Q a before we start the Q a uh I'd like to thank inflow once more for sponsoring this webinar and Ari that was really great interesting great tips so we got a ton of questions as you might imagine I'm sure so quite a few people said that time blindness has cost them their jobs so in addition you talked about you know checking in more with your boss as a potential counter but um some people are asking what else might help them in the workplace to overcome these issues and should they talk to their managers um how should they talk to their manager managers and disclose that they have these issues and if yes how might they do this sure so you know in terms of time blindness causing jobs yeah I totally believe that I absolutely do so you know the sort of the general answer and then the more specific the general answer is um this is about ADHD time is the ultimate outcome but this is really about ADHD so take it seriously educate yourself about it you know there's lots of good tools and systems and strategies as well as you know medication to help you manage ADHD much more effectively and if it feels like your ADHD is casting too long a shadow in your life then keep at it and I know these days it's hard to find providers who know what they need to know and I totally empathize with that but just be persistent and be diligent and really you know kind of do the best that you can um I've also got this line that regardless of what happened yesterday make today a good day right so do more of those good things today regardless of what you did yesterday um I think you know otherwise in terms of time be really intentional about it right lots of lots of clocks and reminders reduce the distractions um be intentional about using a schedule and a to-do list don't feel like you got to be perfect and do not be black and white about it um that if you know if you forget your schedule for a couple days like don't just abandon all hope pick it back up use it again um I think in terms of the question of disclosing often the advice that I give and this is kind of its own webinar but often the advice I give is talk symptoms before diagnoses so don't say I have ADHD and therefore I struggle with time just cut that first part off just say I struggle with time and the reason why I say that is not because there's anything wrong with having ADHD there isn't but you don't know what the other person knows or thinks about ADHD if they have incorrect ideas about it you don't do them or you any favors to tell them something so just get to the meat of it I struggle with time therefore here are some strategies that I think will will be really helpful and my advice here is cater to self-interest right in other words if it's your boss or a co-worker you're talking to you know offer a strategy and Pitch it in a way that benefits them it's not just about what benefits you but like if we can do these you know check-ins more often you know I'm going to do a whole lot better about nailing deadlines and making sure that I'm on the right track so you know we're not gonna have to go back and redo stuff as much that is in your boss or co-workers best interest it's much more likely that they're going to be willing to go with you on that um similar to that a few people said how can I better figure out how long it'll take me to do X Y or Z yeah this is a really good question so you know and this is part of the challenge is that you know how long something takes depends on a lot of factors um you know there's there's also it depends what do you measure are you measuring only the time itself where you start and stop the clock on when you're working and then you stop it when you're off onto something else um it depends how I don't know how long do you have to research something do you have to find some bits and pieces first how often do you get interrupted every time you get interrupted there's a roll of the dice as to whether you know you come on right back or whether you're sort of Off to the Races with something else um you know there's just generally this thing that um you know for some sometimes for folks with ADHD a task will fill the time available if you have one hour it takes an hour if you have three hours it takes three hours right because there isn't that pressure of the deadline until you start getting close to the end of the time so um it's sort of like the analogy I use for a lot of folks with ADHD when it comes to sort of planning how long things take it's like trying to measure something with like a warped and bent ruler right it's like you can't really measure it because your units are inconsistent right an hour doesn't feel like an hour an hour's worth of productivity can vary a lot from one hour to the next so um so maybe perhaps if you if it's a repeating thing that you do every day or often you could time how long it takes a few times and then use that as a ballpark if you're not really sure better to round up and then have a bit of bonus time at the end but I think otherwise to really do the best that you can to you know as I sort of said before increase the signal or decrease the noise right get rid of the distractions get rid of the off ramps and the other stuff that's going to sort of pull you away and add time to how long it takes and then you know try to just focus on that specific amount of time at least to get a certain piece of something done a few people asked in addition to plugging into-do lists into their schedules and a few other things you mentioned did you do you have recommendations for specific apps or tools that may be helpful to manage time and tasks that you can share yeah I mean in general there's so many different apps and stuff out there and you know they all kind of have strengths and weaknesses the general advice I give is keep it simple find something that works well enough and then just use it um because there's definitely this kind of like like making your productivity app perfect can become its own kind of time waster right its own kind of avoidance of actually doing the things that you're supposed to do so find something good enough and then just kind of stick with it um the only sort of thing I might sort of specifically mention here is you know folks who wind up spending way too much time on various sort of online distractions is it might be one of those things that you need to get serious about using some sort of a blocker right some sort of a thing that says either blackout times of like no YouTube from nine to five or you know one or two hours a day you know so a total or something um or you know two hours a day for YouTube Facebook Instagram whatever right so if you find it you continue to go too much to those distractions and spend too much time on it you might need to get more serious about some sort of a blocking system just because you know the willpower isn't working out um here's a question that I think lots of spouses can relate to um my wife struggles regularly with time blindness and I have a hard time understanding and sympathizing with the way she thinks what can I do or should be doing on a daily basis to help her with time and attention management sure and yeah I mean so this is a fair question right because obviously if you live with other people even if they're roommates but certainly if they're a spouse right what you do affects them also in what they do affects you so like that is part of the package deal right hopefully it's more good than bad but sometimes it's bad so um so I think the important thing here is to recognize the fact that um your wife doesn't do this by choice right when she loses track of time when she gets distracted when she gets pulled off onto other stuff it's not because she's being self-indulgent it's not because she thinks herself is more important it's not because she thinks you should do all the hard stuff and she does the easy stuff right it's that it is much harder for folks with ADHD to sort of resist the distractions and temptations and that time just doesn't tick quite as loudly inside her mind so I say this for a couple of reasons the obvious one is if you can see this as it's sort of like being colorblind right like it just is what it is then some strategies are going to be much more effective than others and maybe there are places that you can kind of step in and be helpful not just for her but also helpful to get more of what you want out of the relationship which is important if this is going to last um but also there's kind of a bit of an emotional piece of like if you recognize this is just something that she struggles with in all parts of her life not just in terms of what affects you maybe you don't take it as personally and then you don't feel as bad about it right so that enables you to be more kind of I don't know helpful in the problem solving side of things so that you can both get more of what you want okay um someone asks is there a difference in time blindness in hyperactive versus inattentive ADHD is it more acute in one than another um I don't think so specifically I don't know of anything that kind of separates that out but you know it could certainly show up a little bit differently you know across different people so um you know everybody's different you know ADHD or not everybody's different um someone says I've been diagnosed with severe ADHD and I don't understand why sometimes I can time things perfectly and other times I'm so far off it's ridiculous and actually quite a few people said that yeah and that is part of the maddening inconsistency and therefore unpredictability of ADHD right it's sort of like folks of 80s you can do anything once right but then the problem is if you nail it once people raise the bar and they're like oh you should be able to do it all the time um so you know it's hard not just for the person themselves but also for kind of onlookers so to speak to understand what the difference is and you know in general folks with ADHD are more influenced by the sort of surroundings right by how sort of interested they are how important it is um you know what's happening on right now compared to folks who don't have ADHD have a little bit better ability to just sort of stay the course and do what needs to be done even under less than ideal circumstances so um so some of that inconsistency is just part of the package deal um but you know to the extent that you can really try to kind of manage the stuff that you can manage in terms of the environment that you're working in um and then also and this is super easy to say but it's much harder to do like fill the tank meaning get enough sleep eat healthy enough try to exercise try to manage your stress I mean this is super easy to say but like that's one of the ways that you know that also um impacts some of that inconsistency because you're not necessarily always bringing your best a few people asked how old are children typically when they start to understand the concept of time um you know I don't know exactly but it's not necessarily I mean it's not a sort of like either or so much as you know like young young kids so like toddlers like their their time Horizon is very short right anything more than a few minutes away they're really not kind of thinking about it um you know as kids get older their time Horizon stretches out further and further and if you think about you know like first and second graders everything homework any homework is due tomorrow maybe there's a project that goes a few days but nothing goes a few weeks really and then it starts to stretch out middle school high school college right like it goes further and further out as their time Horizon expands out which is great that's how it's supposed to be except if you're one of those kids with ADHD or whatever where your time Horizon is still a lot shorter in the expectations are beyond their farther out than where you tend to think so you're going to be tending to do more stuff at the last minute compared to your classmates well unfortunately we're out of time so thank you for joining us today and for sharing your expertise with our ADHD Community we really appreciate that and next week our free type our free webinar is titled getting ready to launch setting up middle and high school students for success and independence with Chris dendy we hope you can join us make sure you don't miss future attitude webinars articles or research updates by signing up to receive our free email newsletters at 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Channel: ADDitude Magazine

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Length: 60min 57sec (3657 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023