How ADHD Warps Time Perception: Strategies to Stop Wasting and Start Managing Time

How ADHD Warps Time Perception: Strategies to Stop Wasting and Start Managing Time

By Ari Tuckman, Psy.D., MBA, posted on Attitude Magazine

ADHD impairs time perception. The ADHD brain, locked in the present and oblivious to the future, is prone to hyperfocus, time blindness, and poor time-management skills. Learn how to train your brain to “see” beyond now and “feel” tomorrow to improve time management and productivity.

“Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin

No one knows this better than someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who may lose, mismanage, underestimate, squander, and search for time daily. After all, warped time perception is a core facet of ADHD.

That translates into poor time management in the moment, and problems organizing toward the future. It means perpetually wasting precious time, falling into unpredictable hyperfocus, and turning your back on that onerous task — again. For various reasons, ADHD minds struggle to “see” time and “feel” the future. As such, the most useful time-management strategies for ADHD brains make time salient to the mind’s eye and pull the future into the present, which is felt the most.

Why Time Management Eludes ADHD Brains

Time Management Requires Attention Management

Effective time management prioritizes future goals over present needs or wants. It charts daily steps that lead the way predictably, reliably toward a desired destination.

As such, solid time management requires attention management — a defining difficulty of ADHD. It also demands dynamic attention regulation, wherein our attention shifts fluidly and frequently based on how it relates to our goals.

[Get This Free Download: Keep Track of Your Time]

On one end of the attention regulation spectrum is difficulty resisting distractions. Phone notifications, random (and ill-timed) down-the-rabbit-hole Internet searches, and other distractions work hard to hijack our attention from the task at hand. To resist immediate bits of stimulation and maintain focus on future goals, we need to practice potent response inhibition — another skill affected by ADHD.

At the other end of the attention regulation spectrum is hyperfocus, wherein intense absorption in a task becomes a type of distraction in itself — one that causes time to fall to the wayside. The antidote to unproductive or unhealthy hyperfocus is constant internal monitoring — “Do I keep my attention on what I’m doing, or do I shift to something else?” But this self-awareness, too, is impaired by ADHD.

Time Blindness and the Time Horizon Problem

Our individual time horizons determine the proximity of a task or event before we act on it. (In other words, how close in time does a deadline need to be for it to hit your mental radar? A week? A day? Twenty minutes ago?) Generally, the closer a task is in time, the easier it is to pay attention to. We won’t pay as much attention to a task that is further out in the future.

ADHD time horizons are typically shorter than those for neurotypical people. Russell Barkley, Ph.D., noted that for people with ADHD, time is all but split into two parts: the “now” (what’s on our radar) and the “not now” (what’s beyond our radar).

[Read: Intention Deficit Disorder — Why ADHD Minds Struggle to Meet Goals with Action]

This relationship with time, according to Barkley, causes a “myopia to impending future events.” In order words, planning feels impossible for people with ADHD because they don’t see the future as clearly. They take action toward a future goal (the not now) only when that distant goal moves into the present (the now). By then, frantic scrambling is often required to get the task done before it’s too late, much to the stress of others who see the future sooner.

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