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You are listening to the Navigating Adult ADHD podcast with your ADHD coach and expert, Zena. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Navigating Adult adhd. Now, my guess is that you probably pushed play on this particular episode because you struggle, just like I do with estimating and managing your time. So no doubt some of this sounds familiar. Perhaps you think that a 30 minute task will take you just like five minutes and then you're late for your next meeting. You sit down to quickly reply to an email and three hours disappear into research with 20 new tabs open on your computer and some random tangents. You look at the clock in the afternoon and you are genuinely shocked that it actually says 4pm what the actual fuck? Where did the time go? And you either leave way too late or maybe like me, weirdly early. Like way too early because your brain just can't quite feel the passing of time and long term goals like saving money or perhaps you are planning for retirement or writing a book. They just feel so far away and they just keep getting bumped and put off. My friend, in this episode we are talking all about ADHD and time blindness and why it often feels like everything is either now or not now. Okay, very all or nothing. So we're going to unpack what ADHD time blindness actually is, why our brains experience this, why it is something we struggle with. All right, I'm going to give you loads of different real life examples. So for example, like being late if you're somebody who's always late, if you underestimate how long a task is going to take you, even if you've done it 150 times. Yes, I do have an example I have done 150 times that I will share with you. Right, then we're going to talk about, of course, what you can do, my friend, to support your beautiful ADHD brain if you're struggling with the time blindness. I'm also going to add in just a couple of quotes from experts like Dr. Russell Barclay and Ned Hallowell, because I really look to them as experts when it comes to time blindness. And a lot of their work has helped me when it has come to navigating my own time blindness. Okay, so time blindness, it is a very common symptom of people for people with adhd and time for us is either now or not now. And we often don't give that much attention to the things that are not in front of us right now. So I'm going to take you back in time to give you a bit of an Example, back when I was running a travel agency and I was working long days, I was in charge of a team of, I think around about five or six people. I was responsible for, you know, running this business, this store that was turning over seven figures a year. And I was, you know, feeling a lot of pressure, a lot of overwhelm. There was always so much that needed to be done. I felt like I was constantly putting out fires, right? Like you're having to like employ new staff because somebody's leaving, you're having to do a new roster and then this trip got cancelled and this airline's gone into liquidation and blah, blah, blah, like so much going on. And of course I also had personal goals. I had things I wanted to achieve and do and accomplish outside of work. At the time, I remember one of those was to save money. I wanted to save money, but I also wanted to do a triathlon. However, those were things that were always pushed aside, pushed off to the side as I continued to focus on what was right in front of me day to day. Maybe that was paying my overdue power bill, replying to that email, putting an ad in the paper to get a new staff member, getting groceries on the way home, having to buy cat food because I ran out. All that was now, now, now. And so of course my goals of saving money and doing this triathlon were just pushed off, pushed off, pushed off. So, my friend, this is why you might struggle to set goals, especially long term goals, and feel like you never achieve them. We often don't give attention to the things that are not in front of us right now. One of the things Dr. Russell Barclay says is wherever the now goes, we go. Oh, yes, my friend. So if you have been told your whole life you are just disorganised or you are unreliable, or this classic line, you just need a better time management system, no doubt that was said with some sort of snarky undertone. I want you to know that there is brain science behind this, okay? The ADHD brain is wired differently and we're going to talk about that. This is not a personality flaw. Our difficulties with time is not a moral failing. It doesn't mean we're a bad person. It's simply part of the default setting on our ADHD brains. And it's also something that with deliberateness we can also improve. Okay, so we're going to talk a bit about that. So researchers describe time blindness as a difficulty in sensing the passing of time and estimating how long tasks will take, which also affects our ability to plan and prioritize and set and achieve deadlines. So let me give you a real life example. Me and this podcast, my friend. This one right here that you are listening to, you're listening to episode number 151. That means I have done 150 of these. I have recorded, uploaded over 150 episodes. Now, however, my brain's default setting is to tell me that I can research, I can outline, I can record, and I can also upload a podcast in under an hour. Even after doing 150 of these. That, my friends, that right there is classic time blindness. Again, having done 150 of them, I still have this difficulty in sensing the passing of time and how much time it has taken or does take, right? I have this real challenge when it comes to estimating how long something's going to take, even when I've done it this many times. And of course that can affect my ability to plan, prioritize, and get it out on time. So let me share a couple of ways that you might see this showing up throughout your life. At work, it might be that you underestimate how long it takes to write a report or prepare for a presentation, which then means that you stay late at the office and you have to take work home on the weekends. In relationships, it might be that you are always late when it comes to meeting your friends and your family, your loved ones, you're always running late and then you're drowning in the shame because they make a comment about your lateness and you feel terrible. At home, it might be that you just intend to, you know, I'm just going to do a quick tidy up in the kitchen. Just a five minute, you know, quick freshen up and then you hyper focus on reorganizing the spice drawer and completely forget that zoom call that you were meant to join. When it comes to long term stuff, perhaps you put off taxes, you put off looking at retirements and insurances and medical checks because there are always other things that are more pressing. Right now it's kind of like living in the cycle of like, oh, I'll do it tomorrow or I'll do it next week, but tomorrow never comes. Next week never comes. So my friend, if you recognize yourself here, please hear me. This is not proof that you are a lost cause, okay? It is proof that your brain does time differently because, hi, we have adhd. Okay, so why is it that ADHD brains experience time blindness? So there are three key things at play here. So two of them are executive functions. So one of the Executive functions is working memory. And the second one is the planning and prioritizing executive function. Now the third thing that's at play here, you might have guessed it, it is dopamine. And I love to talk about dopamine, my friends. So I'm going to break this down. Working memory. This is the part that holds the I've got a dentist appointment at 3pm today and so I need to leave home by 2:30, but also I need to send that email off first. Okay, now for ADHD brains, those pieces of information don't all stay in the front of our mind, right? The appointment exists until something more now takes over and kind of boots it off the stage. It's almost like the post it notes on the wall fall off because we've got budget post it notes. We didn't buy Those really good 3M sticky suckers. Okay, then there's the prioritising. Instead of seeing a nice, clear, simple order to follow, it can feel like everything is urgent, needs to be done right now, or nothing is urgent and I can just go and do whatever I want. So you might genuinely intend to work on, you know, the boring but important thing, but something slightly shinier, slightly more urgent, more fun, more right now jumps up and jumps in front of your face, right? Jumping the queue. Then we've got the planning. So the planning is where we are breaking a task into steps and estimating how long those steps are going to take. This is harder for us. And our brain goes, yeah, yeah, I totally can do that. Full report, reply to those three emails and take a shower all in 45 minutes. Spoiler alert, my friend. Hell no, we cannot. But in that moment, your brain really believes that you can. Trust me, my brain really wants to believe. It only takes me one hour to do a podcast. No spoiler alert, it does not. Okay, so that's working memory, planning and prioritising. And then we add dopamine to the mix. So dopamine is the brain chemical that it helps with motivation, interest and reward. Now, ADHD brains are wired to want to chase whatever gives us a hit of that feel good dopamine. Now, okay, that might look like answering the message that just popped up on your phone or checking that notification after you post it on Instagram. Doing that quick job that just feels a little easier and more satisfying to do. I'll just quickly do that first, researching something interesting instead of filling in that boring form that you have to fill in for the doctor. So when your executive functions are wobbly and your dopamine system is basically yelling at you, let's go do the fun urgent thing now. Of course the long term stuff kind of loses out. Okay, so replying to this email now beats working on that. Report this due next week. Scrolling for just 10 minutes beats going to bed early so you can get up a little bit earlier to get that walk in before work. And it's not because you don't care. It's not because you are irresponsible. It is because your brain is literally pulled towards whatever feels real loud and rewarding in this moment, okay? In this moment right now. And the systems that are meant to hold the future in mind are underpowered and their post it notes all fell off the wall. So when you spend all day putting out fires and then you crash on the couch at 7pm Thinking why can't I ever, you know, work on my goals? Why don't I have any time or any energy left for that? Hello. That my friends, is time blindness, executive dysfunctions and some dopamine all teaming up. Okay? And again, this is the ADHD brain's default wiring. So once we understand this, once we know what is going on, we can start building in some supports around this instead of just beating ourself up for it. Okay, so let's talk about that. What actually helps? What are some of the supports that we can put in place when we are having difficulty with time blindness? I am going to share with you five things, okay? Number one, make time visible, okay? You have to be able to see it, otherwise it doesn't exist. ADHD brains are out of sight, out of mind. No doubt you will have already learned that one. For example, if you are wanting to play the guitar, but your guitar lives in the spare wardrobe cupboard, you're not going to play the guitar unless maybe your friend asks you about it. You're like, oh shit, I'm going to go get it out of the cupboard, right? We are so out of sight, out of mind. So if we want to know what, how long things take us, if we want to be aware of the time, if we want to improve our time blindness, we have to put it in sight to make it front of mind, okay? So you can get, you know, off Temu, off Amazon, off, anywhere like that. You can get visible clocks that you can have that you can select a certain amount of time, like maybe 20 minutes and it will alert you with a little alarm after 20 minutes has passed. And this really helps you to feel and understand the passing of time and how long things will take you. Especially if, like me, you seem to think, oh, it's only going to take me an hour to do that. And then the alarm goes off and you're like, holy shit, I'm not even halfway. Wow, I so underestimated that. Okay, so analog clocks in key places. In all the places my friends in the kitchen, in the office, in the bedroom, in the bathroom. In all of the places. It never ceases to amaze me when somebody will say to me, I just thought it took me five minutes to get ready. And then you had me time it. And I realized it actually takes me 25 minutes. I'm like, yeah, crazy, right? Our brain likes to say it's just five minutes. I can be ready in five minutes. No, it's 25 minutes. Put a clock in the bathroom and watch it. Okay, so visual timers, visual clocks, making it visual. Another thing I recommend is if you are somebody who time blocks, okay, have different colors if you. And you're definitely going to have to have some sort of a calendar or a diary. I always recommend using a electronic calendaring system because you always have your phone with you. And when you're out and your friend says, hey, can you do coffee next Monday? And you're like, yeah, yeah, I think I can. And you grab out your phone and you check it and you're like, oh, no shit, I've actually got a doctor's appointment. Right? Having that with you is so important to have an electronic calendaring system. If your iPhone, like, you can just use the iCal, you've got Google Calendars, just something simple. Now, I also suggest, especially if you're a visual person, when you get home, transfer that to something visual. For example, in our kitchen, we have this giant chalkboard wall. It's like a chalk wall, basically, and it has a calendar on it. Like a whole month calendar on it. And we put all of the different things that people need to know on there so that it's visual. It's front of mine in my office right now where I'm recording this podcast. I have a huge 20, 26 wall planner. And I can see, like all of the key. The important things up on that. Making it visual is so important. And again, if we can use different colors, like on our. On our chalkboard, different colors for different people. Okay. So pink for me, of course. Right. Blue for the boys, green for my partner, that sort of a thing. Okay. And if you saw the adhd, not just hyper documentary, I'm pretty sure you actually got a. You got to see that calendar. I'm pretty sure they Did a skim of that in the background. So number one is making time visible. So important number two is to externalize your memory. Okay. Do not trust. Oh yeah, yeah, of course I'll remember that, my friend. My brain is so cute when it says that. I laugh at myself now and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll remember. And I'm like, I'm so cute. No I won't. Oh my gosh, we're not going to remember the things. That's okay. Calendar it. Okay. Calendar anything that happens at a specific time. Anything you need to remember. If it's so and so's birthday, make sure you repeat it for every single year. Okay. Calendar it. And use alarms. Shitloads of them, I kid you not. And also use Siri or Alexa. Have Siri remind you at 7am every morning to take your medication. Right? Have Siri. And the funny thing is I don't even know where my phone is. Oh, that's probably a good thing because I'm sure Siri would start talking to me. I record this, right? But have Siri remind you to call the doctor each month when you need to request your repeat prescription. You can literally get Siri or Alexa or whatever your digital person is to remind you to do all of these things. Hey Siri, remind me at 3pm today that I need to go pick up Carter from soccer practice at 3:30. Okay? So number two is to externalize your memory and don't just expect yourself to remember. So cute. Not gonna happen. We're gonna use the alarms, we are gonna use the reminders from the Siri, the Alexa. And again like having that, that, that visual giant chalkboard in our kitchen. I'm not saying it has to be a chalkboard, but something visual that everyone can see is a really good idea, right? Number three, my friend, you have to take time to plan your time. This is quote that really pisses me off because it's very accurate and it is. Failing to plan is planning to fail just pisses me off. It does. But I'm like so true, right? Especially with like the longer term things. When you fail to plan the days that you're going to train for your triathlon or you fail to plan the days that you are going to write your book, then it's not going to come to fruition. Okay? So we actually have to set time aside to plan our time. And this is really, really key. This helps hugely with time blindness, my friend. When we sit down and ask our executive functions and tell them, hey, we're not Going to look at the Facebook or the Instagram or any of the things. We are going to plan out our time for this week. We're gonna look at this month, right? And we're going to plan it. Now, the key here is to break everything down into teeny, tiny steps. Okay? Remember how my brain is super cute and it thinks that it only takes an hour to record a podcast? No. So for the podcast example, I allow 45 minutes to research the episode. Now, researching for me takes 45 to an hour, but I allow 45 minutes to outline it. And outlining for me typically takes around 30 minutes, but sometimes it can go a little over. So it's kind of like I've allocated for that. So 45 minutes to research, 45 minutes for the outline, and then I have an hour to record and upload the podcast. My friend, that is 2.5 hours right there. My cute little brain thinks it's only one hour, right? But see, when I break it down into the different components, the different things I do, oh, I start to see. Actually, it takes a little bit longer. Now, admittedly, I used to break this down, or when I first started doing this, I broke it down even further into doing the graphic for the podcast. That could take me up to 10 minutes doing, you know, getting, coming up with title ideas for the episode, writing the episode description. Okay? All of those things would take time. And my brain's like, oh, yeah, I can do all of that in five minutes. No, each of those things could be a ten minute task. Now, I've actually got that down over time. However, I used to break it down into those tiny little chunks to really see how long things take. Right? So, my friend, as part of planning your time, we've got to break it into tiny, teeny, tiny steps. Instead of writing a book, it would be write the outline or write five pages in this time that I have here. Okay, number four is to adjust your expectations of how long things take. Oh, my friend, I have had to learn this one many times over. So you got to ask yourself, is allowing 30 minutes to research this paper a fair and reasonable amount of time? Is it actually a kind amount of time to give myself? Often when I ask that second question, is this a kind amount of time to give myself to get this done? The answer is no, my God damn it. And I'll give myself a bit more time. Okay, so we've got to do do a bit of a reality check, right? And one thing that's very helpful when it comes to adjusting our expectations of how long things take is just to time things. I'm not saying you've got to time your whole life, but when it comes to getting ready in the morning, if that's one of those things you think is going to take you five minutes, and then your partner's always like, why are you late? Why can't you just be on time? Time. It. It's so fascinating what you think is going to take you five minutes. Might take you 25 minutes to pick an outfit, to do your hair, to put on a bit of makeup, all the things. Okay? And again, this can be really helpful at work. Maybe you time how long it takes for you to reply to 5 emails, or you time how long it takes for you to actually create that report. How much work do you actually put into that? How long does that actually take? Because that data is so valuable to have. Okay, so number four is adjusting our expectations of how long things actually take. Number five. And I really think that this might just be the most important one. I know. It definitely has been for me. Number five, my friend, you gotta learn how to manage your mind. So when you have planned out your time and let's say you have set aside an hour to sit down and look at your finances and make a plan about saving money this year, here's what's going to happen. Your brain is going to go, fuck that. I don't want to do that. I don't feel like it. Your brain is going to want to check Instagram, it's going to want to reply to Kate's email. It's probably even going to want to clean out the fruit and vegetable drawer in the fridge because you're pretty sure you saw something growing in there. And that sounds way more appealing than. Than doing this right now. Okay? What I'm saying is don't expect your brain to want to do it just because you've set time aside for it. When I say that again, don't expect your brain to want to do it just because you set time aside for it. I love to, when I'm coaching people, I love to tell people to imagine that your brain, right, Imagine your brain is like two different people, right? It's split in two. One part of your brain is a cute little toddler running around with a knife, left unsupervised, getting into a whole, whole lot of shit and eating all of the sugar. Okay? Now the other part of your brain is the adult who, yeah, loves to have a good time and loves to eat some sugar and have some fun, however, knows that, you know, running around with a knife, probably not a good idea. Okay? Learning to manage your mind is seeing when they're a toddler with a knife is trying to control you and steer you off in other directions and you know, seek the dopamine and do all of the fun things or anything. But this thing right now and learning to say not right now, this is the thing I'm going to sit down and do. I understand it's uncomfortable and my brain doesn't want to do it. That doesn't mean I can't do it. Okay? This is a very powerful thing to be able to do. It's a skill that we can learn. Ok? And it's how I record a podcast. Many weeks, many weeks when I'm doing this, it's how I do it because my brain's like, oh, but I could just reply to that email and then I could like, maybe I could just go for a walk and then I could just like, oh, I was gonna do that and oh, I had this really cool idea and like I could just outline that EFT tapping ADHD course that I've been thinking about. Oh, that'd be so fun. And I'm like, no brain, this is the time where we have set aside to draft, outline and record the podcast. So that's what we're going to do now. Okay? Now trust me, my brain wants to chase all of the dopamine and at the same time I also get to be in charge even though it's like wrestling a knife off a toddler sometimes. And I get to manage my mind and sit down and do the thing even when it's uncomfortable. Okay? So number five, learning to manage your mind. Game changer. So a couple things I want to highlight which I've kind of mentioned throughout here is using people and tech as scaffolding. Okay? Body doubling, co working sessions. You know, there's apps I think called FocusMate. I'm pretty sure Focus Mate is one of them. These sorts of things can be really helpful. Sharing your calendar with your partner or a colleague at work, having check ins with a coach or checking in with your therapist or with your partner, having these regular check ins, having somebody sit with you and help you to plan out your time and help you to plan out your calendar can be incredibly valuable. Okay, again, using those alarms, multiple alarms as reminders, using the Siri, the Alexa, all of those things, okay? Helping our brains, putting that scaffolding and support in place. Also I have to mention self compassion. You can't beat yourself into being Better with time. You've got to be kind and understanding and supportive with yourself. Please, please stop with the beating, okay? The other thing to mention here is communication and saying to loved ones, hey, you know, this isn't me not caring. This is my ADHD time blindness. And here's what I'm putting into place. Here's how you can support me, okay? Asking for that help communicating with the people around you. Hey, I'm not running late because I don't care about you. This is something I struggle with. It's part of having adhd. Is this time blindness? Here's what I'm doing, doing these things to support myself. And here is another way that you could support me and help me with this too, okay? So I just want to mention there. Self compassion, communication, so important. All right, my friend, if time has felt slippery for you, if you can really relate to living in the now or the not now, to constantly putting out fires and wondering why your, you know, your goals for your life are just never seeming to eventuate or get anywhere, I really want you to hear this, okay? You're not broken. Your brain is just doing time differently. So in this episode, we have talked about working memory. We've talked about the executive functions of planning and prioritizing as well. We talked about our spicy dopamine system and how all of this teams up to pull us towards what feels loud and urgent and fun right now, right? And in doing so, it's pulling us away from potentially the future we want, the future us that we want, okay? And we've also explored some really practical ways that we can work with this ADHD brain wiring instead of just fighting it. So we talked about making time visible, okay? Getting stuff out of our heads, not expecting ourselves to remember, using checklists, using visual, sorry, visual, wall calendars, reminders on alarms, all of. We talked about the importance of breaking things down into teeny, tiny little steps, okay? Planning our time. We need to spend time planning our time, being more realistic and really a lot kinder with how long we give ourselves and how long things actually take, okay? Also, we talked about that part of like managing your mind, not expecting yourself to want to do the thing and instead learning how to manage your mind and take the knife off the toddler who is running around inside your brain, okay? And lastly, we just touched really quickly about using the tech, the self compassion, asking other people in our life to help with that support and that scaffolding, okay? So if this episode has helped you feel seen, giving you some language to explain time blindness, please share it with a friend. Friend, a partner, a workmate, anyone who needs to hear this. And if you have 30 seconds left, I would love it if you could just leave a quick rating or review for this podcast. It makes a huge difference in getting this into the hands and the ears of more adults with adhd, right? Helping those people who need a hearing. Okay my friend, thank you for spending some of your very precious time with me today. Be kind to your brain. Huge, huge love. Hey friend, if you want some more help navigating and thriving with ADHD and some help applying everything that you're learning here on the podcast, then head over to our website, navigating adultadhd.com.