ADHD & Time Blindness

More than 30 years ago, I discovered in my research that people with ADHD have significant deficits in their sense of time and especially in using time to guide their behavior more effectively. We call the latter time management. And ADHD is among the worst disorders one can have when it comes to deficits in time management. Consequently, I came up with the concept that ADHD was a form of time blindness. That the passage of time did not influence their behavior the way it does for typical people. They also had a nearsightedness or myopia to the future, dealing only with events that were near in time and not those further away in time as other typical people are able to do. This problem with time and time management was found in children, teens, and adults with ADHD and so is a chronic difficulty for them. This video reviews this concept of ADHD as time blindness and discusses ways that one may be able to treat it or compensate for it. For more on this idea and what to do about it, see my books below:

Taking Charge of ADHD: The Complete Authoritative Guide for Parents (4th ed.) published in June 2020)
12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD (published in October 2020)
Taking Charge of Adult ADHD (4th ed.) (Published October 2021)
Treating ADHD in Children and Adolescents: What Every Clinician Needs to Know. (Published May 2022)

[SunnyGirlFlorida]

It doesn't matter if I have 45 minutes, 90 minutes or three hours to get ready, I will still be running late.

[thehighpriestess]

Dr. Barkley you have no idea how many people with ADHD you have helped. Sending you blessings.

[Indiekid-]

At high school, a class in my year group did a mock awards ceremony for morning assembly, they handed out “awards” for biggest poser, artist, sporting prowess etc.
I was awarded a time management award, a toy watch but I was late for assembly and walked in shortly after my award to hoots of laughter! Afterwards people were asking if it was set up!

Likewise years later, I worked as a graphic designer for a newspaper and I was sent to another newspaper in the group to do a course on time management, I managed to get on the wrong train and I finally arrived for the time management seminar, 2 mins before the end, to uproarious laughter once again! I was finally diagnosed with ADHD, this year aged 47.

[flawlix]

I consider time blindness to be the number one most debilitating symptom of my ADHD. It’s probably the symptom that led to my diagnosis, because my inability to keep up with the demands of my career led me to seeking help. I maxed out the number of hours in a day that I could use to make up for failing at time management, to the point I started damaging my health.

[alliec]

Dr. Barkley, I had no idea that you developed the term “time blind.” My utmost respect and gratitude to you. You are a true blessing to the ADHD community. Listening to your lectures makes me feel like someone finally understands me. Thank you for your dedication to this field and the helpful tools you have recommended to help manage ADHD. You are helping the lives of so many people. I actually bought the timer off of Amazon last week and it really does help tremendously. Thank you.

[eris]

People don't realize how much time blindness affects ADHDers. I forget to eat and drink when I am not medicated and then end up binging because I am starving because I was wrapped up in something. I have a popup to remind me to drink something every 20 minutes but it also helps me process the passage of time. When I do not have that popup I will wake up and then it will be time to go to bed. I frequently say that time is an illusion because it does not seem real to me. And then there is the opposite where when I am having to do something I don't want to deal with or an appointment that is happening for the day. Then I am so aware of time that it turns to a crawl. It is very frustrating that there seems to be no in-between a majority of the time.

[RodriguezGorge]

I could remember few years back after my wife died, I was left alone with 3 kids. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Got diagnosed with ADHD. Not until a friend recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment changed my life for better. I can proudly say i'm totally clean for 6 years and still counting. Always look to nature for solution to tough problems, Shrooms are phenomenal.

[marydestefano]

Still listening to this but initially the clock that says 'who cares' made me ANGRY because this is what the majority of people think about us. Not sure if this is true for everyone with ADD but I REALLY do care.

[Hand_Shake]

My wife got frustrated because I put off projects she wanted me to do until the last minute. She started giving me earlier and earlier requests in an effort to help me get things done. Eventually, I was frustrated, too. I said, “Don’t give me extra time, tell me it’s an emergency and I need to do it now!” It worked! It worked even when I knew it wasn’t an emergency! That was years ago, and it still works.

[glittermama]

It’s not really “who cares“. It’s more like “can’t care.”

[Owlaxzahndoir]

I"m so glad you're finally on youtube. You changed my life. You even took the time to respond to an email 10 years ago when I finally got diagnosed at 30.

Time Blindness is a nightmare. It truly wrecks my life.

[jamie.]

Procrastination has destroyed many opportunities in my life 🙃

[Magnymbus]

As someone with ADHD, I have had to develop specific techniques to have patience. And here's the thing most people don't get; I have all the patience in the world as long as I'm doing something engaging. I can sometimes hold a conversation for multiple hours without feeling an ounce of impatience. If I have absolutely no responsibilities for a while, I can sit in the dark and daydream, But if you ask me to sit and wait, where I have nothing external to engage with, and I have to be aware of when it's time to stop waiting, I have to resort to arbitrary counting and constantly checking a clock. I'll try to count seconds, and I can barely keep in sync while looking directly at the clock, unless it's the kind of clock where the seconds had moves smoothly rather than ticking. More recently, I've found some other methods if counting stops working. I've found eavesdropping on stranger's conversations to be extremely effective if the conversation is interesting, ridiculous, or funny. Another one is what I call "the noise game", where I give myself a point for each sound I can pick out of the background, and a point if I can identify the source. I also tried to "watch" Shrek in my head from memory, and was surprised by just how much of the dialogue I remember. I ended up laughing out loud at some point. Someone asked me what I was laughing at, and it was much simpler to just say "just some old memories"... Which was technically true, since I haven't physically watched Shrek in quite a while.

But if you ask me to make sure to finish talking in 10-20 minutes, I'm screwed.

[varframppytwobtokwanguz]

The funny thing is, I can usually guess what time it is when it occurs to me to do so - but I can’t conceive of how LONG a task will take and I manage to fritter away hours anyway.

[AidanCarey]

This made me feel so validated. As a kid, my ADHD was more manageable. But at 29, I’ve realized how debilitating it is. I explained this to my therapist yesterday, actually. 30 minutes feels like 2 minutes. It’s not about caring, but about not having that structure of time.

[meeerdock]

This explanation of time blindness makes so much sense to me, even though i have recently diagnosed at age 37 with adhd i never understood what time blindness means exactly. Also this phrase "delay aversion" describes exactly how i feel when i think a task must done i have to do it asap and i feel great discomfort when other factors that i cant control are delaying me, needless to say that i will forget the task altogether later. Thank you.

[glyngreen]

As a self employed time blind tradesman pricing jobs at a fixed price based on the job taking a certain number of days and that regularly turning out to be way off (plenty of times the job has actually taken twice as long as I priced it for or longer) has led to me earning a lot less than average for my trade and contributed to getting badly in debt years ago. I’m very regularly late too. Hope the medication might help once I can save up for a diagnosis - only realised I have ADHD recently in my early forties. Thanks for the many useful and helpful videos!

[watamatafoyu]

I'm terrible with time, I misjudge and end up doing something too soon and too late, and here I am listening to yet another video describing another attribute I never knew was part of ADHD.

[AmyK]

My sister has been diagnosed with ADHD and this is helping me learn how to understand her world.

[rebeccamay]

Impulsivity and lack of future-sight are tremendous obstacles to ADHD Brains. I've been using the expression "elastic sense of time, " in that the perception of how long something will take and sensing how long it has been will shrink and stretch, relative to one's sense of urgency or impulse.

Practicing "time analysis" can help.
• I have a task, i think it takes this long.
• Write that down, set the stopwatch, finish the task and check the stopwatch.
• Was my estimate close? realistic? startlingly wrong?
• Do this several times with several tasks and compare your results.
• Use the results as your guide for placing the task into your daily/weekly routine.