how to fix time blindness | ADHD Symptoms & Solutions

P.s. Work on these one at a time. Many of them are habits that I’ve stacked up over a while so forgive me if it feels overwhelming to have so many options. The good thing is whenever you next suffer consequences of time blindness you can know that there are many things you can still do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (I like the example of washing your hands: The proper medical technique to thoroughly wash your hands is exhaustive and very few people will do it every time they need to wash their hands, but having the knowledge of the optimum way to do it means if you ever really want an outcome/there are high consequences (clean hands/maybe because you just chopped up a bunch of chili peppers, you can upscale your behaviour accordingly.)

P.s.s. Most depression comes from problems without any way to direct the blame other than inwards towards your character but now can be pointed instead towards past inaction through this new lens of ADHD knowledge. The ideal strategies are the ones that once incorporated, don’t require any effort in the present to reap the rewards. It’s always the present.

[GlimpseIntoTheirNatures]

I spent enough from 1984 to 2011 on taxis that I could have bought a house with it. This was done to keep my job. It feels awful lying to people as to why you are late so I tried to avoid it at all costs. Time blindness is so real, and at a certain time in my life I would tell people that if they need to be reassured that I am not "doing it on purpose" that I will have to bow out of the relationship.

[grimsqueaker]

I have a playlist for my whole morning routine and one for my bed time routine.

I use songs that remind me what to do, which has a play length suitable for the task.

This creates enough urgency to finish in a timely manner, but not to rush and cause anxiety and paralysis.

I add an extra song or 2 at the end in case there is a problem.

I set an alarm for when I need to start the playlist so it will finish by the time I need to leave the house.

I also add time to my drive time so I have plenty of time to get to my appointments or work.

I tweak the playlists for winter and summer and also week days and week ends.

I saw this reccomended for children's routines and it has saved me so many times. It takes a bit of upfront work to get it perfect but then I don't have to worry about being late again.

[silas]

One tweak I done re clocks that's been helpful is that I switched out my digital clocks for analogue clocks. The reason for this is I found that while I will check digital clocks, I don't 'feel' the portions of time nearly as well. A digital clock shows the current time but an analogue clock is showing you the current time plus spatially the time passed and time remaining.
I noticed a strong difference to my time perception once I re-introduced them, having not owned an analogue clock for many, many years, and hadn't realised there'd been a loss.
I found the 'feeling' of time was different between the formats. The volume/quantity of time in a way. For example on digital if I had an event at 7pm and I saw it was 4pm it would feel fairly soon and trigger a ramp up of a kind of anticipatory 'action incoming' state (aka Waiting Mode), stealing focus and limiting action until then, whereas since using the analogue clocks 4pm just feels a lot further from 7pm when viewing it on a clock face, it's more realistic compared to relying on my internal vibe for the volume of time, which was always biased to a feeling of 'soon', which of course gets into Waiting Mode...

So anyway analogue clocks for better time perception. I also use timers that show the time constantly so I can glance to them and keep track, verses alarms alone.

[marya]

Not exaggerating - this was probably the best and most helpful video on dealing with ADHD that I have ever seen. Innovative, thorough, and well-researched. Thank you so much!

[DEDvault]

I just found this channel yesterday and was shocked it has so few videos and some are relatively old. The vid quality is superb and they're so informative. Hope you're doing fine and will continue your work! Thank you!

[heterotardigrada]

Time blindness is probably the primary reason why I am always anxious and in a constant state of despair. I could never describe exactly how my time blindness is debilitating, and this video elucidated exactly how devastating it is. The casino bit was the icing on the cake.

I’m grateful that this video exists.

[jupitersinthebeans]

LIST OF TECHNIQUES

Techniques designed to increase measurability of time, prevent time blindness, and stop ourselves when we get stuck in the time blindness wormhole.


--Buy and hang physical clocks.
-Hang them at eye level where they are easily visible
-In places where you frequently lose track of time, on the wall you usually face.
-Analogue is better than digital

--Buy and wear a wristwatch.
-Choose one that is neutral (fits with any outfit) and water resistant (don't have to worry about taking off / on)
-Switch wrist it's placed on to prevent tanlines and to keep it fresh in your mind; not blend into background
-Practice wearing it and checking it instead of phone
-Analogue is better than digital

--Tether ourselves to the day / night cycle.
-Spend time near a window, preferably viewing the sun
-Change artificial light colors during the day, blue and high intensity in morning and midday, red or orange at low intensity in the evening (also only use partial lighting in evening)

--Go on walks.
-Fresh air, exercise, bloodflow is all great
-In the middle of the day, it can feel like your productive time has doubled (tripled with two walks etc)
-Lower barrier for entry: say you will only put your shoes on and step outside without distractions

--Utilize disruptive music.
-Turn off song blending
-Use playlists you are familiar with and the length of songs to measure time
-Listen to songs with differing tempos to become more aware of time passing

--Utilize body doubling.
-Have someone there for accountability, like a study group
-Just their presence will make time last longer

--Train your internal voice.
-Learn to ask yourself, "What am I doing?" periodically
-Ask between tasks
-Ask without judgment
-The more you ask, the better grip on time you will have (practice, practice, practice!)

--Be aware of state-altering substances.
-Stimulants include ADHD medications, amphetamines, modafinil, caffeine, nicotine, sugar
-Will increase focus and awareness of time
-Depressants include alcohol, benzodiazepines, nicotine, cannabis (CBD), ketamine, GHB, insulin, opioids
-Will decrease focus and awareness of time

--Prevent time-blind behaviors.
-Make these behaviors as difficult and undesirable as possible
-Make alternatives as easily accessible and fun as possible
-Utilize extensions such as StayFocusd to block sites and limit time on certain sites
-Make apps / sites you want to use accessible: on your bookmarks, pinned to taskbar, on homepage, etc, and make ones you don't want to use out of the way
-Delete apps you don't want to spend time on

--Utilize disruptions and distractions
-Though not as great as prevention, we can also disrupt or distract us from time-blind behaviors.
-Be conscious of when you "fail, " don't judge yourself too harshly :)
-Utilize alarms on your phone to disrupt, either at regular intervals to show change of time or in anticipation of a task that needs completing
-Alarms are useful as we can influence the very present that we can set up in the past, a gap which ADHD people often have trouble crossing
-Youtube mobile app has a feature that will disrupt you at set intervals

[fettywapofficial]

the las vegas analogy is super brilliant, props to you for having such a great perspective and thank you because this video really helped

[hopemoore]

oh, something I learned to do after finding out there's a name for the time blindness I've always had: lean into it. Long road trips, long shifts, etc. are great now because I know I can't grasp how long it is and any worry about it is just my anxiety making up stuff and afterward, it wasn't "that long." During, I get to focus on enjoying the "now" instead of how much time has passed and how much more there supposedly is.

[vanessashaver]

You are really good at this. The reverse-engineering Vegas concept is GENIUS.

[jesseskellington]

15:49 Andrew Huberman lab talks about time blindness as being low dopamine. The hire your dopamine is the more you'll understand what time you're in...

[Neylena]

The 'ADHD Tax' is so real with issues like time blindness. The amount of money I have spent on ubers, fees, flight changes, memberships and subscriptions that have run past the free trial period just make up most of my monthly spend. Don't even get me started on office jobs.. Its so frustrating having to pay more to live because my brain is unable to conceptualise the passing of time. Drawing parallels between losing track of time in a Casino and ADHD Time Blindness is brilliant! - I've said for years that workplaces feel like Casinos as I always lose track of time in the office with their bright fluorescent lighting and working on screens, never thought to harness this to my advantage, lots of great tips in this video! Also love the reference to Russel Barkley, he's one of my favourite speakers on ADHD, i've never related to anything more than: 'Their life is a series of one crisis after another, all of which were avoidable' 😂

[carlycheshire]

This is awesome, I love the coping strategies. I’m desperate to improve my time blindness which is severe . Thank you so much for this

[MeelisMatt]

wow this video is much appriciated. this is solutions based video. not people yapping how bad their life is. much respect!!!

[lunaris]

10:12 The internal voice-thing is something I learned form practising Lucid Dreaming, where whenever I did a reality check I asked myself after trying to archive mindfullness to reflect about the thing I am doing right now and what I was planning to do after I finished it. This helped so much against time blindness!

[azimuthnext]

These videos are really well made, not just informative but instructive. Just what I need.

[s.vektor]

This video needs more views, and it should be taught to all people with adhd.
Thanks for putting it together

[BelleAB]

Would you please enable the autogenerated captioning feature on this one so I can watch, learn, understand, and improve? Two of your other videos already benefited me so much! The How to Converse one was especially like we shared the same brain / experiences / sensations

[Mystik]

Time blindness has been my #1 adversary with ADHD, from before I was diagnosed all the way through today. I can find interest in most things that aren't extremely repetitive, so getting to work when I'm at work, hasn't really been too difficult, but getting to my workplace has always been a challenge; avoiding time blindness on breaks and such always caused me problems. I started to feel like it's only a matter of time before my employer notices my constant tardiness and gets rid of me. The only instance where this wasn't a problem was working from home, when my commute was effectively zero time. If I woke up right as I was to start working, I could leap from bed, make the 10s journey to my PC, log in, and I'd be working within a minute of waking from sleep and looking at the time. I was (almost) always on time when that was the case. There were a few times I slept in too late, or got distracted by something in the early AM and didn't log into work until after I was late, but it was far more rare than it is normally. I was diagnosed with ADHD last year, and though my doc describes it as "mild" the consequences have been anything but mild. I've lost jobs, marks and even flunked a few times because of it. I didn't get my HS diploma (equivalency) until I was 23, Attended college from 24 to 29? and I'm 40 now. I'm more than 10 years into my career, still struggling with time blindness. I'm going to do what I can to implement some of these and see how it goes. Having a clock in line of sight of my usual working location both at home and in my workplace is going to be my first step.

[champion]

I must say of the many possible symptoms and phenomena experienced being diagnosed with ADHD at 22, time blindness is one that I am not afflicted by very much. Kinda grateful for that. I have made such a habit out of constantly checking what time it is (and having my watch on me, which I genuinely feel rather anxious when I don't have it on my wrist) that I've become relatively reliable with time sensitive events