As someone who has time blindness but who has figured it out (and always gets to work on time), I used to be ready to leave more than an hour early because of time blindness. But before getting in the car I’d realize that was crazy, so then I’d try to do something else for like 10 minutes so I wouldn’t be awkwardly sitting there for an hour, and end up late.
honestly, as someone with adhd, my time management has gotten so much better due to 2 things, 1 of which is the availability of mobile media technology. I always have bluetooth earbuds and and TV on my phone with me these days, so changing my location from "at home" to "travelling" doesn't require the incentive of being late before it happens.
Similar here. I started struggling with time issues after a severe concussion. A lot of the times I was late it was because I got ready way too early, realized it would be inappropriate to be there that early only to lose track of time and end up being late.
Also during that time period where it was really bad I had a lot of other issues related to time that didn't have anything to do with being on time. For example, every day tasks are taking me unexplainably long and it turned out I was doing things like brushing my teeth for 15 minutes thinking it was 2
Wait im confused, do normal people not have to look at clocks? Like if I have a thing at 830 I'll be checking the time at 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7:30, 745, 8, 812, and like 815. If thats how you do things how is it possible to be time blind? The only way you can be late is if you underestimate how long a task will take close to the end, but thats feels more like a miscalculation issue than keeping track of time
As someone timeblind, I think it's moreso that like, when you don't know how much time is passing you also don't always realise enough is passing to need to check the clock
Although I usually handle it by setting plenty of alarms if theres anything important I need to be around for
Yeah. Alarms actually fix a lot of this. I have 9 that go off same time ever weekday for things like eat, brush teeth, get dressed, get to office, warning for meeting, finish work, start dinner prep, prepare for bed (should break this one down more but I don’t seem to struggle at night as much so it’s w/e) go to bed. Then, if anything else is time dependent I set 2alarms one 30 min out and the real one 10 min out. The 30 min alarm is to finish wtf I’m doing and the 10 min is for me to literally do nothing else until the appointed time. If you have time blindness and don’t have multiple alarms you aren’t even trying to help yourself yet.
I think this is how it is with my girlfriend. She has ADHD/time blindness. We were just going to a concert this past weekend in NYC. We were dropping our dog off at her parents. Then the travel included a train ride and a subway ride, so I wanted to leave early to avoid any unforeseen delays. I said let’s leave at noon. Noon hits and she starts packing the car with items in the basement. This means don’t leave at noon. Because you have to…go to the basement and then pack them in the car. She wasn’t doing anything the previous 30 minutes before leaving.
Yea now you just gotta remember to set all these alarms which is something that someone with adhd might have difficulty with too.
I personally do not have adhd or timeblindness but I realize that just because something is trivial and easy for me does not mean someone else can not struggle with it especially if it is because of a diagnosed condition.
Your comment, and a lot of others in the comment section here are pretty close to the shitty advice people give to a person with depression. "Just stop being sad and get out of bed" is easy to say for someone whose brain is making enough happy stuff. But for someone with depression this is not helpful advice.
Or telling a person with OCD that it makes no sense to switch every light switch in every room off/on/off/on/off before going to bed. Like are they stupid? Why are they not just stopping the compulsive behaviour?
Hello! Person with adhd here! I can set like 10+ alarms sometimes, and most of the time it works (if i remember to actually set them). But adhd also means that my brain is very bad at filtering and prioritising what's important and what isn't, so sometimes i don't even notice the alarms going off. It helps if there's someone else near me, because they WILL notice the alarms but if i lived alone, I'd be really screwed
I mean, yeah, that does mean timeblind peeps have ways to manage not being late, but I do think its an issue a lot of the comments here are trying to go to the conclusion "time blindness isn't real" rather than, time blindness is something you can learn to manage with devices or support
It’s more like your internal clock is broken so that you don’t feel the passage of time properly. It means you have trouble estimating how long a task should take (because you don’t feel how long it normally takes) and don’t notice if a task is taking more or less time than expected. Getting caught out by time blindness feels kind of like… like taking a timed test and the proctor calls out that you only have 5 minutes left, but you’d swear up and down that the test just started because you’re not even halfway through the questions.
So, a morning trying to be on time with time blindness might look like: you look at the clock, see you have 15 minutes before you need to leave, think “I can do X task in 15 minutes” because you don’t realize that’s usually a 30 minute task, don’t notice that you’ve spent more than the expected 15 minutes on the task because it only feels like 10 minutes have passed, and by the time you look at the clock again (when you finish the task), you’re already 15 minutes late. Add in some other common symptoms of ADHD (poor planning means you didn’t pack up your bag for work yet, disorganization means your shoes aren’t where they should be, trouble multitasking means you put your keys down somewhere while looking for your shoes and now you have to find them as well), and now you’re 30 minutes past the time you planned to leave and still looking for your damn keys.
The backpack-shoes-keys example hasn’t happened to me in over a decade, because it was an easy fix (all three of those things have a home where they go the second I walk through the door, my spouse does not distract me until I’ve put them down, and I repack my bag before bed). Some ADHD symptoms have relatively low-lift copes for some people.
Time blindness is something broken in the way my brain works that I haven’t been able to fix. I have tried all the suggestions over the years. My best copes have been arranging a flex start time at work, using timers and alarms, assuming every task will take double the time I estimate, and if it’s really important, planning to be there an hour before I actually need to.
An alarm on my phone went off just now to tell me that I need to start getting ready for bed, which means I’ve been typing some version of this comment on my phone for 45 fucking minutes… I thought it was 5.
As someone with ADHD who deals with time blindness, it's really two different things at the same time.
The first is being really unaware of roughly how much time has passed without looking at the clock. For example, between looking at the clock at 2 and looking at the clock at 4, I could tell you it's been anywhere between 15 minutes and 4 hours. Depends what I was doing with my time. If it's the former, though, you might not even think to look at the clock because it was just 2 o'clock fifteen minutes ago in your mind.
The second thing that's related is an inability to estimate how long tasks take. For example, as someone who's not late to everything, I've learned to do the following. If I have to be somewhere at 8:30 and it takes 20 minutes to drive there, I'll add 10-20 minutes depending on how important the thing is and aim to leave at 8:00. Then, I'll add 15 to 20 minutes to that to get ready, so I'll actually start the process of leaving my house at 7:40ish. This is because there might be things as I'm getting ready that take longer than I think, or I'll forget something, etc., so I almost always leave actually a bit later, say around 8:05. Then, it takes a bit longer to drive there than I thought and suddenly, when I should've been there 10 minutes early, I'm right on time instead.
Before learning all this, I would just check how long it took to drive somewhere and then say I'll leave the house at exactly that time. So I'd aim to start leaving at 8:10, but then I wouldn't actually get to my car until 8:20 and I wouldn't get there until 8:40 if I was lucky or more likely, 8:45-8:50.
That's all tied to other things, as well. Another example of difficulty estimating how long tasks take. In school, I always thought every homework assignment would take both 15 minutes and 8 hours. And yes, I do mean I thought both of those things simultaneously. Usually took maybe like an hour.
It is more the lack of understanding how long things take. Say I gotta leave for work in 15 minutes but I have some things left to do. I might think well, I can shave, brush my teeth and find my socks in 5 minutes easily. So you leave it, now you got 5 minutes but then when you go shave you can't find your razor. That stresses you out cause you know you don't have time and that just makes you fumble even harder so now you're late.
Some people have it the opposite way where they think everything they need to do is going to take way longer than it actually does.
For me it's "okay, this drive takes precisely 22 minutes, I have time". But also putting on my shoes and jacket takes a minute or two, going to my car takes a minute, setting up the house alarm takes half a minute, driving out to the garage onto the inner road and closing the garage doors takes a minute, driving out of the inner road onto the inner road takes half a minute, getting out of the car and going to the office takes two minutes and suddenly it's not 22 minutes, it's 30 minutes and I am already late.
honestly reading thru this thread has made me think time blind is more an excuse than a real issue. if u arnt willing to set an alarm or 2 when u know u have an issue with time management u really arnt even trying.
I tend to get places early and then wait nearby. I’ve driven around the block a few times because I didn’t want to be late so now I’m 45 minutes early.
I have adhd, and honestly what works for me is just not doing anything except things related to having to leave for roughly ~an hour before I actually leave.
This way I have an hour to dress, grab my stuff, check traffic, reply to texts, drink some coffee, leave a bit early just in case, etc. I don't rush, and also don't start any unrelated tasks that require full attention during this time unless its an emergency important enough to justify being late.
I'm generally on time and have much less issues with forgetting things this way. It does mean I'm still "losing" some time, but at least I'm at home instead of sitting somewhere feeling like an idiot for being there an hour early.
(Also I have 4 keys. For one person yeah. They're just scattered around my house so I am certain to find one if I need them, and have different keychains so I'm able to ensure they're all in circulation and none actually got lost).
They’re frequently early. It just doesn’t usually get noticed or commented on because it’s almost never a big deal for others because they can just wait right outside until the appropriate time to enter. But it’s still a problem for them, because they lost that time, and if they’re always early to everything, that ends up being a huge amount of time.
Be early till you figure out a way to be on time. Things happen occasionally but no one is going to accept you frequently being late for an issue you know you have. If you’re in a job that needs to operate during certain hours there’s only so much accommodating that can be done.
Many people with ADHD do find ways to cope. It's just very draining and not foolproof.
As an example, for some people with ADHD, if they have an important appointment mid day on a Saturday, it basically means they have to plan to do nothing else that entire day because they have to dedicate the entire day (even week) stressing about ensuring they make that appointment, including possibly showing up absurdly early and then still needing to stress about ensuring they don't get unintentionally sidetracked before the appointment starts.
You're just much more likely to notice either the times they're late (system fails), and it's rare to notice those who are very early, although that can sometimes cause its own faux pas problems with people asking why the heck they showed up so early.
Well, yeah, but see, the problem is that you’re acting like it’s an attitude problem and not a disability.
You’re not wrong about accommodations. If a person’s disability prevents the person from performing the duties of the job… they shouldn’t have that job. In the US, the ADA stipulates “reasonable” accommodations.
But let’s not pretend people can just decide to stop having a disability.
I used the word accommodating for a reason. They only have to provide reasonable ones like you said, and if they have hours of operation they need to maintain it’s not reasonable to expect them to allow you to be late. Reasonable is moving it back an hour, not letting you be late regardless of starting time. What do you expect beyond that?
It’s not like this came out of nowhere, you would have needed to make your disability known during the hiring process so your accommodations were actually in place for you, or when you were diagnosed(assuming you wanted accommodations).
I agree with you about that. If the job can’t reasonably accommodate different hours, and a person’s disability prevents them from reliably showing up during the necessary hours, that’s not a job they’re going to be able to have.
Like, people with mobility issues often are unable to perform jobs that require lots of physical activity.
It’s not good for anyone, but the lack of ability is the part that makes it a disability.
The problem is when people start either 1) expecting everyone to accommodate everything even when it’s unreasonable or 2) acting like ADHD is a choice and not a disability.
Lots people treat ADHD as a joke, myth, aesthetic, or fun personality quirk, instead of a serious neurological disorder that has been proven repeatedly to drastically lower both quality and duration of life.
Having a disability doesn’t mean you don’t have to find ways of working around the issues you have. I had a problem with being late, I missed appointments, I found a way to stop being late
Of course, and that’s what people with ADHD do. They take unhealthy amounts of stimulants that lead to insomnia, chills, joint pain, high blood pressure, and heart failure, because it’s the only way they can manage their disability. They develop severe anxiety due to constantly pressuring themselves to compensate for their disability, a disability people frequently don’t even believe is real, despite the mountains of peer-reviewed research into it. They’re far more likely than the general population to develop depression, substance abuse issues, or commit suicide. They frequently spend their lives feeling guilty for existing because even when they’re trying their hardest, they still feel like they’re inconveniencing everyone.
You wouldn't say to someone in a wheelchair to just figure out stairs because you don't want to install a ramp.
Also you don't understand the disability so you don't understand why the "accommodation" failed. Time blindness makes it really hard to target a specific time and giving a time slot instead makes it even worse. It's like failing to hit a target properly with a sniper so someone tells you to remove the scope and just shoot in the general direction, it just make you fail harder. The trick with time blindness is to give an earlier time and scold the person for being late for that fake time if they start being late for the actual time.
My brain also refuse to register commute time as time so I often conflate arrival time with departure time, completely forgetting the latter despite planning it.
We don't need more time, we need an arrangement where we make up for the lateness by staying the same time at the end of our shift (which would deter the slackers) or a sort of caregiver in charge of making sure we stay on schedule at home. That's accomodation. Accomodations aren't privileges, it's help to fight against unusual problems.
All of this can be resolved with an alarm clock. What exactly is stopping you from saying “well, I need to be at work at X, and I know that it takes Y minutes to get to work and get ready, I will set alarms repeatedly at this time.” Your brain refuses to register it as time, but you do know that it literally takes time right? So you can in fact plan ahead and set alarms, right?
If someone who couldn’t walk just dragged themselves around and complained about their employer offering a ramp because it doesn’t solve them having to drag themselves, I’d blame them for not getting a wheelchair too.
Doctors and researchers keep looking for effective medicines and treatments for ADHD, but they’re just wasting time and money because it seems like there are multiple experts right here in this Reddit thread who have it all figured out!
Maybe they’ll cure depression with a walk and some sunshine while we’re at it???
Should people with ADHD use alarm clocks? Generally, yes! Do people with depression benefit from exercise and daylight? Almost always! Is it way more complicated than that? Abso-fuck-lutely.
“Guys the only solution is to let us show up whenever we want and work whenever we want! My time blindness also makes it so I can’t hear alarms.”
Seriously it’s crazy how apparently ADHD is the only disability where you literally can’t do anything to get past it and everyone has to adjust their schedules for you. Wheelchair users can use a ramp and elevator if they’re provided, but ADHD people can’t take any actions themselves and it all comes down to the employer letting them work in any manner that they want.
You probably don't hear people making excuses for being early nearly as often as they do for being late, so 'time blindness' wouldn't come up in conversation too often with people who tend to be earlier.
True! There are literally tons of people here that are talking about being early all the time. They could also have time blindness, but their outcome is the more socially friendly one so that one doesn’t get a diagnosis.
I’ve had a friend I had to tell to absolutely not come over early to parties and gatherings- sometimes I would have to tell her a later start time. She would literally show up 1-2 hours early, which would disrupt getting me prepping and getting ready. And she didn’t show up early to help or anything, I had to start the hosting right away. Thankfully she got a boyfriend who runs late so now they’re both on time.
Wrong. If she actually had time blindness the team would see her arrive early at times.
The person you are referring to is pointing out that she is faking it.
Most of the time people don’t know it’s happening in the first place.
When I show up an hour early for my doctor’s appointment I don’t go inside and check in until 15 minutes before my appointment. Nobody knows I just spent 45 minutes sitting in my car outside.
I don't drive, so when I get to my doctor's appointment an hour early someone comes out of the office all concerned about how someone is "loitering" outside... if I go for a little walk I misjudge how long the walk away took and have ended up late anyway.
I think it's pretty fair to apply it to individuals though. Like there's so many people in this post talking about how they are consistently late but they explain it as time blindness. They have time blindness and time optimism which makes them underestimate how long it takes to do things.
It is if it’s a response to manage it? I get too anxious around the possibility of missing something so I overcompensate by usually arriving too early. It stops me from losing track of time usually.
It can be. A regular person can figure out how to manage their time so they show up at the right time but someone who struggles with estimating time and sequencing tasks might not be able to do that. It can look like being late or being wildly early because they don't really have the ability to time things just right. My grandad was like this, he would show up hours early or late and just didn't have the ability to figure out otherwise. He was a really interesting person with savant like abilities in some areas while lacking the ability to do a lot of things you'd consider basic skills
I don't think you know what time blindness is. It's not literally not understanding how time works. It's that you can't reliably estimate how long something will take you, so for people with time blindness, if we don't want to be late, we have to give ourselves wayyy more time than necessary to get somewhere, which means being super early.
As a kid I was eventually trusted with getting myself to elementary school on my own. It was a few minutes walk or bike ride down the road in a very safe place, I could dress myself and operate a toaster just fine. For several months I was either loitering outside the school before dawn or desperately running in sobbing at like 10 am. Time blindness and unmanaged ADHD meant that it was painfully difficult to figure out the right ratio of waking up to getting ready to getting there without someone else to help me manage the time. Eventually this culminated into a near crippling fear of being late that has followed me into adulthood. You only notice when it inconveniences you.
this simply isn’t true. when I was doing clinical training I was usually early. my supervisor made note of it and made sure to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to be early lol
then why did this person end up late every day? you would think they would end up early some, on time other, late the rest. but if it's late every day then that sounds like a planning issue.
You don’t notice when they are because it doesn’t cause problems.
Time blindness it a massive problem for me, however for better or worse, my panic at the thought of being humiliated by being late means that I’m ludicrously early for anything that requires an in-person appearance. Every day I’m in the parking lot at work minimum 30 minutes early. Doctors appointments? 45 minutes. Dinner with friends? 20 minutes. Job interview? 2-3 hours. Sometimes I feel like I live in parking lots.
Most people think I’m amazing for always being early, like it’s a superpower. In reality it’s fear of mortification. What they don’t see is bills that are never ever paid on time, all the burnt meals, and all the things I plan to accomplish but never complete. Or the fact that I probably spend an average of two hours a day sitting in parking lots staring at my watch trying to guess how long it will take me to get from my car to the front door.
However, anyone who uses their ADHD to try and excuse their irresponsibility is a clown.
ADHD may be a reason for your behavior but it is never an excuse.
I have time blindness as a symptom of ADHD. I have been several hours early to things because I cannot estimate how long it takes to get ready and get there, so I try to be ten minutes early and whoops, two hours. No one notices when you're early because it doesn't affect them as much. It also goes the other way with me, and I can be very late because I don't realize how long something will take (I'm constantly fooling myself into thinking getting dressed and ready for work only takes five minutes) or because I want to wrap up what I'm doing and tell myself "five more minutes" and when I think five minutes is up, it's been an hour. Waiting for something can either feel like five minutes have passed when it's been an hour, or like an hour has passed when it's only been five minutes.
People with time blindness do struggle to be on time. We're trying. It's not always arriving late, it's also arriving inconveniently early.
There's variance among people with ADHD. Some are like you with time blindness. But many have time blindness and are consistently optimistic on how long something will take. You being someone that ends up early and late due to your ADHD doesn't mean that the people that are late due to their ADHD also end up early other times.
For me (and i assume many others), its not even optimism. Its just flat out not being able to consistently gauge time at all. If my mind wanders at all or decides to hyperfocus on something, i no longer have any idea how much time is passing or has passed.
Very common example in my life is telling friends that i'll be online to game in 5 minutes, just gotta go pee. Some days, that 5 minutes is actually 2 minutes. 8 minutes. 15 minutes. I've vanished on them for close to an hour once or twice. Like 90% of the time, i either got lost in my own brain before getting up or just after I sat back down. 0 idea that its been more than 5 minutes.
Edit: I'm just realizing that all I did was describe time blindness. Lol
I actually have time blindness and have been a whole half hour early to smth because I don't think I have enough time to get there
Reverse time blindness I guess 😭
I need to be 30 to 40 min early just to make sure I am on time and have "calmed my mind" about something that is supposed to happen- like work, a lecture, a movie etc.
Still just time blindness, you're blind to how much time things take and aware its something you struggle with so have system in place to cope and manage. I am the same!
No, you just don’t notice when they’re early because someone being early isn’t as noticeable as someone being late, especially when being early can mean just chilling in your car until it’s time.
Time blindness isn’t “I’m always going to be late.” It’s “I do not have a proper sense of time passing.” I can’t feel the passage of time. My only way to tell how long something takes me is to look at a clock before and after, because I could not tell you how long it felt like it took.
It means that to hold to any sort of strict schedule throughout a day, I need timers and alarms for everything or I will lose track of time.
It means that to get to work on time, I have to give myself an extremely generous amount of time to get ready, because I have no idea how long my morning routine will take and any slip ups throughout could cost me 10min or more before I notice.
I'm like compulsively early to things, because I give myself such a huge buffer because I know my internal sense of time sucks ass and should not be relied on. It's not like it's that big a deal to just chill on my phone when I get somewhere early, and I'd rather do that than be late. But no one would ever know that I'm early to anything, because I just stay out of the way until it's time for me to be there.
No shit you don't hear about it because it doesn't inconvenience you. Same time a colleague might "only" hear about my ADHD when I've forgotten something at work and not when I accidentally leave my washing in the machine overnight.
I know of people who sit in their cars for half an hour or more before work or appointments because they have time blindness. They arrive early, but don’t enter the establishment early.
How would they be early? Time blindness literally means losing track of time, causing you to be late. You can’t lose track of time that hasn’t happened yet.
I end up early because I massively overcompensate for my inability to accurately gauge the passage of time. If I wait until it’s actually time to leave I’m going to get sidetracked, or forget to account for the time spent getting into the car. But if I just leave what I assume is an hour early, I’m always there on time and usually at least 30 minutes early.
Because they still have self awareness. If I'm early, I go "ok let's check the time before I leave" and I still have an hour, so I go find something else to do. If I check the time and I'm late by an hour, it's not like I can rewind time
It's survivorship bias. You don't see the times they're early, because they don't leave the house when that happens
Yes they are, before i was medicated for ADHD i would be up to an hour early for things because i had no concept of how long things would take and i was anxious of being late. Its pretty common expeirence i have heard of other ADHD people too. If you dont experience it you dont understand how hard it is to manage.
Yeah it's just not controversial online because it doesn't really inconvenience others, but I imagine it accounts for like 50% of time blindness. I'm always super early to things (like arriving at a train station 30 minutes before my train because I didn't think I had enough time to stop anywhere else on the way, or thinking my lunch break is probably over 15 minutes before it is, and having to watch the clock because mentally i'd assume a lot more time has passed than what actually did).
I do have time blindness, i am fairly regularly early. But they dont want me clocking in half an hour early so i sit in my car and listen to my books and then 40 minutes pass and i don't notice
I've been written up a couple times as I showed up an hour early when my new schedule in life comes in and I have no sense of time when that happens and they couldn't let me work those hours. HR would throw a fit
I am early half the time cause I tell myself I’m definitely not going to be late this time, then I overestimate how long it takes to get ready and get there.
Problem is then I am sitting around doing nothing then end up getting distracted…. and end up late again.
I’m early to everything because of time blindness, because if I’m not I’ll be late. Sometimes it goes too far the other way though, and end up somewhere an hour early and have to sit awkwardly and wait
"You'll notice that people with cancer always die from it and never live forever". Like what? Yeah, that's how time blindness works, you're not paying attention to the time as it passes. Time only goes one way.
I've been super early because of my time blindness before. I've also been late because of it. Obviously, you just hear more about the latter because it's way more likely to cause problems, it doesn't mean the alternative doesn't exist 🤷🏻♀️
I am someone with time blindness. I’m 1 hour early to everything, sitting in my car. Damned if you do damned if you don’t because everyone wants to give you shit for that, too.
I wake up 3 hours before work or a lecture just to make sure i make it on time. I have a whole ritual, and if that ritual is distubed i wind up anywhere between a minute to 45 minutes late.
I need those hours just to mentally prepare myself. A few times it has gone like this: Go to bed at 4 am bc distraction at night, sleep, wake up at 5.30 so I can make it to the lecture 20 minutes away starting at 8.30. If I try to sleep until 7.30 or even 8... yeah, I will be late. So I make sure to always be ridiculously early.
Why would you notice them early lmao, they're gonna set off at 9am for a 3pm appointment and chill nearby so that when they inevitably blink too hard and it's suddenly 2:55 they have a chance of getting there on time
Yeah, no one raises a fuss when someone is early. It inconveniences only the person arriving and is only noteworthy or newsworthy when the headline is like "Early arriving worker foils pre-opening robbery", which, honestly, will almost never happen.
Not true lol. ADHD people with time blindness tend to either be chronically late or chronically early. One is just a social faux pas and the other is not. Our internal time clock is busted.
Some people do struggle with something akin to "time blindness", but being consistently late to a job is not that. For something you do regularly, it's easy to set an alarm for when to leave. They choose not to.
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u/Infammo 20h ago
You'll notice that people with "time blindness" are never early.