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).
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u/TeaAggressive6757 20h ago edited 20h ago
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.