The late, great Douglas Adams once said “I love deadlines! I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by!”
Ha! If only they made a sound - then it might be possible to catch up with them! Trouble is the beggars sneak up quietly and with stealth, and by the time you’ve noticed them, panic and fear have set in! Now, don’t get me wrong - neurotypicals hate deadlines too - but they possess this remarkable ability to superglue the deadline into their awareness and wrestle the tasks required into a series of tame little steps that flow into each other in an orderly sequence then somehow meld into a neat, finished package, in a way that ADHDers and AuDHDers can only dream about.
Time Blindness is considered to be a common feature of ADHD. So what is it? As the name suggests, it’s a reduced awareness of time, or the struggle to match demands with the time available. Or so they say. Time Blindness often shows up as chronic lateness, untidiness, and the habitual rush at the last minute. It’s also associated with task paralysis, procrastination, sequencing difficulties, reduced concentration and the seemingly contradictory feature of hyperfocus. Unfortunately, it leaves confusion, anxiety, dread and shame in its wake.
Many ADHDers will say that they simply find it hard to keep track of time or accurately estimate how long something might take, or they might struggle to accurately recall how long the task took on a previous occasion. When this is combined with the impulse to commit to something before fully considering the demands of the undertaking, they land straight into “overcommitment” territory - and the very real risk of failure to deliver. The costs can be high.
What causes time blindness? There are very real neurological underpinnings for this - differences in the prefrontal cortex (the home of executive functioning and planning) and disruption in the dopamine system. It doesn’t mean that a person with ADHD will achieve nothing - it means that they need to allocate more effort, prompts, accommodations and adjustments to effectively juggle a bunch of tasks than a neurotypical person might. And this comes with the risk of mental exhaustion.
Maybe it’s helpful to reconsider Time Blindness not as an inability to see time, but rather a difference in perception of time. Consider the “Time Horizon” concept. Just as we can’t see beyond the physical horizon, the time horizon is a processing barrier - the length of time that we can comfortably envision and manage. A planning or working time window. One person’s time horizon might be a week, which means they have a clear view of what demands already fall within that week, and therefore be able to realistically estimate what in addition can be comfortably achieved in that time frame. However, they struggle to see after that time (past the time horizon) and any new demand with a deadline that falls beyond that period simply gets dumped into their mind’s “not now” box - regardless of whether it’s a day or a month or a year beyond the time horizon. It’s just too much to deal with at that point. It’s an issue for “future them”.
But just as the physical horizon moves away as you move in its direction, and what was beyond the horizon suddenly comes into view, so too does the time horizon. Responsibilities that were placed in the “not now” box need to be flagged. Because they will (eventually) land within the time horizon. If they haven’t been flagged, there’s a big risk of being overlooked altogether. A person is more likely to meet a demand made within their time horizon than beyond it - they can adjust what they have planned to do and accommodate it. Or truthfully say that it can’t be done.
Therefore, the shorter a person’s time horizon is (Three days? One day? Two hours? Five minutes?), the greater the risk of poorly planning for any deadline outside of it. Which means they rush to fit it in as it suddenly jumps into their awareness. Or they may stress because they know it’s there (just not sure when) which switches them into task paralysis or panic mode. All in all, a nice recipe for stress!!
Maybe it helps to reflect on what that means if you have been told that you’re “time blind”. Maybe you’re not blind about time at all, but that your awareness and planning is limited to what’s within your view - within your time horizon. Remember: one feature of ADHD is difficulty juggling or completing simultaneous tasks - so if you limit your focus on only what’s squarely within your time horizon - and ignore what’s outside of it - it helps you to progress. In other words, you stick to what you can reasonably juggle at once. That’s adaptive!
Remember that one ADHD (and Autistic) super-power is hyper-focus - and your accomplishments when circumstances allow this is amazing!! Maybe that’s a benefit of a brief time horizon - it limits perception of the competing tasks and allows for a quality outcome!! Maybe “Time Blindness'‘ isn’t about a poor awareness of time but a clear awareness of capacity.
So what’s the take away? Perhaps that it’s helpful for everyone to reflect on where their individual time horizon is and how to shuffle deadlines and demands to allow for this, and to marshal supports (diaries, reminders, timers and helpful people) to help keep those deadlines that lie beyond the horizon achievable.
