Thread by @dustychipura

Good morning! Here’s your Mon morning #ADHD basics thread:

ADHD causes an inability to “feel” time. It is said that people with ADHD have a short “time horizon”; that we can’t see very far into the future. Since we struggle both to measure time (as in, how long something takes)

And to feel the future, it can complicate a lot of things. Some examples:

- chronic lateness due to not knowing how long things actually take (like getting ready, driving somewhere etc)

- overbooking /busying oneself due to not being able to accurately judge how much time things will take up in the schedule

- not being able to work consistently toward a goal because it feels too far away and it’s in the “not-now”

- not managing time well in the moment

(Ie, I only have half an hour for lunch but I spend 25 minutes fiddling with something in the kitchen because it doesn’t feel like time is passing)

ADHDers conceptualize time in two ways: now/not now. Anything NOW demands our attention, is urgent, is stimulating, can be attended to

Anything in the NOT NOW is basically never/I don’t know when it is and I’ll probably forget

So, projects with fuzzy / far away deadlines (“just get this to me when you can”), things that someone asked you to do “later when you have time”, or tasks you think you’ll return to (like cleaning up after eating) all go into the nebulous Not-Now Land

Things come back from Not Now Land only occasionally and only in a few ways.

1. they suddenly become urgent (have you finished that report that is due today?)

2. They become interesting (I just saw a show about fly fishing & I remember I bought that rod and reel 8 months ago)

Or 3. You plan for them, put them in a real, feel-able future that you are aware of and you remind yourself that they exist.

Guess which one ADHDers are bad at?

It’s actually a lot if you think about it. I need to put said event or task into a time in the future and I already need to know what Future Dusty, who is a creature of great impulse, will be doing at that time

If I don’t have some kind of method of tracking future events and tasks like a calendar or planner, I can’t do that. But as many an ADHDer knows, HAVING a calendar and REMEMBERING THE CALENDAR EXISTS AND TO CHECK IT are very different things

If I can remember to put the thing in the calendar and remember to check the calendar, I also have to be cognizant of the date and time in the moment. Like, I can know that tomorrow is Tuesday and that I have a dentist appointment on Tuesday but if I don’t remember that

Tuesday is Tuesday when I wake up, I can still forget.

This one is so hard to explain. It’s like, I remember that I have an appointment Tuesday. And I know that today is Tuesday. But my brain doesn’t put those facts together somehow? It’s weird.

So there’s the “in-the-moment” forgetting that can happen. For this reason, keeping your calendar and planner game strong is both important and very challenging.

Another way to think about “now/not now” thinking is “black and white” thinking. Another way to think about “black and white” thinking is “all or nothing” thinking. Many people with ADHD are all or nothing thinkers and this extends to tasks and gets mixed up with time

Most ADHDers, without coaching or therapy, are pretty rigid thinkers, especially about tasks. We don’t want to start them unless we can finish them (perfectionism). And since we can’t “feel” time and we don’t know how long a task might take, we are paralyzed to start it.

Conversely this can look like starting tasks and getting really behind because you under-estimated how long it would take.

“Hey what time should we leave for the movies?”
“Come over in 20 minutes! I’m just doing the dishes and getting ready!”
[proceeds to take 30 min doing

Dishes and then another 20 getting ready and the person waiting on you is very annoyed]

It can be really distressing when you think you can get like, five things done but you only get one done because it took WAY LONGER than you anticipated yet the next time you go to get things done you still underestimate. ADHDers get locked into a cycle of not learning from

Past mistakes/behaviours so we keep making them and not understanding why.

It can be distressing to be SO SURE you budgeting enough time to get somewhere/finish on time and still be late.

It’s like, imagine time is 3D, it has volume or weight. And when we want to make a plan or plan a task, we have a box and we need to fill that box with the appropriate amount of objects, which have volume and weight.

Except we see in 2D.

We know there’s room in the box but how much? We know the objects take up some of the room but how much? Know how many objects you can fit in a 2D box without knowing the size of the objects is impossible. Ladies, gents and NB folks, I give you “managing time and tasks with ADHD”