Welcome to the Outsmart, A DHD podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Catino, board certified occupational therapist. Two-time Ted Speaker, A DHD coach, A DHD, advocate and Reality Show, contestant. Now let's talk about A DH. D.  Hello, beautiful humans. Happy Wednesday or maybe Thursday, depending on when I schedule this podcast. It's been a hot minute since I've been here. I have been out of town traveling for the last week and a half seeing a friend from college. I spent a really good time, but I have missed you and I have missed my routine to be so honest with you. But I am back today to talk about time blindness. This is something that affects many of you. I know that because of what you tell me when I coach you. I've seen it in comments on social media. We're gonna get into it, but we're gonna get into it right after I tell you that in the link of this show notes, you are going to see a link for a free on demand webinar called Before You Rage Quit Your Job. Try this. It is specifically for. Overachieving. A DHD. Humans that are burnt out from their job and you feel like, shit, I wanna quit my job, but I can't pay my rent with hugs. What the fuck am I gonna do? You're gonna do exactly what's in the 20 minute webinar, which is actually helpful unlike a lot of freebies. 'cause I don't put out things that aren't helpful. Okay. The second thing in the show notes, you're gonna see a link for a free consult with me. Yes, it is free. It is so that we can both see if we want to work together one-on-one that is in the link of the show notes now to get back to time Blindness. Time blind. What the heck is time blindness? I'm gonna read the definition off of an article that I found on ad.org. It's a really helpful website and it defines time blindness. As this, the time blindness in an adult A DHD is the inability to sense how much time has passed and estimate the time needed to get something done. It isn't an official diagnosis, but can significantly impact your life. Time blindness changes how you prioritize tasks. Allocate time and manage your schedule. Now you might be thinking, I don't sc, I don't suffer with time blindness. What even is time blindness? This is the first time I'm hearing about it. This isn't, it's not an issue for me. Next episode. Okay, let me ask you a question. Have you ever struggled with getting to an appointment on time because you overestimate the time that it takes to get ready for that thing. Does it take you longer than you think it's gonna take you to get ready and get in your car? Do you underestimate the time that it's gonna take in traffic or maybe struggle to. Plan for something unexpected, like running into an accident, not you getting into an accident, but somebody else. Hopefully not, hopefully, okay. Do you struggle with making it to appointments on time? Do you ever even have a Zoom call scheduled and you look at your watch and think, holy shit, it's three minutes past the time that the meeting was supposed to start. Do you find yourself getting places very early Because before you used to get there really late and anxiety now has trained you to get there incredibly early to where you're sitting in your car waiting for the actual time of the thing. Do you find yourself being either very early or about 10 minutes late? These are all struggles with time blindness. It can make you think that you have more than enough time. To do something, it can make you underestimate how long it takes to transition from one task to another. Are you someone that will schedule things back to back when really your brain and your body needs a little bit of buffer time from one call to the next or from one task to the next? This is something that needs to be planned in your day, but unless you know that you need to do this, it's very easy to over schedule yourself or not plan according to how your brain works. So why the heck does this happen? I'm also gonna take this directly from the article, and the name of this article is A DHD, time Blindness, how to Detect It and Regain Control Over Time. This article was really fantastic. Describing why we struggle with this due to our, neurology of an A DHD brain having an underdeveloped frontal lobe and how this impacts time blindness. Now here are some factors that affect time blindness, a change in the chemical balance in the brain. Changes in dopamine levels in your brain can make it harder to estimate time and figure out how long tasks. We'll take. This is something that I did not understand or I did not know until now. This is a new fun thing. Changes in dopamine levels in your brain can make it harder to estimate time and figure out how long tasks will take. We do know that with A DHD Brains, you have. Not enough dopamine in your brain, which can make it really hard to be motivated to do things, and this can cause time blindness. Poor executive functioning. Of course, poor executive functioning is going to affect time blindness because executive functioning is your ability to plan a task, prioritize a task, switch tasks, start tasks and tasks. These are all required to do anything in your adult daily life. So when it comes to time management, I hate that term quite honestly, but when it comes to time blindness, it's gonna make it really hard to plan your day, prioritize things. So of course, having an underdeveloped frontal, late underdeveloped frontal lobe of your brain. Is going to make it harder with anything that requires executive functioning and time blindness is going to be affected by decreased executive functioning or executive dysfunction. Now, hyper focus, hyper-focus is something that will very much affect time blindness. Do you remember a time that you were very focused on something and because of that you completely forgot what you were doing? Or you forgot what you were planning on doing, or an hour has passed when it feels like 10 minutes has passed. Because you were in flow, you weren't even thinking about the concept of time. Hyper focus can make it really challenging to. Plan anything, but don't worry, I'm gonna get into some strategies so that you can harness that hyperfocus and also not be in waiting mode all day. Now working memory deficits that can make it hard to keep track of anything that you need at the present moment. Some CER research suggests that your working memory capacity can affect how well we judge and perceive time. Thus poorer working memory can make it harder to keep track of time. Now as a direct quote from the website. With a DHD, you do have poorer working memory, which means keeping track of everything that you need to hold onto in that moment. Have you noticed that you have a really hard time remembering what you need to do the task that's right in front of you, but you can remember things from 25 years ago? That's because A DHD doesn't affect those long-term. Concrete memories, but it does affect what's right in front of you and what you need to remember to do the task that's right in front of you, which is why it affects time blindness, emotional dysregulation. Having a DHD means that it's harder for us to stay regulated now. Is it gonna be harder to remember that you have to be out the door in 30 minutes for an appointment if you are currently in your bedroom having a mental breakdown? Absolutely. Emotional dysregulation is going to affect time blindness as well. Now, this may seem very doom and gloom, but what I can tell you is that I have a specific system that helps very well with time blindness. Prior to knowing that I had a DHD, and prior to knowing how to work with my A DHD brain, I was someone who was typically always late. If I was early, I was so early, I'm talking like 30 minutes early, just sitting there twiddling my thumbs, trying not to feel like a piece of shit for being late for something, because of course, internalized ableism and also society itself has taught us that if we don't have the supports that we need to. Help our disability or the fact that our disability is invisible in and of itself, that we don't really have a disability and therefore we don't need support. Therefore, we don't seek out support. We don't even know that we need support, and we struggle and feel like a piece of shit when we are late to appointments and making people wait on us. So what are things that you can do to help your time blindness? Alarms now before you glaze over, before your eyes glazes over and you're like, fuck, Jamie, I've already tried alarms. You have not tried them in the way that I am suggesting to you because the way that I'm suggesting to you has worked for most people that I have suggested it to the point that I even put it on the end of emails sometimes when I'm doing something like a webinar, and I know people want to show up to it. Now your brain, like I had mentioned before, with executive functioning, it needs time to transition to that task. So one thing that can be incredibly helpful is to work backwards from the thing that you need to go to. Let's do an example of this. Let's say you have an appointment at 2:00 PM now it's gonna take 30 minutes for you to get to the appointment, which means you need to leave at 1:30 PM You know that it takes you about 45 minutes to get ready for the day, so you budget yourself an hour. I have to write this down because I swear to goodness I have dyslexia and numbers are really hard. Okay, so two o'clock, you've got the appointment. You need to leave at 1 35 or one 30. It takes 45 minutes to get ready, so you're gonna budget an hour, which means that for your two o'clock appointment, you need to start getting ready at 1230. So do you start your, do you work backwards from one 30 when you need to leave the house, or do you work backwards from 1230 when you need to start getting ready for it? You work backwards from 1230. Now from there, I recommend starting with an hour, 30 minute and 10 minute alarms prior to when you need to start getting ready, which means that you would set an alarm for 11 30 11. Or wait, just kidding. You had set an alarm for 11 30, 12 and 1220. The reason for this is because you need time for your brain to transition from the task that you were doing to the task that needs to get done. And the task that needs to get done is getting ready for that appointment. So work backwards, starting with when you need to get ready for that thing. And then after you get ready, get your butt out the door. Another thing I would recommend is not only setting those three alarms for an hour, 30 minutes and 10 minutes prior to when you need to get ready, but also setting another alarm for say, 10 minutes prior to when you need to leave the house. Now here is where a lot of people mess up. When that 10 minute alarm goes off, they'll tell themselves, I still have time to do this thing. No, you don't. It is going to feel unnatural to stop mid task, but I am telling you that last alarm being 10 minutes out is your saving grace to where you will actually get to the place on time without having to be unreasonably early. So let's talk about how to do this again. You are going to look at. The thing that you need to do if you need to leave the house, that means when you need to start getting ready. If it's something at home, then it means the time of the actual task. So if say you had a Zoom call at two o'clock and you were already ready for that zoom call, it would mean setting an alarm for one o'clock, one 30, and then one 50 an hour, 30 minutes, and 10 minutes out an hour. What I have found with my clients. Even those who are just starting to understand their A DHD brain is enough time and three alarms is enough alarms to help your brain transition to that task. Now, if you're someone that's saying, I don't know how long it takes me to get ready, a lot of people don't. How many times have you underestimated how long it takes you to get ready? When you're wondering, how long does something, take me? Have a fun little experiment with it. Have your phone out with your stopwatch and press start. Chances are you're probably gonna work faster than you normally do. 'cause you're trying to prove to yourself that it really doesn't take that long. But it's gonna give you some awareness of how long something actually takes. One fun way that I've been able to gauge how long something will take is playing the game of how quickly can I do this? It's almost like a competition with myself. I'm thinking of a few times where I really had a hard time transitioning out the door to go somewhere and I told myself or and told my partner, I am gonna get out the door in the shower and out the door within eight minutes. And I was so determined to do that and I said something like, when I do that, we're gonna go and get you in and out Burger. Because I'm not doing this for nothing. But quite honestly, just knowing I could do it and I'm a very competitive person, was enough to feel good about it. But we did end up getting in and out Burger and anyway setting that alarm for eight minutes. And then getting out there, I believe in around five because it was like the quickest shower in getting ready that I've ever done and put my hair up in a bun. It was so fun to see how quickly I am able to get ready for something that doesn't require like hair and makeup. There were other times where I have had a competition with myself of just how long it takes to. Do a shower at night and was able to get it done in other five under five minutes. But I know now that if I were to get do my hair and my makeup, it takes a good 30 minutes for me to just be able to leisurely put on my makeup and enjoy the process prior to a meeting for say, a school that's gonna hire me potentially for a speaking engagement. I had to do these little experiments to see how long does it actually take me to get ready? And I encourage you to do these little experiments to see how long it actually takes you to get ready. And if you gamify it, how much quicker you could do it. But I will say when you're setting these alarms and you're working backwards, err on the side of more caution, especially when you're first starting out with this method. You're gonna feel successful getting somewhere on time knowing that you're the reason that you made that happen. You're the one that put the strategies and the accommodations in place. It's gonna feel really good, and chances are over time you might need less alarms. When I started out, this was exactly my process, but now I'm at a point where I have a pretty good idea of how long it takes me to get ready. And I just set an alarm for 10 minutes prior to the thing that I wanna show up for, or 10 minutes prior to when I need to leave the house. And. I'm able to do it and get there on time, but in the beginning be ever so kind to yourself. Be ever so kind to yourself always, but give yourself extra time. So to recap, set an alarm for one hour, 30 minutes, and 10 minutes prior to the task that you need to do. If you need to get ready for the task, set those alarms prior to the time that you need to start getting ready for the task. If you're already ready, set it for the time prior to the task in and of itself. Look at getting ready as a task in and of itself, and set in another alarm for about 10 minutes prior to when you need to actually be out the door. If it's something that requires leaving the house. I hope this was ever so helpful to you. Time blindness is something that so many people feel a lot of shame about because of all the times that we have missed appointments have not shown up for people when we wanted to. It's a really heartbreaking thing. It wreaks a lot of havoc on ourselves, on our self-esteem because we pride ourselves in being there for other people and being responsible adults. But if you have had a really hard time with time blindness in the past, it does not mean that you are always going to struggle with it, and I'm really excited to hear how this works for you. All right. Here's a reminder. In the show notes of this podcast, there is a free. On demand webinar called Before Your Age, quit your job, try this. It's for those who are burnt out in their jobs. Overachievers likely doing the most, probably looking how to solve problems in departments other than their own working way outside their job responsibilities. Coming home exhausted, taking work home because it's hard to get it done there you are the people I am talking to. If you're wondering, what the heck do I do about all of this outside of leaving my job with my finger in the air because I need the money, I am talking to you. Click the show note. Click in the show notes, the link in the show notes for the free on-demand webinar. It's 20 minutes long and if you listen at two times a speed, it's about 10. In the show notes is also a link to schedule a free consultation with me to see if we both want to work together one-on-one. Fun fact, if I don't know for certain that I can help you in the ways that you are looking for, I will not accept your money. My reputation and my integrity means way more to me than how much you would pay me monthly to be your coach. Lastly, if you could do me a giant favor and rate this podcast rate and review this podcast with a five star rating, I will personally thank you on the next podcast episode. Rating the podcast is a very kind thing to do, not only for myself, but for others who would not have gotten to see this information otherwise. And rating the podcast helps other people see, oh, this is actually going to help me. And it also pushes the podcast to other people. All right, my friends. I will talk to you next time. Bye now.  Are you a high achieving woman with a DHD looking for a coach or maybe an event coordinator looking for a wildly captivating speaker? Perfect. Go to outsmart adhd.co. That's out. Smart adh adhd.co to get in touch. 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