8. Time Management
Time can have a different meaning for people with ADHD, it can be harder to track the passing of time so you may let others down by not getting somewhere you said you were going to be when you said you were going to be there. Often people with ADHD struggle with knowing how long a task takes which can mean that you get into bother at work or home because you over promise.
• Set alarms to help you to check the time so that you are not late finishing work or getting home.
• Some people set their phones or watches to go off every hour so they have a sense of time passing.
Time Estimation
Time can be a difficult concept to those with ADHD. Sometimes this is called Time Blindness. You might want to compare how long you THINK a task takes, and then record how long it ACTUALLY takes. Sometimes, we don’t realise how much preparation or clearing up is actually part of the time that a task takes, and so we underestimate it. At other times, a task we predict could take hours will only take a few minutes. Or we realise that when doing one task, we fit in two or three others at the same time, so it takes a lot longer than predicted. So it can help to use the chart below, to get a good idea of how long tasks take, and also to think about what else might be involved in completing that task – to build in time for that too. We talk about preparation time, journey time etc. to broaden their field of vision when we talk about time to not just the singular task.
DEVON ADULT AUTISM AND ADHD SERVICE 29
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