Time Blindness
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Neuro Tribe, the podcast where authenticity meets empowerment. Your host, Teresa, is a certified business executive and life coach, navigating the intricate tapestry of neurodiversity. She's someone blessed with ADHD and dyslexia, and gifted a widow and a mother. To four incredible Neurodiverse children.
So each episode of the Neuro Tribe is an intimate exploration of life, love, business, and parenting through the lens of neurodiversity. Subscribe to the Neuro tribe on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube and never miss a story. And if you really like this show, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, and of course share the podcast with anyone.
Join us on this unfiltered journey where no topic is too challenging, [00:01:00] no triumph too small. Let's unravel the layers of our community's experiences, embracing the struggles, celebrating the gifts, and finding empowerment and authenticity in every episode. And let's start right now.
Hey friends. Welcome back. I am so grateful to have all of you here. As I promised before I would come back in and check with you and talk to you about what it is like to take away. The escapism of me doom scrolling on my phone. And let me tell you, I, I actually think it's been pretty amazing. It is hard because I am having those urges.
I do want to pick up my phone and do doom scroll. And basically what I have done is I've given myself the okay to doom scroll. If I'm putting a kid to bed, [00:02:00] I sit in the room while they've all asleep. So when I'm putting my kids to bed, I sit in the room and I will scroll social media. But other than that, I have been only looking at social media to do business.
So if I am posting something. Or I am, looking to respond to someone or I'm intentionally going on social media for business. I will do that. And then I won't only go onto social media if I'm personally going on there for something like. I have a task that needs to get done personally. That I need to do.
For instance, I am in this group called buy nothing. And as I'm going through my home and getting rid of stuff, I will post things on buy nothing, and then I will get back to life. But what have I noticed with this change? Right. What have I noticed [00:03:00] with me not escaping into my phone to do. Doom scroll for a half an hour or 40 minutes. And it's actually quite amazing.
I am getting a lot done. So I finished a book that I have been wanting to finish for at least a month now. And one of the programs that I have been really wanting to finish for at least two months now, I am more than halfway done and very excited. And I've turned some things in. So I feel like taking that time away from just wasting time and my phone and social media land has really given me the ability. To do other things.
And I'm finding that I feel better about myself and my life. And I also feel like I'm moving more into positive forward [00:04:00] motion because I I'm taking this out of my life. Now on the other side. As I have been, not doom scrolling. I do really notice that those urge, the urge has come up.
I feel very strongly that I want to pick up my phone. I want to. Search something. I w and sometimes I'm catching myself just doing it without even realizing I picked up the phone. So what I am genuinely doing in that, those instances is I'm just checking in with myself. What am I feeling right now? Or what am I not wanting to feel right now? What am I supposed to be doing?
Or what. Is in my schedule to do right now. Am I supposed to be doing a task and instead I'm looking on my phone. What was I thinking when I picked up my phone? And these are some really important questions [00:05:00] for me to be thinking and figuring out and feeling when I'm really addressing this urge to pick up a phone. That I, this habit that I have gotten into and I am really looking forward to getting better and better and better at not picking up a phone. And looking at my phone when that urge comes and just grab it without even thinking. So I really feel like this is definitely a good direction for me to be going into, and I feel like this is going to help me. Reach the goals that I have been genuinely wanting to reach, and I'm really looking forward to. Looking back on myself now and telling myself good job. So I am going to talk to you today about time blindness. Which is super real.
Oh, my word, who.
Who struggles with timeline is I [00:06:00] do. Do you? I know you do. I know you don't cause I'm talking to you guys. And it's real. Right. So what exactly is time? Blindness time blindness is basically the inability to know how much time it takes to do something. It's the, the T the perception of time is off. Now some people think of it just as tasks or, they think of it just as turning things in or deadlines or getting to place on time.
All of that has to do with time blindness. It also has to do with, well, when did that happen? And you're like, uh, Like. Uh, maybe a month ago, maybe two months ago. I'm not sure sometime this year. Right or, okay. So this happened, what year?
Um, okay. So, um, How old was I? Okay. Um, So COVID [00:07:00] happened, you know what I mean? Like sometimes the time blindness. Has to do with years or months as well as minutes and hours. Okay. So the other part of time blindness is what does it affect? It affects punctuality.
It affects meeting deadlines.
It affects managing your responsibilities.
It affects how much time you estimate for something to get done.
It's affects when you start something and when you finish something.
Transitions. It's more challenging to transition from one task to another and or from one part of one task to another part of the task. I'm going to go all into all of this, by the way. Stay tuned going into all of this in a little bit more detail.
And also has to do with procrastinating. [00:08:00] Sometimes when you have time blindness, you have this. Tendency to kind of procrastinate and I hate that word procrastinating. But it's more like, It takes you longer to do the things. Because it takes you longer to get prepared to do the things. And I think what I'm really mean to say is from neuro. Neuro-typical standpoint or even neurodivergent people that don't understand the procrastinating, just isn't something we have control over.
So it's moreover, how long does it take you to prep to get ready? To get ready, to get ready, to get ready to get the thing done.
And just losing all sense of time. Okay. So let's talk about all of these different things. Okay. As far as punctuality goes, you can think, oh, it's going to take me 15 minutes to get to said place. And then, so you get in the car [00:09:00] and. Get in the car and expect to be there within 15 minutes. But because you have time blindness you weren't thinking about the fact that maybe there was an accident, maybe there is some traffic. Maybe you go down the wrong street.
Like there could be so many reasons why it doesn't take 15 minutes to get to the place. But because in your mind it takes 15 minutes to get to the place. And maybe even you feel like you gave yourself some grazing time, right? Maybe you were like, ah, it'll take like 10 minutes to get there. So I'm going to give myself 15 minutes to get there. Right? But then you end up showing up five minutes late. Because you were expecting to get there in 15 minutes and it actually took 20.
Okay. So that's part of the punctuality time blindness.
So, what I really suggest with that is give yourself a really good buffer. Right. If you look up in the [00:10:00] maps and you have the address of the place that you're supposed to go, and it says that it's going to take 20 minutes or say, it's going to say, take 20 minutes with traffic. You never know. From the time you check, check your maps to the time that you get there, if traffic is going to increase or you're going to hit an accident or whatever.
So I always say, give yourself buffer. If you think it's going to be 20 minutes, give yourself double the amount. Of time. That might seem a little bit extreme to some of you, especially if you're not in this practice. I totally get it because I really resisted that myself. But I was one of those people that everywhere I went, I was five minutes late. And it was due to the time blindness, I genuinely would try to get to someplace early.
I would try and I would try and I would try. And it might have been the fact that I went back to get my keys and oh yeah. I forgot my water bottle and oh wait, I don't, I didn't like [00:11:00] I should grab a toothbrush. Right. I need my purse or whatever it is. Like I would leave and wait a minute. I'm wearing my slippers. Not my shoes. Legitimately.
There was always a reason for me being five minutes late, but by the time I got to my car thinking I was going to be there in 15 minutes and it took 15 minutes to get there. It took me five minutes to get from getting ready to get to the car because I forgot all the things right. So that kind of can help you a bit with your time blindness and punctuality.
No meeting deadlines. I think a lot of us, what we will do is we will. Kind of wait, maybe do a little bit. Maybe. Get closer to the deadline. And then all of a sudden we're rushing to get all of the things done because the deadline is tomorrow and we're, there's no way we can get it done. And then we're sending an email asking for another day or [00:12:00] it's due tonight, but we're asking to. Tate, turn it in tomorrow morning. And I understand this is part of our community.
I totally 100 yet. That, but what we can do is we can set up systems to put in place to kind of help us reduce the amount of emails that we have to send, asking for grace to delay how long we are turning something in. Right. So I really think. Setting up, an outline of what it is that you need to do, and then breaking it up into tiny little tasks. And a lot of us have a really hard time breaking things up into little tiny tasks.
I totally understand. I get it. And what I am doing now is I will put, say my AI, I will use AI. And I will put my project. I will put my, whatever it is. I'll put the deadline into it. [00:13:00] I will put in what I need to do. I'll put in the outline and I will ask AI. Please break this up into really small pieces for me to be able to do and achieve, and then I will print it out. If the AI does not break it up small enough, I'll ask, can you please break it up more?
And then what I'll do is I'll ask the AI, please turn this into checkboxes for me to be able to check off when I do the thing. And make it into consideration of how much time I have tell my deadline and then add yourself even with the AI, add a buffer into what you need to do to get it done on the deadline. It doesn't mean you're going to get all of your deadlines in on time. Again, I get it.
We all do it. But it can be some tools that we can help ourselves to [00:14:00] get to our deadlines a little bit more. Right.
Managing responsibilities. Now, this one is a big one, especially if you are working or you run a business or your own a business, you're an entrepreneur and you have kids. You are managing your company. You're managing responsibilities. If you have employees, you're managing risk. Employees, you're answering all the emails, you're doing the payroll, you're doing the, whatever, whatever it is that you need to do in your company or your business. And also you are managing kids.
You're managing kids is schedule your doing doctor's appointments. You are running to therapies. You are going to soccer or football or whatever it is. And that time blindness can take into effect. When you were trying to get from say one meeting to pick up the kids to get to football, or it can be time [00:15:00] blindness of going over everybody's schedule. And responding to all of the teachers and getting back to all of the therapists. , what I really say is preparation can be so helpful. If you can give yourself that grace time on Sunday or Saturday. Or Friday night, whatever day works for you, but start off your week with figuring out and putting everything on the schedule that you can and giving yourself buffer time.
So if it takes half an hour from you to get from work, to pick up kid to the football, the near one, you don't want to give yourself 15 minutes, because what if there's some time where your kid gets in the car and kid's having a fit, right? And then you're late. To football or you have teacher parent teacher meetings.
Right. And the parent teacher meeting is scheduled for [00:16:00] 30 minutes, but the teacher is actually running late. So then you don't start yours until. 40 minutes passed and then you're 10 minutes behind on the whole day. So again, giving yourself these buffer times can be so incredibly helpful. Oh, my word.
Recognizing when to start and stop something. Now this one can be so challenging for multiple reasons. , it can be hard for us to know when do I need to start this project? Or when do I need to transition from this part of the project to the next project? The other part of it can be. We have a tendency to work so hard that it's almost like we're ignoring our body.
So we'll work and work and work and work and work. And the next thing that we know we're crashing. And we can't finish what we had started, or we worked so hard [00:17:00] that we overwork. And we finished the project, but then we can't get back to work the next day. So these are all real important things to think about when starting and stopping projects. And again, I always say, try and plan ahead. I know I keep saying this, but plan ahead and buffer those.
Or if you get anything from this plan ahead in buffer, huge, huge, huge, huge that, and breaking things down into smaller. Small tasks, like little tiny. I always call them little tiny nibble sized pieces, little tiny, tiny bite-size pieces. Okay.
Losing track of time. Okay. We can go on a hyper fixation and really realize that we have lost track of time. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've done this, where I was interested in something. So I looked something up and then I researched it and went [00:18:00] down the research rabbit hole. And the next thing I know I'm like, why am I so hungry?
Why does my head hurt? I'm thirsty and realize I completely forgot to eat today. I started researching like 10:00 AM and it's like seven. So, yeah. That can happen to us friends. All I can give you the. This is the thing. If we start on a rabbit hole of research or we start on hyper fixation and we're super into it. What I can offer you is some of the tools you can use is set an alarm to remind yourself, to eat or drink or go to the restroom or whatever it is because I get it.
You're interested. You're super into the thing that you want to do. And you can lose track of time. We really, really can lose track of time. It could be hours. It could be days we could just lose track of [00:19:00] time. So, what I say is set alarms set buzzers, right?
I also say, utilize your calendar for me.
I live off of my calendar and if something is not on my calendar, it doesn't exist. So by the way, if you want to get on my calendar, you have to get on my calendar or you don't exist. Just kidding. I love you guys. You exist. But I don't know to talk to you unless you put yourself on my calendar. Otherwise. I just don't know.
Okay. So with the time blindness, we can get to the point where. Like we think it's going to take maybe one day. And it ends up taking two or three days, and then we get to the level of frustration, right. And we feel overexerted and we feel overwhelmed. So planning ahead when we think something is going to take one day. Maybe give us two days.
Instead, if we [00:20:00] think something is gonna take 15 minutes, give a self. 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Give that extra time and a little bit of buffer in order to help you get the things done that you want to get done. Right? Because we all are powerhouses. We like to do the things that we like to do. And what we tend to doing this is leading into the next part. Right? What we tend to do is when we do have time blindness, we beat ourselves up.
And then when we are late to things, usually other people are really frustrated.
And so not only are they frustrated with us, but we're sensitive. So then we feel it and then we feel bad. And then we're trying to explain ourselves, or we're just apologizing profusely or, you know, maybe people have left out without us, whatever it may be. There's this whole level of beating ourselves up [00:21:00] with our time blindness. And with our being late to things or turning a deadline in, we are beating ourselves up.
When we are sending an email out to ask to have some more time or have time extended. What I want to offer you is how can you come to a place? That you can understand that time. Blindness is something that's real. Yes, no. Doctors don't diagnose it. But it is part of our diagnosis. It is part of how our brain works and there's no way that we can beat ourselves up into. Making ourselves forget this part of ourselves.
We can't beat ourselves up into not having time blindness. It's literally the brain, your brain is wired. So can you get to a place where. You can [00:22:00] accept, just accept. This is the way that your brain works and because this is the way your brain works. You need to set up some systems and some tools. To help yourself work with this right. I know that there are so many people that are out there that are talking about, you know, giftedness or ADHD or autism dyslexia. As. It's it's all strengths.
It's all strengths. These are beautiful. It's it? Because it is really, our brain thinks in a way that other people just can't. We also have challenges that are very, very real and. W rather than ignoring them and beating ourselves up because of them. I want to encourage you to understand this is part of how your brain works and let's help that part of your brain.
And let's give yourself tools and [00:23:00] systems to help yourself with your brain and also love yourself through it. Please try to love and accept yourself through your time blindness. Okay, you guys. I love you so much. Thank you for hanging in there with me, please like subscribe and share my videos. I am looking forward to all of you joining our community, our neuro tribe. Let's go love you all.
Bye bye.
