Time Blind

Are you saving time or wasting it?

No matter how early I wake up, I’m always late for work.

I’ve tried getting ready the night before, but I still find myself confused about the next steps. I’ve tried waking up earlier, but it seems the more time I have the later I am. I’ve tried lists, timers, and alarms and still every morning I’m rushing, feeling like a failure again.

When I look back, I can’t always pinpoint when I went wrong, but typically it’s a simple distraction. I was watering the plants instead of making my lunch. I decided to clean out my bag with only 5 minutes left to get ready. I stopped to listen to a news story. I was playing with the dog. More often than not, I simply lost track of time and moved too slowly.

My problems with time don’t end there. I’m late to almost everything. I can’t finish tasks on time, or often at all. I lose a lot of time finding lost items or trying to remember what I was doing, or how I ended up doing what I find myself doing instead. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. It’s a waste of time.

People always say, “Just don’t get distracted”, but they don’t understand that I don’t know that I am distracted in the moment. In the moment, I am doing exactly what I need to be doing. Worse, in the moment, I often believe I’m saving time rather than wasting it. I’m doing everything all at once! I’m moving fast! I’m being productive and efficient!

I began to suspect I had ADHD a couple of years ago after making a joke about having it in front of a coworker and she replied, “Well, duh.”. I asked all my friends and family if they thought I might have ADHD and all of them said the same thing, “duh”. At 36 years old, I was the last to know.

To be clear, I don’t have an official diagnosis. The symptoms of anxiety, chronic fatigue, and CPTSD overlap and all make sense for me, but my mother has it and so does at least one of my brothers, so the chances are high. I haven’t pursued treatment because even though it’s often frustrating, exhausting, and upsetting, it comes with several super powers:

1. I can switch gears quickly. Most of the time this happens against my will, but it means a bad day doesn’t get me down for long. It means I can find motivation easily. It means I don’t get stuck.
2. I can do many things at once. I can talk to someone and clean the kitchen. I can write a blog post and listen to someone’s story. I can think about one problem while working through a solution to another.
3. I can think fast. I can move from thoughts to conclusions, problems to actions, before most people have got their bearings. I can even hold two thoughts—or even two emotions—at the same time with ease.
4. I can focus in chaos. Because my mind creates its own chaos, I can thrive in environments where a lot is happening. I can see paths out when other people feel overwhelmed.

I like myself just the way I am, but this problem with time is the hardest to overcome. I can’t work out a coping mechanism or life hack my way around it.

Recently, hoping to find a solution to my problem, I came across several articles on “time blindenss“. Each gave the same advice: exercise, get out in the sun, drink coffee, and track your time. It seems I’m already doing all that I can. This may be the best I or anyone else can expect of me. It may be the world that needs to change a little to meet me where I am.

In a capitalistic country with a culture of fervent productivity, where every job requires time management skills and timeliness is nearly a moral issue, it can be hard for people like me who have tried, and tried, and tried but can’t seem to do what comes easy for everyone else.

My days are filled with little failures and small moments of shame. Even the people that love me most find themselves some days bewildered and other days angry because it appears I won’t try harder. I don’t care enough. I am broken in some fundamental way.

What I wish the world understood is that the same way you can be sight impaired, or hearing impaired, you can be time impaired. It is a sensory issue. There are people who simply cannot feel time as it passes or make informed estimates about the time that is needed. It is a sensory problem and no amount of planners, timers, or alarms will work because when time slips, so does your attention. You get lost in it—with it—and maybe that isn’t always a bad thing.

On days when I have nothing to do and no expectations to meet, when my time belongs to me and I can let it slip or stand, I feel free. On days like that, I like the way that time can stretch or narrow depending on how I feel. When I’m happy and hyper-focused, time is never ending. When I’m in love, time stands still. When I’m excited, time speeds up with me. Time bends to me, time becomes part of me. I wish I had more days like that.

Instead, most days are negatively impacted by the way time moves for me, but many of those negative effects stem from the structure of workplaces and deadlines. Without those structures, I’d be free to work in a way that felt right to me. Without those structures, we’d all feel more confident in our abilities rather than worrying about our shortcomings. We could all have more days when time felt like something we moved through—or that moved through us—rather than something we measured each other against.

🌶️