Tag: Procrastination

Time Blindness in ADHD: Simple Strategies to Implement Straight Away.

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Blindfolded woman in front of clockface to represent time blindness.

Time Blindness in ADHD: Simple Strategies to Implement Straight Away.

Time blindness is a very familiar phenomenon for my clients with ADHD, and it may be for you, too. Broadly speaking, time blindness is a difference in the perception and awareness of time passing.

It can affect people in various ways, for example:

A) being unable to estimate the time it may take to do a task,

B) having no sense of time passing while engaged in something,

C) struggling to sense future events coming up and act accordingly.

Let’s look at the above three aspects of time perception and consider some possible strategies for each of them in turn.

A. Difficulty in estimating time accurately.

This difficulty can take the form of both under and over-estimating the time it takes to complete something.

Time underestimation.

The result of underestimating time can often have dire consequences in the workplace.

For example, when we believe that each job will take less time than it actually does, projects and assignments start to build up as we find they take longer, thereby pushing other tasks further into the future. At some point, the accumulated backlog of tasks becomes overwhelming, and we feel we cannot cope at work.

Another example would be a person who needs to leave the house by a particular time and reckons it won’t take them long to get ready. However, in reality, they are inevitably late leaving the house every day.

I have worked through this challenge with various clients over the years, and usually, the primary reason comes down to underestimating time in some way or another. Once we have established this, it’s relatively straightforward to work through each part of getting ready and develop a more realistic estimate to enable them to leave the house in time. For more on that topic, go here

Time overestimation.

Overestimating time is often associated with some of the less pleasant activities or those tasks which don’t hold so much interest for us. This can stop us dead in our tracks, as really, who’d want to start washing up believing it’s going to take 45 minutes or start writing an email, suspecting it will take at least half an hour – maybe more?

Strategies for time estimation

So, what’s the solution for these internal time warps?

Well, one of the most effective ways is actually to time yourself to begin with. YES, with a stopwatch if necessary. This enables you to accurately identify how long something takes to complete.

I have created a simple tool you can use to help you do this. It’s called the Time Estimation Tool, or TET for short, and you can download your copy here.

        The TET enables you to keep testing out your “guesstimates” and then adjusting your techniques based on the real-life results you get. Mostly, when people have done this exercise, they are surprised to discover the actual amount of time things take. With practice, and applying it to various different life situations, this can revolutionise people’s time management skills in all kinds of positive ways.

TIP: Using clocks and watches, various timepieces and reminders and alarms on our phones or smart watches can help familiarise us with common time periods in our individual circumstances.

Find out what works for you, either audio or visual ways of seeing the passage of time or a combination, until you know for sure how long these things take you.

The effect of having small chunks of certainty in an often windswept existence is strangely comforting and provides a firm foundation to build on.

B) Having little sense of time passing when we are engaged in something.

It is hard enough to get going on something and feel we can sustain focus on something without interrupting ourselves to look at the clock. That is what many of my coaching clients have told me over the years. We are usually talking about hyperfocus. 

For those not in the know – you could liken hyperfocus to very heavy sleep where nothing gets through; even a loud bang next door or a car alarm going off is not enough to wake you. On the other hand, the kind of sustained focus with awareness is more like a light sleeper, one who is sleeping, but noises like thunder or a ring on the doorbell would waken them sufficiently to notice what’s happening around them.

One is so intensely focused on the matter at hand that there is no awareness of anything else. The other is still focused, yet with the possibility of dipping in and out of focus on the task to notice, for instance, hunger, noises, other people, and, of course, what time it is, as well as the significance of that information.

Strategies for noticing time passing while engrossed in something.

  1. Again, you can use anything that gets your attention, like a noise, a timer, or a message; some people even ask someone to come and tell them it’s time to eat, stop, or whatever else needs to be done.
  2. Another effective strategy is to set yourself up with an intention beforehand. For example, I will work for 20 minutes on X, then stand up and walk to fetch water and stretch for 5 minutes.

In this way, you are priming yourself to bear time in mind when you first set out to do something.

3. You can also make a pact to check in with yourself at intervals throughout the day, say mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon, and (at a time which can be particularly tricky for many with ADHD) at the close of the working day. Yes, you may well need a check-in at 5 pm to tell you to wrap up and literally get ready to go home. Many people overwork and extend their working hours more by accident than design, simply due to not noticing time going by.

      You can build this up in small increments until you have more awareness of time passing throughout the day.

C) Not sensing future events coming up and acting accordingly.

Time blindness results in perceiving events as literally less “real” the further away they are in the future. This lack of awareness of the distance of future dates and events causes ADHD-ers to be chronically underprepared when the time inevitably does come. Life will be full of unpleasant surprises as a result, leaving you feeling demoralised and often at a disadvantage.

Examples:

  • Lack of awareness of how close or far away events are in time leads to leaving things to the last minute – e.g.  Not realising the due date for a bill until you get a final notice or a court summons.

         Not seeing your holiday dates coming up might lead to you not packing the suitcase until the last minute or realising your passport is out of date when it’s too late to do anything about it.

  • Another common circumstance of time blindness comes when preparing for well-known future events – knowing there is a deadline for handing in a piece of work, for example, but being very hazy about when that is. In coaching sessions, many people have told me,” Oh, it’s in a couple of months, I think.” When I asked them the exact date to put in their calendar or planner, they had to go and look it up and were, in many cases, surprised to find it was rather sooner than they thought.

Once these clients firm up their knowledge around due dates and record them where they can easily refer to them, they find it much easier to make a realistic plan to get the work done in time.

  • Not doing things for our future selves is another result of time blindness. Often, because of impulsivity added to time blindness, we enjoy ourselves so much in the moment that we forget the needs of our future self. This can lead to burnout, energy crashes, or just plain overwhelm, as our self-care needs continually get put on the back burner.

Strategies for dealing effectively with future events.

  1. Make time visual and external to your brain whenever you can, using calendars, wall charts, and diaries. If you are OK with checking digital devices, then use those too.
  2. Identify precise dates and times when events are happening to be sure to set reminders and timers for them. You may want to remind yourself a few times they are coming up soon, as well.
  3. Practise asking yourself, “What would future me thank me for doing right now?” That extra glass of water, healthy option, or money in the bank can very likely help “future you” maintain your equilibrium.

Fortunately, there are many strategies that you can employ to combat time blindness.

  • Using methods which make time more “real” for you,
  • Experimenting to find out which of them works for you, and
  • Implementing one or more of the above strategies, you will be able to bring more awareness and skilfulness into your dealings with this elusive construct we call time, and live your life more smoothly and enjoyably as a result.

Anna Schlapp B.A., ACC, ACCG, is a certified ADHD coach, coaching people to understand and manage their unique time perception more productively. If you would like to explore this or any other of your ADHD traits with a highly experienced coach of more than ten years, you can contact Coach Anna here.

 

20 Top Tips to Tame Procrastination

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20 Top Tips to Tame Procrastination

witty epithet:I'm taking care of my procrastination issues, just you wait and see
  1. Slow the Action – Pause, Notice, consider your Options. Take Your Time. Someone once said, “If you don’t take your time, somebody else will.”

 

  1. Don’t go EAST ( Everything At the Same Time). Obviously you cannot do everything at once – can you? One thing at a time is plenty.

 

  1. Think how great it will be to have started this. Taking that first step releases amazing energy and power. 

 

  1. Remember it doesn’t need to be perfect. There’s no such thing as perfect. Good enough is fine for now. 

 

  1. Do something you feel attracted to for a set amount of time before approaching the task in hand. Following your interests wakes up your brain and makes you feel more motivated. It can also pay to get a quick win with doing something you are interested in, improving your mood and giving you a sense that things are moving forward. Try making a list and ticking or crossing out completed items.

 

  1. Do something physical first. Physical movement can not only help break the deadlock, it also releases helpful hormones, brain chemicals etc and allows you to re-oxygenate your blood. Your brain will thank you for it.

 

  1. Take the pressure off. Too much pressure will release stress hormones like cortisol, effectively shutting down your brain in a most unhelpful way. Try one of the many free Mindfulness apps to help short circuit feelings of pressure.

 

  1. Create a plan. Creating a plan will help to clarify your intentions and make it easier to see what needs to be done, and in what order. Check out this article for some basic planning techniques to try.

 

  1.  Think of just having a first go at it, like a draft or prototype. This strategy gives you the combined benefits of taking the pressure off ( see no.7 above)  and also gives you the opportunity to think in more flexible terms. This way you provide yourself with multiple opportunities to refine your task/project/ideas, avoiding both perfectionism and the dread of making mistakes.

 

  1. Chunk things down into doable pieces. If tasks seem too large and vague, they will appear far more off-putting. Making them smaller will make them easier to do.

 

  1. Get clear on what your very first step will be. When you think you have your first step worked out, check it out by imagining yourself doing it and asking, “What do I need in order to be able to do this?” For instance if the first step is to call someone, maybe you would need to have the number in front of you before you can make the call. So the first step is to find out the number. Then you can ask the question again. “What do I need to do in order to find out the number?” It may be you need to look it up on your computer. So the first step then becomes switch on my computer. Continue asking this question repeatedly until nothing stands in the way of you taking that first step immediately.

 

  1. Do a tiny bit of a tiny bit. This is similar to the example above, no.9 where we get put off by large or complicated tasks with lots of moving parts. Try subdividing your projects into mini- projects, and then into individual steps. One step could take maybe two minutes or less, and is therefore much more likely that it can be fitted in somewhere.

 

  1. Have a back-up plan for if things go differently to how you would like. Having a Plan B can be reassuring, and provides an alternative to get on with, should you run into snags with your first plan.

 

  1. Set a timer. Think of the amount of time that does not fill you with dread, maybe 10 mins or 5 mins and set a timer to do it for that long. Give yourself permission to stop after that.

 

  1. Make it fun. Having fun is a sure way to stimulate the brain neurotransmitters that will help you get motivated and into Action. 

 

  1. Have rewards lined up for yourself for the effort you put in, rather than using achievement alone as your success criteria. As Carol Dweck has written, ” … [W]e can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent. That has failed. Don’t do that anymore. But praising the process that kids engage in: their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement. This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient.”  from this article on Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset.

 

  1. Get support from a buddy, friend or workmate. Support from another can vary from simply  having someone in the same room while you are working, to cooperating on a task together, or asking someone to help you by regularly checking in on you.

 

  1. Pay attention to setting your environment up to suit the way you work best. Everyone is different. Some need silence to be at their best,  a tidy desk, a hot drink and their favourite pen. Others need their favourite music in the background, can work with piles and clutter all around them, drink only water, and work best in a cosy armchair. Experiment to find out what works best for you.

 

  1. Have a race with yourself. Having a race with yourself adds an element of competition and fun. Try using a timer to see how much you can get done in “x” amount of time.

 

  1. Think how you will feel once this has been completed. Will you feel relieved? Glad? Proud? Triumphant? Ready to do it all over again? Get in touch with those feelings and really imagine yourself into that place you will be after you have done this. Research reveals that future imagining and past remembering are stored in the same area of the brain. By using our imaginations to vividly create a desired future, the brain begins to tap into this information as though this future already exists, and is a memory that the brain can work with, helping the brain to problem solve and generate solutions to make your plans a reality.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.

Part 2: Procrastination: How ADHD traits can derail productivity for creative entrepreneurs

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Is it possible to procrastinate without meaning to? How ADHD traits can derail productivity for creative entrepreneurs.

Numbers on clock face with no hands

Part 2 of a Two-Part Blog

In the first part of this blog we looked at how the ADHD traits of highly variable working memory, and aversion to the routine and mundane, have a part to play in Procrastination for the ADDer. In this second part, we put two more traits under the spotlight, to illuminate whether procrastination is truly deliberate, or simply a natural result of the interplay of symptoms or traits, and therefore incidental to ADHD.

There is an oft quoted proverb which states that “Procrastination is the thief of time”. For those of us with ADD/ADHD, time can indeed disappear before our eyes, but what if the whole concept of time was different for us because we just don’t see it in the same way.

A completely different way of perceiving time:

It is said that neurotypical people divide time into discrete chunks in their heads and can estimate when five minutes has gone by without too much difficulty. Not so with those of us with ADHD traits. One common trait I find in my ADHD clients is overestimating or underestimating the time they will need to accomplish something. Task length can be frequently over or under estimated, leading to missed deadlines or projects which stretch on and on into eternity. These experiences can be unpleasant to ADDers so that they wish to avoid repeating them, the solution being procrastination. One way to approach this is to first spend some time learning about how you estimate time. Try experimenting with how much time it takes to do an activity, and write down the result. Is it more or less than you expected?

Having a broad and vague concept of time passing, leads to lack of precision in setting start times for tasks or projects. How many times have you caught yourself saying “I’ll do it later.”? When might later be exactly? Without a specific start time in mind, it can look to yourself and others as though you may be deliberately procrastinating.

Try setting a specific time of day for something you have been meaning to do for a while, like “10 o’clock on Friday 7th “, rather than “by the end of the week”. Put it in your schedule, and maybe highlight it so it stands out against the crowd. Then back this up with some well-chosen reminders, the kind which will grab your attention. You can have fun experimenting until you find a type of reminder that works for you.

When an ADDer does begin something interesting and engaging however, things can take an unexpected turn into

Hyperfocus:

One way to understand hyperfocus is to think of yourself happily flying along on the Star ship Enterprise, when suddenly it seems you’ve been sucked through a vortex into another dimension, where time has no longer any meaning in the conventional sense of the word. It’s as if the thing you are doing grows to take up all your awareness and leaves none available for noticing what’s going on around you. While you are completely absorbed it feels as though mere minutes have passed, only to find when you eventually surface that many hours have elapsed. You are so intensely interested in what you’re doing that you can literally forget to eat or sleep!

Used intentionally this trait can be an absolute boon to the creative, who can follow ideas or creative processes from start to finish in record time and be highly productive when conditions are right.

Working at night when everything is quiet and the pull from distractions and constant interruptions is at a low, or taking oneself on a retreat for a few days in solitude, has enabled creative artists, writers, and composers through the ages to be fruitful and productive in a way that is much harder and more challenging in busier circumstances.

However, being unable to bring yourself back from hyperfocusing when you need to, which is something that clients often tell me they are having difficulty with, can mean there are many other things which potentially get ignored, forgotten or pushed to one side, and this can have a huge impact on whatever you need to achieve, from paying attention to the people in your life to the day to day running of a business.

What’s the way forward from here for creative procrastinators?

We have seen how at first glance, people with these ADHD traits can seem to be deliberately putting things off, because of how they exhibit challenges in getting things done, yet dig a little deeper and there is a bit more to it than that.

A different way of perceiving time has an impact on the ability to work to routines, develop ideas, accomplish things to deadlines, and set specific times to begin things. Hyperfocusing, an immensely useful ability in the right situation, can also be something that can potentially get in the way, and have a negative impact on vital areas of functioning in life and business.

By separating out and identifying which ADHD traits are behind your procrastination, you will then be better placed to work on one piece at a time, and build up tailor made strategies to help you to do the activities, tasks or projects that have been liable to get delayed as a result.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.

 

 

 

 

Procrastination : How ADHD Traits Can Derail Productivity for Creative Entrepreneurs

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Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Procrastination Isn’t Always Intentional: How ADHD Traits Can Derail Productivity For Creative Entrepreneurs.  Part One of a Two Part Blog

Procrastination most likely affects us all at one time or another. My recent search of Amazon yielded over 3000 results for books on the subject. Someone must be reading them! This behaviour of putting things off until a future unspecified time, commonly known as ”procrastination”, probably doesn’t occur on a daily, hourly, or even minute by minute basis for most of us, and it can be particularly poignant for those of us with ADD/ADHD when it does.

Procrastination can be perceived as intentional, i.e. you are aware of putting something off, and unintentional, i.e. it just happens because of the interplay between other factors.

So, what is it about ADD/ADHD that makes the creative entrepreneurs among us with this condition so exceptionally good at procrastinating? Beneath the surface, things are not always what they may seem…

There are quite a few factors that come into play. Here are just a couple.

Working memory:  

Imagine a brain that’s as full of creative ideas as a pan of popcorn with no lid on. Ideas are continually popping into existence, but because the pan has no lid on many of them are escaping.

Then see yourself trying to catch hold of those ideas before they can slip off, because they are great ideas! One minute there you are holding in your mind a fantastic concept for how your whole business could be run more efficiently, and the next minute it has skittered off down a side alley never to be seen again! Have that happen several times a day for years and years of your life and how would you be feeling? How can you start something brilliant that you cannot reliably get a hold of a lot of the time? Devastating!

Or imagine your brain is like a computer that intermittently keeps losing its internet connection. You try going to a website to look something up, you know the information is there, but you cannot reliably access it when you need it. How frustrating is that!

Even if you can recall or keep hold of your ideas, this next trait makes it hard to work on them;

An aversion towards routine:

Suppose you have an inexplicable dread of doing the same things in the same way every day. What would it be like to hate routine? How many things would get put off as a result? ADDers often have a dislike of routine and can even have an aversion to the very word “routine”. Maybe it’s something to do with the need for novelty and stimulation and the fact that things that become boring are painful to the person with ADHD; repeating the same things over and over can literally feel excruciating.

Many of my clients are highly talented in their creative field, yet the thought of e.g. sending regular emails out to their list of potential buyers fills them with inertia. For the creative entrepreneur this can be problematic in that in any business there are a number of routine responsibilities, such as keeping on top of finances, or regular marketing activities, which help the business run smoothly.

If left uncompleted, things begin to pile up, adding psychic stress to the already complex mix of other ADD/ADHD traits. Things like paying bills or submitting tax returns can carry an unpleasant financial penalty if they are not done. The uneasy feeling of potential punishments hanging in the air means the ADD/ ADHD brain is that much more likely to succumb to overwhelm, and grind to a full stop. Procrastination reigns.

The brain saves energy when habits or routines are repeated and they become automatic. The person acquiring these habits will find they are able to complete them faster and easier as time goes on. Yet ADDers often find these tasks so gruelling that they never repeat them the same way for long enough for this to happen. Something usually comes along to knock them off trajectory, something more interesting, and I don’t think to date I have met a person with ADD/ADHD who didn’t have many interests and enthusiasms, past and present.

So, what’s the solution? :  Well, for a start, it can be helpful simply to understand that if something more interesting presents itself at a time that needs to be devoted to something perceived as boring, then the interesting thing will be the one that gets the attention.

Knowing that many routine tasks can get put off by default, can be a guide to where you can direct your energies in building strategies to address these tendencies. For some tips see my blog on How to Tackle the Boring Stuff here

For some this can mean finding ways to capture ideas quickly before they disappear into the Abyss of Forgotten Memories, while for others it might mean strategies to make the Boring become more Interesting.                                                                     

However it occurs, the reality is that putting things off can have dire effects on productivity, and for creative entrepreneurs, every minute counts. Delaying action for whatever reason, is liable to short-circuit your profit margins and your self-esteem if left unchecked.

In Part 2 I’ll be putting some more ADD/ADHD traits under the spotlight and considering how they also can contribute to the complex phenomenon we know as Procrastination.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.