ADHD and Time Management
How emotions can help with understanding time.
ADHD is characterized by difficulties with executive functioning, which includes skills such as planning, organization, and time management. These challenges can make it hard to stay on track with tasks, meet deadlines, and juggle multiple responsibilities. Understanding how ADHD impacts time management is the first step toward finding effective solutions.
We know that ADHD’ers struggle with time perception, time processing.
Individuals with ADHD do not always have significantly worse performance on time perception threshold tasks when compared with controls. There are times when individuals with ADHD better detect emotional stimuli.
Research on the perception of time that was related to emotional stimuli, together with neutral stimuli, those with ADHD scored significantly higher when compared with neurotypical children, but only for emotional stimuli, and were also better at interpreting positive and negative emotional effects of the stimuli The findings of this study suggested that when a neutral task related to time discrimination was assigned, those with ADHD scored lower and had some difficulties, but when emotional stimuli were included, those with ADHD did better and appeared to be more focused
I was curious to know why when I listened to music I was able to understand how much time was passing then if I was in a silent room.
Of course, the tracks of the songs have how long they are but for me music is emotional, so according to this research, time estimations are better when emotions are associated with them. I’m curious how we could use emotion to help us understand our time perception and time processing better.
What are some ways we can add emotion into our tasks to help with our time perceptions?
Music, audio books, body doubling with a loved one or support person. I think all these things can help you with adding that emotional piece to tasks to understand how time is passing. Also hitching something emotional to the task may help it get done a bit quicker and have a better perception of how long it takes.
I wonder too if this is part of why inviting a guest over to our homes creates the need to clean and get organized. The emotions associated with wanting the home to be clean for them and the excitement of spending time with those we love.
Another area in which those with ADHD tend to struggle is the perception of time being “now or not now” meaning the steps or places in between in time are hard to understand or perceive.
There is pressure in the now, it feels urgent. Many times ADHD brains struggle to determine the now/not now. The other worry is if we put it in not now we will forget.
This is where practicing to begin to ask the question “where else could this task land?” When we begin to look at the fact that the task could be down road, creating a system of a storage space for the not now tasks can help us to remember that we did have other things to come back to. Maybe that's a post it, a journal, a google doc. Whatever works best for you. But having a dedicated “not now” list can help our working memory!
Try some of these time management strategies, be creative, share with me what works!
Reference:
Nazari MA, Mirloo MM, Rezaei M, Soltanlou M. Emotional stimuli facilitate time perception in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. J Neuropsychol. 2018