By Bonnie Mincu
Are Your Fantasies and Assumptions About Time Making You Late?
Many ADHD / ADD people who don’t complete things on time, or are always running late, often operate on a belief system that is based on erroneous evidence, or no evidence at all.
I’ve noticed an interesting pattern among many with ADD: The belief that a particular task will take a certain time to perform, because that is all the time that’s available.
Here is an example similar to one that came up in a session with one of my ADHD coaching clients.
. . . . . . . .
Andy, an architect, mentioned that he had a set of architectural drawings due to his client by 4:00 that afternoon. When I asked him how long the drawings would take, Andy said “I guess a couple of hours.”
At 2:00 he set out to begin the drawing, but it took time to look for specifications, make some calls to get additional information, there were interruptions…
… so Andy didn’t actually begin the drawing until 3:45.
At 5:00 he called his client and promised the drawings would be there first thing the next morning. He stayed up all night and barely finished the drawings by 9:00 .a m.
Later, I asked Andy why he had guessed the drawings would only take two hours (when they actually took 16).
Andy replied, “I only had a couple of hours to do them.”
It’s no surprise that planning and time management are a problem for Andy! He’s habitually acting on a common ADD-type fantasy: “Time will follow whatever rule I decide for it.”
Time fantasy rules can have several components:
- How Long I Have To Do It
This was the kind of logic that Andy used, after procrastinating until there were only two hours left. - How Long I Think It “Should” Take
This logic could be based on either a completely arbitrary assumption, or on how long it seems to take other people.
– Janet habitually crammed her weekends full of so many errands and ‘to do’s’ that they were impossible to accomplish.
She based her schedule on the idea that a typical errand “should” take 10 minutes. After a few weeks of actually timing how long each activity took, Janet was forced to acknowledge that nothing on her list took less than 30 minutes.
FANTASY CREATES FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY
What’s even worse than the shame and missed opportunity caused by the chronic lateness is the ADDer’s belief that “everyone else” would actually be faster and more efficient. While there are sometimes areas where efficiency can be improved, in reality, the activity in question would usually take ANYONE far longer to perform.
In any case, the relevant time is not how long it takes others, but how long it typically takes YOU.
Do you persist in holding fantasy assumptions of how much time an activity will take you, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary?
Make a conscious point of finding out how long things really take YOU to do. People who don’t struggle with lateness have assimilated this knowledge by looking at their watch and paying attention time.. Try it!
Warm regards,
Bonnie
P.S. You can learn to get out of fantasy, and make accurate plans around time and activities with a simple paper/pencil tool. This Time Sense Tool takes five minutes or less a day, for just a week or so.
