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As the saying goes, ‘Time flies when you’re having fun!’. It’s typical for you to lose track of time when you’re enjoying yourself – but what if you find that hours are just flying by, without you noticing, no matter what the task is?
While not an official diagnosis, time blindness is used to describe an individual who is unable to manage their time, often to the detriment of their own social, professional, and emotional health. This article explores what exactly is time blindness, what it could be a symptom of, and what you can do to help manage this.
What is Time Blindness?
Time blindness refers to an inability to keep track of time, whether it’s gauging how much time has passed since you’ve last checked the clock or estimating how long it’ll take you to accomplish a task.
Typically, time blindness may be more associated with ADHD or autism; although you can still have time blindness without being diagnosed with any additional conditions as well.
What causes Time Blindness?
The causes for time blindness is still something that’s being researched.
Some studies indicate that it’s because of how we may shift between different types of attention: namely, automatic attention, which is when we’re operating on auto-pilot, usually when we’re doing something we enjoy or are very focused on; and directed attention, which is when we have to focus on specific tasks that we need to accomplish. Time blindness – in this case, it could be similar to when we’re in a flow state – may occur if we’re unable to switch out of the ‘automatic attention’ to ‘directed attention’.
Time blindness may also be caused by neurological factors, such as the physical structures in our brain. Certain research has shown that the frontal cortex in individuals with ADHD may function slightly differently; and this is the part of your brain that looks after executive functions, such as judgement and time-perception.
Symptoms of Time Blindness
While time blindness is not an official medical diagnosis, it’s still a condition that can affect your daily life, and cause inconvenience to your routine. There are certain common symptoms that may indicate that you’re suffering from time blindness; and this includes:
- Constantly being late for scheduled events: You may always be showing up late for events; or missing appointments entirely, because you’re unable to catch the right timing to show up.
- Procrastination: You may not make deadlines, or find that you’re constantly rushing your work because you’ve spent too much time procrastinating on a task, without even realising how much time you’ve taken ‘delaying’ the starting of an activity.
- Inability to gauge how long an activity may take you: It always takes you either much longer or much shorter than you expect to finish an activity; and this can affect your schedule or ability to plan out your day.
- Feeling like time is always slipping away: You find that you’re unable to manage your time and that you’re always losing track of the day of the week you’re at, or even the month.
Time blindness can have a huge negative impact on your life, whether it’s having friends who are upset with you because of missed plans or losing out on opportunities at work because you’re unable to meet deadlines.
Managing Time Blindness
There are many tactics you can adopt to manage your time blindness, and they typically boil down to helping you be more aware of the amount of time that has passed.
Use Timers
The easiest way to keep track of your time is to use a timer or set an alarm before you start an activity. You can decide how much time you want to spend doing something, and set your timer according to this; so that there’s a physical prompt to let you know when it’s time for you to wrap up an activity.
For this tactic to be successful, you also need to be disciplined in abiding by the timer. That is, you have to end your activity when the alarm rings; or, you must reset this timer again, before you continue doing the activity.
Create a Visual Schedule
Time blindness occurs because we’re unable to picture the amount of time we’re going to spend on activities. To make tangible the invisible concept of time, you can try drawing a visual schedule and hanging this in your room, or setting it as your wallpaper. Use different colours to indicate the different types of activities you’re doing; such as blue to represent your work, green to represent rest, or red to represent sports.
Making a visual schedule helps to cue your brain into thinking of your time into these blocks, and this can help guide the way that your brain processes the time you have and the time you’re spending as well.
Get Professional Support
If you find that your time blindness is having a huge negative impact on your life, it may be good to speak to a mental health therapist or counsellor for more professional support to manage this. They would be better able to identify possible reasons or scenarios in which your time blindness is most prominent; and give you effective ways to manage this.
Additionally, as mentioned above, time blindness tends to occur in individuals who have other mental health conditions, such as ADHD. Should you notice that other similar behavioural quirks that could be a sign of a deeper condition, getting professional guidance early on can be extremely helpful in helping you manage any conditions you may be diagnosed with.
Reach out to any of the professionals that we’re working together with at A Space Between. Our team is here to help you manage what you’re facing, and give you the tools and skills to set you up for success.
References
- https://www.healthline.com/health/time-blindness
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/basics/time-blindness
- https://health.clevelandclinic.org/time-blindness
- https://www.verywellmind.com/causes-and-symptoms-of-time-blindness-in-adhd-5216523
- https://www.ucihealth.org/blog/2024/05/time-blindness-and-adhd
