ADHD and Time Blindness – In Our Lives with Jaclyn Paul

Lindsay Guentzel (00:05):

Hello and welcome back to Refocused, a podcast all about ADHD. I’m your host, Lindsay Guentzel, and before we get into today’s show, we’re wrapping up our series on ADHD and time blindness. I want to take a minute to thank all of you who took the time to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and those of you who have been leaving comments on specific episodes you like over on Spotify, it means so much to us and as I’ve mentioned, while these things might seem insignificant, they’re actually a huge help in a number of ways. The biggest being, it helps us grow the podcast and it boosts Refocused in all of the searches, meaning more people who are looking for exactly what you found here, can discover us.

(00:49):

These reviews don’t need to be super long. In fact, you can leave us five stars on Apple podcasts and not leave a review. But if you want to leave one and are feeling overwhelmed, like “What do I write?” Here’s an example from AllstarDT67 who simply said, “A gift to our community,” which is incredibly kind, and I’m so happy to hear that you feel that way because that’s been our goal from day one; building a place where people with ADHD can feel seen and understood. So thank you AllstarDT67 for taking the time to post that. Remember, you can connect with the show directly through email [email protected] and over on Instagram @RefocusedPod and @LindsayGuentzel. We love hearing from you guys.

(01:36):

Today’s episode is the final in our series on ADHD and time blindness, meaning it is highly recommended that you press pause on this episode right here and pop back to listen to episode 134: Understanding ADHD and Time Blindness with Dr. Ari Tuckman with part two coming up right after. This makes sure you are completely up to speed before diving into today’s episode. And to make sure you have access to every episode of Refocused double check, you are subscribed wherever you’re listening right now. That way you’ll get every new episode delivered right to you every time we hit Publish. And now that we’ve got all of our housekeeping items out of the way, let’s get into today’s show understanding ADHD and time blindness in our lives right now.

(02:30):

John and I just got back from vacation. We left very, very early on a Saturday morning. Our Lyft driver was in the driveway at 3:20. It was imperative that we be packed up the night before, so it’s Friday late morning and I’m going through my undresses. We escaped the below zero temperatures in Minnesota for some much needed hot sun, and I’m trying stuff on and I put on this beautiful sundress I got last summer. It reminds me of the sunset and I have been thinking it’s going to be perfect for our trip, except it’s too big. Over the last six or so months as I’ve dealt with my illness, I’ve lost both a significant amount of weight and muscle, and now this dress that I’ve only worn a handful of times is too big. It’s an easy fix, far less complicated than other alterations I’ve done in the past.

(03:19):

Have I mentioned that one of my many hobbies is sewing, but it’s the day before we’re leaving and I’m not packed yet. The house isn’t cleaned up for our pet sitter. I still have work I want to finish that afternoon. Now obviously what I want to do and what I should do in this situation are very different. What I want to do is bust out my sewing machine, pray to God I have matching thread, save myself a trip to Joann Fabric and get to work fixing the stress that I want to bring on vacation. And there was a time, not just before I was diagnosed, but in more recent times where that’s what I would’ve done. I would’ve walked down the hall to the office, pulled out my sewing machine, covered up the dining room table with all of my supplies and gone to town, leaving my list of actual to-dos, things that really needed to get done before we left on vacation, sitting where I left them next to my still-empty suitcase.

(04:14):

I would’ve been overly confident that I would’ve been able to get it all done. Would it have been pretty? Well as a perfectionist, I can tell you that the alterations to the dress would’ve been impeccable. Everything else would’ve been done, quality not guaranteed. And so I would’ve left for my vacation with this must-have dress packed, probably not so neatly amongst my other perfectly good sun dresses, but at what cost? My sanity or better, John’s sanity, my stress level, I likely would’ve been beating myself up. I guarantee if John had walked in on me starting a sewing project when I was supposed to be packing, it would not have been a pretty conversation. But in that moment, all I could think about was, “I want this dress and I can do the alterations myself right now.” I wasn’t thinking of all the steps needed to complete the project, how delicate I would have to be while working with the fabric, how I would’ve had to fit it by myself or ask John to help me, which given his likely response, would have not gone over well.

(05:20):

Altering the dress, despite the story I was telling myself was a lot of work without a doubt, more time than I was estimating, and I was ignoring all my past experiences that were screaming at me to hang up the dress and get over the fact that I just wanted to make it happen. I didn’t alter the dress. I hung it up in the closet and I packed the other sundresses I have. And you know what? It was so humid where we were staying. I likely wouldn’t have worn the sundress anyway because it goes all the way down to my ankles and it would’ve been so hot under there. Ultimately, what stopped me from finding myself in a last minute spiral of stress before vacation was taking a minute, and thinking it through and remembering how much I don’t enjoy being stressed out, even if it ends with me wearing a cute outfit.

(06:10):

Time blindness is something a lot of people with ADHD struggle with. It can be difficult for us to accurately perceive and manage the passage of time. We can find it challenging to estimate the duration of tasks which can throw off how we plan and organize our schedules. This issue with time perception can result in procrastination, missed deadlines and challenges with maintaining a consistent daily routine, which can bring on stress and anxiety, it can strain the relationships in our lives, it can ruin our careers. Time blindness can have a huge impact on a person’s life.

(06:45):

On today’s episode, we’re going to continue to look at ways time blindness shows up in our lives. With a look back at our conversation with Dr. Ari Tuckman and the good old Aha moments that stood out from the first two episodes of the series. Plus, we’re bringing back an old friend of the podcast who will share how they manage time blindness in both their personal and professional lives.

(07:10):

I am going to pull back the curtain a bit for you. That interview with Dr. Tuckman took place months ago, like last summer. And because of Refocus Together and then all of my health stuff, we kept having to push the series back. So as I was getting these episodes ready to publish, it was the first time I had revisited them since we had our initial conversation. So there was a lot that stood out to me, and I’m going to share those thoughts with you.

(07:39):

But first I want to bring another voice into the conversation. It’s one you’ve heard here on the podcast before. Jaclyn Paul shared her ADHD story with us during our first Refocus Together in 2022. She’s the writer and creator behind ADHDhomestead.net, an incredible resource for the ADHD community that she started in 2014. She then went on to write the bestselling book Order From Chaos: the Everyday Grind of Staying Organized with Adult ADHD, which combines her experience as both a mom and wife with ADHD with solid advice, the well-researched kind of advice that she’s made a brand staple for ADHDhomestead.net over the almost decade of blogging on the site.

(08:22):

Time blindness is something Jaclyn has written about extensively exploring the ADHD quirk and its effect on both the lives of people who are neurodivergent and our partners, colleagues, family members and friends. Here’s a little excerpt from Jaclyn’s website, from the audio blog she creates to accompany the writings on her site where I think she does a great job laying out the magnitude of time blindness in the life of a person with ADHD.

Jaclyn Paul (08:47):

Our perception of time or lack thereof, lays the foundation for our biggest struggles. As Dr. Russell Barkley explains it, ADHD disrupts the fabric of time. While time feels like it should be a simple concept, ADHD’s time blindness finds some complicated ways to hurt us. Neurotypical people may wonder what could be so difficult about looking at your watch? How could you not know how long it takes to get ready for work in the morning? How could you not have realized you didn’t have time to mow the lawn before our date? ADHD makes these most basic life skills exceptionally difficult. Time blindness causes all the screw ups I just mentioned above and more. It kills our self-esteem and it exacerbates our emotional volatility. It can even put us in danger of seriously harming ourselves.

Lindsay Guentzel (09:37):

I want to share with you a little bit of our chat where I asked Jaclyn to share some examples of how time blindness shows up in her own life.

(09:44):

Time blindness can show up in so many different ways. And so I’m curious for you, what are some of the examples that you can share from your experience as a wife and a mother and a writer and developing this website and keeping it going? I have to imagine that that comes with a lot of hard lessons learned.

Jaclyn Paul (10:06):

It does. And being a writer in any kind of big project, it’s very hard to keep perspective. And even in this book, I spent a lot of time in the weeds with that, and the editorial process can be a lot. And actually, the beginning of last year, I just spent the whole of January just kind of disappeared into my editing cave. And when I turned in my final version of that book manuscript, I realized I hadn’t really thought about any… It had been a really protracted hyperfocus, and afterward it didn’t feel great. There’s the dopamine crash that happens when you take the hyperfocus thing away, and that didn’t feel great. But also, time had been passing while I was working, and I literally sat down and couldn’t really remember who my friends were, or what I had been doing for fun before I got deep in on this deadline.

(11:15):

And that’s when I realized I can’t approach a project in exactly this way again, in terms of my work balance, and day to day how many hours I was spending, because I’m sure to everyone else, I just disappeared or it seemed like I wasn’t interested in keeping up or whatever. And then, I kind of had to reverse engineer my life and figure out like, what did I do? What did I choose to do for fun, or to recharge, or to what was my social life? And I think that’s not a neurotypical thing to just completely lose time and reality in that way.

Lindsay Guentzel (12:01):

No, I don’t think so either. Well, and I love that what you said too, because it kind of takes it away from this idea. The conversations that I hear a lot about time blindness, and I laugh, because this is what happens in our household all the time, is I get asked how much time I need, I respond with, “Five minutes” regardless if it’s five minutes or an hour and a half. My partner knows that it’s not five minutes. Even if it’s a task that could take five minutes, that’s just not-

Jaclyn Paul (12:31):

Not what’s going to happen?

Lindsay Guentzel (12:33):

Not what’s going to happen. Past history has told us differently. So it’s those little things like you’re out running errands and you think, “Oh, I can squeeze in one more trip to Target.” And you can’t comprehend that that’s not something you do in five minutes. In a perfect world, yes, but then it’s an hour later, and then your whole day’s thrown off, and then everything else is stuff that you’re running late for, and the feelings of shame and all of that. And it is awful. And in prepping for this interview, and kind of going down your path as a writer, it brought me back to why I got started in journalism, and I think it is those deadlines, it’s relying on those really tight deadlines of knowing exactly when something is due, exactly when it has to go on air or it has to go out for print, and it can be exhausting because the lead up to those deadlines is just so full of unnecessary stress.

Jaclyn Paul (13:27):

Yes. Yeah. And I’m not going to say that the publisher gave me a deadline that was unreasonable and I had to work like that. I didn’t work on it at all for two months, and then I did three months of work in one month because that’s another way we perceive time around deadlines, right? Is that if the deadline is too far away, then it doesn’t feel like a real thing and your brain just won’t grab onto it as a real thing. And until there’s just that tipping point of stress that, “Oh no, now I need to work on this at the exclusion of everything else,” which is not very healthy.

(14:09):

But I definitely do the errand thing too, and I really have to write it down and write down steps like, “Walk from parking lot to the store, and walk around the store, stand in line at the register” because if I don’t actually write it all down, I won’t realize that those things are part of shopping at the store. And so, I’ll literally only leave time for how long does it take me to walk to where this item is on the shelf, and then walk to the register and then that’s it. That’s the length of time that it takes.

(14:40):

Yeah, there’s that. And then the emotional hyperfocus, I definitely get that significantly. And it’s not always a fun time because if there is then that feeling of shame where I screwed up the errand and now I’m late, because it’s bumped my entire day so that I’m… The shame around that and the way that it’s so easy to roll it all up into, “Well, this day is really a representation of my entire life” and go down that spiral of negative, that’s another part of the time blindness equation too, that it’s a lot deeper than just, “Oh, I was working and I lost track of time and now I’m running late.” It’s very complicated.

Lindsay Guentzel (15:27):

One of the first points you make, “Time blindness can hurt ADHD’S relationships both with themselves and with others.” How so I’m wondering if you can expand on that a little bit and then I guess even more importantly, to what extent?

Jaclyn Paul (15:41):

So there was a time where we had a dinner reservation for our anniversary or something, but I get to the restaurant and he is still just leaving work, and I had to kind of kill time and I guess they seated me, but it was like I waited like a half an hour just enjoying my wine flight for one. And there’s this sense, I think especially those of us who don’t enjoy attracting attention to ourselves, that every time the server comes over and it’s like noticing that your dining partner isn’t there yet, and even just that feeling of being left alone, for me, this was long enough into both of our ADHD journeys and my learning about ADHD, I don’t think I got too upset about it because I understood, but things like that can have a huge impact on relationships.

(16:47):

It can be extremely hurtful, and it’s hard because you have to have a balance of, there is a cultural importance placed on being super on time that can be damaging, while at the same time, if you make a dinner reservation and you’re 30 minutes late and the other person has been alone, or even if you say that you’ll help with something on a Saturday and then spend the entire day doing some other thing and saying, “Oh, I’m almost done. I’m just wrapping this up, and then it’s like 7:00 PM.” Those things make the other person in the relationship feel unimportant. And I get that we need to be accommodating and compassionate toward ADHD partners, but I think we can do that and also acknowledge that these things can be hurtful, they can be embarrassing, they can be damaging to our reputation with other people if we ask for help with something that we were counting on being able to get done. And it can also just convey a lack of interest or prioritizing the other person.

(18:03):

And the compassion I think, comes in when if you can have an honest conversation and say, “Look, you are my top priority. I really tried to be here on time and I feel terrible.” And talking about the actual struggle that you’re having, and I think a lot of us probably grew up as the teenager being called selfish or irresponsible because you miss curfew again. And it’s like, “But I’m not selfish.” But having someone shoot back at you and say, “No, you’re just making excuses.” That’s not okay. But I think that we do have to acknowledge that these send a clear message to other people about how important they are to us and we can end up feeling extremely isolated, like we can’t count on those relationships in our lives.

(18:48):

And so I think it can do deep damage to a relationship and even, I mean for me, with the emotional hyperfocus, if you get angry or upset about something and lose sight of what it is to experience feelings that aren’t that, that if you feel rejected or criticized, as the emotion starts to increase, the time perception decreases to the single pinpoint. And it can be very difficult to keep perspective on the relationship and our value in it as a whole when we’re in an emotional interaction. So I think it makes relationships so complicated and it can make us present in a relationship as a person that we don’t think we are, that’s not authentic to us, or that we don’t want to be, which really messes with your self-perception and self-image.

Lindsay Guentzel (19:44):

When Jaclyn joined me for this conversation, we had two goals in place. One to talk about time blindness and two, to talk about her most recent project, her first novel that she published last year under the pseudonym Lena George, it’s called She’s Not Home and it features ADHD characters. And what was so interesting about our conversation was, even though we didn’t try to make this happen, the topic of time blindness really bled over into our chat about the book, which makes total sense considering how important deadlines are to the publishing process. In fact, Jaclyn mentioned to me that people love asking her about working as a writer, a world dictated by deadlines, because they are so curious to know how a person with ADHD can handle the amount of structure that it comes with. Here’s the little piece of our conversation where she touches on the balancing act she has to perform as a writer with ADHD, and I even share a bit of my own struggles looking back at how I managed work before doing our first Refocus Together, to now.

Jaclyn Paul (20:46):

I actually love structure. I mean, it gives me a clear guideline and a really easy to grab hold of deadline, then I will work very happily. But publishing is not always forthcoming with that kind of deadline. These things take a really long time and I really appreciate when I hear a podcast, or they read a cover story, a magazine and the journalist says something about having reported on a story for two years, and I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, you’re a different person by the time this gets to everyone else.” And that can be really hard.

(21:20):

The other tricky one is a publisher can give you a deadline that’s three months out to get these edits in, and we don’t necessarily excel at conceptualizing what a three month editing deadline means. I definitely messed that up this time. The first two months of that time window, I did not spend working, as I should have been. And so that’s why the last month was so busy. And now, as I’m writing the new book, I am doing my whole thing, which I write about all the time with the mini habits and just set a goal of 50 words a day, just 50 words a day, and I can’t write just 50 words, it’s always more than that, but it’ll get me to the table. And that to me, is the most important thing is getting to the table, sitting down and interacting with the project every day, and then even if you do have a big rush at the end, it’s not quite as bad.

(22:11):

And then even after you’re done, your edits, like publishing itself is very slow, and so then you’re promoting a book that you wrote quite a while ago. You might be in a different place as a writer and a person, but that’s just how the timing of these things works. It’s, I think even more difficult if you don’t have quite a grasp on time.

Lindsay Guentzel (22:33):

And I also think too, one of the things that I’ve noticed about myself, and I would imagine that this is probably something that a lot of people with ADHD deal with is we set expectations that we are going to be perfect the first time around. I dealt with that doing Refocus Together back in October, telling 31 stories in 31 days is nuts. And I can tell you that when we do it again in October of this year, because we are, it’s going to be so much better because I learned so much, and there was a point midway through where I kind of had to go, “I had no idea what I was getting into.” And when you accept and acknowledge that and realize that, hey, that’s growth and that’s how you learn and all of that, but you have to come at it with compassion and patience for yourself, which is not something that we’re very good at.

Jaclyn Paul (23:22):

Just admitting that, “I had no idea how long this is going to take me” or, you know how long it takes to do one conversation on the podcast, but doing enough to do one a day for an entire month, the ability to conceptualize how much time that really is, that’s something that I only learn through rough and tumble experience.

Lindsay Guentzel (23:42):

So much of life is learning through rough and tumble experiences, and the unfortunate part that I struggle with is, even if I know I’m learning, I can accept that I’m learning, and I’m growing, and I can use this experience, however bad and frustrating it is to make the next time not so frustrating my inner voice, it’s not always caught up to speed and can be pretty destructive. Here’s another story Jaclyn shared on her website that I have a feeling lots of you will relate to.

Jaclyn Paul (24:12):

I once showed up for a doctor’s appointment on the wrong day after having asked my husband to stay home from work to babysit our son while I went. As soon as I got back into my car in the parking garage, my negative self-talk just spun completely out of control. This would be my entire life; making mistakes like this. My family would be better off without me. My presence in the world could only drag others down and do them harm, and just on and on and on. And for someone with ADHD, a simple mistake like this can lead to obsessive inescapable thoughts of self-harm, and it takes some brain wrangling skills to snap out of it.

Lindsay Guentzel (24:52):

I’m so appreciative of Jaclyn sharing her time and her stories with us here on Refocused. Again, if you haven’t listened to Jaclyn’s episode of Refocus Together back in 2022, I’ve linked it in the show notes and I highly recommend going back and listening to it and of course, check out her work [email protected] as well as her latest project, She’s Not Home, her first novel that even features characters who have ADHD. I’ve included all of the info for you in our show notes.

(25:21):

I mentioned earlier that it had been a while since I first recorded my conversation with Dr. Tuckman, so as I was listening back, I did a lot of reflecting on who I was when I recorded that and how much has changed and how I’ve been trying to adapt to those changes while keeping my ADHD and the symptoms I struggle with, in check. This was one of the moments that had me going, “Oh wow, I was doing that.” Let’s say I wake up and I’ve got all of this time in the morning before I have to leave for whatever the first appointment is. I used to do whatever I wanted to do and then I’d be like, “Oh, I only need a half an hour to get ready,” which is never the case, again.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (26:00):

Right.

Lindsay Guentzel (26:01):

Horrible.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (26:01):

History does not bear that out. Yes.

Lindsay Guentzel (26:03):

Yeah. Exactly. So what I’m working on is going get ready now and then you have all of the time in the world.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (26:10):

Yeah, yeah. When you’re losing track of time and then you’re realizing too late, “Oh, now there isn’t enough time,” that mad dash scramble is not reflective, right? You’re not pausing, you’re just racing, which is a great way to, I don’t know, forget to bring something, to forget to lock the door. It’s just like you don’t have that luxury of time to think about what you’re doing, so it robs you of that opportunity, which then has downstream effects.

Lindsay Guentzel (26:44):

Notice how I said I was doing that. Up until September, I had a good stretch where life felt fairly typical. Sure, I was juggling a lot of doctor’s appointments, but I was falling into somewhat of a routine, and then obviously all the hospitalizations threw that plan right out the window, but just the other day, I actually got to put that strategy: getting ready first and being ready to walk out the door before working on anything else, into action, and it worked wonders for me.

(27:17):

See, we were going to our nephews’ snowboarding competition, and we’d been advised that we’d see more of them if we came for their practice runs, which was supposed to start at 1:30. I had a couple of hours to kill and lots of stuff to do during that time, but I figured I could be ready to go and then work on my stuff, instead of waiting until 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave to get started.

(27:40):

And lo and behold, would you guess what happened? The competition was running ahead of schedule, so the practice we wanted to see was now starting at 1:15 and not 1:30. Guess who showed up on time for the new start time? Granted, I only had one of my gloves with me. True story. I dropped it in the garage. John saw me drop it, figured it was so obvious I had dropped it that he didn’t say anything to me until I noticed I didn’t have it with me as we were walking up the ski hill. Just so many lessons being learned here.

(28:13):

I mentioned John and I recently went on vacation, and I won’t lie, it’s been hard getting back to life here in Minnesota. One of the reasons, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this, but it actually fits in with what Ari shared in regards to how technological distractions can skew our concept of time, is because I downloaded a game on my phone to play while we were on the plane ride down and I straight up got addicted, like losing hours of my life, addicted. What was Ari’s line? Oh, yes.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (28:44):

Oh, you mean those devices designed by geniuses whose entire job is to figure out how to get you back onto their service and keep you there? Is that what we’re talking about?

Lindsay Guentzel (28:57):

Yes. Those devices, that’s what we are talking about. And sure there’s time for play, but I was negotiating an unbelievable amount to justify how much I was playing that game. It was my hyperfocus. And I’m really glad I took the extra time to go back and listen, really listen to my conversation with Ari, because it reminded me of this little gem of a nugget.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (29:20):

What happens is when you’re sort of in the zone, you don’t sort of pause and say, “Let me reflect upon how my day has gone. Let me remind myself about what the rest of my day holds. Let me think about my better self and the goals that I have for my life and how does this moment relate to that.” Right now, it’s just sort of this automatic knee-jerk sort of like swipe, done, and away we go.

Lindsay Guentzel (29:43):

It may seem harsh to some, and like I said, everything has its time and place, but it’s an incredibly important mindset that I needed to be reminded of, which was ultimately what got me to delete the app from my phone, meaning, if and when I want to play it, I need to download it. I can’t just swipe over and hop in. I also need to set up some parameters and likely find an app that strong arms me into holding myself to those parameters.

(30:10):

The thing is, I have a lot of goals I want to achieve, and life is harder for me right now than it has been in the past and my good time, my kick ass and take names. Time is limited so I don’t need to waste it playing a game on my phone, but at the same time, we all also need to check out every once in a while, and I think my ADHD hyperfocus means I need to be extra careful picking and choosing what outlet I want to be utilizing at any given time. I’m thinking a few of you might feel the same way.

(30:42):

I want to leave you with this for all the times you’ve struggled with time; managing it, understanding it, trying to control it, and for all of the feelings that have been brought into your life because of it. This is not something to be ignored. It’s not something that we’ll likely just figure out or grow out of. Yes, there are things we can be doing to help ourselves, but we are hardwired to have it be more difficult for us, and I need you to remember that: the impact in our lives, it collects and intensifies.

Dr. Ari Tuckman (31:13):

It’s like that death by 1000 cuts, right? It’s not that one sort of major crisis moment. It’s not like some massive trauma of being assaulted or getting into a car accident or whatever. It’s just that slow wearing away, that million and one times. And it’s not just the sort of the ones that are witnessed by others, so to speak, where it’s, “Here we go again. Everyone sees I’m late coming to work,” but it’s all those times that even when you do get to work on time, let’s say there’s this sense of like, “God, man, if they only knew, sure, it’s 8:59 and I’m walking in or 9:01, but man, if they knew what the last 20 minutes looked like.”

Lindsay Guentzel (32:00):

I’m so grateful to Dr. Tuckman for sharing his time and expertise with us here on Refocused, and I love that you all are connecting with these episodes. So many of you have reached out on Spotify to let us know that you’ve been loving these conversations on time blindness, and that makes me so happy to see. We want to be creating work that you connect with. I had such a good time putting together this hodgepodge of an episode for you along with my team, Sarah Platanitis, Phil Rodeman, and John Borland who helped with the first two episodes on time blindness, as well as my interview with Jaclyn Paul. We have some changes in store for you here on Refocused that we’ll be sharing with you soon. Remember, you can always connect with us directly [email protected] and on social @RefocusedPod and @LindsayGuentzel.

(32:46):

In the meantime, take care of yourselves and in an effort to reduce the unbelievable amount of stress we all carry around with us unnecessarily, please be a little kinder to yourselves this week.