ADHD: Why Am I Like This? Part 8:

By this point in my investigation, I had begun noticing a strange pattern.

It wasn't just that I struggled to start tasks.

It wasn't just that I became overwhelmed by projects.

Time itself seemed to behave differently for me.

Not the clocks.

My experience of time.

People often say time flies.

For me, time seemed to do something much stranger.

It either wasn't happening yet...

Or it was happening all at once.

That became another clue.

The Jury Duty Letter

In the twenty-five years I've been a legal adult, I've only been summoned for jury duty once.

That's probably because I've moved so many times.

When the letter arrived, I opened it immediately.

I read it.

I understood exactly what it said.

The letter wasn't asking me to do anything today.

It was simply informing me that I needed to report for jury duty more than a month later.

So I placed it exactly where my ADHD brain stores everything that isn't today's problem.

The pile.

You know the one.

Not finished.

Not thrown away.

Just...

Not today's problem.

Weeks passed.

Life happened.

The pile grew.

Eventually, I found the letter again.

My jury summons had expired more than a month earlier.

I had completely missed it.

The strange part wasn't that I forgot.

The strange part was that I never felt enough urgency to do anything about it until it became today's problem.

By then...

Today's problem had become last month's problem.

That became another clue.

Appointment Paralysis

Looking back, I realized jury duty wasn't the real story.

It was simply one example.

There had been countless times in my life when I missed a deadline.

Forgot an appointment.

Discovered an opportunity had quietly passed me by.

For years, I assumed that was simply part of who I was.

Then I noticed something even stranger.

I honestly can't say I missed out on anything that would have felt better than the relief of not carrying it around in my mind for weeks beforehand.

Future obligations rarely stayed in the future.

They occupied the present.

If I had an appointment at three o'clock...

The entire day belonged to the appointment.

I couldn't fully relax.

I couldn't completely start another project.

I couldn't stop checking the clock.

I couldn't stop thinking about forgetting it.

I've come to think of it as appointment paralysis, or what many people in the ADHD community commonly refer to as "waiting mode."

It's as though the future reaches backward and freezes the present.

The appointment itself usually wasn't difficult.

Waiting for it was.

Ironically, once the appointment finally arrived, it was almost always easier than the hours or days I had spent anticipating it.

Looking back, I've come to my own conclusion.

I don't think my brain was trying to sabotage me.

I think it was trying to protect me.

If every future obligation felt as emotionally urgent as today's responsibilities, I don't think I would have had enough mental bandwidth left to function.

Perhaps this strange relationship with time wasn't simply a defect.

Perhaps it was an adaptation.

The cost, of course, was missed deadlines.

Forgotten opportunities.

And the occasional jury summons.

That became another clue.

What the Research Says

As my investigation continued, I discovered that researchers have been studying this strange relationship with time for decades.

They even have a name for it.

Time blindness.

People with ADHD don't have trouble reading clocks.

They have trouble experiencing time.

Research has shown that many people with ADHD struggle to accurately estimate how long tasks will take, remember future intentions, prioritize events that aren't immediately in front of them, and sense the passage of time itself.

That immediately resonated with me.

Because my problem was never understanding what time it was.

My problem was understanding what time meant.

Tomorrow rarely felt real until it became today.

Next week barely existed.

A month from now may as well have been another planet.

Then, without warning...

Tomorrow became today.

Next week became this afternoon.

And suddenly everything was urgent.

The Future Doesn't Feel Real

Looking back, I don't think I ignored the future.

I think I experienced it differently.

The future often felt theoretical.

Abstract.

Like reading about someone else's calendar.

Then one day it wasn't theoretical anymore.

It was now.

And now demanded my complete attention.

Researchers have found that people with ADHD often struggle with what psychologists call prospective memory.

Simply put, it's the ability to remember to remember.

Not remembering facts from the past.

Remembering to do something in the future.

That explained so many moments in my life.

Not because I forgot they existed.

Because my brain had quietly filed them under not today's problem.

Living With a Different Clock

One of the biggest surprises of this investigation has been realizing how many things I had mistaken for character flaws.

Executive dysfunction.

Emotional intensity.

Time blindness.

Each one felt like a personal failing.

Each one eventually became an explanation.

Not an excuse.

An explanation.

That distinction matters.

Understanding how my brain experiences time doesn't remove my responsibility to manage it.

It changes how I manage it.

Instead of expecting my memory to do a job it consistently struggles to do, I rely on external systems.

Calendars.

Reminders.

Alarms.

Visual timers.

Writing things down immediately instead of trusting my memory.

I've stopped viewing those things as crutches.

I see them the same way someone with poor eyesight sees a pair of glasses.

Neither one is cheating.

Both are adapting.

That realization changed the way I think about myself.

For years, I believed I had a memory problem.

It turns out I had a time problem.

That's a very different mystery.

People with ADHD don't usually lose track of time because they don't value it.

They experience time differently.

The future often doesn't feel real until it suddenly becomes the present.

Once I understood that, I stopped expecting my brain to manage time the same way everyone else's seemed to.

I started building systems that worked with the brain I actually have.

Perhaps that's the most important clue I've uncovered so far.

Not every difference is a defect.

Sometimes it's simply a different way of moving through time.

Next

Part 9: Why Do I Remember That... But Forget This?

Memory has always fascinated me.

How could I forget where I put my wallet...

...yet remember the serial number of a piece of equipment I installed twenty years ago?

Why could I remember the words to songs I hadn't heard in decades...

...but completely forget why I walked into the garage?

Like so many other parts of ADHD, I eventually discovered that memory isn't one thing.

It's many different systems.

And some of mine work much better than others.

References

Barkley, R. A. (2012). Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved. Guilford Press.

Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Brown, T. E. (2013). A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults: Executive Function Impairments.Routledge.

Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., et al. (2021). The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-Based Conclusions About the Disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789-818.

Kofler, M. J., Irwin, L. N., Soto, E. F., et al. (2019). Executive Functioning Heterogeneity in ADHD. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

Sirois, F. M., & Pychyl, T. A. (2013). Procrastination and the Priority of Short-Term Mood Regulation. European Psychologist, 18(2), 115-127.