How many times have you said these words? It feels terrible to be late—to work, to your doctor’s appointment, to your meeting, to meet a friend, getting the kids to school, and even worse, picking the kids up from school. How can you stop this cycle? How can you improve your time management? ADHD coach Kay Grossman, M.A. explains that effective time management requires two skills that people with ADHD often naturally lack, but can learn–planning and marking the passing of time. According to Grossman, the best prescription for being on time includes:
planning ahead on a daily basisemploying strategies that use the individual’s preferences and personal styleusing external cues to indicate elapsed time
Grossman provides a few no-fail solutions for addressing specific time-management dilemmas.
Challenge: Planning Too Many Activities
How many times have you committed yourself to too much? Grossman says that this over-scheduling occurs quite often. Sometimes we become too gung-ho or unrealistic about the number of things we can get done in a given period. Other times, we may have difficulty saying “no” to requests others make of us. Unfortunately, over-committing and over-planning simply sets us up for frustration.
Solutions:
Challenge: Having What You Need to Get Out the Door on Time
It’s time to go, but your necessary items are scattered all around the house. Where are those car keys? Where are my glasses?
Solutions:
Challenge: Having Too Much to Do in the Morning
You can’t decide what to wear. Your shirt is wrinkled, so you have to iron it. You finally decide what to wear, but now one of your shoes is missing from the closet.
Solutions:
Challenge: A Lack of Internal Cues That Help You Judge the Passing of Time
How many times have you been engrossed in an activity on the computer and lost track of time? This happens to people with ADHD quite frequently. We get involved in an interesting activity, completely lose our sense of time and as a result, we miss an important meeting or picking the kids up from school on time.
Solutions:
Challenge: Estimating How Long Specific Tasks Take
Grossman notes that with a fluid ADHD-style time sense, it is difficult to know if there’s enough time to finish a report the morning before the big meeting, to take one last phone call before leaving to drop off the children at soccer practice, or to make “just one stop” en route to the doctor’s office in time for the appointment.
Solutions:
Challenge: Failure to Account for Time Eaters
What are time eaters? Grossman explains that time eaters are the seemingly trivial, peripheral activities that accompany most actions we take, eating into our time without our awareness. They include traffic snarls, searching for parking spots, walking from parking lots into buildings, elevator delays, finding the right office, and the need to run back to the car for a forgotten item. Time eaters also show up at our workplace, interfering with on-task effectiveness. They include phone calls, audible e-mail alerts, and stoppers-by.
Solutions:
Challenge: A Desire to Avoid Being Early, Which Results in Being Late
Grossman notes that some people simply don’t like to arrive places early. They may dread the discomfort or tedium of waiting for a meeting or appointment to start.
Solutions:
The next time you find yourself running late, review Grossman’s list. Find your “challenge” and try each of the suggested solutions. You may find yourself arriving places on time (maybe even early!) and feel much more relaxed and happy.
