45:Scattered to Savvy: Time Blindness and Hyperfocus Toolkit

Ever feel like the clock is playing tricks on you? You start a task “for just a few minutes,” and suddenly hours have disappeared—or you’re racing the clock and still running late. You might be experiencing time blindness. In this episode of Your Priority Centered Life, we explore what time blindness is, why it happens, and how it can impact everything from meeting deadlines to showing up on time.

You’ll learn practical, brain-friendly strategies—like using visual timers, breaking projects into steps, and setting intentional time buffers—that can help you stay aware of the clock without feeling controlled by it. Whether you struggle with ADHD or just want to manage your minutes more effectively, this episode will give you tools to reduce stress, improve punctuality, and reclaim your day.

Tune in and start managing time in a way that works for you.

Want to get a snapshot of your own life in just minutes? Take the free Prior 10 Life Assessment at www.prior10.com/assessment.

The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.

Transcript

So imagine this, you are just about to get off of work and you have a list of things that you want to do after you leave work and you're going through the list in your head, you're thinking, okay, I've got this, I've got this, I've got this. And as you're getting into the car, you see that there is a text from your partner saying, oh, we're out of milk.

Could you stop and pick up some milk? Does this make you feel like you are going to explode? If so, you might be particularly interested in what we're going to talk about today because we're going to talk about time blindness.

Time blindness is something that I find really fascinating and it was probably the big driver of why I decided to create the prior 10 life management system, one big driver at least. Because to be truthful, I have struggled with this through most of my life. That time blindness is really a challenge for me, and so I've learned some tips to be able to manage it, but let me just explain.

What time blindness is and see if you can relate. So time blindness is basically when you have extraordinary difficulty with time and it shows up in a number of ways. You may have difficulty estimating how long things will take. You may be always late, you try to be on time, but somehow mysteriously you end up late anyway.

You struggle with scheduling. You may double book appointments, you may miss appointments. You may just really have a hard time figuring out when to make an appointment and possibly you miss deadlines. So you may find also that maybe you make the deadline, but it's very difficult and you know, you may be pulling an all-nighter, you may be pushing it at the last minute to try to get it done.

Maybe as I did in college, I vividly remember racing to the psychology department building and handing in papers at the very last minute, not because I put it off, but because I just couldn't estimate how long it was going to take me to do the paper. And also I was, I was very thorough. I would get interested in the subject and I would really dig deep.

And then inevitably look at the time, oh my gosh. And then bang, I'd have to race to the building. I remember once a professor taking the paper, you know, totally humorless expression and he was just like, can I get a little close, aren't we? And I was just like, yeah, no blank. So, so yeah these are the ways the time blindness may show up.

And so if any of these things sound familiar to you, feeling like I need to have a GPS just for time that often ran through my head, then you might be interested in knowing what causes this and what to do about it. So let's look at that. So some of the things that can contribute to time blindness, our emotions certainly can play a role. If we are really enjoying something, time can go by really quickly.

When I was writing papers and also when I was a university professor, I would just get so into preparing lessons that I would completely lose track of time. I would work for hours. And so it's kind of a hyper focus thing. On the other hand, if we're not enjoying something, if something is really a drag or we're feeling more down then we may feel like time goes on and on and on. And when is this ever going to end? If we're bored, then it could just feel like time stretches and stretches and stretches.

So whether you have time blindness or not, these are really normal differences. And of course there are cultural differences too that some cultures really put a higher priority on things like schedules and punctuality than other cultures. So I often thought, I wish I was from one of those cultures that put less of a priority on time. But unfortunately in the United States, and particularly in urban areas, there's more of an emphasis on time and punctuality.

So these things can factor into our awareness of time. And of course also if this is really a chronic challenge for you, it's possible that relevant areas of the prefrontal cortex are having difficulty communicating with this, dopamine pathways are implicated in this. And so when you think prefrontal cortex, when you think dopamine pathways, if you're at all nerdy about brain stuff like I am, then you might think, hmm, sounds like ADHD.

Yes. Time blindness does tend to accompany ADHD. However, if you have difficulties with time, it does not mean necessarily that you have ADHD. There are a lot of other reasons why time can be challenging for you. I'm just listing a few. So know that you're not alone in this, and it may be related to ADHD or it may not be related to ADHD at all.

So what can we do about it? Well, there are a number of things that can be helpful. First thing that is really important to think about are external aids, and previously in this podcast we've talked about external aids and how important they are because you just don't want to rely on your brain to do everything. Give it a hand.

And so you can give it a hand by doing things like having clocks all around your house where you can see them from every room, from wherever you intend to be. Because you don't want to get into the trap of being like, oh, I don't need a clock in the dining room. I want to have relaxed family time. And I can always, the clock is in the kitchen. Well, yes, but you know, there may be times when you need to have dinner and then go somewhere.

For instance, if you eat in the dining room and relying on yourself to get up and go to the kitchen and look at the clock is probably not realistic. So really making sure that you have clocks all around the house where you can see them. Or if you don't want to do that, you could wear a watch. I personally recommend have a watch and have clocks in every room.

And you may feel like, well, a watch is really like for fashion, it's not really necessary. Everybody has the phone. True. But you know what happens when we're checking the time when we look at our phone? Well, you can easily get distracted. You pull out your phone and then you see there's a notification or a text and then, oh, let me just check this, and then you forget that you were actually looking at your phone to check the time.

Also, you may stuff your phone in your bag or something and you want to know what the time is right away. So it's just handy if you can just glance at your wrist and see what time it is, why not? So clocks, watches, alarms. It can definitely be handy. Just don't over rely on them because as we all know, you can set alarms and then you set so many that it ends up being like you just tune them out, right?

You just swipe them and then they're gone and you forget all about them. I've recommended previously the Alarmy app. That can be really helpful because you have to do more than just swipe. You have to do various things like solve a simple math problem or scan a barcode or something to be able to turn the alarm off. So it really does make sure that you're not just unconsciously swiping it, keep doing what you're doing, and forget about the time.

Okay, so setting alarms judiciously, being selective in what alarms you're going to set. Timers can be really helpful and timers can be helpful in a number of ways. One way they can be helpful is in just estimating, like being able to get more accurate with your estimates. And I talked about this in a previous podcast in episode 35.

I talked about time estimation and it can be really helpful to just with certain things where you're really not sure how long it's going to take, actually collect your own data and jot down some notes of how long it took each time. Or using an app that saved that data for you. I love doing that. So there are a lot of apps where you can just say, I want to keep track of how long it takes me to do this task.

And then just bang, just hit your phone, turns it off, turns it on, and it will say, okay, over these past five days, it has taken you this amount of time. And then you can make an educated estimate based on that of just how much you want to plan on in the future. So timers can be helpful for that.

Timers can also be helpful if you do tend to hyper focus. Then being able to set timers, so saying, okay, I am going to, for instance, if I was going to write a paper, do something that I knew could really suck me in, and where I would be doing it for hours, then I can set a timer for say, 20 minutes. You know, pick your timeframe, and then the timer goes off in 20 minutes and it forces you to just pause.

Okay, how far have I gotten and what time is it? And then you can set the timer again. So Pomodoro style, you're setting the timer repeatedly to get through the task, but it's forcing you to stop and look at the time. One type of timer that can especially be helpful is the time timer. Some of you may be familiar with this, and this is a timer that when you set it, it shows you visually how much time is left because it's red and white and the amount of red and the amount of white changes according to how much time there is.

There are other variations on this. The time timer can be a standalone thing that you can buy or it can be an app. There are also similar apps. I used to use one earlier in my days of being a therapist that would change just during the time of a therapy session. I could just glance out the corner of my eye and see that my app was turning from green to yellow to red to tell me how much time was left in the appointment.

So that can be really useful. And by the way, thinking about clocks and thinking about timers, one reason the time timer is really effective is because it is analog. And I really recommend using analog clocks, using an analog watch because the problem is when you're really busy with things, and this tip is especially helpful the more you struggle with time blindness, the more using an analog clock or a watch can be helpful to you because it's spatial.

When you look at a digital clock it may say it's 7:30, but now your mind has to really think about, okay, 7:30, so what does that mean exactly? How much time is there left? And that's where the time timer can be so helpful because it's just a quick glance. You can see visually how much time is left.

And clocks can often help you in that way much more quickly once you learn to use analog clocks. If you grew up in the digital age, you may need to kind of train yourself to use an analog clock, but it can give you that information quickly instead of you looking, you see the time, but then you have to do the additional steps of figuring out, so what does that mean exactly?

So using a more old school type clock or timer can be helpful. I had one person I worked with who had a number of different, you know, those sand-in-the-hourglass type timers. He preferred those because he had them in different time increments and he would flip them, watch the sand, and that just really helped him to estimate how much time he had left much more effectively than doing a traditional timer. So you might experiment and see what works for you.

Another way that you can do this is by using music. Now, obviously, using music is not going to give you the level of precision that using an actual timer will, but it can be a fun way to do it. It can be fun for kids. It can be fun if you just feel like you get stressed from constantly setting timers and you want to have a rough idea of a time limit, and it doesn't have to be exact.

Then what you can do is, for instance, you might say, I am going to get ready to go and I want to use this playlist. If it's a playlist that you've made, then you may know that by the time I get to this song, this is about the time when I want to be starting to grab my stuff together to get ready to leave, for instance. Or, I can't be in the shower more than three songs — something like that.

So that can be useful. And with children it can be great because since young children may have a more difficult time with time anyway, if you say, by the time we get to the song where Barney's singing or whatever, then that makes sense. Then they know, okay, I need to make sure all the toys are put away before the end of the song.

So that's another way to do it. And of course, using a planner — and this is a whole other subject, we could spend multiple episodes on planners. But the bottom line for looking at time blindness is that, first of all, the reason it's so important to have some kind of a planner is because if you try to keep all this stuff in your head, there's a very good chance you're going to forget it.

I worked with one person who said, when I encouraged them to use a planner — they had a lot of difficulty with time blindness — when I encouraged them to use a planner, they said, oh, I don't need to do that because whenever I have an appointment, I always get a reminder text, so I don't need to worry about it. I don't have to write down appointments because I get a reminder text.

Well, when I asked this person further, they did admit it's a hassle because I could have plans for the day, and then I get the reminder text and then I realize, oh, shoot, I have to do that tomorrow. So, you know, it just gives you more freedom if you have a planner that you're using instead of relying on somebody else. Not to mention the fact that, I mean, as a therapist, I certainly have had people say, oh, I didn’t get the reminder, my phone was dead, or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that's why you don't want to just rely on this system to be able to remember appointments.

So you can decide whether you want to have a paper planner or whether you want to use something like Google Calendar on your phone. They both have great features. I do a little bit of both, using them in different ways. Google Calendar of course, or whatever calendar system you use — Apple or whatever — the nice thing about that is that they will, of course, send you reminders when you enter the appointment. You can say, okay, remind me at this time.

But the disadvantage is that, again, you can get really distracted looking at your phone. So sometimes it's easier just to have something separate like a paper planner. And also, when you're using a paper planner, it gives you a little bit of time to think instead of just quickly talking into your phone and then it's done. You could talk into your phone and say, dentist, 10 o'clock on this date. But then feel like, okay, I'm done, I've scheduled the appointment.

The problem is that if you're not really thinking about how much travel time is there, how much time do I need to get ready for the appointment, and you block that off — yes, you could definitely do that in a digital calendar system, it's easy to do. But I'm just giving you a little bit of caution that sometimes it really is important not to just take the speed of something for granted. Sometimes you really do want to slow down and say, now wait a minute, how much time do I need around the appointment, not just for the appointment itself?

But try to follow the rule that if it's not written down, then it doesn't exist. So if I make a dental appointment and I don't write it down, it is not a dental appointment. Because if you're relying on your brain to remember it, even if the appointment is tomorrow, even if the dentist said, okay, we need to do this emergency work and I can see you tomorrow, don't rely on your brain. Write it down. Really, really important.

And on the subject of appointments, it can be helpful to have a rule for yourself, like 10 minutes early is on time. And the reason for that is because that way you're not stressed racing in the door. And also you just never know. I mean, you could have a meeting scheduled and somebody could stop you in the hall and say, hey, do you got a minute? And we all know how that goes — it's never one minute. It always lasts longer. Something may very well trip you up. You just don't know. You may need to use the restroom, who knows?

But allowing that little bit of a cushion really can make a difference. And depending upon the thing, you may feel like, well, 10 minutes is not enough time, I want to arrive earlier than that — that's fine. But just allow a little bit of time. Tell yourself that the actual time to be there, if the meeting is at 10, the actual time to be there is 9:50. Give that a try.

Another thing that can be helpful with time blindness is, if you have a bigger project that you need to do, these can be really difficult to estimate in terms of the time. Write down the steps so that you're not trying to do the whole thing at once, and just look at each step in turn and estimate how much time it might take to do that.

One thing that can be really helpful — with cooking, for example — if you do one of these meal kits like HelloFresh or whatever, what's great about that is they will send you the recipe, but they will have already figured out about how long it will take to make the dish. And they will also tell you, while you're waiting for the water to boil, do this. And so they've already written out the steps, they've already estimated how long each step will take.

So that's just an example that if you're trying to do something that's more complicated with multiple steps, it's a good idea to write out the steps, estimate how long each step will take, and also that gives you a chance to really think about, oh, well, I want to do this first — for instance, I want to turn on the oven to preheat before I do these other things. Otherwise, I'm going to take much more time.

And that's something — whenever I use a recipe, I look to see, does this involve an oven? Does this involve boiling water? Something where it's going to take more time? I read through it first and I circle, or I highlight if there's like an oven temperature thing or whatever, because it's really annoying, but a lot of recipes will just have you go through all these steps and they'll say, and then put it into a 350-degree oven. It's like, wait, what? I was supposed to preheat the oven? So now your time estimate is completely blown.

So doing a little read-through first can really make the difference — whether it's cooking or some other kind of project, like putting together a piece of furniture or whatever — just so that you know, oh, okay, I need to do this too, then I'd better allow for that.

So I hope that this is helpful for you to be able to more accurately estimate your time, to avoid being locked into hyperfocus, and so that you can be able to avoid the stress of losing track of time. Have a great week.