Time Management | I’m Always Late!2020-01-31T15:49:48-05:00

Time Management Examples

“I’m always late.  I’m always behind schedule.  I leave things till the last moment.  I end up rushing.  I’m always trying to catch up.”

Adults with ADHD often struggle with being on time. They fail to plan, they don’t follow a schedule, or allow for delays and interruptions.

They end up driving too fast, cutting corners, forgetting things because they’re in a panic. Yet they cannot see why this keeps happening. It is a huge blind spot, and it costs an ADHD adult time, money, opportunities, and eventually affinity, friendships and even their job. Dr. Anthony Rostain explains what’s going on and uses a powerful analogy drawn from mountain climbers who take on the challenge of Everest.

Time management is a big issue, and as you learn to arrive on time, or ever early, you will enjoy a huge reduction in stress and frustration.

Time Management Strategies

One of our favorite techniques is to bring about metaphors that people can use in their everyday life, so here’s one that we like to use and I credit my colleague Russ Ramsey with this one. We had both liked the book into thin air and if you remember in that book the party goes up to get to the top you know of Mount Everest but there is a thing called a turnaround time and the turnaround time is the time where no matter how close you are to the summit you gotta turn around because if you don’t you’re gonna get stuck and you’re gonna get trapped and if the weather just goes bad you’re gonna die and that’s what that book is about.
So we tell our patients so there’s a this concept called turnaround time so in your life, if you’re trying to get somewhere, you need to leave by a certain time and if you don’t leave by that time you’re gonna be late and if you’re don’t and if you leave late it’s likely that you’re gonna leave in a rush and you’re gonna leave very upset etc etc. So what we want to do with you is figure out just for our appointments, where are you going to be before the next appointment? How long is it gonna take you to get here? Let’s add 10 minutes let’s calculate when your departure time is and that will be your whatever you’re doing set your alarm set your phone alarm or your computer alarm or have someone call you at that time to remind you this is the turnaround time and get going.
So of course patient says great and next week they come in on time the following week they come in on time the third week they come in 15 minutes and they sit down they look and they go doc I died on Mount Everest, and we laugh. We’re saying okay how did you die this time? You know? What was the big mistake here? and so our view is that you just have to practice and get you know like and learn from everything that it’s not like you know you’ve got to get it right the first time we are completely opposed to that. We are very much a learning model so what did you learn when you tried to start this and you procrastinate it to the last minute?
What did you learn about yourself? and did that did it did it work and what was the cost? and maybe you may be procrastinating works too well for you we’re not going to try and tackle that one right away because you’re still using it quite effectively but maybe getting mad is something what you want to work on and we get we really get into the so how how could you improve your your ability to handle emotion?
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