ADHD Time Blindness: “Now vs. Not Now”
Maybe this sounds familiar, you ask your child to brush their teeth, and 15 minutes later you find them deep in Lego Land. Or maybe you’ve told yourself, “I’ll answer that email in five minutes,” only to look up two hours later with the email still untouched.
This isn’t laziness. It’s not carelessness. It’s a common struggle called ADHD time blindness, one of the most invisible but most disruptive struggles for people with ADHD, whether they’re 8 or 48.
A Real-Life Moment (Personal Story):
Just last night, I had a big blow-up with my son. I told him dinner would be ready in 20 minutes. When I called him to eat, he wasn’t there. I searched the house up and down and 10 minutes later I finally found him outside playing with the dog. He had completely forgotten.
By the time I got him to the table, dinner was cold. I was frustrated, angry, and honestly hurt despite knowing it wasn’t intentional, it still felt like he hadn’t listen or didn’t care. But the truth is, he wasn’t being defiant. He simply got swept up in the “now” of playing with the dog, and the “not now” of dinner disappeared from his mind. This is time blindness in action.
What Is Time Blindness in ADHD
For ADHD brains, time often isn’t felt as a smooth, predictable flow. Instead, it can feel like living in a two-box system:
Now
Not now
If it’s happening now, it’s urgent, and real. If it’s not happening now, it may as well not exist, even if it’s important, even if it’s only 10 minutes away.
How Time Blindness Affects Children and Adults
For children:
Morning routines stretch endlessly because “10 minutes” and “30 minutes” feel the same.
Transitions like ending play, starting homework and going to bed often lead to resistance or meltdowns. They know what they should do but get distracted, and by the time you remind them again, it feels like nagging.
“I’ll do it later” quietly turns into never.
For adults:
Running late to meetings or social events despite best intentions.
Underestimating how long tasks will take (leaving no time buffer) and creating constant stress.
Struggling with bills, deadlines, or meal prep because the future feels far away.
Getting hyperfocused: “I had five minutes to water the plants” turns into two hours when you also start laundry and make a quick phone call.
ADHD Time Blindness: Why It Happens (The Neurology Behind It)
Time blindness isn’t about willpower or character. It’s about how the ADHD brain processes time:
Weaker time perception: difficulty sensing the passing of minutes and hours.
Working memory challenges: harder to hold a future moment in mind while doing something else.
Reward sensitivity: what’s stimulating now always outweights something important later.
Temporal discounting: future rewards feel less valuable than immediate ones.
Delayed gratification struggles: waiting feels harder than acting in the moment.
This makes “just manage your time better” as unhelpful as telling someone with a broken leg to “just walk it off.”
Managing Time Blindness (Strategies for Children and Adults)
1. Externalize time.
Use visual timers, alarms, or apps.
Say: “When this timer rings, it’s time to start homework” or “I’ll work until the 15-minute alarm, then stretch.”
2. Make time visible.
Analog clocks, countdown timers (like Pomodoro), color-coded calendars.
Place Post-it reminders where you’ll actually see them and move them if they become part of the background.
3. Anchor tasks to existing routines (also called Habit Stacking)
“After breakfast, brush teeth.”
“After coffee, check the calendar.”
4. Chunk tasks.
Children: “Write one sentence.”
Adults: “Reply to just this one email.”
Small wins build momentum.
5. Build in buffers.
Leave earlier than you think you need to. As a rule of thumb give yourself twice as long as you think you’ll need
Set timers for transitions: “Leave in 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes.”
6. Lead with compassion.
For children: remember it’s not defiance, it’s wiring.
For adults: beating yourself up won’t fix it, tools and self-kindness will.
Whether it’s your child struggling with mornings or you losing track of time at work, time blindness is real and it’s not a moral failing. With the right tools, you can create structure where the ADHD brain struggles, and bring calm to the chaos of “now vs. not now.”
Time doesn’t have to feel like the enemy. With the right knoweldge and tools it can become something you and your child can learn to work with, not against.
Struggling with time blindness? Book a call with me to discover ADHD strategies that can help you and your family thrive.