Due to circumstances, completely within my control, I will be late. (True story)
In case you were wondering, time is not this linear thing for me. For the most part, I perceive only 2 times, only two categories. NOW, and NOT NOW. That’s it. That’s the whole system.
Not “in five minutes.” Not “later this afternoon.” Not “next Tuesday.” Those all collapse into the same bucket the second they’re not imminent: NOT NOW. Which means, functionally, they don’t exist yet. Not in a way my brain can act on, feel urgency about, or locate on any kind of internal timeline.
Thank goodness my side of the family didn’t really do huge things for birthdays, or other events that are much “more” for other people. We certainly had great celebrations, Christmas, Easter, but in my family, if someone tells you Happy Birthday 2 days before thru to 2 days after, you are solid. I don’t know if they adapted that due to the spicy in my family or we just focus on other things to celebrate?
For a long time, and in keeping with the fact that neurodivergent kids get 10K+ more negative comments by age 10-12 than their peers, I thought most things were my fault. I didn’t care enough, or wasn’t organized enough, or was — the classic — just lazy. I had calendars. I had reminders. I had systems built by well-meaning people who experience time as a continuous, evenly-spaced line, and none of them worked, because that’s not the shape of time for me. Time isn’t a line. It’s more of a switch. Something is either happening right now, radiating enough urgency to break through, or it is NOT NOW — filed somewhere I cannot feel until it becomes NOW without warning.
This is time blindness, and it’s one of the most consistently misunderstood parts of ADHD and AuDHD brains. Not a metaphor. An actual difference in how the brain tracks and feels the passage of time and the proximity of future events. Neurotypical time sense works something like a gradient — a deadline three weeks out generates a little bit of urgency now, a little more next week, ramping up smoothly until it arrives. My time sense doesn’t ramp. It’s flat, flat, flat, flat — NOTHING — and then you are flying down the side of what feels like a cliff.
Have you ever written a 15 page term paper the night before, on a word processor, that has a “screen” that shows 2-3 lines at most? How did that go for you? Did you know that desert & dessert are both correctly spelled? 15 pages of a religion paper that toggled back and forth between the hot sand and the sand cookie. I got an F. The teacher understood what happened, but couldn’t get over how many times it was throughout the document. Sigh. NOW can be painful. Or not…
Here’s the part that took me decades to get to, though: this isn’t straight up a deficit. It’s also a feature, and I mean that in the most literal, unsentimental way possible — not as a reframe to make myself feel better about the Fs that are scattered here and there in my life, but as an actual operational advantage in the right context. Because I have had the pleasure of that, too!
When something finally becomes NOW, I am completely, uninterruptedly there. No gradual ramp-up, no simmering dread for three weeks beforehand, no partial attention split across a future that hasn’t arrived yet. Just total, undivided presence with whatever is directly in front of me. Because funny enough, that tip over the edge, screaming down the hill towards the goal that has arrived at NOW can get our brain to hum like a Jaguar XJS Convertible (British racing green) and our body takes action – and things are awesome. You actually want me in a crisis. I am the one in the medical emergency that is barking orders until the professionals arrive. “You call 911. You find a first aid kit. You find towels. You – Get out – your screaming is not helpful!!”
The problem was never the NOW/NOT NOW system itself. The problem was building my life around tools designed for a gradient brain when mine is a switch.
What actually works, for me, is external triggers that get me closer to a light with 3 levels vs. just on and off. These artificial NOWs get me moving, focusing, delivering before the real deadline arrives — not because I’ll suddenly develop a gradient time sense, but because I can trick the switch into flipping early. I also assume the struggle will remain regardless of my efforts – so I have also added back ups. Meds, for example, I have 2 metal rainbow tubes. I try to keep one in my bag/car and the other where I get dressed. I also have a 9AM alarm that asks me if I have taken my meds. (I do love the people who talk about the addiction of ADHD drugs– not if you have ADHD!!) I also add drive time before any meeting, so I get a reminder that I am going to need to drive soon, and that backs up to the real calendar event, which is on the calendar 15 minutes early (I do put the real time in the subject) to keep nudging the NOW button along.
If you’re a parent of a time-blind kid, a manager of a time-blind employee, or a person who has spent years being told you just need to try harder to feel a deadline coming: the ramp doesn’t exist for us. Stop building systems that assume it does. Build systems that create the cliff earlier, on purpose, where you can see it coming. Time related = external system. I have a couple of “Handlers” (they don’t like to be called babysitters) who help keep me on track when I have important things looming. I highly recommend.
The brain that lives in NOW and NOT NOW isn’t broken. It’s just a different piece of hardware. Once you build for the hardware you actually have, instead of the one you were told you should have, everything gets a little more possible.