Does it work for you?

Or is it the other way round with you usually on catch up, out of synch with lingering feelings that you might have missed something. Do you do that thing where you think you can squeeze in another task… or perhaps to be on the safe side, you stop and wait so that you don’t end up being late. 

It turns out that ‘time blindness’ is a real thing and refers to a difficulty in accurately perceiving the passage of time and estimating how long tasks will take to complete. Individuals who experience time blindness may struggle with planning, time management, and meeting deadlines. This phenomenon is often associated with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Importantly, despite that fact that it can affect anyone to some degree, few people talk about it.

It sounds more than a little judgy, ‘time blindness’, as if people are beyond help and there appear to be a lot of labels associated with it. How about time myopathy? Could we use that as a concept instead?

The reality is that we are all time travellers, surfing time as best we can. Some countries and cultures pay more attention to time than others. I’ve always been curious about the border between France and Germany, with their contrasting cultural attitudes to the importance of punctuality. Time is relative anyway, and there are even places on the planet, like the top of Mount Everest, where time is measurably slower. It is only recently that we have had the means of measuring time to such granular, atomic detail.

There are generally two ways that we, the time myopic, fall foul of time:

• getting so engrossed we lose track of time

• inaccurately assessing the length of time required to complete individual tasks

The former is also known as ‘flow’ and for some on the quest for fulfilment, ‘finding your flow’ is a bit of a grail. Yet it can also lead to unhealthy habits and a pain in the neck from spending too long in front of your screen without adequate breaks. Do that too often and you are on the road to burnout… this can be avoided by setting a timer and as Brendon Burchard says ‘regardless of what zone of genius you are in when the alarm goes off’, stop, move, breathe and take a 10 minute no screen, no desk break.

The latter... I have no answers. I can only gaze in awe at the people who say they can predict how long it will take to work through their to do list.

So I have a different tack – building awareness so I can make better choices.  

Before I set the timer for a work session, I decide how I will spend that time. When the alarm goes off, I look at what I achieved and use the information about what I didn’t get done to set a more accurate intention for the next work session. Over time (accidental pun, sorry, not sorry) it is working, and I am generally getting more accurate with my intention setting.

Unfortunately, this system fails when I am not so honest with myself about: what I need to do; what is involved; or that the next task needs to be researched, before I embark on it.

Like most adults, I am still very much a work in progress.

Here is what I do know about promises

When you set an intention for a work session, you are making an honourable promise to yourself.

If you break that promise (repeatedly), then you are teaching yourself that you can’t rely on yourself. Feelings of guilt, shame and despondency could easily follow. Confidence will wither.

However, start keeping those honourable promises to yourself, then increasing feelings of self-reliance and self-confidence will follow. Yes, that’s right, you can do that for yourself!

Now that you know, is it acceptable to continue to deny that for yourself?

Ouch!

As with all challenging self-development questions, try pretending that you are in conversation with your best friend to see if it is a reasonable question to ask. If it passes the ‘best friend test’, you can take the logical (and tiny) next step and ask yourself that question.

And go easy – this self-love malarkey is quite challenging, especially if you usually do what you can to make sure you’re last in the queue for your love and attention.