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Why time feels different when you’re neurodivergent · The Neurodivergent Lens

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Neurodivergent Lens.
• 0:07
  We are so excited and grateful that you have chosen to join us.
• 0:11
  In this episode, we discuss the idea that time is not your friend and how to tame the time demons.
• 0:18
  I'm your host, Meryem Hassan, and I'm joined today by my friend and colleague Emma Lord-Jenkins.
• 0:26
  A very familiar nemesis point that we're going to be discussing now.
• 0:33
  Time is not my friend- taming the time demons.
• 0:37
  Emma.
• 0:39
  I think we're going to have some fun with this, because I know in myself, how time shows up and sabotages me and gets in my way.
• 0:48
  You're nodding your head.
• 0:49
  Yeah. Me too.
• 0:51
  Absolutely, in lots of different ways, I don't know where to start.
• 0:54
  Yeah. I mean, yeah, where do we start?
• 0:56
  So I suppose a good starting point is punctuality.
• 1:01
  I mean I'm smiling but also I cringe inside when I think about punctuality.
• 1:06
  When I think about experiences that have happened in my life, from getting to school on time, from getting to appointments on time, from getting to work on time, from time management in general.
• 1:18
  It does something to me internally when I think about time, and my life is very governed by time.
• 1:24
  But that sense of punctuality, not being able to meet time deadlines, fills me with dread.
• 1:32
  I don't know what your experience is?
• 1:34
  I think it's such a societal expectation, particularly, I don't know whether it's particularly Western culture, I feel like it might be, but you know, Everything is built around time, isn't it?
• 1:42
  So if time is something you struggle with, then you're not meeting one of society's basic expectations.
• 1:49
  So for me, I think, for me it shows up in a different way.
• 1:53
  So we’ll talk about hyperfocus in a little while.
• 1:56
  But I sometimes underestimate or overestimate how much time I have, so it's about estimations of time.
• 2:01
  My anxiety has kept me in check for the most part, I tend to be quite good at turning up to things on time, but I've worked with many people, who really struggle with time.
• 2:10
  And I do too, just in a different way.
• 2:12
  What I've come to know, anecdotally, is that there is something that happens in a neurodivergent brain, I like to think of it as time slippage, time slippage rather than time management.
• 2:24
  Time management, for me, feels like it's a disparaging, accusation that's thrown at somebody - you can't manage your time very well.
• 2:33
  Whereas my sense is and from from anecdotally, from working with people, Something happens in a neurodivergent brain and there's a time slippage or a time clash.
• 2:45
  that goes on. You talked about impulsivity.
• 2:47
  I recognise impulsivity as well.
• 2:50
  Impulsivity for me in that sense is I'm thinking numerous things in one go.
• 2:56
  I want to, for instance, I want to set the dishwasher before I leave home.
• 3:00
  I've got to make sure that my bag’s packed.
• 3:03
  Where are my keys?
• 3:04
  I've got to ensure that I've got my shopping list, because I'm going to be popping in to somewhere on the way home.
• 3:09
  I've got, I'm balancing a number of thoughts, and I know that they say women multitask really well, but With a neurodivergent brain, there is something about not experiencing time in the same way.
• 3:22
  Yeah. You’re nodding again.
• 3:23
  Well, I think again, there are lots of different reasons I think executive functioning comes into play a little bit.
• 3:28
  So you’re just talking about it's balancing all those things at once, so for me it's, I might lose my keys.
• 3:34
  I might have a safe space, for my keys but there might be like 5 or 6 safe spaces and they become redundant because It's like having seven to do lists on different bits of paper.
• 3:43
  There's no point having a to do list then is there?
• 3:46
  So I think Executive functioning can get in the way of time management because it's difficult to balance all this and juggle all those different tasks.
• 3:53
  Also, I'm not very good at budgeting time.
• 3:56
  So for example, I might think I've got it all really, like, I think I know my schedule really well, but if anything goes wrong, I don't budget that time in for anything else to go wrong.
• 4:05
  There's so many things that affect it- working memory, and there's a term you were talking about time slippage, one that I resonate with, is time blindness, which is particularly used to describe ADHD experience, but I presume, I would think that you might relate to this as well.
• 4:20
  And it's that difficulty estimating how much time has passed.
• 4:23
  So not really knowing what half an hour feels like versus an hour, for example.
• 4:28
  And if you're hyperfocusing.
• 4:29
  So if you're really invested in a project and you're hyperfocusing, that's even harder to estimate how much time has gone by, because when you're in that flow state and you're really enjoying yourself, three hours might feel like half an hour.
• 4:40
  And then in that time, you might not have done some essential tasks like feed yourself, go to the loo, or whatever it might be.
• 4:46
  Which is a really good point, actually, because often when neurodivergent individuals are hyper focusing, then actually time slippage or as you said, time budgeting can, that's one of the first things that I think actually gets altered and impacted.
• 5:02
  And I work with, or have worked with some clients where their estimation where, as you said, time budgeting, their estimation of time.
• 5:11
  It's not just about how long is this task going to take me, but a very valuable point that you've made is that sense of how do I factor in the unknowns, you know, how do I factor in that the tube’s not going to be working or there's going to be an accident, or that actually something unexpected has come up and and it's really it's a really valuable point.
• 5:34
  You mentioned time blindness.
• 5:36
  I'm really aware that I've had people say that they really struggle around reading clocks and watches in a very chronic way, like really crippling way to the point where it's really upset them and dysregulated them, where they look..
• 5:52
  So what do you think is behind that then?
• 5:54
  My sense is that each of our brains are hardwired differently, and the way I like to think of it is that it's one of those neural pathways, perhaps, that has become deviated or hasn't, hasn't created perhaps in the way that somebody else's neural pathway has.
• 6:14
  They say that you can actually recreate neural pathways and so a lot of challenges you can kind of recreate neural pathways that may help with certain things maybe like reading time.
• 6:27
  But I just want to be very clear, I don't think we can recreate pathways to kind of eradicate neurodivergence.
• 6:34
  So I just want to be very clear about that.
• 6:36
  I feel like I’ve heard reading time, I'm sure there's loads of reasons for that.
• 6:40
  For me, I think it might just be literally forgetting what I've read straight away.
• 6:42
  It doesn't stick in my head.
• 6:44
  I'll use Alexa to set like little time reminders, like, and that helps me estimate when 50 minutes has gone by or whatever as well.
• 6:50
  So it almost reinforces that learning, I guess, right?
• 6:53
  You know, learn being able to estimate time.
• 6:55
  But I imagine there's other reasons for why people struggle with reading time in that format as well.
• 6:59
  It's something about perhaps episodic or semantic memory that sense of episodic memory, actually, it's how something is actually captured in the memory and how it's then represented, and then that sense of how for, for dyslexic individuals, how we manage that kind of spatial reasoning and the priority, the priority that's given in the brain for that particular task.
• 7:23
  It’s made me think of an app that I've had off recently, and I can't remember the name of the app, but it's about reinforcing a memory in three different ways.
• 7:30
  So you do something and you get like a click sound, and then you write it down and there's something else like three different ways to, commit that memory to your head.
• 7:38
  And I guess, yeah, it's finding ways that work for your brain.
• 7:41
  Okay.
• 7:41
  I think of that as like, kinetic learning.
• 7:44
  So then actually you'll kind of reinforce it through sound, talking and written mediums, so And everyone has a different learning style so it makes sense.
• 7:52
  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly exactly. That sense of taming the time demons, that sense of taming this kind of nemesis, this inescapable plague of time when it's so prevalent and so dominant in life is a really interesting one because on a more kind of like serious note, There are so many people that have lost their jobs because of things like punctuality or because of how other people are reading that neurodivergent individuals’ struggle around time.
• 8:24
  You know, I've often heard employers say, oh, yes, well, this person well, they just were very disrespectful of other people's time and so therefore we had to get rid of them.
• 8:35
  They’re unreliable because they can't even do this, they can't even be on time for a meeting.
• 8:39
  Even if they can do some other amazing things that all goes out the window if they can't come to this meeting on time.
• 8:44
  And that's a concept I feel that got turned on its head when we hit obviously a very difficult time with COVID, but then suddenly we had to trust, employers had to trust people working from home more.
• 8:58
  Employers had to kind of expand their mindsets around what is it that we're asking of individuals, what's the priority here?
• 9:09
  I think COVID, yeah, there's again, there's pros and cons, I think, for many people it allowed that flexibility, which was really helpful, and people working from home you can manage your own environment, that could be really helpful.
• 9:20
  For me personally, working from home is what led to my diagnosis.
• 9:24
  Because I realised that without that structure and routine and somebody else helping me manage time, I really struggled to work from home.
• 9:30
  But I also know people with ADHD who find it the exact opposite.
• 9:33
  So you know, there's a lot of variation within, you know, one condition on paper if you like.
• 9:38
  You've made a really valuable point in the sense of how somebody's talents and somebody's ability to do a job or to do the thing that you've got them there to do, gets superseded by the fact that they can, punctuality shows up, or is a social construct that they get judged by.
• 9:58
  And I think the expectation is that they can just fix it themselves because most people can, you know, turn up on time and, and measure time in a, in the typical way.
• 10:07
  So not enough support is given and not enough understanding is given.
• 10:10
  And maybe There's an assumption that if you can't even show up on time, then you can't be good at the job in every other area, but we know that's not the case.
• 10:16
  And for me, what feels important about that, and I really hope that the message that goes out, more widely is that actually, if we all had a bit more tolerance and had more awareness in terms of how time shows up for neurodivergent individuals, and we depersonalised it, [Yeah] and stopped weaponising it, then actually we would get so much further, we would really be able to engage with people's talents and abilities to do the job or whatever it is at hand.
• 10:48
  There are so many strategies that can help, like the Pomodoro method, which is 20 or 25 minutes working - 5 minute break, that can really help to introduce a structure of time, also helps you to manage your energy, so it could be helpful for that reason as well.
• 11:00
  That's quite a helpful one for many people who are neurodivergent and not just neurodivergent, just people in general.
• 11:06
  You know, you've got apps, you've got, lots of different ways to measure and set little chunks of time.
• 11:11
  But I think there's a bit of a shame around it because it almost feels like, almost feels childish I think, people feel that they can't say that they need support in that area because, you know, these are the basics you should have covered at school, actually, and you should by now, when you get to adulthood and go into the workplace, you should have that down, but that's just not realistic for a lot of neurodivergent people.
• 11:29
  If you go through life and time has always been a bit of an issue, but you don't have the support necessarily to manage it, then it can crop up elsewhere, and it's not just work.
• 11:36
  You might miss appointments, really important health care appointments.
• 11:40
  You might show up late and feel the shame of that, and then not book another appointment for whatever it is you might need.
• 11:45
  So there's other ways that time can or time blindness or time management can crop up.
• 11:51
  And the thing that it took, while you were talking where it took me was in exams.
• 11:57
  So when I, so at university when I was diagnosed with dyslexia, one of the things that they offered to me was a little bit of extra time in exams.
• 12:07
  Yeah.
• 12:07
  And whilst I appreciated that and it felt like that was a kind of structural accommodation, [Yeah] there was no real discussion about how I could actually work around time in general in my, in my life.
• 12:24
  [Yeah] And that again, that was a discovery.
• 12:27
  They were kind of trials, hits and misses that I had to come across.
• 12:31
  How do I time manage better?
• 12:33
  Or how do I actually, One of the strategies that I used to employ for myself was setting two alarms, when I set an alert or a time for when I need to leave, I set an alert at a time half an hour before that [Oh, I do that] to alert myself, you know, nobody taught me that.
• 12:50
  That was just something that I actually came up with for myself and it sounds like you did too.
• 12:54
  Another example of dyslexic creativity, though, isn’t it?
• 12:57
  Coming up with your own strategies.
• 12:59
  Yeah. No, I do that.
• 13:00
  I set up a set up what, it takes me about five alarms to get out of bed, that's a whole other issue, but no I definitely do that where I’ll set an alarm maybe ten minutes before I have to leave and then I know I've got a short amount of time to to get out the house.
• 13:11
  And I do that every day, actually, for when I have to get somewhere on time - it doesn't always work.
• 13:16
  Earlier we were talking about how we can't factor in the unknowns, but actually What I do tend to do more automatically now is what I call contingency planning.
• 13:27
  Is that sense where I sit there and I go, okay, so I'm going to be going for work, going to work.
• 13:32
  It takes me X amount of time to get there, but actually if I hit a hitch, it may take me X amount of time.
• 13:40
  If I have to come out of this station or that station or, so I'm actually going the extra mile and thinking about contingencies, and I build in [What a strength!] an extra 20 minutes, and then so, it's so, I work backwards from that place.
• 13:53
  But think about that, that that skill set might lend itself to other things like risk assessments or you know, being very detailed in the workplace, for example, like, you know, there are benefits to it as well.
• 14:03
  I agree, my sense is that there are benefits to it, and that comes down to the gifts.
• 14:07
  Once, I think, a neurodivergent individual can recognise that there is time slippage or time management issues going on.
• 14:17
  Then, for me, it's about keeping that in your awareness, build that into your everyday actions, and once somebody does that, then that sense of being able to You control it rather than it controlling you.
• 14:31
  So once we can employ that with raised awareness, then that sense of being able to kind of factor in the things that we need to becomes easier.
• 14:40
  I'm not saying, I mean the important message here is that This is actually an incredibly crippling aspect in neurodivergent individuals’ lives, which is why we've named it as a nemesis.
• 14:54
  Yeah.
• 14:55
  And like everything, it can be both.
• 14:57
  And I think there's also something really freeing and great about having unstructured time, especially if you're in hyperfocus mode, but I think it's important to build that in as well.
• 15:06
  It's, you know, because, yeah, society doesn't accommodate, a lot of neurodivergent traits.
• 15:11
  This is one really good example, but actually making sure that in your day, you do have that unstructured time where you can, you know, let go of it and not measure time.
• 15:18
  You might do your most creative and best work in that time, so I think it's important to recognise that as well and make things work for you, and not just have to make, you know, fit into societal expectations all the time.
• 15:28
  But that's easier said than done.
• 15:30
  Well it is when we live in such a kind of structured environment where time is money.
• 15:36
  [Yeah, absolutely] That phrase just kind of dominates, doesn't it?
• 15:39
  Time is money - and actually, you know, we all need to be making sure that we are respecting time in that way.
• 15:46
  But then if you given permission, like say if you have quite a strict work schedule, but I don't know, once a week you have the unstructured half day. Right, you go and work on whatever creative project you want.
• 15:55
  Then, time is money might apply there too, because actually that might, you know, lead to some really interesting ideas, or do you know what I mean?
• 16:03
  I do.
• 16:04
  My sense is also is that this is where neurodivergent individuals perhaps can, monopolise this in a way where they can turn it into a gift, is that sense of if we're able to be able to speak our neurodivergence, and I know that it isn't possible for everybody, because outing ourselves in any environment is incredibly difficult, and as we've already discovered, it brings up shame and trauma responses.
• 16:32
  But if we can speak our neurodivergence and we can speak to people around us and say, I need the time, because actually what Winning back, gaining back time is going to do is it's going to make me think more creatively.
• 16:48
  It's going to make me be able to really drop into a hyperfocus place, [yeah exactly that] then it's a win-win situation all round.
• 16:54
  Yeah, and I think time doesn’t, time just doesn't work the same for a lot of neurodivergent people.
• 16:59
  I mean, I think about how I work best and it's not necessarily to a structured routine.
• 17:03
  Sometimes it is, but more often than not, I have to go with the peaks and flows of my energy, and that doesn't fit into a conventional time schedule a lot of the time.
• 17:10
  There's really, it's hard to find jobs that match that and I think that's probably why I'm self-employed.
• 17:15
  And there's a lot of people who are neurodivergent and maybe a bit more entrepreneurial because it suits that style better.
• 17:21
  Absolutely.
• 17:22
  And I and again, that's where it becomes a gift when a neurodivergent individual recognises what their strengths are and that they want more flexibility, they're then creating that more authentic life, there happier, healthier.
• 17:38
  [Yep] They're also able to self-regulate better and you know, as we've often talked about is really regulating that nervous system response.
• 17:46
  But it takes time to get there, and as we've talked about previously, it's also a privileged position to be in.
• 17:52
  You know, [Yes] like I've said before, I've got the, the privilege on my side I suppose, and the support and the awareness, whatever, around me, that I can create that lifestyle.
• 18:01
  Not everybody [No, no] has that same luxury.
• 18:04
  And I'm just recognising that also the privileged position that I come from is I work in an environment where I've had to really manage my time very well.
• 18:12
  Yeah. And of course, that's.
• 18:14
  Yeah, that's also important.
• 18:15
  I'm not saying that everyone should have to do it with time and live in a completely unstructured, free society.
• 18:21
  But I think there's room for both, isn't there?
• 18:23
  And, you know, it's I think it's not it's having strategies in place to support people to manage their time because of course that's helpful.
• 18:28
  There's lots of benefits to that.
• 18:28
  But it's also recognising that, there's a balance and to also incorporate some unstructured time in there as well.
• 18:37
  Thank you for joining us today.
• 18:39
  I hope that you will join us next time as we delve further into more conversations around neurodivergence.
• 18:45
  And don't forget to share your stories with me.
• 18:48
  And if you liked what you heard, then subscribe and let's keep the conversation going on neurodivergence.