The first time I read about someone like me, it was in a middle-grade fantasy novel. "The Glass Sentence" by S.E. Grove came out in 2014 and features a 13-year-old girl named Sophia Timms as its main character. In the world of the book, unique circumstances have caused everyone to be obsessed with the passage of time. Sophia, however, is different from everyone around her — her internal clock is broken. Hours might go by in what feels like a second, while seconds could take what feels like a week. Unable to judge time for herself, she relies on others to navigate her hours.
In the book, it seems like a fantastical kind of problem.
In reality, Sophia's experience is awfully similar to mine.
At 22 years old, I still have no clue how long 15 minutes is. Sometimes I'll be getting ready in the morning and start to panic, thinking that surely I've just used up 20 minutes in the shower, and get out to find that only 7 minutes have passed. Other mornings, I rush around, watching the clock, as minutes seem to tick by in 30-second intervals. What seems like 5 minutes of gathering my things turns out to be 15, and suddenly I'm late — again.
It drives my family crazy. My brother, who always arrives 30 minutes early, never understands why I always feel like I have a little more time before I should leave. My mom, who plans her days to the minute before they even start, can't understand why I can't tell her how long each task on my to-do list will take. And the years I've spent watching my best friend flawlessly manage her own time have made it pretty clear that she doesn't have this problem either.
I liked a Facebook page about ADD/ADHD a few semesters ago as part of research for my major. Around the time that I read "The Glass Sentence," articles started popping up with titles like "Are You Time Blind? 12 Ways to Use Every Hour Effectively" and "Problems Getting Up in the Morning?" While I'm pretty sure I don't have ADD or ADHD, the titles of those articles sounded oddly reminiscent of my own difficulties with time, so I started reading. The beginning of one article stopped me in my tracks:
A good sense of time is one critical executive function. It involves knowing what time it is now, how much time is left, and how quickly time is passing. Folks with ADHD tend to be “time blind,” meaning they aren’t aware of the ticking of time. As a result, they often struggle to use time effectively. http://www.additudemag.com/
So now I had a name: time blindness. It's a real thing, and it's a problem that real people have — it's not just me and fictional Sophia Timms anymore. The unfortunate thing is that there is no information that I have found on this problem if it is not coexistent with ADD/ADHD (try it for yourself -- use Google search tips to exclude results containing "ADHD" from a search for time blindness -- there's nothing there). If you're reading this and what I've described sounds familiar, don't let the ADHD label stop you. Even if that doesn't apply, there's a host of tips and tricks in the ADD/ADHD community for dealing with this inability to process time.
It may seem like a childish problem, but as I've recently discovered, this isn't the case. For me, realizing that "time blindness" is a recognized thing and not a personal failing makes it easier to find strategies to stay aware of the ticking clock. I may not ever "grow out of it," but as it turns out, I can deal with it.
