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Episode 8 - A Timely Look At Time Blindness
87 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Paul and Martin (co-Mayors of ADHDville) take a look at the reality of Time Blindness. Paul forgets which episode he's supposed to be recording, and Martin's Accountant might be good at figures but he knows nothing about ADHD.
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Put quill to paper and send us an email at: ADHDville@gmail.com
Theme music written by Freddie Philips and played by Martin West. All other music by Martin West.
Please remember:
This is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals.
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Transcript
Creative Directing with ADHD
00:00:00
Speaker
Have you got an anecdote to kick in with? Well, it isn't really related to this topic, but I was talking to the accountant and he asked me, so what do you do? And I said, I'm a creative diary director.
00:00:26
Speaker
And we'd already talked and said that I had ADHD and that's why my taxes were late. And he said, you're a creative director. Isn't that like very detail orientated stuff?
00:00:45
Speaker
I said, yeah, actually where this is going. I can see where this is going. Right. I said, yeah. Yes, I have ADHD, but that that doesn't mean that I'm just airy, fairy and my head's in the clouds. And yeah, you know, you can actually just, you know, part of that is the hyper focus part where you're just
00:01:13
Speaker
hyper-fixated on that project and all of the details have to be right and that's part of what ADHD is. I think he was definitely in the camp of not thinking that ADHD was a real thing.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas this is just sort of the case, isn't it? Like, well, I think with the next, our next episode about hyperactivity, you know, I just, people's perception is like, oh, teenage boys jumping around the class and causing trouble. That's pretty much, you know, end of conversation, you know, in their heads.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:01:59
Speaker
Right, OK, well, with that, welcome to Old Geezer's talk about ADHD. A D H H D A Old Geezer's talk about ADHD.
00:02:32
Speaker
So because of the whole time lag thing, because I'm in the USA, you're in Italy. Hello. Ciao. It never really syncs up.
00:02:48
Speaker
But I kind of like that. It's a kind of a rambling mess. It's a beautiful rambling mess.
Hosts' Background and Friendship
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah. It's a kind of unprofessional professionality going on. It's out there. So hello. Hello everyone. I'm Paul Thompson. I was recently diagnosed ADHD after 55 years of being distracted by random squirrels.
00:03:13
Speaker
and I'm Marty West and I was diagnosed by ADHD. Wait a second, I was diagnosed by ADHD. Yeah, I think that probably sounds about right to be honest. Yeah, so I've had it for a while. A while, I haven't. Bye.
00:03:34
Speaker
So we just happen to be two old geezers who, by coincidence or not, after 39 years of friendship, discovered that they were co-ADHD-ers. I'll just put it in the notes there, because I just love this kind of stuff.
Anecdotes and Humor
00:03:55
Speaker
Apparently friendship in German is Freundshaft, which sounds way better. So there you go. 39 years of Freundshaft.
00:04:03
Speaker
Now it's really important to say that this is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals. No. So don't take any advice from us. No, no, no. We're just here remembering fools. We're just making up as we go along. We're just here as an all-inclusive ADHD park bench with a onesie and a full packet of fruit pastels.
00:04:31
Speaker
Oh, I love me some fruit pastels. I like the black ones. Yeah, I would consume those things in like, there would never be like, like a kind of example of, oh, I left couple in the packet.
00:04:48
Speaker
People are like, I would follow through to the one right at the end. Absolutely. I'm still here. Go on. I just want to say that every time that you get to the after 39 years of friendship, you always want to make it less than that. Like it's somewhere around 35. Somehow, my mind wants to say 39.
ADHD Medication Effects
00:05:13
Speaker
It always comes out as 35.
00:05:15
Speaker
weird yeah oh don't stop me on numbers and ADHD that would be another episode anyway still here then grab your bento box and let us take you to ADHDville an imaginary town that we've created in our minds where we like to explore different parts of ADHD
00:05:36
Speaker
Right, in ADHDville we have the Town Hall and which is where we sit as co-mayors of ADHDville and this is where we take care of business. So, the meeting of the week. How was your week? Good, bad,
00:05:57
Speaker
again. Ooh, Skeena's been a real mixed bag, mixed bag Martin, mixed bag. I started New Meds, Ritalin, going really well.
00:06:09
Speaker
It's written out really well. I haven't had a headache for four days. No migraines, no headaches. Amazing. So that's good. Generally feeling like smoother and really happy that I moved on from Provegeal to Ritalin.
Lifestyle Changes and ADHD
00:06:26
Speaker
Um, way better, way better because it's got, it's got a slow release. Oh yeah.
00:06:31
Speaker
All right. And Baba says that. Yeah. Part of that, oh, and giving up, oh mate, I know this is a theme, giving up alcohol I know is like, is really done wonders for me. So it's like, even if I hadn't been diagnosed recently with ADHD and I'd just given up alcohol, I'd think I would have just been felt so much better anyway.
00:06:59
Speaker
It's made a huge difference. Yeah. Uh, just so happens they're dovetailing, you know, those two things. Cool. Good for you. Um, on a lighter note, my dog ate a whole she, he found on the street, a whole, uh, croissant that was not Nutella field. Okay. It was filled with Nutella. So, uh, yeah, next podcast, I'll give you an update on that one. Yeah. Bad update next week on that one.
00:07:25
Speaker
All right. So Rudy got taken to the, to the vets or, or, or just no, I'm not like that. He's unfortunate. He's like me. I'm really, I, uh, 20 years I've been living in Italy and I've never had a GP until three weeks ago. So unfortunately Rudy gets the same treatment. He could be like, like falling apart and I don't take him to the vets and he's fine. He's fine. He's fine. No, he's really fine.
00:07:56
Speaker
All right. It's hanging in there. How was your week, Martin? Again, mixed bag. My wife's been on a work trip for a couple of days. So that's been a complete disaster as far as really. Well, yeah, I mean, it's been a disaster as far as getting food
00:08:24
Speaker
Right. Done. So I do all the cooking. Right. And I cook like three meals a day. And and
Understanding Time Blindness
00:08:34
Speaker
because I don't have her to cook for, I'm like, Oh, I can't be asked to cook away. So you're talking we're talking takeaway. Not even that. Not even that.
00:08:47
Speaker
You don't eat the bananas. I've had some bananas. I've had some chips crisps. Um, yeah, no, the whole food intake has been quite appalling. Oh my God. Eating dry wheat, bigs of bread, wheat, uh, wheat to bigs for breakfast.
00:09:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah, between two between two slices of bread, like a big sandwich. Nice. But apart from that, other other things have been have been fine. It's just that really that's, you know, like not having that other person to be accountable for kind of
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, other some things in my life just just just completely go by the way side. Yeah. But, you know, talking of it's been accountable. Eddie, sorry, how's Eddie? He's all right. Is he? He's barking right on cue. He's right on cue. I know he he he doesn't like his mum being being away from home. He's he's a mess as well. Like me and Eddie.
00:09:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. We're talking about accountable. I'm going to like go from accountable to accounting and accountants. See what I did there. And, um, nightmare. I think this is going to be, uh, I won't go on about it because it's going to be, Oh,
00:10:16
Speaker
I'm changing accountants. I'm between accountants right now. A bit like Leonardo's between agencies. Agents. Oh God. I just wonder sometimes how much ADHD has cost me financially.
00:10:32
Speaker
Oh, I have an episode. I have an episode. In the episode list, if you look up, there's this thing that says, where is it? In my list, scroll, scroll, scroll. It's number seven on my list of things to talk about, which is the ADHD tax. And should you pay it?
00:10:58
Speaker
And that is that exactly like the cost of ADHD. Right. That's a two hour episode. Oh, I know. I know. It's like going through all the zeros that is cost. Right.
00:11:18
Speaker
You know what? I'm just going to pause this podcast while I just get Eddie up the stairs because his legs don't work. Feed him, mate. Feed him. You know, I can't just feed him Weetabix. Works for me. Good Lord. Eddie's a mess. He's a mess today.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Rudy was a mess yesterday. He was a total mess yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, okay. So we are
00:12:00
Speaker
What have we got? Oh, oh, we've got interesting segment. I love this segment. It's a bit kind of like... All right, well, firstly... So we've done the good, the bad and the ugly, haven't we? Yeah, so item number two on our list. This is me reminding you to subscribe to the podcast. Rate us, tell us what you think. We're on...
00:12:24
Speaker
How about a breath from mine downstairs? We're on Apple Podcasts, we're on Spotify, we're on YouTubers, we're on the Tik Tokies, we're on the Facebookies. So we're all there. Let's spread out there on the... Yeah, so give us those five stars. Come on, you know you want to.
00:12:51
Speaker
All right, so item number three, the budget. Budget, yes. Mabel, Martin, she's been on to me like endlessly. Mabel's in from, do you remember her? She's from R&D department. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. Yeah, she's asking for more money again.
00:13:17
Speaker
Because we've got, right, because like, I don't know what she's doing for you. What's going on in R&D? I don't even know what she's working on at the moment. As far as the town hall and our mayor jobs goes, I have no idea why we even have an R&D department, to be honest. What are
Managing Time Blindness
00:13:38
Speaker
we researching and what are we developing?
00:13:43
Speaker
Well, there was a memo going around about digitizing the stimometer because it's been like analog for a while. Oh, right. So this... Did that ever go anywhere? The stimometer is the thing that measures someone's stimming. Isn't it chair based? Isn't this chair based technology where you sit down on the chair and then it measures
00:14:12
Speaker
the amount of stimming that you do. It's like an Apple watch, but it'd be like strapped effectively to your backside. All right. Yeah. I just like reads your, your, your stimming activity.
00:14:29
Speaker
Well, yeah, I'm just guessing. I'm just guessing. Anyway, I'll get back to... Yeah, I thought you'd know. I thought you knew. I'll get back to her. She's gonna be kicking off for a couple of days. I know Mabel, but I didn't even... I just thought that she... You know how you walk around an office and you say hi to people? Yeah. And you don't know what the hell they really do.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah. She was the only one that, yeah, she's the only one that, um, drink, she, she's the only one that gets ginseng from the, um, you know, from a coffee machine. That one. Oh, right. Yeah. That takes up a valuable slot in the, in the coffee machine that could be. It could be like gin and tonic in there. Right. Gin and hot, hot, hot chocolate.
00:15:17
Speaker
Anyway, so anyway, I'll get back to Mabel and I'll update you sometime or not. All right. So item number four, do you have any previous homework? So in typical ADHD thing, I was supposed to try and find a hack, a housework.
00:15:37
Speaker
Chores hack. That's right. This week. That's right. And I even said to a message saying, Martin, have I forgotten, we've forgotten homework and he said no. Right. And then that was me like, okay, I've got to go and find an ADHD hack.
00:15:55
Speaker
yeah to help us with housework which kind of works in its way because it's like even if you give me the homework i would have forgotten it right so yeah just i'm gonna keep it on the list all right so
00:16:13
Speaker
last thing on the agenda so okay so that's all the meetings uh yeah where are you taking us today well martin well martin uh mr west i'm going to take you down to the left field left field farm and we're going to talk about hyperactive hyperactivity what does that look like in adults question mark
00:16:39
Speaker
Or is that episode eight, and we're doing episode seven, where we're going to be talking about... Oh mate, you're right, you're right. No! Blindness. Scratch that. Let's walk down to the clock tower and we'll talk about time blindness and some other timely thoughts. Lovely. I love that. Yeah, right. That was just a beautiful moment. Professional.
00:17:03
Speaker
All right, let's get in the mayor's car and go to the town square.
00:17:25
Speaker
Nice. There we go. All right, so we're here to talk about time blindness. Is this a thing? Yes. It is a thing. I know that it's a big thing over on TikTok. I think it was researched and brought to light only a couple of years ago. So this is a fairly
00:17:53
Speaker
new aspect of time blindness and I think it's probably kind of good to kind of
00:18:06
Speaker
just run through a couple of things that are characteristic of time blindness. I think like everything else in ADHD, everyone has like their own thing with time blindness, which I've got my thing. Mine looks more like time, like a time vacuum.
00:18:31
Speaker
All the time blindness. But anyway. All right. So some characteristics of time blindness being late for things. Also the complete opposite.
00:18:47
Speaker
being early for things is also an aspect of time blindness. Having trouble estimating how long something would take. So like a task. So you think it's going to be an hour and then it ends up being like two hours.
00:19:07
Speaker
and also conversely thinking it's going to be an hour and it only takes you 10 minutes as well. So time blindness kind of works both ways in that you can have a poor concept of time and what's going to happen in the future. And then that can either
00:19:34
Speaker
future, future, future and then that can either lead you to not think about it, put it off and then you can like run into deadline problems or you kind of
00:19:49
Speaker
you react to it so that you are actually too early for stuff. One interesting example of that for me is if I've got a really important thing at, say, 4pm, right, I've got an important meeting or something, if it's really important, I will have trouble doing anything
00:20:17
Speaker
other than think about the important thing that is coming up at four. So it's almost like, I can't do anything else. I just have to think about this 4 p.m. thing. And it kind of sucks up so much of your time. Well, sucking. That's why for me, it's less about timelines. It's more about time vacuum. I just like it sucked into this, like, I can only think about one thing.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's a part of the blindness. That's right. OK, that's it's that's like the it's like a two sided coin. Yeah, you can either be blind to it or it can consume you. Right. But got it. But either way, it has an effect on your actual time now because you're either not doing anything and you're thinking about this future thing.
00:21:14
Speaker
or you're not thinking about the future thing and then it bites you in the ass. So it's a tricky little sucker.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. Um, it's almost like, cause I struggled with it when I first heard about time blood flow. What, what was that about? And then Martin, you said, so yes. Well, I, the fundamental parts, the most fundamental parts of ADA said like, Oh,
Distractions and Productivity
00:21:41
Speaker
blimey. Yeah. So if, if you, if it had been expressed as like,
00:21:45
Speaker
Blind like time blindsidedness that would work for me, you know, I get blindsided by time Yeah, that was anyway. Yeah because like, you know like there's this other nice little interesting thing about it, which is You won't you don't do anything until you hit until you hit the deadline mode and
00:22:13
Speaker
yeah and then your brain kind of goes oh christ i better get going on on this task this thing and then you just like bang it out really quick yeah and you and then you hit the deadline and it's kind of fine
00:22:29
Speaker
But, uh, you know, that's, I used to get clients to like, if they had like a really loose deadline, I'd say, look, I can't work with loose deadlines. This is way before I was diagnosed with ADHD. I said, don't, don't give me like two weeks, give me three days. Yeah. And, and, and, uh, it's way better for me. Right. Yeah. Cause, uh,
00:22:56
Speaker
again, with this two sided nature of it, I feel like that you can either not plan, right? Or you've or you can't plan. And then you wait till the panic button gets pressed, and then you just kind of hit it.
00:23:15
Speaker
Or the other way is that some people do is that they'll structure everything out, they'll make a plan with lots of mini deadlines, and then they'll use that to kind of get to the finish line. Yeah, that doesn't work for me.
00:23:34
Speaker
Right. So, you know, what I, what I do is like, I just give myself, I'll just work longer than everyone else. Cause I have to, even if I don't use it, I have to have the time for me to be distracted or to lose motivation in my head. Even if that doesn't happen, I kind of like need to like, I need, I need room for that to like potentially happen in my mind.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you know, I think, yeah, that's an interesting thing. So I always think of, you know, I think it's also known as procrastination, right? That's, that's, that's another term that kind of gets mad. Yeah.
00:24:31
Speaker
used a lot where you kind of put something off, put something off. And for me, it's a trouble envisioning the future past, you know, well, any kind of future. So I will often kind of go,
00:24:54
Speaker
Oh, shall I take the trash out on that? Well, I'll do it in an hour or I'll do it tomorrow or something. And then you don't, right? You just kind of kick the can down the road on everything. You ADHD lied to yourself by saying, oh, yeah, no, I'll, you know, I'll totally
00:25:18
Speaker
remember that I put my, you know, where I left my keys. Yeah. Well, in fact, I've got down here in, in my notes, like I've separating in terms of time blindness, separate, I've got separate, you know, work life and private life. It's like in private life. My way of organizing my time very, very coincides with how my friends or family or partners
00:25:46
Speaker
manage their time. So it's really, really tricky to point where if someone else tries to organize my time, I get irritable. All right. Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
No, I like other people organizing. I like other people. Yeah. OK. Yeah. It's it's like, yeah, it's it's not great. I know. But if someone goes, right, Martin, you're doing this now and then we've got this thing and then that and then I'd go, OK, well, I don't have to think about it. I'll just do these things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker
But for me, I've never missed a deadline in my life and for work, never missed a deadline.
Strategies for Time Management
00:26:40
Speaker
I remember having a boss gave me a appraisal, yearly appraisal, and he said,
00:26:47
Speaker
Oh, how'd you do it? It's like the, the, the more pressure under pressure you are, the better you perform. Um, as yeah, that's just looking back at it now in hindsight, like, God, that's so ADHD. You know, it's just like, I, I, you know, I used to like, call it good. It's like good and bad stress. That would be like a good stress. When you working on something stimulating, I can, you know, I'm on it, you know, totally on it.
00:27:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. There is like a a good stress and a bad stress. Yeah. You know, and when you kind of squirrel down on something and you're like totally consumed by it and you're just banging out some really good work, you know, that's that's, you know, and even if you're running into the evening or the night or you pull in all night or whatever. Yeah.
00:27:41
Speaker
I don't think of it as being bad stress. It's a kind of happy place stress. I mean the bad stress comes like if you've miscalculated and you've got 20 things to do and you've only got five minutes to do it and then it all falls apart.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah. And then that's bad skills. Yeah. Well, I've got here Martin. Yes, Paul. Talking of stress. Hello. It is Paul. Yeah, it is. It is. Still. Still. Yeah. Because I've got here. Ask Martin about when we used to work together.
00:28:27
Speaker
because we went to college together, famously. We studied together for four years, and then we worked together for a big chunk of time. And I remember
00:28:41
Speaker
I remember what you remember about me in terms of today's subject, a listener of time blindness. I remember my impression of you was like Martin was pretty much non-operational before 11 o'clock in the morning. And then you'd like kick in.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds fair to me. And you're a bit like, you know, but you would like always like you'd easily catch up with everyone else, you know, it'll be on it after that. Yeah. Yeah. I was mistaken in that I thought I was a nighttime person. Right. And I'd stay up late.
00:29:26
Speaker
Because I felt like if I went to bed before midnight, I had somehow lost. I was a loser. And then I would wake up tired and blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:29:38
Speaker
And then I'd go, well, I'm clearly not a morning person because I don't function in the morning. And it wasn't until later in life when I go to bed at, you know, I could go to bed at 10 30 and, and I'll, and I'll wake up the next morning, like 6am, 6 30. And I'm like, and I'm up out of bed and up an atom.
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was the same, exactly the same. I convinced myself, yeah, I'm a bit of a night owl. I do all my best thinking at night. Right. I used to think that, but then I realized that actually after night's sleep, I have all my best ideas in the morning. Right. Right. On the toilet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I won't be, okay. So timeline is, I can remember
00:30:30
Speaker
there's a few points where I kind of realized that I didn't like the fact that I was pushing the deadline, I was doing it all at the last
00:30:48
Speaker
and I can't, and also because quite often it seems like 50% of the work is done in the last 10% of the project, of the important stuff, the kind of, I don't know the important stuff, but
00:31:07
Speaker
It just kind of felt like if I didn't give 100% of my effort to those final 10% of a project, it would be shit. Whereas if I gave all the effort and time into that last 10%, it would be night and day difference. And I can remember making a conscious choice to kind of
00:31:38
Speaker
If, if I thought I could start this job at 10 a.m. say and get it done by five, I would start, I would make myself panic at 9 a.m. Right. Instead of 10 a.m. Yeah. And I would imagine all these things going wrong in my day that would hold me up.
00:32:00
Speaker
Like, oh, okay, yeah, this will happen and then someone won't come back from lunch and then get the copy in and then it's going to be a nightmare.
Conclusion and Reflections
00:32:09
Speaker
And then I'd almost manufacture a sort of a stress that meant I would start projects earlier.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's the same as me exactly the same exactly the same I used to I always found it really strange that colleagues Seem to be able to switch off You know when they're out of the office I always always as you were just saying I was always thinking about it. I
00:32:43
Speaker
you know, it actually became a positive thing in a lot of ways, you know, I forget an idea on the trade, you know, going back home, you know, I'd write it into a notice of but I was always like,
00:32:57
Speaker
after a minute I kind of resented like annoyed by people just like how do you do that how do you just like walk out the agency out the office and just forget about work I just couldn't ever do it but that was me yeah right
00:33:14
Speaker
i could quite oh you could oh really oh fuck you in a nice way once i was right once i turned off my mac well actually i didn't ever turn off a mac what are you talking about i just i just i just walked away from it no way that was it i transitioned from from that world into into my next next world i mean
00:33:41
Speaker
Sure, all the way home, you know, like there was a part of my brain that was still thinking about work. But I think I always thought, sorry, sorry, mate. And I was always like, you know, on the way home, if you see if you saw a poster or some piece of graphics, you would
00:34:01
Speaker
look at it from a professional point of view. I think I had big chunks of imposter syndrome, so I always thought I had to work hard on everyone else, work hard and think hard on everyone else. I think that's probably
00:34:17
Speaker
thing that's maybe not related or is to ADHD, I don't know, separate, in parallel thing. It definitely is part of the of the pick and mix, you know, mental health, ADHD thing.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, because of that. Freud apparently went to his deathbed thinking he was an impostor. Freud, you know. Freud? Or was it Einstein? I think you brought... Sorry, Einstein. Albert Einstein. Sorry. You brought the other. I'll get my Freudins and my... Yeah, I'll get them mixed.
00:34:57
Speaker
And yeah, but Einstein, he went to his last breath thinking he was a total imposter. Mad, madness. I know. So I think one of the important things, I mean, what about alarms?
00:35:19
Speaker
I have this, I know that if you're listening on the podcast, you can't sit, but I have this interesting clock. And what you do is you just turn this little handle and it will say, it'll give me a countdown for 10 minutes and it's like a very visual thing. And then it will just gradually count down and then it'll beep.
00:35:48
Speaker
And I use this all the time, like as an ADHD hack. So what happens is I look at it. It only has an hour on it. Right. So I look at the thing I get. Oh, I've got I've got a meeting in in 30 minutes. I'll just flip this to 30 and then I can I can forget that I have a meeting.
00:36:13
Speaker
Right. I can just go back to concentrating on something and then in 30 minutes, it'll beep and I get all crap meeting. Right. Well, I say it doesn't work for me. Maybe it would. I tell you what doesn't work for me. You know, all the software in the world on, on my computer doesn't work for me. Well, in my calendar, I've got like really rough stuff. You know, I don't mean, you know, rough stuff like wrestlers.
00:36:38
Speaker
No, it I've like really broad kind of like appointments nothing like you know segments or anything like that And it doesn't really work for me I what works for me is I have to write it down on a pad. I've got like a pad and
00:36:55
Speaker
You're a visual person, right? So you can almost see it, right? So you can sit in your mind's eye. Yeah. And it actually goes in better when you write stuff down. Yeah. Right. And you can see it. And there's something about that physicality of writing stuff that makes it imprint in the brain a bit better. Yeah.
00:37:24
Speaker
Oh, I've got a, do you remember we were in New York together like 20, I think it's about 25 years ago. And at one point I had to, this is the days before, you know, what's happened stuff. I remember I had to make a call home and I bought this like card from a news agent in Fifth Avenue to make international calls. And what you do is you go to like a public phone box
00:37:52
Speaker
And you had to like, there was like 20 digits on the, on the card. And, um, you had to type out, you know, type out, you had to put in these like 20 digits. And then, then you call your, in my case, I think I called my mum.
00:38:09
Speaker
and I called her number and it was there. And I was convinced with myself that I couldn't remember anything. But because these numbers were on this American little card and it was all kind of new and shiny and different to me, I remembered all of those 20 numbers.
00:38:31
Speaker
Cause it had like, I remembered it. I would never remember it. I don't think ever since then I've never, I can't, I can't, I don't know my own phone number, my cell phone number. I don't know it. I can't remember it.
00:38:45
Speaker
Wow. That is amazing, isn't it? When it's, when it's stimulated because it's new, you're in a new country. Um, it's like this strange system, probably graphics as well. It looked Americans. It was all kind of different. I remembered these 20 long like code 20. I think that's something about ADHD is
00:39:11
Speaker
You do stuff like that, right? And you go, wow, there was something about that.
00:39:18
Speaker
that really made my brain work. And then you kind of go, well, let's figure that out. And you kind of go, okay, well, I think it's because of these aspects that made that hack or that thing work. Let me see if I can replicate that next time. And then that's, if there's one thing about ADHD and about making it work for you, it's that, is you look back and you go, well, that worked.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah. Let me try that again.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'd have to move to Fifth Avenue and the property prices are crazy there. Well, there you go. Move to New York, Paul. There you go. And the other thing about all these things, these kind of like hacks and where they set up alarms or I've got my little clock here, is that if it works for 75% of the time, say, that is a win.
00:40:19
Speaker
in my book. If something works most of the time, that is a solid win. That is a thing that works. I've got an anti-hack though. I've got a hack that isn't a hack in terms of it's something you don't do, social media, cell phones.
00:40:50
Speaker
I was just like, wow. What time sucks. You mean what? If you've got, if you've got like a blind, a blind timeless, a time blindness thing, okay. You've got something you need to do. The worst thing for me is like, um, even for me having, cause I've got it here, I've got like a double, um, screen. Cause I like cut and paste and I like have email over here and I work over there.
00:41:16
Speaker
I've realized because I'm learning constantly at the moment, I haven't been diagnosed recently. It's not good for me, but it's the same with social media as well. If I'm, if I need to like concentrate on something and not get distracted and I need to like, okay, stick to a deadline, stick to a task, social media and cell phones are a nightmare for that. Oh yeah. Too much distraction.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah. The, there was the old classic tick tock of someone. So you, you basically see this person in the morning at breakfast and they say, Oh, I'll just get onto tick tock. And then it cuts to the evening and they're still in the same position. Hmm. Yeah. Um, what's it called? Doom scrolling.
00:42:06
Speaker
Doom scrolling. Yeah, there is that as well. But yeah, so I think, you know, like if something works.
00:42:17
Speaker
mostly that's a win. Also the other thing I've found out about all these things like setting alarms and always kind of little hacks like for example I move my my the clock I have a clock on my wall which is above my head which I look at all the time and it's set five minutes fast
00:42:39
Speaker
Right. And I forget that it's five minutes fast. Of course you do. Right. All day, all the time. Right. Yeah. So I look up and go, oh crap, I'm going to be late for this meeting. And no, I arrive on time. Okay. So all these things. Yeah. I heard about someone who used to give himself a KitKat reward.
00:43:07
Speaker
No, you do with dogs. You do dogs so they behave well. Give them a biscuit, keep it in your pocket. It turns out it works for some adults too. Cat rewards for getting stuff done on time. Yeah. I mean, the other thing, the little kind of light bulb moment about all these things went off maybe a year or so ago, which was
00:43:38
Speaker
All these little hacks, they can work, but they don't work all the time, and that's okay. You can do something like put Post-it notes up around the house, and that will work for a while, and then it doesn't, and then you switch to something else, to some other way of hacking. Then you can go back to the thing that didn't work, because now it probably will work.
00:44:07
Speaker
There is no one golden bullet, but rather there's a lot of things, tools in your toolkit that you jump from one thing to the other and back again. Something will work for a week or two and then it will stop and you go switch onto something else. That's okay.
00:44:33
Speaker
That's fine. There's this kind of myth about, I mean, have you ever bought like a book on how to be more efficient with your time or read those, read those like 20 things that, you know, that successful, uh, YouTube is full of it. Isn't that kind of stuff? Right. Yeah. 20, 20 things that billionaires do first thing in the morning.
00:45:03
Speaker
Right. Right. As far as I'm concerned, it's bullshit. Yeah. Because because it's really about how you work and you have to kind of look inside yourself to kind of go, well, this works and this works. This doesn't work. You know, like if I don't get enough sleep, nothing will work.
00:45:28
Speaker
Nothing. All the hacks in the world are useless. If I'm eating badly, like I have been this this week, things really start to slide down. Especially tomorrow when you've run out of Weetabix.
00:45:44
Speaker
And bread, I'd be like eating air sandwiches. I'd be eating Eddie. We're like, come on, Eddie. If you can just hop between these two slices of bread, that'd be great. But yeah, apart from hacks that, you know, work for a period and then don't, et cetera, et cetera. There's also, I was just saying about cell phones and other things. There's something I'm learning. There's a lot I could do to help myself.
00:46:12
Speaker
Um, yeah, a hell of a lot, you know, not, um, doom scrolling and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, alarm sleep, switching things up. Um, right. You know, um, working out how, how you can hit, hit the panic button.
00:46:33
Speaker
earlier so that you can get stuff done. It's like I've never missed a plane as far as I can ever remember because I sit there and go okay well there could be an accident on this thing here and there could be a long line and maybe it's a Friday night and so I tend to get to the airport a little early. I wouldn't say I'm there
00:47:00
Speaker
ridiculously early, but I get there comfortably early. Yeah. I'm oodles early, getting really early. I do remember, I don't remember, I don't remember where we were, but I do remember you turning up late at an airport. I don't remember where it was. And we ran. Yeah, that was when we were going to Cuba. Oh, was it? Yep. And we landed in Spain.
00:47:27
Speaker
Madrid. Yeah. And then we had to change. Yes, we had to change airlines and then we, it wasn't us being late. It was the, that was the, okay. The connection was like really short and we had to leg it. Right. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, my own excuse for being, one time I was late for a flight, but I was, I had, I was on the lash the night before.
00:47:58
Speaker
Um, for our American or non-English listeners on the lash is, uh, I, I got quite drunk in the evening before, but yeah. Hmm. So I think, you know, like.
00:48:15
Speaker
you know, there's the whole talk about, okay, right, yeah, you could miss meetings, blah, blah, blah. But there's also bigger things like, you know, for example, so if tomorrow doesn't exist, then you can think, well, I'm not going to plan for retirement, you know, I'm, you know, I'm not gonna worry about a pension or any of that boring financial stuff. And then that ends up biting you.
00:48:49
Speaker
There's also things like, so for example, people with ADHD tend to have poor dental hygiene because
00:49:02
Speaker
they don't think about the future if they don't brush their teeth. Like there's no immediate payoff, right? So you think, okay, well, you can't think of a future where you've got mouth problems and it's only when you do that you suddenly get all crap.
00:49:25
Speaker
and you're sucking on your gums. Right. So, you know, like, yeah, you know, and I can remember we were watching that, that video, right. And some guy got an abscess and almost died. Right. Because, because that's the kind of shit that time blindness will do to you. You know, right. It isn't just meetings and missing planes or not missing planes, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's also the, the big, big stuff as well.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird. I've just suddenly got this image of Mao Zedong in my mind. I read a book about Mao Zedong, it's written by his personal physician.
00:50:08
Speaker
And, uh, when he was actually employed, say, okay, okay. You've got the job. Um, his first thing he was, first thing he did was examined mousey tongues teeth. Holy Jesus. Um, anyway, yeah, I don't know if mousey tongue was ADHD. Great book, by the way.
00:50:29
Speaker
Cool. Okay. A little anecdote about communist leaders there. I mean, I think one thing is, you know, like, if you don't plan, and then things go wrong, and then you get stressed, right? Like, for example, you think, oh, it'll only take an hour to drive from here to there.
00:50:51
Speaker
and then you don't take into account oh yeah there's there's been some road works or something and then you're late and you're stressed out yeah and I think I think when you when you appreciate time blindness and you get it you're
00:51:08
Speaker
The important thing is to be flipping honest with yourself and kind of go, yeah, no, that was me. I was being time blind. And that's on me. And also the other part of it is that
00:51:27
Speaker
My wife, for example, will kind of go, oh, did you do this? You said that you would, I don't know, take the car in for an MOT. And I said, yeah, I'll take the car in for an MOT. ADHD lied to myself because what I didn't do
00:51:44
Speaker
Was put a note in my phone to remind myself with a little reminder and an alarm that would trigger me to phone. The car place I could put my car in and then I'll get annoyed with her.
00:52:01
Speaker
When she says, oh, did you take your car in? I go, no. Or conversely, if I did put the car in for a service, she would go, did you put the car in for service? Well, of course I put a car in for a service. Who do you think I am? That's right. I do exactly that. I think, what? You just think I'm an idiot?
00:52:23
Speaker
Right. And that is a defensiveness because we know we have time blindness or we don't know we have time blindness. It's a defensive posture. So if there's one thing that will help you with time blindness, it's recognizing and just being honest with yourself that
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's you. It's you don't get annoyed with other people. I'm going to offer another provocation. There was the reason why I was actually in New York at that time with with your good self and your lovely lady wife was I was on a course and he said, I said to him, I was on a course it's like for like a self-esteem and that was kind of shenanigans. Oh, yeah.
00:53:15
Speaker
I told him, never late for a meeting. He said, you should try it. Would you go back to London with your little skinny English legs? I didn't say that. You should try big late. I think the provocation is, nothing's going to happen. It's like, just take it easy. Nothing happens.
00:53:43
Speaker
Um, point of the irony of that story is that I never did try being late. Unfortunately, I should do it. I'll do that. I'll do that next week. We'll get back to you on that. Well, I think being late for you is probably just being on time, right? Because if you're typically, exactly say you're early, you're the uncomfortableness wouldn't be being late. It would actually just being on time. Yeah.
00:54:13
Speaker
Oh, totally. In fact, actually just being comfortable in the place of being on time is enough. You don't have to be late because your brain will be going, you're late, you're late, you're late, you're late. There is another reason, and it's all related to time blindness. The reason I arrive early
00:54:42
Speaker
It's because I don't want problems with traffic or any other complications to distract me from what I was actually going to that place to do. It's like, if I'm doing a presentation to like, you know, a corporation, and I'm like, I don't want I can't
00:55:05
Speaker
I can't imagine compared to imagine the idea of being distracted from doing anything other than that thing. So I don't want to be like caught in traffic and like panicking. So I would get there. I like sit myself down and like nothing distracted me. Great. Do the presentation.
00:55:28
Speaker
Right. And that's great, right? Because that's like peace of mind. It's only a problem if you're there way too early and you're robbing yourself of time. Say you're there an hour early and you really need to be there like
00:55:49
Speaker
half an hour early and then you've got half an hour that you've robbed yourself of that you've been doing something else earlier. So all I'm saying is like getting there early is great and that is cool. If you're there too early then that also starts to become or can become a problem if it's
00:56:15
Speaker
Yeah, totally. If you're paying a price for being too early. I think the ultimate price is though, it's a discussion about self-esteem, isn't it? It's like, you know, Paul, what's the worst going to happen? You've got this, you know, you've got like, you've got like an amazing fucking presentation in your bag. What the hell you got to worry about? You know, arrive late, you'll be fine anyway, you know.
00:56:46
Speaker
Right. I think when you get to our age, you definitely know the kinds of things that you need to do to be in a good place mentally to do something. So for me, for example, I can't really start a project sometimes until I've cleared up my desk.
00:57:09
Speaker
And my room and everything's clean and tidy and I've cleaned the surfaces and, and then my, I know that my brain will then be happy and you can, uh, start working. Yeah. That's what I do. I actually cleaned my desk before I start a podcast.
00:57:29
Speaker
Oh, do you? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I don't. Nothing. No, I did. I did. But only in a vain kind of way because it was like anything that was in camera. Okay. Right. I removed. Right. Okay. Like, can you describe one of them or is it not pod castable? What?
00:57:53
Speaker
Sorry. Was it something that was in the camera in the front? Oh, yeah. There was my Dunkin donut bag that I got my breakfast in. Okay. It just looked a bit, it looked a bit trashy. Okay. All right. Okay. I am now going to leave because my little mouse has stopped working. Um, we're going to go.
00:58:22
Speaker
and head over to the post office. And then you go. Oh, do I? Your feedback. Yeah. Oh, I thought we had that already. No, no, we don't. Okay.
00:58:46
Speaker
Your feedback is vital to us. Hang on. Your feedback is vital to us, it says here. We'll be reading almost all of your comments and we'll include a regular feature on our future podcast with a pick and mix of our faves. Our discretion is almost important as our biscuit tin. And we'll always be careful to ask before sharing your comments.
00:59:10
Speaker
Nice, nice, nice. All right. So, I think that just leaves me to say, thanks for being here. Check out our show notes. Visit us on all of our socials. Spend the meantime. Spread, spread. In the meantime, just fucking spread your sandwich with Weetabix.
01:00:02
Speaker
Bye! Bye! Ciao for now!