ADHD is a biological disorder involving an impairment in executive functioning. This impairment affects an individual’s skills of, for example: organisation, self-regulation, memory, motivation and time-management.
Strategies that might assist the individual with ADHD to manage their time: –
- Make sure there is a visible clock in each room. Always wear a wristwatch.
- Establish a morning routine. To save time, lay out what you plan to wear the next day, the evening before. Post notes in the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen with the time allowed for showering, dressing and eating breakfast.
- Resist the temptation to make one last phone call, get something out of the fridge for dinner or clean the bath before leaving home
- Keep your lights and TV on a timer to shut down automatically, and remind you it is bedtime.
- Keep to a set bedtime to ensure tasks have to be completed early in the evening.
- Try to estimate how long activities will take. Regular practice in guessing the time it takes to do things, may lead to an improvement in an individual’s overall time management.
- Listening to music is known to help individuals with ADHD concentrate, but has the added benefit of improving their ability to perceive the passage of time. Rather than setting a timer or alarm for an hour’s work, put on a playlist that lasts for an hour.
- Avoid taking on too much and delegate tasks to others. It is easy to overestimate the number of tasks that can be completed within a certain period of time.
- Set a timer or watch alarm to remind you when you should finish a task. Program a phone alarm to vibrate every 15 minutes in order to check you are still working on a specific task and haven’t been distracted. If random ideas or thoughts occur to you as you work, note them down, but then carry on working.
- Tell friends or colleagues of the time you have allowed for tasks, and ask them to check that you are keeping to your timetable.
- Taking short breaks as you work may seem like a waste of time, but will refresh your brain and help you to function more effectively.
- Allow yourself small rewards when work is completed or focus maintained.
- Whenever you have to be somewhere at a specific time, add in travel time and unforeseen circumstances time allowing for late trains or buses, traffic jams or car park queues.
- Some people don’t like to arrive to appointments early because of the irritation felt when killing time. If early, spare time could used productively: tidying a handbag, throwing away old receipts and tickets, rewriting to-do lists or answering text messages.
- Create a to-do list. Colour code work to be completed according to urgency. Choose four or five of those tasks to do that day, and remove them from the list once completed to give a sense of progress. Some individuals with ADHD prefer to compile to-do lists the night before, so they don’t worry about the tasks whilst trying to get to sleep.
- Most individuals with ADHD work well to deadlines. Deadlines create a sense of urgency, so divide up longer pieces of work to create several deadlines.
- Think about the times when you know you work well. Is there a particular time of day, work area or kind of task that you manage well? Is it possible to use that knowledge to manage your time more effectively?
Pat Guy Education Specialist & Author 