Dr Melissa Shepard has a problem with managing her time. She had always been a high achiever, making it through medical school to become a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. But no matter how hard she worked, she struggled with one of life’s simplest expectations: being on time.
“I really felt like I could just not crack the code,” Shepard said. “I worried: am I just an asshole? Is that why I’m always late? No matter how hard I wanted to be on time, it was a struggle.”
When Shepard learned about time blindness as a symptom of ADHD, which she has, it all clicked. Russell Barkley, a former clinical psychologist and expert on ADHD, coined the term in 1997 to describe what he calls “the serious problem people with ADHD have with governing their behavior relative to time intervals and the passage of time more generally”. Time blindness can be a symptom of ADHD or other conditions such as anxiety or autism spectrum disorder.
Shepard now frequently talks about time blindness and other mental health struggles on TikTok, where she has 1.5m followers. The term has become something of a buzzword in certain corners of the video-sharing app, with some pointing to its legitimacy as a symptom of a medically recognized disorder to explain why they can’t get out of the door in the morning. Others use it to vent about their “chronically late” friends. You know the type: you say “let’s have lunch at 1pm” but make the reservation closer to 2pm, because you’ve learned to factor in their perpetual tardiness.
Everyone has their slow days, but some TikTokers argue that people who are habitually 30 or 45 minutes late are claiming time blindness when in reality they’re being inconsiderate. As one person posted in a video liked over 125,000 times: “I think that being chronically late is a character flaw, and I think that it’s disrespectful across the board … I know people are like, ‘time blindness’ – no, you need to figure out how to be on time for things.”
Some people are bad planners. But others, like Shepard, do live with time blindness. “We all sort of have this internal clock that we use to estimate how much time has passed,” Shepard said, “but people with ADHD tend to not have as good of an internal clock.”
On social media, those who have time blindness share examples of their inability to gauge how long a task might take. For instance, one woman created a timetable for waiting for freshly brewed coffee to cool down, so she doesn’t burn herself. (At 30 seconds: “very hot – ouch!” One minute: “Hot but could drink if urgent.” One minute 30 seconds: “Ideal drinking temp.”)
Dr David W Goodman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, clarified that time blindness as a symptom of ADHD or other conditions refers to a difficulty with the perception of the passage of time. He said it is different than poor time management, or when someone can successfully perceive how long it takes to do something but fails to plan accordingly. (So-called “time optimists”, or people who constantly underestimate how long it takes to get somewhere or complete a task, fall into the latter category.)
The popularity of the phrase does seem to point to the proliferation of “therapy speak”, or how psychobabble has made its way into the mainstream to excuse poor behavior with fancy-sounding clinical explanations. Could “time blindness” be a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone strolling into work 45 minutes late, toting an iced coffee?
According to the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, it is possible for people with ADHD to receive disability accommodations at work via the Americans With Disabilities Act, provided they have proper documentation of their condition from a medical provider. Shepard also noted that the rise of remote or flexible work has eased the strain people with time blindness feel, since it eliminates the need for a traditional commute.
You have to make a decision: is time blindness an explanation or an excuse?Dr David W Goodman
Still, one TikTok user sparked a mini-meltdown on the app in 2023 after suggesting that employers should allow for disability accommodations for people with time blindness. “They exist actually!” one user commented. “They’re called watches and clocks and alarms.”
On Reddit, professors have voiced frustrations that more universities are allowing students extra time to get to class or submit assignments due to time blindness. “Any student, regardless of ability, who does not learn what they need to do to show up and turn work in, is not prepared for a job in most fields,” one wrote on r/Professors in 2022. “We are setting these students up for failure.”
Shepard has written accommodation letters for people with time blindness, but she’ll also work with those patients on strategies to help them be more prompt. Many are common-sense solutions, such as setting alarms in the morning to denote it’s time to start a new task (wake up, brush teeth, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast).
Some are less obvious: Shepard said that people with time blindness do better working with old-fashioned, analog clocks that have hands, as it’s easier to physically see the passage of time that way.
Goodman said it’s “cloudy” whether or not time blindness constitutes a disability for which someone should get accommodations at work or school. “You really do need to have a formal diagnosis in which that would fit,” he said. “Not just that you didn’t plan or anticipate. You have to make a decision: is time blindness an explanation or an excuse?”