#71. How to Overcome Time Blindness
Episode Shownotes:
Have you ever struggled with estimating how long a task will take? What about getting lost in a therapy session or evaluation report without realizing how much time has passed? Then you might struggle with time blindness. Time blindness is a real challenge that can negatively impact your ability to complete documentation, meet deadlines, and--in some cases--maintain work-life balance.
In today's episode, you’ll learn what time blindness is and why it matters, hear relatable stories, and get practical strategies to manage and overcome it. Join the conversation in the SLP Support Group and explore strategies like visual timers and time-based playlists to help overcome time blindness. And make sure you don't miss a special announcement at the end of today's episode!
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
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Episode Transcript*:
Welcome to Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists. I’m Theresa Harp, an SLP and productivity coach, and this podcast is all about how to build a successful career as an SLP and still have time for yourself and the people and things you love. So if you’re ready to ditch stress and burnout for a more balanced and fulfilling life, then you are in the right place. Let’s dive in.
[00:00:00] Hey SLPs, welcome to the podcast. If you are listening to the podcast, welcome. If you are watching this in the SLP support group, hello. I am, I'm waiting for the dog to come over and say hello. Cause he always comes over to say hi when I start talking and I've been quiet for a while. Sorry, I had to take a little sip.
I've been quiet for a while. And now that I'm talking again, I'm waiting for him to come pop his head in. But here we are episode 71 of the podcast. And today I'm going to be talking about the topic of Time blindness. Okay. This is something that comes up a lot in my coaching sessions with coaching clients.
This is something that is very [00:01:00] common in the neurodivergent world with, uh, specifically individuals with ADHD. And it's something that many of you in the SLP support group have mentioned that you struggle with, whether it's in conversations here in the SLP support group or in your membership responses when you've joined the group, I know this is a struggle.
And so what we're going to do today is talk about what it is. What is time blindness? How it impacts you in your work as an SLP? And also a bit in your, we'll talk a bit about how it impacts you in your work at home, whether you are, you know, running a household, a parent, a spouse, partner, whatever that looks like for you.
And then, Perhaps most importantly, we'll talk about strategies to help you work through, or dare I say, overcome, time blindness. Okay, so that is the plan for today. [00:02:00] If you are watching this in the SLP Support Group, Tell me in the comments that you are watching and tell me also if, as you're listening and watching, if any of this resonates with you, if you can relate to any of these examples, please, please, please share in the comments, let us know, it's so helpful for other people to kind of recognize and be reminded that we are not alone in this, And I think it's also really helpful to crowdsource, uh, strategies and ideas and supports and resources and all that fun stuff.
So, make sure that you comment in the SLP Support Group as you're watching. Okay, I've got notes on my other screen, so if you see me moving back and forth, that's what's happening, alright? So, let's just talk very, very quickly. about what time blindness is. In case you haven't heard this term before, or you've heard it, but you're not quite sure what exactly it means, [00:03:00] time blindness is essentially an inability or a diminished ability to accurately Perceive how long something will take or how long something has taken.
So it, it affects your ability to track the passage of time. And so this can be really, really difficult if you don't Um, it can be really hard to have a clear gauge, so to speak, of how much time has passed or how much time something will take. It can be really hard to plan your day appropriately, um, realistically.
It can also be really hard to execute different tasks throughout your day, even if you're not a planner and you're just kind of going. It can be really difficult to carry out tasks if you don't have a very accurate and reliable gauge of how long something will take. [00:04:00] Okay. I mentioned that this is something that is relatively common among people with ADHD, but let me be clear.
This can happen to anyone. This can be something that you struggle with and you may not have ADHD and that's absolutely fine. It. is especially common in situations where there are a lot of tasks happening at once or a lot of demands, a lot of events, um, a very struc uh, what, not structured, a very chaotic or busy schedule can lend itself towards, uh, struggles with time blindness, okay?
So, hopefully that kind of gives you an idea. Of what it means, but I want also to talk about why this matters, like what does this actually matter for you, but before I do that, let me just tell you a very, very quick story about a post that I saw in a recent recently in a Facebook group, which is what prompted me to [00:05:00] finally record an episode on this topic.
It was sitting in my episode bank in terms of planned topics, planned episodes, but I had never sort of. acted on it until I saw this post. So recently there was a post in some SLP group about, it was sort of like the Reddit, uh, I don't even know if it's Reddit, the online, I think it's Reddit, the online, um, platform where it's, it's sort of, I think it's called Am I the, uh, A hole, Am I the A hole, where people write in and they talk about something that they did and they want to know, like, Was I wrong?
Were they wrong? Who's the a hole here? Right? So it sort of reminded me of that because the post is essentially an SLP talking about how she, he or she, or they use a timer when they go to home visits. They have a timer, they take it out, they use it. And one of their clients had [00:06:00] requested that they stop using it, that they found it rude.
And I don't remember the details of the post. I don't remember the details of how it was. Uh, how that message was sent or delivered to the SLP by the client, but it, I do, I don't remember what group it was in. I just remember that there were a whole lot of interesting comments on the post and it got me thinking, I wonder if this person who made this post struggles with time blindness.
And it also got me thinking about how so many of you, of us, struggle with this and why this is so important, why this skill is and why this challenge of time blindness is so important to overcome or to know how to troubleshoot and work with because it not only can impact your schedule, but it [00:07:00] can also impact it.
Other people's schedules, it can impact how you are perceived. Side note, I don't really necessarily think we need to, we should, or need to worry all that much about how we are perceived, but you got the idea. It can impact relationships. It can, it can, it, it clearly creates a whole lot of. a myriad of implications, okay?
So some of the ways that this may, that time blindness may impact you and your schedule as an SLP include staying on time with your schedule. So staying on time for Sessions starting on time, sessions finishing on time. This can impact your ability to manage your caseload. This can impact your relationships with your clients, with your client's family members.
It can impact, time blindness can impact your relationships with your clients. colleagues, your coworkers, your supervisors, your [00:08:00] employees or your contractors. If you own a private practice, it can impact your private practice. Speaking of private practices, how smoothly your private practice is running, it can impact your overall mood, mental health, and well being.
So, believe it or not, time blindness does matter. It has an impact and not just an impact on you, but it impacts the people around you. So if this is, if time blindness is something that you struggle with, or if you tend to have a hard time staying on Time, so to speak, or if you have a hard time, I keep thinking hard time and thinking about how it's a terrible pun and trying not to make a bad joke, but if you struggle with accurately gauging how long something's going to take, even if it doesn't happen all that often, [00:09:00] but it's happened in the past, listen to this episode, watch this video in the group, because these strategies are going to be helpful, and they are helpful not only for time blindness, but they're helpful for lots of other demands that we face as busy SLPs, PTs, OTs, okay?
All right, so let's talk about specific scenarios where this might show up, okay? I've talked about a few of them briefly. But I want to be really, really specific here. Okay. And I want you to ask yourself as you're listening to this, does this show up for me in this way? Does this resonate with me? Is this something that I can, I have experience with.
Okay. So, like I said, sessions constantly running. Over the amounts of time, the allotted time. If you have 30 minute sessions, but you, you know, 30 minute, the 30 minute comes, the 30 minute mark comes, and you are nowhere near wrapping up, [00:10:00] or if you're in a session and you find yourself all of a sudden looking up at the clock and realizing, oh my gosh, it's been PSTN.
Use us 30 minutes and we only have 45 minutes and we didn't even get to XYZ today or even if you're so focused in the zone on a specific activity to target certain goals and you haven't accurately gauged how long you've been working on it for. That can cause trouble because now you're racing through the rest of a session.
You're not getting to all the goals that you plan to target. So you can see how this can impact you both within the session, and then it can impact you at the end of the session. Right now you maybe don't have time, the time that you had built in, perhaps, for session notes or documentation has now gotten cut off.
taken away or impacted, you are now rushing, you are feeling behind schedule, you now didn't have time [00:11:00] to prep for the next session, or if you are, this used to happen to me on the road a lot, traffic, things like that. I would be running behind and I knew if I was running behind with one session, I was pretty much going to be running behind with all the others, because let's face it, usually if you are a home based provider, it's rare that you get somewhere faster than you would anticipate.
It usually winds up that you get there. someplace slower. It takes you a little bit longer. That's more likely. So it can impact your whole day, right? Then you're rushing through your documentation or maybe now you are taking work home with you when you would have otherwise hopefully had gotten it done during the workday.
You might now be unprepared for your other sessions within that day. You're now taking time to schedule frantic text or emails to other clients or [00:12:00] phone calls to other clients letting them know that you're running behind, can we shift or juggle things. Now you are Eating away at your breaks. So now if you had a break, perhaps you are not able to have your lunch or take time away because you've run over.
So you can see how that would impact. And this doesn't even necessarily happen only when you are running behind or time blind in a session. These things can also happen when you are time blind when you are working on a task. So if you sit down to write an evaluation report, you think it's going to take 15.
I'm just going to say 15 minutes. Evaluation reports do not take 15 minutes. Session notes, maybe. But if you're going to write an evaluation report, let's say you thought it was going to take you 45 minutes. You're going to work on it for 45 minutes, and now you are 40 minutes in. You're just realizing 40 minutes have gone by, and you haven't even prepped [00:13:00] your You haven't even gotten through scoring everything or gathered all of the appropriate materials, and you've gone down a rabbit hole and researched something, right?
Now you're taking work home with you, or you have less time available to write a good evaluation report, okay? This can also show up with what I call non client facing tasks, so outside of session times, all of the things that we have to do. So besides documentation, think about your session planning or think about your invoicing or if you run a private practice or maybe responding to emails, scheduling clients or meetings, right?
Because you not only Perhaps have eaten away into that time because of your time blindness, now you don't have the necessary time to do those things. Or, if you are struggling with time blindness, you [00:14:00] can get stuck in this pattern of over scheduling, over committing. Because you don't accurately know how long something is going to take, so you over commit.
You schedule things for, you schedule IEP meetings or IFSP meetings. thinking they're going to take, let's say, 45 minutes when in actuality they take an hour and a half, right? So you can see how this has long lasting implications on your time, okay? So if I haven't sort of sold you, so to speak, on why this is important yet.
I don't know how else I will. Um, but tell me in the comments, if you're watching this, which of any of those things have you experienced? I want to know. Other people want to know. We want to know we're not alone. So tell us which of those things that I've talked about so far resonate with you. [00:15:00] Okay? Now let's get to the meat and potatoes of this session of this podcast episode or this video.
Okay. Let's talk about strategies. Let's talk about things that you can do to help yourself with your time blindness. Okay. I'm going to, there's lots, I'm going to give you about five minutes. four ish four or five. So I'm going to tell you the strategy. I'm going to walk you through how this can help you like what the strategy is and how it can help you and give you specific concrete examples of how you can implement this in your work as an SLP.
Okay, so first strategy that I have for you visual timers. For example, I've got this one right here. This is my time timer and it is visual. It shows me exactly how much time I have left for a certain task. There are lots of different visual timers that are available on the market. This is one that I use.
It's not the [00:16:00] only one that I use, but I pretty much always have it on my desk, have it ready. Even when I go in and work in a coffee shop or in the library, I usually take it with me. I'm very nerdy and I will do that. discreetly, just sort of like, set the timer, put it on my desk, and have it there. So, think back to the story I shared at the start of this episode, the SLP who goes into her home visits with a visual timer.
Like this, okay? So that's exactly what it is. These are really important for those of you who are neurodivergent because it's in your face. You can see the amount of time very, very quickly. It's not just a, a digital number. It actually visually represents the amount of time that you have left, okay? So, some ways that you can do this, like I said, you can bring it into sessions, I would suggest having a conversation with your clients if you are [00:17:00] bringing it in and just explaining why you have it so that they don't think or feel that they are being rushed and that their time doesn't matter and that you are maybe, I think one of the comments on this post was about nickeling and diming them, all that stuff, right?
So you've got that, um, that way that you can use it. You can use it when you are working on session notes. You can use it when you are working on evaluation reports. You can use it when you have little breaks of time in your day. Lots and lots of options. Okay, so that's one strategy. Second strategy that I have for you is to build in a buffer.
Build in buffer time or leave room for the margins. I had, uh, on my old podcast had recorded an episode about this strategy. Where you are building in proactively a cushion of time. A cushion of time. Either before. Sometimes it could be during or even after a task, okay? [00:18:00] Before, during, or after a task or an event.
So, it includes the amount of time that you think it's going to take, plus some room for error, right? Some room for traffic. Some room for tantrums. Whatever it may be, okay? So you are building in extra time. That can help counteract some of the time blindness. Now, I first want to acknowledge some of you listening or watching may not be able to control all parts of your schedule.
You may not be able to build in buffer time. In certain parts or of your treatment schedule. I hear you. I see you. I understand. However, all of you have options, have opportunity to build in buffer time in some part of your life. Your life. So maybe that is in your downtime outside of work. Maybe that's in your travel time to and from work.[00:19:00]
Maybe that is within your day if you are in charge of your schedule. Okay, so just start out by identifying the parts that you can control and then build in some buffer time there. And You don't necessarily have to know exactly how much time it's going to be as a buffer. It doesn't, you might not know that ahead of time.
Take your best guess, then go back, reflect, see, and adjust. Okay? Um, this strategy makes me think of a client who I worked with who was neurodivergent. She has ADHD and she, we were working on this strategy and I remember her saying that before we started work, working together, and I'm paraphrasing, but before we started working together, she had always scheduled her day and, and operated in terms of how long, how long she wanted something to take or how long she thought it should take.
not [00:20:00] how long it actually would take for her brain. So she was almost timing things and planning as if she had a neurotypical brain. And once we started working together, when she started to give herself permission to schedule things according to what, how her neurodivergent brain worked, it was incredibly Number one, incredibly liberating because it freed her up.
It gave her that validation and that freedom and that ability to just honor where she's at and how her brain and body works without it meaning anything about herself. And instead of trying to pigeonhole herself in to what she thought, you know, or what society has told her or what grad school has told her, [00:21:00] how long things should take, she said that through our work together, she was then able to just allow herself to schedule according to what her brain needed.
And it was incredibly freeing, and it allowed her to manage her time more accurately and more effectively. So. I think of her often, I think of that strategy often, and I want you to ask yourself, where are you maybe pushing yourself to get something done faster than you are actually capable of? Okay? And there are two sides to that, so we're not going there, I'm not going there, hopefully you can think this through in a way that is meaningful and relevant for you, okay?
So, buffer time. That's the second strategy I have for you. Third strategy I have for you is what we call [00:22:00] reflective time logging, where after you've done something, tracking or noting how long it took. Now, in order to do this, accurately and yeah, accurately. You really do need to plan this out and make note of your start time and your end time.
Okay? Um, so that does require a little bit of forethought, a little bit of planning. However, it can be incredibly eye opening. So once you have completed a task, if and when you can log that information, how long it took, and put it somewhere visible. I have stickies all over my walls. Put it somewhere visible.
Session notes. 10 minutes. And just track it, okay? You don't have to do it every single time, but even just doing it once in a while for someone who struggles with time blindness, that can be really powerful because it gives you a starting [00:23:00] point. It gives you some parameter to work with, but having it there visual reduces your need to Remember it to rely on your memory to use that in your planning, okay?
And keep in mind too that this is an estimate. It's going to vary by a number of factors, right? We all know this. Your energy is going to change, your mood, your um, your health, your focus, the task. Not all tasks are created equal. We know some evaluation reports are going to be longer than others. So on and so forth, okay?
Just Try it at loosely as a strategy and see how it works. Okay, so time logging. I've got two more for you
Okay, that's so funny. I had to stop recording because I got interrupted by my phone I didn't have it on airplane mode or whatever and Then it was total If you [00:24:00] give a mouse a cookie syndrome, right? So then it was something else. And then from there, I had to go get something else. And then next thing I knew it was time to get the kids.
And we did the whole after school nighttime debacle is really the only word that comes to my mind tonight, the way it was going. But anyway, now I am finally ready to get back to talking about Two final strategies, two more strategies to help you with time blindness, okay? So the fourth strategy is a little bit, I think maybe a little bit unique, a little unusual.
I have found that it works very well for me, but this is not coming necessarily from, is not necessarily a research based study or anything like that. I like to create playlists that are sort of timed out for different tasks. So the average amount of time that I might spend on, um, let's say deep work, like if [00:25:00] when I was practicing, if I was writing an evaluation report, or if I was sitting down and reading up on certain, a certain diagnosis, or I was, I don't know, session planning, planning out their upcoming therapy session, so on and so forth.
I would sort of have a playlist that would last the approximate amount of time that would take. So let's say, That I would do that maybe a one hour block. So if I had an hour. During the day. I know not everyone here listening or watching has an hour in your day at once. But for those who can and who do then that's a strategy and then sometimes that might be later on in the day Or it might be having difficult conversations with Supervisors or colleagues, or, you know, making even just simple requests and asking for things that might better suit your needs schedule wise.
But regardless, being able to [00:26:00] have those playlists set up for certain durations of time. And then listening to that. will help me cue in on, Oh, okay, I know, like I'm getting to this track. Once I've heard the playlist a few times, I'm like, okay, when I'm getting to this track, I know that I'm almost finished.
Um, I know that this amount of time is almost up, so I'm going to have to be finished. Does that make sense? And so I'm able to hear it, remember it while I'm working. And then that is sort of giving me like a multi sensory cue and tapping me back into, you know, being also focused on my surroundings, my time and all of that.
Okay. So you could do this, let's say one playlist for, um, like I said, you know, your deep work or like your written work, the work where you have to be more focused, then you could do another playlist with different kinds of songs or different lengths of time, right. For, um, maybe, I don't know, going through and doing your billing if [00:27:00] you are in a private practice.
Um, or maybe it's for doing your emails, like catching up on your email correspondence. That's funny, that word correspondence, it reminds me of a Friends episode, sorry. So, you could catch up on your emails, and you could also create a playlist for something like taking a break during your day. There's a novel idea, right?
Taking a break. That's a great cue because it signals, okay, like this is something fun, this is something different, it sort of can, music can help shift your mood, right? And so, then you're able to be more mindful of. The time to allow yourself to take those breaks and then also to maybe get yourself out of that break and back into work, if that's something that tends to be difficult for some of us.
Okay. Speaking from experience. Okay. So playlists, try it. I don't know if, if that's anything that sounds like it would be useful to you, but I, it's [00:28:00] something I have found that helps me. So I would really love to actually, I'm curious to hear how that one works for anyone who tries it out. Okay, the last strategy is probably somewhat familiar to most of you, but I still wanted to mention it.
And that's the strategy of body doubling. So body doubling, you might also hear this referred to as coworking, right? Where you are essentially either meeting in person or in most cases these days, you're virtually working on a task at the same time. So in fact, I was a member in a group co working session with colleagues in a coaching program that I'm in.
So we had a co working session today at noon and I find it to be incredibly helpful. It keeps me focused and on task and it's a really nice way. It can be a really nice way for you to be mindful of your time because you have that accountability right there. You have someone else that's working at the same time as [00:29:00] you, so you can hold each other accountable for the time.
You might have someone queuing you in, okay, we have 10 minutes left or something like that. So it gives you that added, uh, those added cues. And I also love this one. I love, I also love co working and body doubling because you typically do it for a certain amount of time, a start time and an end time.
It's typically something that you have scheduled ahead of time with somebody else, right? And so there is that hard stop and it can keep you focused without having to, you know, worry, where am I at with the time, you know, okay, start and done. Okay. And then you've got that also that body doubling, you know, aspect of it as well.
So I find it to sort of be a It, it, it, it. checks multiple boxes, right? It's a really great strategy that can help different people in different ways. Okay. And with that in mind, if you haven't, if [00:30:00] you aren't in the SLP support group, or you haven't heard me mention it, I want to just remind you that in the SLP support group, From now through the end of December, we are hosting every week, a free coworking session.
I have them scheduled for every Tuesday at noon Eastern. And that is from the time that you're listening to this episode, or should I say the time that this episode is released, through the towards the end of December of 2024. So that's a great opportunity for you to get your feet wet with something like this strategy body doubling.
It's also a nice way for you to get connected with other people. That's that's not the time and place that you would be doing that. But you meet new people, you see new faces, you get new names, you can chat and share information, and then you just sort of get to get to know other people that are working, that are like minded and working on similar goals, similar values, so on and so forth.
So I find [00:31:00] it to be really helpful, and I'm really excited to do it with the SLP Support Group. If you are not in the group, click the link in the show notes to join, and then I can get you all the details that you need for the body doubling sessions. Okay. So this was, for me, a very long podcast episode, but for you, not so much, hopefully.
I do hope, though, that this was helpful, that you have some clarity around what timeliness is and any impact that it can have. And most importantly, you've got a number of strategies that you can use to help you catch yourself when you're, you know, in those time blind traps or hopefully to even proactively prevent you from falling in those time blindness traps.
Hope this was helpful and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.
*Please note that this transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.