How To Master Time Management – ADHD Skills Part 1

Summary

Dr. Tracey Marks offers non-medication strategies for managing ADHD symptoms, focusing on time management. She suggests wearing a watch and placing clocks in visible areas to improve time awareness. Additionally, she advises creating a time log to estimate task durations and using planners to keep track of daily activities and future events. By breaking down tasks into smaller steps and scheduling them realistically, individuals with ADHD can enhance their executive functioning and reduce time-related stress.

Takeaways

• ⏰ Time management is crucial for individuals with ADHD, who often struggle with time estimation and scheduling.
• 📱 Constant access to timepieces, like wearing a watch and having clocks in key rooms, helps maintain a seamless awareness of time.
• 📝 Estimating the time required for routine tasks is essential for planning the day and avoiding procrastination or incomplete tasks.
• 📑 Breaking down larger tasks into smaller, manageable sub-tasks can help with focus and completion, particularly for complex activities.
• 👕 Practical examples, like timing a shower or laundry routine, illustrate how to apply time management strategies in daily life.
• 📈 Keeping a time log to record the start and end times of tasks helps in understanding time usage and identifying areas for improvement.
• 🗓️ Utilizing both a daily planner and a weekly or monthly calendar supports overall organization and keeps important events and tasks visible.
• 📱 Digital or paper planners can be used, depending on personal preference, but the key is to have a consistent system that's always accessible.
• 🔄 Regularly reviewing the planner at the start and end of the day helps in prioritizing tasks and adjusting plans as needed.
• 🔄 For tasks that consistently take longer than anticipated, consider further breaking them down into smaller, more manageable parts.

Q & A

What is the main focus of Dr. Tracey Marks' video?

The main focus of Dr. Tracey Marks' video is on time management strategies for individuals with ADHD to help manage their symptoms.

Why do people with ADHD often have trouble with time management?

People with ADHD often have trouble estimating how long tasks will take and adjusting their schedules accordingly, which can lead to being frequently late or not finishing tasks.

What is the first step Dr. Marks suggests to improve time management for ADHD?

The first step is to have constant access to timepieces, such as wearing a watch and having clocks in rooms where you spend the most time.

Why is it important for individuals with ADHD to estimate the time it takes for their usual tasks?

Estimating the time for usual tasks helps ADHD individuals plan their day, leave home in time, and understand how much of a task they can complete, which is essential for motivation and self-esteem.

How should one go about estimating the time for their usual tasks?

One should make a list of usual tasks and time how long each takes over a few days, noting the start and finish times on a time log.

What is an example of a task that might be broken down into subtasks for better time management?

An example is getting ready for school or work, which can be broken down into subtasks like showering, grooming, eating, preparing lunch, and getting out the door.

Why is it beneficial to break down complex tasks into smaller parts for individuals with ADHD?

Breaking down complex tasks helps individuals with ADHD to better manage their attention and avoid becoming overwhelmed, making it easier to complete tasks and avoid leaving them unfinished.

What is the significance of having a daily planner and a week-at-a-glance calendar for ADHD management?

A daily planner and a week-at-a-glance calendar help ADHD individuals keep track of appointments and tasks, providing an overview of current and upcoming commitments, which is crucial due to the tendency for 'out of sight, out of mind'.

How often should an ADHD individual review their planner according to Dr. Marks?

An ADHD individual should review their planner twice a day: in the morning to plan the day and in the evening to reflect on the day's activities and reschedule unfinished tasks.

What is the purpose of timing problematic tasks and breaking them into smaller tasks?

Timing problematic tasks and breaking them into smaller tasks helps ADHD individuals identify time inefficiencies, understand where time is spent, and plan more effectively to reduce the risk of being late or leaving tasks incomplete.

How can the time log be used for planning and troubleshooting time inefficiencies?

The time log can be used to plan the day by understanding how long tasks take and to troubleshoot by identifying tasks that consistently take longer than expected or are causing delays, allowing for adjustments in planning.

Outlines

00:00

🕒 Time Management Strategies for ADHD

Dr. Tracey Marks discusses strategies for managing ADHD symptoms through time management. She emphasizes the challenges people with ADHD face in estimating time and adjusting schedules, leading to frequent tardiness and incomplete tasks. To tackle this, she advises having constant access to timepieces like watches and clocks in frequently used rooms. She also suggests estimating the time required for usual tasks and breaking down larger tasks into smaller, manageable sub-tasks to improve planning and execution.

05:02

📝 The Importance of Time Logs and Planners

In this segment, Dr. Marks highlights the importance of keeping a time log to accurately estimate the duration of daily tasks, which is crucial for planning the day and avoiding procrastination. She uses the example of Judy, who struggles with laundry, to illustrate how breaking down tasks can lead to better time management. Dr. Marks also recommends using both a daily planner and a weekly or monthly calendar to keep track of appointments and tasks, ensuring that they do not overlap and are realistically scheduled.

10:05

📆 Implementing Time Management Techniques

Dr. Marks concludes with actionable steps for implementing time management techniques. She advises starting with having a watch and clocks visible in key areas, then creating a time log to understand how time is spent. She also suggests getting a daily planner and a weekly or monthly planner to keep track of appointments and tasks. The daily planner is for immediate tasks and obligations, while the larger planner provides an overview of upcoming events. She emphasizes reviewing the planner twice daily to appreciate the scope of the day and to reschedule any unfinished tasks.

Keywords

💡ADHD

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. In the context of the video, ADHD affects executive functions such as decision-making, planning, and time management, which are crucial for daily activities. The video aims to provide strategies for individuals with ADHD to manage their symptoms, particularly focusing on time management.

💡Executive Function

Executive function refers to a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and completing tasks, and managing time and space. The video discusses how ADHD impacts these functions, leading to difficulties in tasks such as estimating time and planning, which are essential for effective time management.

💡Time Management

Time management is the ability to effectively organize and prioritize tasks to make the best use of time. It is a central theme of the video, where Dr. Marks provides strategies to help individuals with ADHD improve their time management skills. This includes using timepieces, estimating task durations, and planning with the help of a planner.

💡Watch

A watch is a timepiece worn on the wrist or carried in a pocket, used to keep track of time. In the video, Dr. Marks emphasizes the importance of wearing a watch for individuals with ADHD to have constant access to time, which helps in managing their schedules and reducing tardiness.

💡Clocks

Clocks are timekeeping devices, either analog or digital, that display the time of day. The video suggests placing clocks in frequently used rooms to help individuals with ADHD maintain awareness of time, which is crucial for effective time management.

💡Task Estimation

Task estimation involves predicting how long a task will take to complete. The video explains that people with ADHD often struggle with this, leading to scheduling issues. Dr. Marks advises creating a time log to accurately estimate task durations, which is vital for planning and completing tasks on time.

💡Time Log

A time log is a record of the time spent on various tasks. In the context of the video, Dr. Marks recommends using a time log to document the actual time taken for tasks, which helps in understanding personal time usage patterns and improving time management.

💡Planner

A planner is a tool, either physical or digital, used to organize and plan daily activities, appointments, and tasks. The video suggests using both a daily planner and a weekly or monthly calendar to keep track of obligations and appointments, which is essential for individuals with ADHD to manage their time effectively.

💡Subtasks

Subtasks are smaller, more manageable parts of a larger task. The video discusses breaking down larger tasks into subtasks to make them less overwhelming and easier to complete. This strategy is particularly useful for individuals with ADHD who may struggle with tasks that involve multiple steps.

💡Mental Clutter

Mental clutter refers to the accumulation of thoughts, ideas, and information that can overwhelm the mind and reduce its ability to focus and process information efficiently. In the video, Dr. Marks mentions that individuals with ADHD may experience mental clutter, which can lead to forgetting tasks or appointments, emphasizing the need for a planner to keep track of responsibilities.

💡Overwhelming Tasks

Overwhelming tasks are those that seem too large or complex to start or complete. The video advises breaking down such tasks into smaller, more manageable parts to make them less daunting. This approach is beneficial for individuals with ADHD who may find large tasks particularly challenging due to their impact on executive functions.

Highlights

Dr. Tracey Marks discusses non-medication strategies for managing ADHD symptoms.

Emphasizes the importance of time management for individuals with ADHD.

Suggests having constant access to timepieces to improve time awareness.

Advises wearing a watch and placing clocks in frequently used rooms.

Recommends estimating the time required for usual tasks to plan the day effectively.

Encourages breaking down tasks into sub-tasks to manage time better.

Provides an example of timing and breaking down the task of doing laundry.

Discusses the impact of ADHD on executive functioning, including planning and time estimation.

Suggests using a time log to record the start and finish times of tasks.

Advocates for using a daily planner and a weekly or monthly calendar for organization.

Recommends reviewing the planner at the beginning and end of each day for better planning.

Advises rescheduling unfinished tasks to another time slot.

Highlights the importance of breaking down overwhelming tasks into smaller parts.

Provides a step-by-step guide to improve time management for ADHD.

Encourages viewers to improve time awareness and stay tuned for future videos on task follow-through.

Transcripts

Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist,

and I make mental health education videos.

Today, I'm talking about the things you can do

to help your ADHD.

And this is a followup to a video I did

on executive function.

In that video, I talk about,

the different ways ADHD affects your decision making,

your planning abilities, time management, and other tasks.

When it comes to non-medication ways

to manage your ADHD symptoms,

we can break it down into these three domains:

time management, organization and planning.

This video is dedicated to time management.

People with ADHD typically have trouble estimating

how long things will take

and adjusting their schedules accordingly.

As a result,

you may be frequently late to things,

or can it can even affect your ability to finish things

because you don't take into account

how long things should take.

Also with ADHD,

the loss of time has a cumulative effect.

You can just lose time to things

that you can't even track.

So step one, to master this time management skill

is to have constant access to time pieces.

Do you wear a watch?

You may say, "I don't need a watch

"because I've got my phone."

But you can't always pull your phone out

to look at the time.

You want your awareness of the time

to be a seamless flow,

because it's always there in your face.

If it takes too much effort to know the time,

you'll just act without knowing probably assuming

that you're fine with the time.

So you want to have a watch on your wrist

and clocks on the walls in the rooms

where you spend the most time,

like the kitchen, bedroom,

home office and bathroom.

The watch gives you access when you're in places

where there's no clock in easy view.

And the clock is for easy view,

when you don't have your watch on,

you're not wearing it for some reason,

or you just don't wanna lift up your wrist.

Have you been late for an appointment

because you took a 30 minute shower

that you thought was gonna be a quick five minutes?

That's where a bathroom clock is a must.

The next step is to estimate the time

that it takes for your usual tasks.

Knowing how long things take,

can help you plan your day,

leave your home in time for things,

and know how much of something that you can complete.

Leaving things undone can happen

because you get distracted or bored,

but it can also be a factor of starting something

that will take you more time than you have.

And repetitively leaving things undone chips away

at your motivation and self esteem.

It's very satisfying to be able to complete something,

even if it's a small task.

So you want to make a list of your usual tasks

and over the course of a few days,

time how long it takes you.

Your list may look something like this,

getting ready for school or work.

And if task takes you more than an hour, by the way,

you should break it down into sub tasks

to see what takes you the longest,

then keep that separate.

So it may take you 40 minutes to shower and groom yourself,

brush your teeth, comb your hair, et cetera.

Then have a separate task of eating,

preparing your lunch and getting out of the door.

Then include things like doing laundry,

dishes, other house chores,

walking your dog, sorting your mail.

Let's say you have a task that you do

that you can never seem to do in one sitting.

And because of that, you always get behind on it

because the unfinished tasks pile up on you.

Use this exercise to time the activity

and break it down into phases of the tasks.

So you can see where the time goes.

Here's an example.

Judy gets anxious thinking about her piles of laundry

that she can't get under control.

She first estimated that it takes her

about two hours for the wash and the dry cycle.

Then maybe another 30 minutes to fold.

But at any given time,

she has piles of clean clothes in baskets

and on a bed in the guest room.

And the family goes into the room

and gets clothes from the bed,

clothes fall on the floor, get stepped on.

And then you can't tell what's clean and what's not.

You might say, "Why can't other people fold those clothes?"

That's not the point.

The point is in her head,

Judy thinks that laundry is this basic task

of putting clothes into machines,

and it only takes about two and a half hours,

but she can never find a two and a half hour

block of time to do it.

So to really see this task through to completion,

it was important to break out the different aspects

of doing laundry and knowing how long it took

to do each of those things.

So when she did that,

she realized it took 15 minutes

to gather all of the clothes from everyone's room

and then take them downstairs

and put them into the washing machine.

It took an hour and a half for the wash

and the dryer cycle together.

It took anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes

to fold the clothes and another 10 minutes

to put them away.

So it takes Judy the initial 15 minutes

to gather the laundry.

And then after an hour and a half break,

it's another 30 minutes to process each load.

With her family there was easily four to five loads

of laundry each week.

So folding and putting away

could easily take a couple of hours.

Knowing this helped Judy plan how she did the laundry,

because one of her problems was that

she set an unrealistic task for herself to have a day

where she does the laundry.

That was overwhelming because it was too many steps

and she couldn't sustain her attention

to the final steps.

And this is especially hard,

when you have to an hour and a half

to do the next step.

So the natural inclination would be to save it for later,

knowing that the second part

of the laundry would take a couple of hours,

allowed her to schedule that as its own thing,

and then break it into steps.

So after she completes the mountain of laundry

that sits on the bed,

she would then schedule separate times

to sort fold and put away.

Now, this may seem like common sense.

And if it does,

it's probably because you don't have this problem,

but ADHD causes problems with executive functioning,

which includes planning, time estimation and organization.

And when you face a task that has multiple steps to it,

it's very easy to lose track of the steps

and just have them drop off

or be left unfinished

or poorly finished in a way

that causes problems like not knowing where your clothes are

because they're underneath a pile.

Or your favorite tops slipped under the bed

after someone stepped on it.

And this means it took you

an extra 20 minutes in the morning,

finding your clothes to wear.

So this problem with time has a trickle down effect.

And this highlights a point

when you are timing your morning activities,

you may have to break out

how much time you spend finding clothes to wear.

So the time awareness exercise involves two parts.

The first part is estimating the time for your usual tasks.

And you don't wanna guess on this.

You wanna look at your watch and write down

the start time and finish time on a time log.

Then the second part is to look at the tasks

that take you a long time to do

and are problematic for you,

causing you to be late,

break those down into smaller tasks,

and then time them.

You can use this time log later for planning your day,

as well as troubleshooting things that are eating up

too much of your time.

Like the example of spending 15 minutes each morning,

figuring out what you wanna wear or finding clothes.

So you can use this list later

to reduce some time inefficiencies.

The third and final step that I'll talk about

in this video is to keep a planner.

I suggest two different kinds of planners,

a daily planner, to keep up with your daily activities

and a week at a glance calendar so that

you can keep a bird's eye view

of what's currently going on in your life,

and what's coming up in the future.

This is something you wanna carry with you all the time.

It doesn't have to be paper, it can be digital,

if you're more comfortable using something on your phone.

With ADHD out of sight is out of mind.

So if it's not on your planner, it doesn't exist.

You don't wanna crowd your head

with all of the things that you need to remember to do.

If you happen to remember great,

but you don't want the burden of needing to remember,

because with ADHD, mental clutter gets purged

without your knowledge,

your brain just lets go of it for you.

And the information is gone until someone reminds you

of what you missed.

You want your planner to include appointments and tasks.

Now that how long things will take,

you can avoid having things overlap each other.

You wanna look at your planner

at the beginning of the day and the end of the day.

You look at it at the beginning of the day

to get an overview of what you've got to do for the day.

And then you wanna look at it at the end of the day,

to see what things were left unfinished

and what you've got going on the next day.

If there are things that you didn't complete,

you wanna move that task to another time slot.

And that could be the next day,

or it could be several days down the road.

If you notice a pattern of certain things

that you never seem to finish,

in the time that you thought you should,

that can be a task that you break down

into sub tasks and assign those

as separate things for your to do list.

So this may seem like a lot of work

to get all of this going.

When tasks seem too overwhelming to start,

it means that the task is too big.

So you break it down into parts.

So I'll break down what I've talked about

in this video into parts.

Start with getting a watch

and having an adequate number of clocks,

visible to you in areas where you spend time.

Then create your time log using your watch and your clocks.

This may take you several days to do

and start with the big things that you do,

like getting ready for work, chores, eating dinner,

getting ready for bed.

And this list can also include things that you do at work,

so you can have a better understanding

of how you use your time at work.

And this is to help you appreciate time.

Lastly, you get a daily planner

and either a weekly or monthly planner.

You're gonna use the daily planner

to track your appointments, obligations,

and your to do list.

And you're going to consult the planner twice a day.

In the morning to appreciate the scope of your day

and in the evening to reflect on how your day transpired

and review what you've got going on tomorrow.

It also gives you a chance to reschedule things

that you didn't complete.

Okay, thanks for watching.

I hope this is helpful for you.

Go improve your time awareness and then come back later

to hear about how to follow through

with difficult tasks.

Stay tuned, see you next time.