Time blindness

Time blindness is a core ADHD mechanism: without an external cue you don’t feel how much time has passed. Hence the classic estimation trap — you assume ‘everything in life takes 15-20 minutes’ and leave yourself the same buffer a neurotypical person would, then end up sweating in a rush. (Nuance: in lab tests people with ADHD more often OVER-estimate short intervals; the under-estimation is mainly about planning ‘how long a task will take’, not the raw sense of time.) Crucially, the task itself is often easy — it’s the surrounding logistics and prep that exhaust you, not the core work. That’s why external time anchors (an alarm clock, a series of alarms) help, not ‘trying harder to keep track’.