Temporal Black Hole of ADHD

Time is weird when you have ADHD. It's like you're living in a constant state of "before" and "later," with very little happening in between. One second it's 9pm, I'm just going to check one thing, and then boom, it's 2:30am. My 6:30am alarm is already mocking me from the future because I have to get up, put on pants (hopefully), and get my little guy to school.

Time isn’t a straight line when your brain works like this. It's more like a poorly drawn circle that someone spilled coffee on. Everything overlaps, nothing feels linear, and sometimes entire days just vanish like socks in the laundry.

The Time Warp Is Real

People like to call it "time blindness," which is a polite way of saying your internal clock is about as reliable as a dollar store watch. I can go weeks without talking to someone and when I finally reconnect, it feels like it’s only been a few days. Or I’ll forget to call my parents for way longer than I realized. Not because I don’t care, but because time just melts together.

That’s the fun part. The not-so-fun part is how this messes with routines, especially sleep.

The Sleep Spiral

Here’s the cycle. I try to wind down around 9 or 10pm. But then my brain says, "Hey, what if we think about every unfinished project since 2003?" Suddenly I’m deep into organizing a hard drive or reading about the physics of time dilation. It’s 2:30am, and I’m buzzing with ideas and regret.

Sure, I can function on four hours of sleep for a day. But stack that up and I’m not just tired. I’m short-tempered, forgetful, overwhelmed, and probably skipping meals. Sleep and food are always the first things to go. Ironically, they’re also the most critical.

Pavlov’s Playlist: Using Triggers to Wind Down

One thing that helps? Audio triggers. I’m basically training my brain like Pavlov's dog, but for bedtime. A specific playlist or soundscape tells my brain, "Time to shut down." It doesn’t work perfectly, but it beats staring at the ceiling thinking about whether raccoons feel guilt.

Audiobooks, brown noise, nature sounds—whatever calms the noise just enough to drift off. Worth trying.

Externalizing Time

I’d love to say I "keep a routine" and everything's fine. But that’s not real life. Not when you’re managing a brain that keeps forgetting what day it is.

So I cheat. I outsource my sense of time to systems that don't forget. Tools like Reclaim.ai help schedule recurring habits, block time, and keep me from triple-booking myself. Google Calendar, alarms, sticky notes, whatever it takes to build scaffolding around my chaos.

These tools don't fix the wiring, but they keep it from short-circuiting the entire day.

The Drive I Don’t Remember, But Sometimes Really Loved

Not all memory gaps are bad. Some of my best thinking happened behind the wheel. Back when I was commuting in LA, I was lucky. My route took me from Malibu along the PCH, through Santa Monica, and into Culver City. Waves crashing, golden light, that whole California vibe.

And weirdly, I loved that drive. Even the traffic. It gave me time to decompress and process the day. By the time I got home, the stuff I was stressed about was already sorted out in my head. The drive often felt like it lasted seconds, not an hour.

That time warp? Sometimes it’s a gift.

Highway Hypnosis

But there’s another side to it. You pull into your driveway and think, "Wait, how did I even get here?" Like you teleported.

It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention in a dangerous way. It’s more like autopilot took over while my thoughts wandered somewhere else.

Here’s what might be happening:

1. Automaticity: Familiar routes become muscle memory. The brain zones out.

2. Working Memory: Your internal whiteboard keeps getting wiped mid-task.

3. Distraction or Hyperfocus: Either you’re drifting or deeply zoned in. Either way, nothing sticks.

4. Time Distortion: Thirty minutes feels like five, or sixty. The clock doesn’t register.

5. Cognitive Overload: Your brain prioritizes survival, not memory.

6. Low Dopamine: Your brain isn’t firing up for routine stuff, so it doesn’t bother storing it.

Parenting With This Brain

Now toss in a six-year-old. Every morning feels like trying to launch a rocket with mittens on. Alarms. Lost socks. Forgotten lunches. One of us crying. Some days it’s him, some days it’s me.

It’s not just about managing your own chaos anymore. You’re trying to manage someone else’s life while yours is running off in a dozen directions.

But I’m doing my best. That counts.

It’s Not Laziness, It’s Time Distortion

A lot of what looks like "not trying hard enough" is actually the result of living in a brain that doesn’t track time properly. That doesn’t store things the same way. That gets overwhelmed by tasks that seem easy to others.

If that’s you, you’re not broken. You’re just running a different operating system. It’s exhausting. It’s funny. And sometimes it’s kind of magical.

What Helps Me

• Audio sleep cues

• Reclaim.ai and calendar tools

• Timers and alarms

• Being kind to myself when the train comes off the rails

Still Messy, Still Trying

This isn’t a story about overcoming anything. It’s about learning to work with the brain I have. Some days it clicks. Some days it doesn’t. But I get my kid to school. I keep building my life. I eat meals more days than not.

And that’s progress.

More From This ADHD Circus Tent

If this story made you nod, laugh, or aggressively point at your screen like “yes, that’s me”—you might like a few of these other brain-scrambled adventures from the creative trenches. Same flavor, same chaos, maybe even a duck metaphor or two.

The Broken Clock of Friendship
The Multitasking Myth
Pulling Forward

FURTHER READING, SOURCES & DEEP DIVES:

Medical & Scientific Research:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556068/

NIH PubMed Central - Comprehensive clinical review on time perception impairments in ADHD.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322307006208

Elsevier ScienceDirect - Biological Psychiatry - High-impact psychiatric journal research on time perception deficits.

https://adhdevidence.org/meta-analysis-finds-consistent-time-perception-impairments-in-adhd/

ADHD Evidence Project (King's College London) - Academic research initiative meta-analyzing ADHD time perception studies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-024-03203-6

Nature - Translational Psychiatry - Top-tier scientific journal publishing neuroscience research on improving time perception in ADHD.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00145/full

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience - Open-access peer-reviewed journal on perceptual timing deficits in childhood ADHD.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34487154/

NIH PubMed - Federal database of biomedical literature on temporal processing endophenotypes in ADHD.

Evidence-Based ADHD Resources:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html

Simply Psychology - Psychology education site run by PhD psychologists with peer-reviewed content on ADHD time blindness.

https://www.understood.org/en/articles/adhd-and-time-blindness

Understood.org - Nonprofit organization (supported by 14 founding partners including National Center for Learning Disabilities).

https://www.ucihealth.org/blog/2024/05/coping-with-time-blindness-and-adhd

UC Irvine Health - University of California academic medical center providing clinical guidance on ADHD time management.

Entrepreneur Research:

https://surface.syr.edu/etd/1713/

Syracuse University Surface - Academic institutional repository hosting graduate research on ADHD's impact on entrepreneurship.