Time Blindness and Finding Your Anchor Points

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Do you ever feel like time is slipping through your fingers? In this quick episode, you’ll learn how to use simple "anchor points" to help your ADHD brain feel the flow of time, without strict schedules or rigid routines. 

Jess shares practical tools for navigating time blindness and encourages you to create just one grounding moment today. It’s not about doing more - it’s about noticing the moments that matter.

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To find more tips and support, visit theADHDMom.com and subscribe to the show!

Jessica is a Creative wife & mom of 3 from Northwest Pennsylvania. She is a voiceover artist at Jessica Lewis Voice and enjoys creating calming art through macro and landscape photography at The Painted Square.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
hey.
Welcome to Quick wins for ADHDMoms.
I'm Jess, a mom with ADHD kidsand working on figuring out my
own ADHD as well.
I'm so glad you're here.
Today's quick win use anchorpoints to feel the flow of time.
We're gonna be talking abouttime blindness a little bit
later in the episode, but rightnow.

(00:23):
A quick win Use anchor points tofeel the flow of time.
So this is all about helpingyour ADHD brain feel the passage
of time without the strictschedules or color coded
calendars, although color codedcalendars do sound like a lot of
fun.
But okay, let's stay focused.
So here's your win.
Create one anchor point today,just one.

(00:46):
Okay, so what is an anchorpoint?
it's just a simple, repeatablemoment that helps you feel
grounded in your day, so acouple examples would be maybe
pouring your coffee into thesame mug every day and letting
that be your morning signal,your morning routine.
Maybe it's lighting a candleduring dinner every evening,

(01:07):
even if it's just leftovers.
Maybe it's playing the same songevery morning when you start
your workday, creating a mentalswitch to focus mode.
Tiny, meaningful markers oranchors.
That tell you, Hey, this momentmatters.
It's not about doing more.

(01:27):
It's about noticing the flow ofyour life one anchor point at a
time.
So I mentioned time blindnessbefore, but let's revisit that.
What is time blindness and whydo these anchor points even
matter?
Does this really work?
Because if you have ADHD, timecan feel really slippery.

(01:48):
It's called time blindness.
And it's one of those thingsthat can make you feel like, or
maybe you are always late oralways forgetting something.
Always living in this weird nowor not now space.
If something isn't happeningright now, it might as well be
happening.
Never.
And if something is happeningright now, it takes over

(02:11):
everything.
Whether that means you're in themiddle of a creative project,
maybe a kid is melting down oryou're folding one sock and
somehow end up cleaning out thewhole closet.
We don't feel time passing in alinear, reliable way, and that
is called time Blindness andanchor points are just a really

(02:33):
easy way to help your brain feeltime again, they give you little
touch points.
Not to control time, but to justkinda slow down and notice it.
So how does time blindnessaffect your daily life?
Time.
Blindness shows up when youunderestimate how long things
are going to take.
It's just gonna take fiveminutes, right?

(02:53):
And it ends up being 25 minutes.
Or you're late, even though youset three different reminders,
or maybe you feel rushed all thetime, even on days when there's
technically nothing.
Urgent time blindness can alsohelp you not be able to picture
the future clearly, likeeverything's kind of foggy
unless there's a crisis thatputs everything into clarity and

(03:17):
is pushing you.
Or maybe you forget how long agosomething happened.
Wait, wasn't that last week?
No, no.
That was two months ago.
So this time blindness, it's notlaziness or poor planning, it's
just how our brains areprocessing time in a really
fragmented, non-linear way andtime blindness isn't just

(03:38):
logistical, it's reallyemotional.
When we are constantly feelingbehind or late or like we're bad
at time, it can chip away at ourself-esteem.
And being a mom, you suddenlyfeel like you're grieving how
fast your kids are growing,while also yelling at them to
hurry up and brush their teeth.

(03:58):
We already deal with mom guilt,and then we add forgetting
appointments and the shame foralways being rushed and
frustration when we just can'tseem to fix anything.
But here's what I want you toknow.
You are not broken.
Your brain's not broken, you'renot lazy.
Your brain just needs maybe adifferent approach to time,

(04:20):
creating those anchor pointsthroughout your day, your week,
maybe your year, can help youfeel more grounded in the flow
of time.
And making these anchor pointsaren't supposed to make you turn
into this rigid routine kind ofperson.
Because let's face it, we do notlike rigid routines.
But at the same time, we needsome kind of structure And these

(04:42):
anchor points just need to bereally flexible.
It gives our brain something tohook onto, like finding kind of
a rhythm and the chaos but it'snot rigid.
And then over time theseflexible anchor points build a
sense of continuity.
They help you say, oh yes, timeis passing by and I am living

(05:04):
it.
So talking about time blindness,there's ways that you can work
with your brain instead ofagainst it.
So here's a few tools that mightbe able to help you.
Visual timers, ones that showthe passage of time with the
color or movement.
So Amazon has a bunch of theseand my 18-year-old daughter
loves it.

(05:25):
in fact, she never knew how longit actually took her to put her
clothes away until she put thetimer on and realized instead of
two minutes to put her clothesaway, it took like 30 minutes
because of all the distractions.
But she It's also good to havereminders with labels.
So not just set an alarm atthree o'clock because that
alarm's gonna go off at threeo'clock, and you're gonna say,

(05:46):
what the heck did I set thattimer for?
So be really specific.
You know, set a timer forputting laundry in the dryer, or
leave now to pick up the kids.
I've set timers that say, okay,leave in five minutes.
That doesn't help because Iforget, oh yeah, I was supposed
to leave in five minutes, 10minutes ago.

(06:07):
Another thing you can do to helpfight time blindness is being
able to externalize time.
So having your calendars on thewall, or sticky notes, or having
a visual planner, you know,we've talked about this before.
Get it out of your brain andonto the piece of paper.
Don't try to keep it all in yourhead.
Transitional cues like music orscents like lighting a candle

(06:31):
that has a certain scent or evenchanging the mood lighting in
the room Can tell your brainit's time to make a shift.
You could also do time blockingwith a lot of padding.
So like instead of schedulingsomething back to back, build in
a lot of white space in yourday.
In fact, put that in yourcalendar.

(06:51):
Just put a block of time thathas nothing to remind yourself
that the project you haveprobably is gonna take five
times as long as you think, butwhen you build in white space
around it.
It helps you kind of pad thattime, blocking time in your
calendar.
You're doing better than youthink.

(07:11):
Listen, we live in a world thatprizes precision and
productivity, but our brains area little different.
They operate with creativity andintensity.
And you just don't feel time,you experience it.
So give yourself permission tocreate a life that actually
works for you.
Use anchor points, play withsome of these time blindness

(07:33):
tools and be kind when thingsfall through the cracks, because
we all know they do.
And remember, you are not theonly one on this journey.
There's a lot of us with this.
Same kind of brain and same homesituations too.
So we're just here to encourageeach other and keep moving
forward.
So thanks for spending just alittle time with me today.
If this episode resonated, I'dlove if you could share it with

(07:56):
a fellow, ADHD mom, who reallyneeds to hear it.
Let's help others find thesegentle little reminders too.
And hey, maybe today your anchorpoint is just you pressed play.
You listened to the episode, youshowed up, and that's enough.
All right, go out.
Have a wonderful day.
Find your anchor points.
I'll see you next time.
I.