Hey, it's Erica here. Today I want to chat a little bit about how challenging it can be for ADHDers in their relationship with time, and share a couple perspectives on how folks I've known have really transformed their relationship to time, and figured out good life hacks to be able to operate and succeed in a very clock driven world. The first thing that I always wanna tell people, who have ADHD, who are struggling with being on time, is: you really can cut yourself a break. Because it legitimately is hard for you to measure the passage of time. And I like to talk about the idea of just progress, not perfection, right? So I think of it as working to increase your on time percentage. I thought of this because many, many years ago, I was really frustrated because I missed a flight. I'm often cutting it very close at the airport and this one time, I just cut way too close. And nothing disastrous happened, I was just so mad at myself about it. And I was talking to a friend about it afterward, just being very harsh at myself about the fact that I had missed his flight. And he said something to me. He said, "well, tell me how many flights do you take any year?" At this point, I was travelling a lot for work. So I said, "well, probably 50", and he said, "okay, so in the past year, how many of those flights have you missed?". I said, "well, just the one". And so he said, "sounds to me, like you have a 98% on time percentage for making flights". I said, "yeah". So that's actually pretty good. The top airlines celebrate if they achieve an 80% on time arrival percentage. And I really liked the way that this conversation helped me flip the story. From a story where I'm always late, I'm always late, which I would say to myself often, into something where I would say I have a 98% on time arrival percentage and I want to make it even better. So when I've worked with clients, I often start there. I say, "Okay, let's just figure out what your actual on time arrival percentage is right now, and see if you can improve it just 1% a day, 1% a week." Getting factual about it can help to take a little bit of the bite out of how frustrating it is to want to be on time and not be on time. So you know, let's say for example, okay, realistically, you've got about a 50% on time arrival percentage right now, and you're going to try to see if, in the next couple of days, you can get it over 55%, that feels manageable. And then notice what's happening, what's going right. When you get places on time, what are you doing those times that you could repeat and do what other times? And then start implementing experiments, I think it's very much about having your own life hacks and experiments that can externalise time for you, because you're not going to add a clock inside your brain, so you'll need to have clocks and timers around you if you want to thrive in this very clock oriented environment. Doing those kinds of experiments, helps in a couple of ways. Yes, it really helps you to figure out the life hacks that are gonna work for you. But I also believe that it can help you to shift into more of a scientist investigator mode rather than a self critic. Because what I found as a coach is that for many of the ADHD folks that I work with, for whom time blindness is a real issue, one of the most important things they do that helps them to shift to have just a bit more wonderful of a life is to reframe the situation. And to really accept the fact that not having a good sense of time isn't some kind of moral failing. Even though you might get this really critical feedback from other people and they might misunderstand it as somebody who is lazy or doesn't care or is irresponsible, you can understand that this is just something that you have to find your workarounds for. And it can help with making it a bit easier to just get into solution mode, rather than critical mode. You know, I mean, we all have these things that you know, psychologists call cognitive distortions, right? So they're really just these lies that we tell ourselves that we believe to be true. And oftentimes, we do this kind of black and white extreme thinking. So it can show up in this situation like, "I am always late", or "I can never be on time for things", or "I will never be able to be on time", which, if you look at it factually is just untrue. And so to the extent that you can shift your mindset into, "here's my on time percentage rate now, I'm not happy with it, and I want it to be better", but it's not the same as "I can never be on time". In the upcoming chats, I'm going to be talking about little life hacks and techniques that have worked for a lot of my clients and for me, when it comes to increasing that on time percentage, and I hope they work for you. But I really do believe that one of the ultimate essential life hacks when it comes to living a life you love while having time blindness is to just get clear on the fact that it's because you ended up with this brain, not that brain. It's not a moral failing. It's just that you have to find some ways to externalise time. And it's not that you're always late or can never be on time, but you're just constantly working to increase that ontime percentage.