Dr. Russell Barkley

How would you recognize that?

You would see that because number one, they're very impulsive and show very poor self-control and self-regulation.

Two, they're not as aware

of their difficulties as are the people around them because they're not self-monitoring to the extent that you do.

Three, they are horrible at time management because the working memory system in part gives you your sense of time and timing and allows you to think about the future, to deliberate what is coming next, and then to use that to inform your own behavior.

So time management, it becomes a major deficit that just gets worse and worse with age because life becomes more time sensitive with age.

Three-year-olds don't have to manage time.

30-year-olds are incredibly time sensitive.

Most of your day is filled with deadlines, schedules, promises, commitments, bills.

Everything has a time tag on it.

And so that's when I came up with the word, as you saw in my book,

time blind.

Adults with ADHD, kids are too, but especially adults, struggle with this concept of time and how you cope with this and manage yourself relative to it.

And then, of course, you're going to see the emotional self-regulation problems, impulsive emotion, difficulties getting control over your emotions, what other people can do.

You're going to have a lot of trouble with self-motivation.

You're going to procrastinate.

Anything that doesn't have an immediate payoff is very hard for you to stay with.

And you'll keep being distracted by anything that offers you a promise of immediate gratification.

And then when you're faced with problems, instead of sticking it out and trying to problem solve, people with ADHD tend to quit.

They tend to simply shift over and go do something else.