Chapter 1: What is time blindness and how does it affect punctuality?
Smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged. Late Night's Fresh Perspective. The Last Show with David Cooper. more annoying than dealing with a friend or coworker who's chronically late. But what if we shouldn't be so quick to judge? What if it's not rudeness and thoughtlessness, but a brain that experiences time differently than you? Enter time blindness. What is it?
Well, we're going to discuss that with author and psychotherapist, Dr. Stephanie Sarkis. Dr. Sarkis, welcome to the show.
Chapter 2: How can therapists differentiate between time blindness and procrastination?
Thanks for having me.
When someone is always late, what is the first thing you listen for as a therapist? Like, how do you tell whether it's someone's brain, whether they're experiencing time differently or just a behavioral choice?
I think when we think of choice, we have to be kind of careful with that because when we are running late or we are getting in trouble with friends or family because of our time perception issues,
is different or in school you're waiting until the last minute to get projects done, sometimes there's a moral thing of, well, if you just tried harder, if you just worked more at what you're doing, if you weren't lazy. So I think that when people run late, they generally do want to be on time. Who doesn't want to please their partner or friends or
So we need to look at the fact that this might be related to issues with the brain, particularly executive functions, which are in the frontal lobe.
Fair enough. But for some people, clearly, it must be just procrastination, not them experiencing time differently than everyone else.
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Chapter 3: What are the common misconceptions about people who are chronically late?
It depends. It depends. Some people have procrastination that has a brain back reason for it. And some people have procrastination that is related to other stuff. So it really depends on what the other things that we're seeing at the same time. So if it's a cluster of things like.
Difficulty showing up on time, difficulty estimating how much time it takes to get projects done, difficulty with seeing the timeline of time. So things are either now or not now. When you look at that cluster of things, then we look at possibly timeliness.
Okay, well, let's talk about time blindness because it sounds abstract.
Chapter 4: How do individuals with time blindness perceive the passage of time?
How do people who experience it actually feel time passing? Like I'm always glancing at my clock. I think I'm pretty good about estimating like, oh, this drive is going to take 45 minutes. Having a good concept of where I am in that journey, how many minutes have elapsed. I think I have a pretty good handle of that stuff. For someone who's time blind, how would it be different?
When you have time blindness, you will be in a room without a clock, and somebody will ask you, how much time do you think has passed? And you either over or underestimate, and it's by a lot. So it's not just that you're overestimating or underestimating five minutes. We're talking, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes. You have a schedule. You know that there's traffic.
You know you need to leave early, but somehow you still are not able to get out at the right time. Or you think, you know what, this project is going to take me about 10 minutes to do, when in fact it's an hour. It's a large discrepancy between what time should take and what you actually estimate it to be.
And what can someone who experiences time like that do? Is there a way to sort of function like the rest of us to not be chronically late or I suppose chronically early also?
Well, that's the other thing that happens when people are chronically early. That's the part of time blindness that we don't really talk about as much, is that sometimes people will show up super early because they know they tend to run late. And that's also not an efficient use of time, right?
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Chapter 5: What strategies can help someone with time blindness manage their schedule?
So if you're sitting in a doctor's office for an hour early, there are other things you could do. And you know that if you just go get some coffee and come back, you're still gonna be not arriving on time. So it really hinders how people live their lives. And so one of the things you can do is do adaptations, block schedule your calendar. Also use timers.
Have a partner or friend that checks in with you to let you know, hey, are you going to that thing in five minutes? You probably got to leave now.
And also, if you think that this is a sign of other things, like if you're having other brain issues, like difficulty with remembering things, difficulty with motivation, difficulty with anxiety, it may be worth talking to a mental health clinician to get an evaluation.
That could be something like ADHD, I suppose. When we hear ADHD, we think just disorganized. That's got to be a misconception though, right?
That's part of it. And ADHD also, again, has to do with the executive functions of the frontal lobe. So that means an issue with motivation, difficulty with time estimation, regulating your mood. So it's part of a cluster of different symptoms.
Interesting. Okay, so how much shame might someone carry around when they have time blindness and they're chronically late? Like you must speak to clients or people that feel like they're perceived as rude, lazy, broken, that sort of thing.
A lot of shame. Yep.
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Chapter 6: How does time blindness relate to mental health issues like ADHD?
A lot of shame because people are treated differently. They're treated differently by friends and family. They're being told that, well, you don't really care about me because you didn't show up on time. And this is a person that really makes every effort to try to be on time, but it just doesn't happen. And sometimes they don't know why it's happening.
They know that they have a hard time estimating time, but it's made such a huge impact in their relationships. It's even led to relationship breakups.
Now, when reading about this, I stumbled upon something called the fear of arriving early, which was just wild to me. Are there people that are scared of arriving early to things and so they cut it too close? That coupled with a bad idea of how time functions, that can be the perfect recipe for disaster. Can you say more about this fear? Have you encountered this before?
Yeah, it can be tied to social anxiety and other types of anxiety. So if you show up early to something and you're the only one, there's only about two other people there, it can really put a lot of pressure on you socially to interact. So that could be an issue.
Also, what do I do if I show up early and I don't have other people that I can kind of monitor or observe to see what I'm supposed to do? It can create a lot of issues for people.
I am blessed to live with a wonderful partner who I love very much, who's very patient with me. She is not great with time. She is chronically late.
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Chapter 7: What emotional impact does time blindness have on relationships?
She does her best not to be for work, but for social stuff and like theater tickets or whatever it is, dinner reservations. And it drives me insane, Dr. Sarkis. What can I do? Should I just be more patient? Those who interact with and live with people who are chronically late, be it because of time blindness or not, what do you recommend?
I think we need to look at that this is someone that's probably not doing this personally to you, right? It's something that someone struggles with. And people do live with shame and guilt because they're not able to be on time. Now, if she's on time for work, maybe it's that there's immediate sanctions if she doesn't show up on time at work.
But we hope that the people that we live with, the people that we're related to are going to be a little bit easier on us and love us unconditionally. And so we can be ourselves. So there's not as much pressure. So the flip side of that is that she's probably a wonderful person, has a great personality. So we have to look at a relationship. What's the other side of it?
Why did you fall in love with her in the first place? And we all have stuff that, again, like you said, your partner's tolerant of your stuff. So it's looking at, well, you know what? Maybe they're late. So let's figure out together how we can make sure that this doesn't happen.
True. And she has that strange brain disease where she thinks dating me is socially acceptable. And so I have to give her credit for being late sometimes. But I got to play the troublemaker here, the nudnik.
There's got to be a fine line between just an excuse to say, hey, I'm time blind when you're actually rude and thoughtless versus someone who actually needs to work on some mental health stuff or has some issues around time perception. Where is that line? Or am I oversimplifying by saying that?
Well, if you have ADHD or anxiety or depression that causes you to have issues with lateness, you're still responsible for the behavior. You're still responsible for seeking out help for it. And still you should apologize if you've upset someone because of your lateness.
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Chapter 8: What practical steps can someone take to improve their time management skills?
And that has nothing to do with guilt or shame. It's just being responsible to other people.
So making your friend sit there at the restaurant for 45 minutes, not even texting, showing up late, you can't just say, hey, I'm time blind and expect everyone, everything to be okay.
There's also the thing of, you know, if you care about people and you're empathic, you text somebody and go, hey, I'm running late. Or you tell the person, you know what, I'm late. You have every right to get up and go. And then as the person that is waiting for that person, you can say, you know what? Here's my limit. Here's my boundary.
I'm going to wait about 20 minutes and I want to text that person. And if I don't hear from them, I'm going to go. And so that's the natural logical consequence. And that happens because your time is valuable, too.
For someone who's listening and thinking, oh, no, this is me. I'm that late person. What is one small, realistic change someone who's chronically late can do to make things actually work better for them?
Set timers, set timers for everything. And you can have timers that talk to you. You can have your watch will give you a little ding or vibration when you need to do something. That's essential. And also, again, if you feel like this is impacting your quality of life, seek an evaluation from a mental health professional.
All right, well, you can check out Dr. Stephanie Sarkis' book, Healing from Toxic Relationships. That's available wherever books are sold or go to stephaniesarkis.com. Dr. Sarkis, thank you for talking to me today. I appreciate your time.
My pleasure.
My name is Jordan and I'd like to invite you to join me on the Canadian Gothic, a podcast covering stories of Canadian crime, mystery, and the offbeat. The Canadian Gothic blends the spirit of late night talk radio with the depth of a documentary film and applies that approach to both developing stories and historical cases.
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