Time Blindness Isn’t Laziness - It’s Neurology

The clock on my laptop taunts me: 2:17 PM. I’ve been eyeballing it for an indeterminate amount of time, a spectator to its ceaseless march. At noon, I was all gung-ho: “Let’s hammer out that report, shall we?” By 12:30, the enthusiasm had waned but the spirit lingered: “Alright, soon, very soon.” By 1:00, it was merely wishful thinking.

Now at 2:17, the report remains a desert of blank pages.

Beside me, my coffee has given up all pretense of warmth, content to leave a soggy ring on the calender - today’s date circled in a mocking, garish red. Deadline, that brutal, accusatory word.

I assure ya, I’m not a disciple of the slacker arts.

It’s just that my brain has a quirky relationship with time. It prefers to categorise life into ‘now’ adn ‘not-now’. That deadline was comfortably in ‘not-now’ land until, without so much as a by-your-leave, it bulldozed into ‘now’, with all the subtlety of a hippo in a ballet.

I glance at my phone. Three texts from my boss, spaced out like a breadcrumb trail of anxiety. Each one read and mentally replied to with, “I’ll get back to you in a tick when there’s something less embarrassing to show.”

That tick turned out to be more elusive than one might have hoped.

Through the window, the sun’s having a bit of a guffaw, casting that end-of-the-day golden glow that screams, “Oi, you’ve squandered another one!” How did it get so late so quickly? I rub my eyes and try not to entertain the cocktail of shame, panic, and frustration brewing in my chest.

Last week, my therapist dropped a term on me: “time blindness.” It hit me with the force of an unexpected diagnosis.

“It’s not a character flaw,” she had assured. “It’s neurology.”

I let these words marinate as I stare at the haunting emptiness of my Word document. It’s not that I’m a rebel against deadlines or have any disdain for punctuality. It’s just that my internal clock is more Salvador Dalí than Big Ben - melty and unreliable.

I remember sitting in class at ten years old, the teacher droning on about the virtues of punctuality. “People who are always late just don’t value others’ time,” she had declared. I’d felt that burn of embarrassment, having waged war with three alarms that morning and still arriving a chaotic fifteen minutes late.

Here I am, twenty years on, and that schoolgirl shame hasn’t quite left me.

My phone buzzes - a gentle nudge from reality. My boss: “Meeting in 10 to discuss the report status.”

Ten minutes. What a bizarre amount of time. Long enough to ponder making coffee, short enough to ensure it remains undrunk. Sufficient to start a panic spiral, but utterly inadequate to produce the promised work.

I shut my eyes, inhaling deeply.

The invisible beast, time blindness, is my silent nemesis. It’s unseen by others, the mental gymnastics I perform daily, translating the simple “ten minutes” into something tangible. No one knows the crutches I need - alarms, timers, glaringly obvious visual cues - to navigate what to others is effortless.

Eyes open, I set a timer for eight minutes. This digital countdown morphs the nebulous future into a manageable chunk. My fingers dance over the keyboard - bullet points, not War and Peace, but it’s a start.

As I type, my therapist’s voice echoes, “Your brain works differently. That’s not an excuse - it’s context.” With this, I can build coping strategies that mesh with my brain’s eccentric wiring, not against it.

The timer beeps. Meeting time in two. I’ve cobbled together the skeleton of the report and sprinkled it with preliminary data. It’s a far cry from complete, but it’s tangible. Proof that I’m not just lounging in the realm of laziness or neglect.

I fire off my embryonic report to my boss with a note: “More to follow. Beginning framework attached.”

Clicking into the video call, I scribble a mental note to dissect tomorrow into precise, timed slivers, complete with built-in breathers. A framework to scaffold my unpredictable sense of time.

My boss pops onto the screen. I brace for the blow, but instead, she nods, “Thanks for the outline. Let’s walk through what you’ve got.”

Relief floods me. Not because I’m out of the woods, but because, for once, I’m addressing the problem rather than drowning in it.

Time, that fickle fiend, will always be my Everest. I’ll always require more scaffolding than others to scale it. But recognising that my struggles stem from neurological quirks - not moral failings - alters something fundamental in how I view myself.

I’m not lazy. I’m simply navigating a world tailored for brains that tick differently than mine.

And for now, that realisation is enough.