Change your outlook toward your job. By changing the way you look at your day ahead, you can change your performance. Martin Luther King once said, “If you are going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be.” Keeping this in mind as you go through your day at work can help you look at your job in a different light. If you can use the experience to improve any aspect of yourself, then it is a worthwhile job.
Maybe your job isn’t boring and menial. Maybe the job is difficult and frustrating and you aren’t confident in your ability to do it well. Your frustration could appear as a lack of commitment to the job. Your co-workers or bosses may feel that you do not care about completing your tasks well. Determine if there is some accommodations that could help you do better. If so, talk with your boss about some ways that you could improve your performance.
Besides work, there may be other commitments in your life that hold no interest. Maybe you really don’t want to attend. Maybe you are less than excited to go to the parent teacher conference. No matter what it is, if you don’t want to attend, there is a good chance you will allow other things to take your attention, causing you to be late. You may not have intentionally tried to avoid the situation, but in a way, that is exactly what you have done.
No matter what the activity, you can use the same change of perspective to help you. Instead of telling yourself that you do not want to go, change your view, even if it is “Let me go so I can get it over with.” Find some reason to get there, complete your obligations and move on to a task you are more interested in.
Distorted Sense of Time/Hyperfocus
Time, for people with ADHD, can be distorted. Time can pass much more slowly when performing an activity. Many times you may feel that you have plenty of time to complete other tasks before leaving to attend your obligation. With a distorted sense of time, it is easy to not realize how much time has past. You may feel that only 10 minutes has passed since you last looked at the clock, when actually 30 minutes has gone by.
Time management skills and not properly gauging how long something will take to complete are both reasons adults with ADD/ADHD often lose track of time. They may feel a task will take only 10 minutes to complete, although in reality it may take 2 or 3 times as long.
