𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

Time blindness is a term that is sometimes heard with people with ADHD. All ADHD people don’t have it and all who have it are not ADHD persons. Having said that time blindness can hit a lot of people around us. People who have time blindness measure time in a different way than most people. They are aware of time but not with the sensitivity of other people. Here are some ways we can be time blind:

*Difficult to estimate the time for a given work.

*Get so absorbed in what we are doing we forget other things that needs to get done.

*Perennially running late for appointments.

*Cannot understand how time disappears in their lives

*Cannot estimate the journey time properly.

*Cannot figure out why people make such a fuss about being on time.

*Feeling time was not enough in the exam that they took.

*Periodically not able to estimate the time of the day.

These are some characteristics of people who are time blind. It is not intentional. That is the way they are wired. They don’t have an internal sense of time properly. For them to overcome their time blindness they need external cues all the time. Alarms on the phone/watch, more clocks in the house, reminder notes, big calendars on the wall, other trusted folks to remind them. They struggle when the have to depend on inner cues of body and mind when it comes to time. They work best when they depend on external cues.

𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

I could not find any literature or mention anywhere with regard to this but figured it out myself when I looked at myself. I am not time blind but space blind. I am keenly aware of time at all points in the day and have no difficulty with it. I am before time for appointments and can accurately estimate the time needed for a job, journey etc. But I seem to be blind to usage of space around me and here are some characteristics of people I have seen who are space blind:

*They don’t give so much importance to how space is used around them

*They can do with minimum space and don’t need different areas of the house for different activities. One table can serve for reading, writing, eating, surfing the net etc.

*They struggle with the idea of ‘place for everything and everything in its place’.

*They struggle to keep the cupboards, and drawers organized. They can attend to that only when it gets impossible (perhaps once a year!)

*They cannot pack suitcases for journeys as elegantly as space-conscious people do.

*In the kitchen, they can pile vessels and plates on top of one another without being aware of sizes, shapes etc. The space-conscious one will organize the plates size-wise, all vessels fit into one another etc.

*The books shelf is a place to keep books. Do you mean the books have to be organized by the height of the books? What a strange idea!!

*They cannot estimate the correct size of containers to pour stuff into and err on the side of bigger containers.

The only way for such people to overcome space blindness (they have to live with others who are space-conscious) is to constantly bring awareness to their surroundings. Have a routine of organizing the desk every day either before beginning the day’s work or at the end of it. Have a fixed day in a week to organize the cupboards etc. Create a pause before putting things back.

Some around us suffer from time blindness and others from space blindness. A few may have both and there definitely are people who are neither space nor time blind. What we need to do is to be aware of our blindness and the blindness of others around us and help each other navigate the blind spots with kindness and compassion. Time and space-blind people are not doing it deliberately to spite you. They can’t help who they are just like time and space-conscious people cannot help who they are.