What the EF? How to Support Time Management

When someone consistently struggles with time management, the outside world often interprets it as laziness, irresponsibility, lack of effort, or “not caring enough.” If perceived in this way, it leads to frustration, disappointment, and hurt for others and shame for the ADHDer.  In reality, many of these challenges stem from ADHD-related differences in executive functioning, including time awareness, time estimation, attention regulation, task initiation, working memory, and energy management. 

Support becomes much more effective when we stop assuming that the issue is a lack of planning ahead, and we actually break down and consider what cognitive skills and information is necessary to effectively time manage. 

Let’s talk about what actually helps.