Ep 18: Understanding AuDHD in the Real World - Time Blindness, Planning & Task Initiation

🎙️ Episode 18: Understanding AuDHD in the Real World - Time Blindness, Planning & Task Initiation

In this episode of the AuDHD Psych Podcast, clinical psychologist Aaron Howearth and co‑host Dan explore why getting started on “simple” tasks can feel impossibly hard for AuDHD brains, even when the motivation and desire are absolutely there. Drawing on clinical work and lived experience, Aaron explains prospective memory (remembering to do things in the future), time blindness, and executive function differences that turn “make a phone call” or “apply for uni” into an overwhelming tangle of steps, fears, and past experiences of running out of time.

Aaron and Dan unpack the urgency cycle and last‑minute sprint – why panic can act as a powerful attention anchor, but also reinforces anxiety, exhaustion, and the belief that you “only work under pressure.” They tease apart procrastination from task initiation difficulty, and look at how ADHD impulsivity and autistic set‑shifting differences interact in AuDHD, making it harder to switch away from interests toward boring, complex, or ambiguous tasks. Throughout, they offer practical, shame‑free strategies like timers, reminders, body doubling, and micro‑steps, while emphasising self‑compassion: this isn’t laziness, it’s a different brain that needs different tools.

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Prospective Memory & Time Blindness – How remembering future intentions and accurately sensing time are both executive functions that often work differently in AuDHD.
• Planning Load & Overwhelm – Why not knowing all the steps (e.g., applying for uni, legal admin) makes tasks feel impossibly big and easy to avoid.
• Urgency Cycle & “Last‑Minute Only” Mode – How relying on panic to get started reinforces anxiety, burnout, and the belief that you can’t begin until it’s almost too late.
• AuDHD Interaction, Not Just Addition – How ADHD impulsivity/inattention plus autistic set‑shifting and intense interests create unique patterns of inertia and stuckness.
• Task Initiation vs Procrastination – Differentiating moralised “putting things off” from genuine difficulty initiating action, even on important, wanted tasks.
• Timers, Reminders & External Time Anchors – Using visual/auditory timers, layered reminders, and alarms to compensate for internal time blindness.
• Body Doubling & Social Accountability – How doing tasks alongside another person (in‑person or virtual) can anchor attention and make planning or admin more doable.
• Micro‑Steps & First‑Step Reframes – Breaking tasks into tiny, concrete actions (“just set the alarm,” “just make the call”) to reduce overwhelm and build new patterns.
• Self‑Compassion Over Shame – Reframing “lazy” or “inconvenient” narratives into an understanding that AuDHD brains need tailored strategies, not harsher self‑talk.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever planned to get things done and just not quite got around to it? Yeah, me too, about a million times. Hello friends, welcome back to the Audi HD Psych Podcast. I'm Aaron Howe with Clinical Psychologist, and we are different, not defective. This week we'll be having a chat about our time blindness, task initiation, and other some such joys. And just before we crack on, I just want to let everyone know that as always, this is information for general use only. It's not personalized therapy. And if you are having difficulties, please find an affirming therapist in your area. So I'd like to thank the delightful Dan who's here to help keep me on track again today, who is just waving delightfully in the background. And I just want to take a second to say thank you, thank you, thank you to Uma, who's left how with psychology, but did an amazing job in taking on the podcast and helping me get it off the ground in October last year. So Uma, thank you very much, and good luck with your new role at another clinic that I won't name, um, but they do an amazing job too. I'll hand over to Dan and say, Dan, do you want to ask the first questions and keep me on track today?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I would love to and I'll do my best. So uh we've been talking before about prospective memory. What does that mean for your listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:18

So, prospective memory is our ability to keep in mind or remember that we plan to do something. You know, a lot of us manage that with our diaries, but it is just keeping front of mind that I've got a thing that I planned on doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah, the memory for future intentions.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Very much so, the memory for future intentions.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Adults with ADHD show large planning impairments in complex perspective memory tasks. Would you say that's your experience as well?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, so the planning difficulties that we have, absolutely, and part of that is um, you know, we were talking earlier on, and I used the example of me going to uni. I planned on going to uni a number of times decades before I actually did. Uh, the planning difficulties can tap into our differences with our relationship with time, in that I can A, either overestimate or underestimate how long it takes to do something, but I can also over-underestimate how big a task is if I don't know what all the steps are. So I I wanted to go to uni many years ago, and back at that stage, for a mature age person who hadn't passed uh high school, I needed to sit a special tertiary admissions test. So when I thought I want to become a psychologist, I also then thought, oh, okay, uh, to apply for uni, I need to have a stat score or an admissions test score. To have that, I need to know how to go about sitting a stat, and then I'm probably gonna need to study for it and do all the preps for it. So instead of just calling a uni and signing up, it became this big overwhelming thing for me, um, and I didn't know how long it would take. Um, and I have a history with not being great with managing my time, so that became a barrier. So I just found other things to do. Um because I didn't know what was required, I wasn't able to plan time, and even if I did know what was required, I'm not great at planning time. But that made it overwhelming for me. It wasn't just apply for uni, yeah, it was also all of the related things. So it became an overwhelming task that I avoided in many, many ways.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

So inhibition contributes significantly to that planning difficulty. I remember you telling me a story about uh admissions.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Well, I think uh I think inhibition, uh very much so, you know, we as ADHD is and Audi HD is uh impulsivity or impulse control uh leads to difficulties for us. Not always, but we'll leave that there. Um and so applying for uni years ago, I think I was when we were talking about this earlier, I think I was saying I was living on Sussex Street in Sydney, and I had wanted to I decided right this morning I'm gonna call the uni and find out what I need to do. And probably because I thought it was really overwhelming, I suddenly thought it would be a great idea to go shopping. And you know, many ADHDers enjoy a shop or two. And and so I did. Uh the task was overwhelming. I found a reason not to do it. I had that reason happened to be the impulse to go shopping, and I didn't suppress that impulse. So I impulsively went shopping instead of doing the task at hand, and for me it was, you know, I was full-time employed, didn't have a significant impact on me. But sometimes we're not doing the thing and not planning well for things that do have a really significant impact on our personal and professional lives. So, yes, I I bought some new jeans and perhaps a new coat, I think, but I did not apply for uni or even call the uni, which was really the task was make a phone call. But because it was linked to so many other things, because I had so many experiences of not being able to get the thing done, I just there were barriers in the way there, including impulsivity.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

So I've also seen in in a lot of different areas that that sort of can read as not taking responsibility for what you desire or what you want because that you know has gotten in the way. I remember we've spoken to that before about how it's not about what you want, it is that difficulty purely getting in the way.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

You know, there's uh the old ADHD lesson that we learn from the world around us that we're lazy or we're not motivated, or you know, if we wanted to do the thing we could, but it's just not that simple. There is so much involved in doing a thing. And if the thing happens to be something that requires managing my time, then I'm at an inherent loss. You know, I was talking to you about the time management side of things while I was in the Navy. I used to say to my friends, Oh, we did that thing a year ago. And my friends would correct me and go, No, that was like three years ago. And I used to think to myself, my brain must only be counting time when I'm alongside in Australia and not counting the time at sea. But then I left the Navy and the problem exists still. Like, I still think, you know, I think you and I met. In my head, it feels like about a year ago. But how long have we been friends for now? Like two, two, three years, something like that?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I'd say coming up to three, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah, so my my relationship with time is not typical. Um, but I'm gonna bring myself back on track because I was ADHD'd all over that. What was the question again?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

So it was is talking about how it's not a lack of desire that stops you from getting the task started or done or something.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

It's um so it was more speaking more to that experience.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, very much so. So it's not about us being bad people, it's about us having a different set of resources to apply to a task. One of them is our ability to manage time. One of them is that history of not being able to do the task. You know, if I've got caught in that urgency cycle, that emergency cycle, where, and many ADHDs and Audi HDs do, we uh have a history of not being able to start, and we have a history of learning that we can't cope with the boring thing particularly. Um so that's an inherent barrier to us starting. And then we have a history of needing the emergency to get started. So we develop these beliefs, I can't get started until it's the last minute. But those of us who have won genetic lottery and happen to have above average or higher intellect, we can also start, and I know this has certainly been the case for me, start to get into this mindset of always get it done at the last minute. Like, always get it done. You know, I proudly talk about um the best effort that I ever did was having an assignment due at midnight, getting it done at 11.59, and then getting a HD for that assignment that I threw together in 12 hours. Not my proudest moment, because it models such poor things for lots of other people.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

That's exactly the same at uni. That confirmation bias becomes so it's almost addictive.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Absolutely, and it's another barrier. And it's funny you say addictive too. There's also that kind of the reward is I'm stressed, it's the last minute, and then I get it done. And that reward is not unlike the reward pathways that get hijacked by a lot of substances. But there's so there's that, there's these belief barriers, positive and negative. Um, there's my difficulty managing time, my difficulty understanding the tasks, so that kind of planning and organization and the executive functions. I just talked about the emergency, there's some emotional regulation going on there. It's my working memory that we often see functions differently in ADHD as that can impact it. But it's not us choosing not to do the thing. It's not us being lazy or or trying to torment other people by not getting it done. It's literally just we have a different set of resources, and when we're not taught how to use them in a way that serves us, how can we know how to do that? How can I know to anchor my attention by challenging myself, setting a goal and challenging myself to meet it? Or maybe I don't get along with, you know, Jonathan in the next table, challenge myself to beat them at the thing, or you know, um, maybe I haven't learned that. So we're not bad people. We just haven't necessarily learnt the skills that we need to be able to apply our brains in a typical setting.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So with time blindness and the urgency cycle that we were talking about just before. How would you say that prospective memory deficits can be linked with procrastination?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

So I think that prospective memory and procrastination, they're probably actually uh a little bit um I'll differentiate procrastination from task initiation. Yeah. Because procrastination obviously is uh one form of not initiating a task, but it's not the only um form of not initiation of uh difficulty with task initiation. How does procrastination uh and our relationship with time feed into that? If I don't measure time in the same way that the average person does, um I might over or underestimate how long something will take. And uh, you know, I just built or started to build some desks in the office, and in my head, I think I went to the store where I buy the hardware's from at like 1.30 or something like that, and I'm like, I'll be there for maybe an hour, and then it'll take me a few hours to do it's about an eight-meter-long wall that I wanted to build desks into, and then I left there at half past eight tonight, and so I spent all of that sort of five or six hours, and all I got done was one of five panels of desking.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

So I'll be back in an hour. I remember going, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah, that wasn't a thing. And that's about the that is about our planning and organization of tasks, which is one of the executive functions that um we often have difficulty with as ADHD is. But also, if I don't project well how long time things will take, then I'm going to have experiences like that. And that might become a barrier. I might learn that every time I do a thing, it takes forever. So then I'm going to avoid that long, onerous tasks. Um, alongside if I'm an ADHD or I probably don't love admin and things like that, or if I'm ADHD forward, um, then the anxiety about, oh, what if I don't do it well enough? That can be a barrier for a lot of people that leads to procrastination. But the task initiation requires so much more than that. There is the understanding how long I've got to do the thing, remembering that I want to do the thing, planning how I'm going to do the thing. And if I don't plan that and I don't know all the steps, it can become that big overwhelming thing. Taking that first step and starting can be something that either I avoid or I just don't quite get around to because I get sidetracked with the planning or with the trying to work out how long it's going to take.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

The only thing that my notes have here is poor time estimation could help explain why deadlines become too real too late.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Very much so. You know, I um excuse me, I am I'm perfect at uh submitting things at the last minute. I think I'm excited the example when we were chatting before, I have a legal thing that I'm managing at the moment, and I had to do some updates there, be aware I had to do some updates there a little while back, and I had three or four weeks to do it. And at three weeks, in my head I'm like, oh, I've still got three weeks to do it. Oh, shall we take the dogs for a walk? I'll just focus on this podcast-related thing, or I'll focus on this clinical-related thing. And that was two weeks to go, and in my head, like two weeks to go, ages to get this thing done, but I wasn't really thinking about how long the thing would take. And it was many hours work, 15 odd hours work just in a couple of little updates that I had to do. And so one week to go, and it started to be emergency, but I had my clinical work to do at podcast work, and so then it came to basically the day before it was I had to submit it, and then I'm rushing to get it done. I'm in that emergency mode, and again I'm reinforcing those beliefs. Oh, I can't get it started till the last the last minute.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

But I got it done, so I'm also reinforcing that belief that I always get it done at the last minute. But then when I get it done, there's that release of the anxiety, that stress relief, and that is a reward. My system recognizes that as a positive thing, so it reinforces that behavior.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

It's it's so funny you say that because it says here urgency can work as an intention anchor, but it is costly and often anxiety-driven.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Absolutely. And you know, where I talk about the nice framework often, novelty, interest, challenge, and emergency is that anxiety. Um, and I spoke just a second ago about using challenge. We can use novelty and interest as well. Like if I have an autistic interest in something, or an ADHD hyperfixation is another interest, I can use that to anchor my attention. If I've got something that I don't love doing, let's say I work with an amazing human being on their study routines and getting their study done. And what we've done is we've anchored, funnily enough, it's a future goal. Their goal career, we look at the thing that they have difficulty studying, and we're like, how does this play into that future career to anchor interest into it right now?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

So on to the next full topic is it's about task initiation. Could you describe task initiation as a specific executive function?

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So task initiation we're talking about there is starting the task, which obviously involves knowing that I have the task to do, um, that sort of prospective memory, working memory, actually keeping in mind that I have the task to do and planning. Uh, that obviously requires prospective memory, the task that I have to do, breaking it down, holding all of that information in working memory and manipulating it, uh, requires impulse control if I have distractions or other things that come up, managing those impulses, managing emotional reactions to things. What was the question again?

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Because So that's the first part. So now that you've explained that, how does that connect to Audi HD complexities? So the inertia switching tasks, the costs, the overwhelm.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, so well, if I'm autistic, a lot of what one of the diagnostic criteria is restricted on repetitive patterns of thought, behavior, and use of objects. So repetitive patterns of thoughts arguably taps into the executive function of set shifting. So taking my attention from this thing and putting it onto that thing, make this thing my particular interest or one of my particular interests, and it's going to be even harder for me to move to the planning, to the task initiation. If I haven't planned it, it may be overwhelming. If I don't have a great relationship with time, not only is it going to be easier for me to stay with the thing that I'm interested in because maybe my set shifting is not as strong as other people's, there's also going to be a bit of a revulsion from doing that thing because of the anxiety that I've learned, because of the I always get it done at the last minute. Oh, I can't get it started until the last minute.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

That bias becomes different.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yeah. Absolutely. So as Audi HDers, we have the impulsivity and the inattention that are the core diagnostic criteria of ADHD that can contribute to our difficulty starting tasks and managing our time and our relationship with time. But then we can also have that restricted patterns of thought, that set-shifting difficulties that come with autism. There's some great research out there that um argues for not just an additive effect of, you know, autism plus ADHD equals Audi HD, but also an interactive effect. There are Aud exigencies, difficulties that we experience, and strengths that we experience that are not that are exclusive of the ADHD and the autistic experience that are very specific to Aud, and that comes into play as well, and I just don't have enough time to go too deeply into that today.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

So, what are some tools or accessibility options that people can use? I I I have written here maybe external visible clocks.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

So I I love mere timer, I say it so often. One of my favorites for those on watching on YouTube is this little one here. I pick the queer person with the rainbow thing. So I love visual time because I don't track time internally the same way everyone else does. So I have a timer and it just counts down. I have it for when I do therapy sessions with people, I have it for when I have an hour allocated to a job, and then I need to move into another job because that little visual time counting down, it actually helps me shift my attention. I have to have it beside my laptop so that I can see it while I'm working, otherwise it has less effect for me personally. But any form of timer, reminders in my phone, you know, I've said before, if I've got important things coming up or anything coming up, so that to manage my difficulties with prospective memory, I have reminders set a month before, a week before, a day before, and an hour before the event, and that just keeps it front of mind for me, so I know it's coming up and I can plan and organise better. But I can also have some things where I just acknowledge the reminders. So I have alarms that I use in conjunction with that for really important things, and I have specific alarms that are offensive sounds. One of them is literally my own voice going really loudly, and I'm so sorry for anybody who has an audio sensitivity. But uh, I set that up with a particular person that I chat to each fortnight, and with their consent, it was to keep us both on track for our time boundaries because our conversations are so engaging. We lose track of time. So there's that attentional anchor interacting with time. And then again, I gained their consent, and we both know when that when my voice starts honking at us that we have three minutes to go and we need to wind the session up. So I'm not sure if that answered the question, but I will pretend that it did.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Well, yeah, I'd say that's an audible timer. Here it also talks on micro-steps, shorter planning horizons, and body doubling slash social accountability. So I remember you talking about the first step into eating.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, so I really like oh actually, I'll start with body doubling. Um, I love social accountability. Social accountability is so good. We know that just being in a room with somebody, just being on FaceTime with somebody can help motivate us to get the thing done. And sometimes getting the thing done might be just going through my diary and planning my week, planning an organization, which helps me manage my prospective memory. And I do really want to highlight that that body doubling can be done in person and virtually or on the phone. It can be done in any way where I have a connection to another human, probably, and this is my best guess, probably tied to the fact that we are mammals and we have survived as a species by fitting in with the group. So when there's another human around, for some reason, I'm probably better able to anchor my attention. But that is my working theory on why that would be. So body doubling, I love the other things that you said were micro steps. Oh, micro steps. I particularly like um Mary Solanto did some good research and then um constructed CBT for ADHD. And the thing I love most about that is uh, and you know, we use this a lot, don't put it down, put it away. This is one of my favorites. Am I amazing at using it? 60% of the time. But it's better than 0% of the time. In terms of managing our time, our task list, and our doing, uh, I really like two other mantras that are in Solanto's procedure. One of them is if you're having getting trouble, if you're having trouble getting started, the first step is too big, and getting started is the hardest part. So that really taps into task initiation and also that overcomplexity, like me not finding out about the stat and sitting the stat and applying for uni 15, 20, 25 years ago. I was having trouble getting started because the first step was too big. In my head, the first step was all of it. I need to know the stat, know how to apply, apply for uni. But actually, the first step was picking up the phone. And if I'd broken it down to oh, today I'm just going to call the uni, today I'm just gonna pick up my phone, and then step two much easier to start. So if you're having trouble getting started, the first step is too big. Getting started is the hardest part. So getting those tasks completed, once I get started, we just I generally know that we can keep going. Not always, obviously, there are exceptions to all rules, but generally, once I start on a task, I can continue doing it. So just getting started by breaking things down into smaller parts to be able to start can be a really good way to manage my time because I'm starting tasks and crossing them off my task list, but also just learning new lessons. If I just start when the legal thing is three weeks away from June, probably going to get five of those 15 hours of work done now and only have 10 to do. So I'm more likely to get five done two weeks out, and then only have five to do one week out.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

And my brain, as you were saying that, just went, you can't see the trees for the forest, not the forest for the trees. Absolutely. Which is just that was a fun, that was a fun way to think about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

I love neurodivergent brains.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

So tracking estimated versus actual time to improve calibration over time.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah, so I I didn't mean for this to be a big plug for Silanto's CBT for ADHD, but here we are. Um one um well one of the many tools or part of one of the tools is one predicting how long the things in my day are going to take, and then actually clocking how long did they take for me to do. Then you know, I am the monarch of misattributing the amount of time that will take as discussed. I thought it would be a couple of hours for the desks. It was many hours for one-fifth of the desks. But I think to pardon me, I lost my train of thought again. Wow, that's happening a lot tonight. We were talking about CBT for ADHD and tracking time. So keeping a journal a ledger of how long do I expect that to take? And how long did it actually take? And that just gives me updated information to be able to go, oh okay, I've got to do jobs one, two, and three, and they actually do take me two hours, three hours, or four hours. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

So we are getting close to the end, which is always sad for me.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

And me, I do love a channel.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

With with the strategies that we talked about before, what would you think would be a good strategy for your listeners to try over the course of the next week?

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So I think you know, breaking things down uh is a really nice way to manage my task list, which invariably impacts on my time management. So have a look at a task that maybe you've been avoiding or maybe other things. When I say avoiding, we're not often doing it actively. We're like, I need to do this thing, I want to do this thing, but look, I've got to do the dishes. And it's not like when we say procrastinating, it's not like we're deliberately and willfully avoiding the task we know we want to do, but those tasks do get sidelined. Have a look at one of those tasks and ask yourself, what's the first step? What's the first thing that I need to do? And try and just do that and then see how we go. Getting started is the hardest part, and if we're having trouble getting started, the first step is too big. So just look at your task. What's the first achievable concrete thing that I need to do to start on that task and give that a go?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Setting an alarm for 5 a.m. to take the dog for a walk.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Don't I like I had to, because we did this and then it was so difficult to think, oh I have to get I have to take the dog. So I'd just like to start with the alarm. Very good. And it's yeah, once we started, can continue going.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, and it's the same with you know Yoda. For years I have rolled out of bed, taken Yoda for a walk. And that started way back in the day when I first adopted him and he needed more exercise, then he'd go for a morning wee break. And it was effortful to set that routine, but I would just first set the alarm for the extra 15 minutes early. And then in the morning when I woke up and there was that resistance to that, it was okay, I'm just gonna get out of bed.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

And then okay, I'm just gonna put on some clothes and my shoes. And then I've started moving and it's easier for me to keep going.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

So if someone listening has just learned that they've taught themselves that they only work well under panic and stress, what what's a bit of self-compassion that they should give themselves now?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

You're not a terrible person. You're not a bad person. You're not choosing to leave things to the last minute. You've just got a brain that functions differently, and you've learnt beliefs that contribute to this and patterns of behavior that are really hard to change when we don't know what our brains are, how our brains work, and we live and grow and develop in systems that generally tend to accommodate a typical brain more than they accommodate our brains. So just to be kind to yourself, just recognize that this isn't a deliberate choice that you're making to make your life more difficult. You're not lazy, you're not unmotivated. You just have a different way of anchoring your motivation, attention, and getting the job done. And when we learn how to work with our brains instead of against it trying to fit into typical systems and structures, we actually tend to achieve everything that we want to in our way.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Thanks. So that's everything on the list, um, which makes me very happy because it means we did a very good job covering everything on the list. We did indeed. We did it within time.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

I love this. I'd like to save. Thank you, Dan. Thank you very much. And just one last plug again, thank you, Uma, for all of your help leading up to this point. And Dan for slotting on in and filling the role. Uh, Dan will be my new Uma helping me out with the podcast. And um, I really appreciate everyone listening in, all of our likes, follows, subscribes, comments on Instagram. I really appreciate it, and I do try to respond to everyone that I can if I think that I can respond in a helpful way. Um, thank you all. And if you have a chance, please give us a rating on your streaming platforms because it helps the algorithm algorize and do the things for to help us get out the word that we are different, not less. Thanks very much, team. We'll see you next time.