Lateness

I first became interested in doing an intervention about lateness because of my own experience. I have rarely been late since I was young, so I used to find it difficult to understand why someone could know exactly what time they needed to leave and still end up being late.

However, while interviewing my participants, I found that this was a common difficulty mentioned by several adults with ADHD. They were not necessarily unaware of the time. Sometimes they knew they needed to leave and had even started preparing early, but still struggled to turn that awareness into action.

This made me realise that “knowing the time” and “actually taking action” can be two different things.

Research on adult ADHD also suggests difficulties with time perception and time-based prospective memory — remembering and carrying out an intended action at the appropriate time (Mette, 2023; Altgassen, Kretschmer and Kliegel, 2014).

Research on adults with ADHD suggests that difficulties with time management can contribute to chronic lateness, affecting work and attendance at important appointments. Distraction and becoming absorbed in other activities may also make it difficult to follow an intended schedule (Adamou et al., 2021).

So I decided to carry out a small intervention around lateness.

In the first test, the participant needed to leave home before 10:00. We set an alarm every ten minutes from 8:00 to 10:00, hoping that frequent reminders would help her keep track of time. However, she simply dismissed the alarms one by one and still failed to leave on time.

For the second test, I changed the position of the reminder instead of increasing the number of alarms. I placed the alarm beside the front door, so she had to physically walk to the door to turn it off. This time, she successfully left home on time.

She later tried the same method several more times when meeting friends and attending appointments, and it continued to work for her.

Reference：

Adamou, M. et al. (2021) ‘Recommendations for occupational therapy interventions for adults with ADHD: a consensus statement from the UK adult ADHD network’, BMC Psychiatry, 21, 72. doi: 10.1186/s12888-021-03070-

Altgassen, M., Kretschmer, A. and Kliegel, M. (2014) ‘Task dissociation in prospective memory performance in individuals with ADHD’, Journal of Attention Disorders, 18(7), pp. 617–624. doi: 10.1177/1087054712445484.

Mette, C. (2023) ‘Time perception in adult ADHD: Findings from a decade—A review’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(4), 3098. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20043098.