Shifting From Time Scarcity to Time Abundance

In her article, Escaping the Time-Scarcity Trap, Janet Choi speaks eloquently about the issue of time scarcity and how one can approach it differently through shifting thinking and behavior. I like how she challenges our thinking about time and how it can be highly subjective. She suggests speaking to priorities in a proactive manner and noticing when we start a sentence with “I don’t have enough time for…”, matching high energy jobs with high energy times of day and giving time away (i.e. the time abundance perspective).

Global Creatives may need to do a little extra work to get to a place to take advantage of Janet’s suggestions. People with ADHD are doubly vulnerable to the time-scarcity trap because they are often at a disadvantage when it comes to appreciating the depth of field characteristic of time. To Global Creatives time can present like a two-dimensional backdrop on a stage. They see the mountains and the trees but everything looks the same distance away. It is very difficult for the ADDer to gauge the distance to their ‘time horizon’. Russell Barkley refers to this as ‘time blindness’. It shows up in two ways. Underestimating how long something will take and overestimating the amount of time we have. People with ADHD can yo-yo between a false sense of time abundance and what the author calls time scarcity. Time scarcity creates the adrenaline response that induces the ability to hyper-focus.  Not a bad quality in the moment but this habit leads to inconsistent output. Appreciating your own time horizon and noticing how some objects are closer than others can help you change your perspective on time and turn it into the ally it really is.

Read the full article by Janet Choi HERE.