Edge Foundation Blog

Dear coach,
My boss just wrote me up for lateness.  I really want to get to work on time, but I just can’t seem to make it.  How do I make my boss understand I’m trying?
Signed,
Better Late Than Never

Dear Late,

Yes, being chronically late can be a problem when you have ADHD.  Instead of focusing on getting your boss to understand why you are tardy, it’s more useful to consider ways to get yourself to work (and school) on time.  You can do it!  It just may take a little experimenting to find what works best for you.

There are three main reasons people with ADHD are usually late.

1.  Getting up late.

Yes, getting out of bed on time in the morning can be hard.  Especially if you are cutting your self short by falling asleep later at night than you should.  (For tips on how to get to sleep on time, see ADHD & Sleep.)  Here are a few things to try:

• put your alarm clock across the room so you have to get up to turn it off.
• use two alarm clocks, so you won’t be tempted by the snooze alarm.
• set your alarm for 15 minutes earlier than you think you need.  It may be that you are just underestimating how much time you need to get out of the house.

2.  Getting sidetracked

Do you jump out of bed with time to spare and still find that you are late out the door? Pay attention to what you are focusing on.

• Keep a checklist of everything you need to do before leaving the house.  And don’t turn on the TV, phone or internet until you get these things accomplished.
• If you take medication, take it first thing out of bed. That way it will start working before you leave the house.
• Set reminder alarms to keep you on track.  Figure out how much time you need to dress, eat and get organized.  Then set alarms to remind you that you need to have that task completed.  Use your phone or buy one of those reminder watches so your alarms are always nearby.
• Add in 5 or 10 minutes to your commute time so you have room for the unexpected.

3.  Being disorganized.

Do you walk out of the house only to realize you forgot your lunch or phone?  Do you spend needless minutes hunting around for your keys or shoes?

You need a “launch pad” by your exit door.  Set aside a special place near the door.  Collect all of the things you’ll need in the morning the night before.  If there are things like lunch that you’ll need to make in the morning, leave yourself a note at the launch pad, so you remember it in the morning.  Then at night, put everything there — keys, sunglasses, phone, purse, briefcase etc.  So they’ll be ready for you to grab as you run out the door.

You may have already tried all of these things, but are still late.  That’s where time with a coach can come in handy.  A coach can give you outside perspective about what’s not working and how to fine tune your routine to make it work for you.  ADHD and lateness often go hand-in-hand, but they don’t have to.  With a few simple tweaks to your routine, you can become a punctual person.

Do you have a question for the coach?  Send it to info@edgefoundation.org.  We’ve love to hear from you.

Editor’s Note:  Stories from the Edge are real life accounts about how an ADHD coach works – as told by the student receiving the coaching.  This is the second installment from Kelsey Peterson who is a junior at Parson’s School of Design.  You can read her first post here.  We asked Kelsey to tell us what she’s working on this month with her coach.

One thing I’m struggling with this month that my coach is helping me with is balance with my homework.

Handling the reading load for my classes is challenging

I am taking one design class and three lecture style classes. Even though the lecture classes are very interesting and I love going to them getting the reading done for them is hard. They all assign a lot of reading and I’m trying to schedule my weeks to block out time to do them. It’s easy for me to do my design homework and forget about the reading until the morning of that class or the night before.

Using a day planner to make time in my schedule for reading

My coach has been helping me look at my planner and assign blocks of time throughout the week to go to Starbucks or the library and read. It’s been going better but still hard to stick to my schedule at times. During the day my friends and I are all out going to class or hanging out in a similar neighborhood in Manhattan so it’s hard not to meet up and get a coffee with my friends in between classes instead of doing the reading. So I have been trying to balance time with my friends with homework.

Basically I came up with a game plan for one of my classes that meets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays we have a lecture and on Wednesdays a discussion class about the readings. So my new schedule is that I go to the lecture on Tuesday and do the reading right after so that the reading makes more sense to me and I’m still thinking about and digesting the lecture. This has been working really good and I’m still experimenting with the other classes and when the best time to get the reading for them is done.

When I look at my day planner with my coach I make sure to schedule things appropriately, for example I try hard to plan on doing my homework in the morning because I have mostly afternoon class and I like to hangout with my friends and my boyfriend after six. I don’t have time to hangout with my friends every evening but for the most part I’ve discovered what works best for me is to get up early and do as much as I can – and then after six have fun and relax.