Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am joined as always by my brother.
Herman Poppleberry here, ready to look closely at the brain once again. It is February twenty-fifth, twenty-twenty-six, and the world of neurodiversity research is moving faster than ever.
It really is. Today’s prompt comes from Daniel, and it hits home for a lot of our listeners, and honestly, for us too. He is asking about why neurodivergent people, specifically those with A D H D or autism, struggle so much with time management, context switching, and finding that elusive focus time.
Daniel mentioned he has been doing some decluttering while listening to the show, and it is funny how those physical tasks—sorting through old boxes, deciding what to keep and what to toss—can often spark these realizations about how our internal clocks and organizational systems are wired. I know he and Hannah have their hands full with young Ezra lately, so finding those pockets of focus time must feel like a high-stakes mission. When you have a toddler, your time is no longer your own, which makes the internal struggle with time management even more acute.
That is the key thing. Daniel brought up the concept of the spiky profile. The idea that neurodivergent individuals might have these incredible peaks of ability in one area but then these deep valleys in others, like timekeeping or transitions. It is not a flat line of competence.
Right. And that standard deviation he mentioned is key. If you are looking at a neurotypical profile, the strengths and weaknesses usually cluster pretty close to the average. It is a relatively smooth bell curve. But for someone who is neurodivergent, those peaks can be in the ninety-ninth percentile. You might be a world-class coder, a brilliant artist, or a visionary strategist. But the struggles, like executive function, working memory, or simple task initiation, might be in the bottom fifth percentile. It creates this massive internal friction because the world expects your performance to be consistent across the board. If you can write a complex white paper, why can’t you remember to start the laundry or show up to dinner on time?
I want to start with the why. Why is time so slippery for us? Daniel mentioned that for him, focus is not a faucet he can just turn on and off. If he is writing a white paper in the morning, he cannot just jump into a social context or take Ezra to the zoo without a massive internal cost. What is actually happening in the brain during those moments of context switching?
It really comes down to executive function and the way the brain allocates resources. For most people, there is a mechanism in the brain that allows for a relatively smooth handoff between different neural networks. But in a neurodivergent brain, specifically one with A D H D or autism, that pass is often fumbled. We have talked about this a bit in episode eight hundred nineteen regarding the two E brain, but the biological mechanism involves the prefrontal cortex and the regulation of dopamine and norepinephrine.
So, when we talk about context switching, we are talking about the brain having to essentially clear out all the active working memory associated with task A and then load up all the parameters for task B.
Precisely. For someone who is neurotypical, that loading process is relatively automated and fast. But for us, it is more like a computer having to clear its R A M and reboot the entire operating system every time you change tasks. There is a cognitive tax involved. If Daniel is deep in a white paper, his brain has built a complex mental architecture. Every variable, every logical thread, every piece of data is live in his working memory. When he has to stop and switch to a social context, like a dinner date or a family outing, he has to dismantle that entire structure. The problem is that rebuilding a different structure for the new context—social cues, emotional regulation, environmental awareness—takes a huge amount of energy and time.
That explains why it feels so physically draining. It is not just about being distracted. It is the literal energy cost of the transition. I have noticed that when I am in the middle of a project and someone asks me a simple question, I feel this flash of irritation. It is not that I am a mean person, it is because they have just knocked down the tower I was building, and now I have to start from the first brick again.
That irritation is a very common response. It is a protective mechanism for your focus. In the autistic community, there is a theory called monotropism, developed by Dinah Murray and Fergus Murray. It suggests that autistic brains tend to focus a lot of attention on a small number of interests or tasks, rather than spreading it thinly across many things. This creates a very powerful flow state, which is that high peak in the spiky profile Daniel mentioned. But the downside is that pulling out of that flow state is incredibly difficult. It is like being a deep-sea diver who has to decompress for hours before they can surface. If you surface too fast, you get the cognitive equivalent of the bends. You feel disoriented, irritable, and completely exhausted.
That is fascinating. So the struggle with time management is actually a side effect of the intensity of the focus. If you are capable of that deep, monotropic focus, the world’s demand for constant switching is essentially asking you to break your brain’s natural rhythm.
That is the reality of it. And then you add the layer of time blindness on top of that. Doctor Russell Barkley, who is a leading researcher in A D H D, often says that A D H D is not a disorder of knowing what to do, but a disorder of doing what you know at the point of performance. One of the core components of that is the inability to accurately perceive the passage of time. For many neurodivergent people, there are only two times: now and not now.
I have definitely felt that. If something is due in three weeks, it is in the not now category, so it basically does not exist. It is invisible. Then suddenly it moves into the now category, and it is a total emergency. There is no middle ground where you are gradually working toward a goal.
Right. The brain does not have that internal ticking clock that provides a constant, subtle reminder of how much time has passed. This is why Daniel mentioned that he finds it hard to predict how his focus will unfold. He cannot look at a task and say, this will take exactly forty-five minutes. Because if he hits a flow state, forty-five minutes might feel like five. Or if he hits a block, five minutes might feel like an hour of torture. This is because neurodivergent brains are often interest-based rather than importance-based. We do not prioritize tasks based on their objective deadline, but on how much dopamine they provide or how much they engage our focus.
It creates this constant state of uncertainty. If you cannot trust your own perception of time, how can you possibly plan a day? It makes total sense why that would be overwhelming and stressful. Daniel mentioned the pressure of specific deadlines, like leaving the house for a dinner date with Hannah. The stress comes from knowing that your internal experience of time is likely going to clash with the external requirements. You are trying to bridge two different worlds.
And that stress actually makes the problem worse. When you are stressed, your brain’s executive function takes a further hit. Your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for planning, organizing, and regulating emotions—starts to go offline as the amygdala takes over. The amygdala is the fear center. So the very thing you need to manage the transition, which is executive control, is being suppressed by the anxiety of the transition itself. It is a vicious cycle. You are worried about being late, which makes your brain less capable of doing the things needed to be on time.
We actually touched on the emotional side of this in episode eight hundred twenty, when we talked about A D H D diplomacy and explaining your brain to others. It is hard to tell someone, I am not being rude or lazy, I am just currently decompressing from a focus state and my brain has not surfaced yet. It feels like you are making excuses, but it is actually a physiological reality.
That is the heart of the issue. And for Daniel, especially with a young son like Ezra, those transitions are non-negotiable. You cannot tell a baby to wait while you finish your white paper. This is where the practical tools come in, because we cannot just rely on our internal clocks. We have to externalize our executive function. We have to build the scaffolding outside of our brains because the internal structure is missing or unreliable.
Let’s get into those resources and tips. If the internal clock is broken or non-existent, how do we build an external one that actually works without causing more stress?
The first step is acknowledging that the goal is not to fix the brain to be neurotypical, but to build a system that supports the brain you have. One of the most effective tools is visual timers. Not just a digital clock with numbers, which are still abstract concepts, but something like a Time Timer where you can see a red disk disappearing as time goes by. This turns an abstract concept—time—into a concrete, visual one. It helps bridge that gap of time blindness because you can literally see how much time is left.
I like that. It is less about the pressure of the numbers ticking down and more about a visual representation of the remaining capacity. What about the context switching itself? Daniel mentioned he prefers taking entire days off for specific tasks rather than trying to have many breaks.
That is a very valid strategy. It is called task batching or day blocking. Instead of trying to do a little bit of work, a little bit of parenting, and a little bit of chores throughout the day, you dedicate large blocks to a single context. This minimizes the number of reboots your brain has to do. If Daniel can set aside Tuesday for deep writing and Wednesday for meetings and administrative tasks, he is saving a massive amount of cognitive energy. He is staying in one mental architecture for as long as possible.
But what if you do not have that luxury? What if your life requires frequent switching, especially with a toddler around?
Then you need transition buffers. You have to stop viewing a transition as a momentary event and start seeing it as a task in itself. If you have a meeting at two o’clock, you do not work until one fifty-nine. You stop at one forty-five. Those fifteen minutes are for the brain to decompress from the previous task and slowly load the next one. You might use that time to walk around, get a glass of water, or just stare out the window. You are essentially allowing the diver to surface slowly.
That is a hard one for people to accept, though. It feels like wasted time. In a productivity-obsessed world, fifteen minutes of staring out a window looks like laziness.
It feels like wasted time only if you assume your brain can switch instantly. But if you accept that your brain requires fifteen minutes to switch, then those fifteen minutes are the most productive thing you can do to ensure the next task goes well. If you do not take that time, you will spend the first twenty minutes of your meeting in a brain fog anyway. It is an investment in your future focus.
I also want to mention body doubling. We have talked about this before, but for listeners who are new, it is the practice of having another person present while you work. They do not even have to be helping you. They could be reading a book or working on their own laptop. Just their presence helps anchor you to the task and provides a sort of externalized social pressure to stay in the now.
For sure. There are even websites now like Focusmate or Flown where you can find virtual body doubles. For many people with A D H D, having a stranger on a video call who is also working can be the difference between a productive hour and an hour of doom-scrolling. It leverages the social brain to support the executive brain. It is a way of creating an environment where focus is the default.
Daniel also mentioned the rise of autonomous scheduling agents in episode four hundred fifty-nine. I wonder if that is the future for managing this overwhelm. Having an A I that understands your energy patterns and automatically builds in those transition buffers for you.
That is where the field is heading. By twenty-twenty-six, we are seeing A I systems that do not just schedule meetings, but actually monitor your cognitive load. Imagine a system that looks at your calendar and says, hey, you have been in a deep focus state for three hours, I am going to push your next meeting by twenty minutes because I know you need to surface. Or an A I that notices you are struggling with task initiation and suggests a five-minute body-doubling session. That kind of personalized, neuro-inclusive automation could be a game changer. It takes the burden of scheduling off the person who is already struggling with the concept of time.
One of the things that Daniel said really struck me. He mentioned the pressure of predicting how focus will unfold. It is the fear of the unknown. Will I be able to get into the zone today? Or will I be fighting my brain for eight hours? That unpredictability makes it so hard to commit to social plans or deadlines.
That is the core of the anxiety. And I think the tip there is to lower the stakes of the start. We often feel like we need to have a perfect three-hour block to even begin. But the neurodivergent brain often struggles with task initiation. This is what Brendan Mahan calls the wall of awful. It is the emotional barrier of past failures and current anxiety that stands between you and the task. The solution is often to make the first step so small it is almost ridiculous. Instead of saying I am going to write this white paper, you say I am going to open the document and write one sentence. Once you break that initial barrier, the flow state often takes over.
And what about the ending? How do you stop when the hyperfocus is so strong but you have to go to dinner with Hannah? That is often where the most friction occurs.
You need a hard stop with a physical trigger. An alarm that is across the room, so you have to physically stand up to turn it off. Once you are standing, the spell is partially broken. And then, you use a bridge. Write down exactly what you were thinking about and what the very next step is. This reassures the brain that you can return to this exact spot, which reduces the panic of leaving the task. You are telling your brain that we are not losing this architecture, we are just putting it in sleep mode.
That bridge idea is great. It addresses that fear of losing the mental architecture you worked so hard to build. If you know it is recorded, you can let it go more easily. It reduces the grief of stopping.
Spot on. And I think we should also address the shame aspect. A lot of the stress Daniel mentioned comes from the feeling that we should be better at this. We have been told our whole lives that punctuality and time management are character traits or signs of respect. But for a neurodivergent person, they are often physiological challenges.
That is such an important point. Because executive function is invisible, it gets treated as a moral failing. We need to move away from the idea that being late or needing transition time is a sign of bad character.
Precisely. In episode eight hundred seventeen, we talked about the power of neurodiversity and moving beyond the diagnosis. Part of that is self-compassion. Recognizing that your brain has a different architecture. That is not a flaw, it is just how the machine works. You should not get mad at a monotropic brain for not being able to switch tasks every five minutes.
I think for Daniel and for many of our listeners, the key takeaway is that you cannot shame yourself into better time management. Shame only increases the cortisol, which further impairs the prefrontal cortex. The more you beat yourself up for being late or struggling to switch, the harder it becomes to actually do those things.
Right. Acceptance is the first step toward optimization. Once you accept that you have a fifteen-minute transition cost, you can plan for it. Once you accept that you are time blind, you can use visual timers. You stop fighting your nature and start working with it. This is what Tamara Rosier talks about in her book, Your Brain is Not Broken. She emphasizes that we need to stop trying to use neurotypical tools for neurodivergent brains.
I am curious about the role of medication in this, too. We covered the A D H D medication maze back in episode four hundred ninety-five. For many, medication can help lower that transition cost by stabilizing dopamine levels. It does not fix everything, but it can make the wall of awful a little bit shorter.
It can. It can provide that extra bit of executive control that allows you to notice the timer or decide to stop. It helps the brain pass the baton a little more reliably. But even with medication, the structural strategies are still essential. Medication might give you the keys to the car, but you still need a map and a sense of where you are going. It is a tool, not a cure.
Let’s talk about the resources for a second. If someone is feeling completely overwhelmed right now, where should they start?
I would suggest starting with the work of Jessica McCabe and her YouTube channel, How to A D H D. She does an incredible job of breaking down these complex neurological concepts into very practical, shame-free strategies. She has a whole series on time blindness and the wall of awful. I also highly recommend the book Your Brain’s Not Broken by Tamara Rosier. She talks a lot about the emotional regulation side of A D H D and how that ties into time management. And for those interested in the autistic perspective, looking into the work of the Autistic Mutual Aid Society on monotropism is eye-opening.
Those are excellent. And I would add that looking into the concept of a neuro-inclusive workplace or home can be helpful. If you can talk to your partner, like Daniel can with Hannah, and explain these mechanisms, it changes the dynamic. Instead of Hannah feeling like Daniel is ignoring her when he is deep in work, she can understand that he is in a deep-sea dive and needs time to surface. It turns a personal conflict into a logistical one.
That communication is vital. It moves it from a personal conflict to a collaborative problem-solving exercise. How can we as a family manage these transitions? Maybe it means having a fifteen-minute heads-up before dinner instead of just calling out that it is ready. Maybe it means having a shared digital calendar that uses color-coding to show different contexts.
That heads-up is huge. My wife and I started doing that, and it changed everything. She gives me a twenty-minute warning, then a ten-minute warning, then a five-minute warning. By the time it is actually time to eat, my brain has already started the process of dismantling the work tower. I am not being yanked out of my flow state; I am being guided out of it.
It is all about those gradual steps. We are essentially building an external scaffolding for a brain that does not have it internally. And that is okay. We all use tools. No one feels bad about using a calculator to do complex math, so we should not feel bad about using timers and buffers to manage time. We are just using the right tools for the job.
I think we should also mention that there are benefits to this kind of brain. We often focus on the struggle, but the ability to enter that deep flow state is a superpower in many fields. Daniel is a brilliant tech communicator and developer. That requires the kind of deep, immersive focus that many people simply cannot achieve. The goal is to protect that peak while supporting the valley.
Well said. That is the essence of the spiky profile. We want the peaks. We want the innovation and the deep insights that come from that hyperfocus. We just need to make sure the descent back to reality is a little smoother. We need to build the infrastructure that allows those peaks to exist without causing a total collapse in the valleys.
Before we wrap up, I want to reiterate that if you are listening to this and feeling like you are failing at being an adult because you cannot keep a schedule, you are not alone. There are literally millions of us. And the more we talk about these mechanisms, the more we can strip away the shame. You are not lazy, you are not broken, and you are not disrespectful. You just have a brain that handles time and context differently.
That is the core of it. This is not about being broken. It is about being different. And once you understand the physics of your own brain, you can start to navigate the world with a lot more ease. It takes practice, and it takes a lot of trial and error to find the right tools, but it is possible to find a rhythm that works for you.
Well, this has been a really enlightening discussion. I think Daniel gave us a lot to chew on today. It is a reminder that even as we navigate the high-tech world of A I and automation, our own biological hardware is still the most complex thing we have to manage.
It really is. And it is a lifelong journey of discovery. Every time we think we have it figured out, a new challenge like a new baby or a new job comes along and we have to adjust our systems. But that is part of the process. The goal is not perfection; it is progress and self-understanding.
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Thanks for joining us today. We will be back soon with another prompt from Daniel.
Until then, take care of your brain and give yourself a little extra transition time today. You deserve it.
See you next time on My Weird Prompts. Goodbye everyone.
Goodbye.
