People often speak of time as if every hour were equal to every other hour.
Under that theory, when scheduling your day you could look at the things you need to do and slot them in wherever they seem to fit best.
In a framework where “all time is equal,” 2 am and 11 am are equally viable options for the same task.
Most people would agree that’s not how it works.
All time is not equal.
Scheduling a day is not just about finding blocks of time to fit things in.
To effectively get things done in a way that maximizes use of time and energy requires an understanding of timing, context, and sequencing:
- When is the best time for you to do that thing?
- What is the best environmental context for the task?
- What is the best sequence of tasks?
In other words. what do you need to do first to facilitate the current task. What post-task constraints help facilitate efficiency and which ones drain energy or impede on the current task?
This applies to everyone, but people with ADHD can be especially sensitive to timing, context, and sequencing.
Our brains need certain types stimulus to perform specific types of tasks. On the other hand, certain events can interfere with a task — even if they come after a given task.
For example, an important meeting later in the day, an unresolved conversation from earlier, or an open loop can hijack focus for work you’re trying to do now.
We also need the right context. Scheduling a task for the right time isn’t good enough if you don’t have the right environment for executing it.
The same activity might require a different amount of starting energy or can take a different amount of time, depending on the time of day the sequence in which it occurs.
For example, I need to workout in the morning as my first activity. For me, exercise isn’t just about the physical benefits. It’s not recreation or a “nice to have.” It’s a necessary ingredient to establish baseline functionality.
Without enough stimulus, neither my body nor my brain functions well.
While other people might be able to make an exception and “fit in a workout later,” that approach doesn’t work for me.
It’s not merely about “fitting in a workout” for exercise. The same 1-hour workout isn’t the same later in the day. In fact it’s often not physically possible.
And without it, I don’t function at all — meaning nothing else gets done.
Creative work is similar.
When I engage in creative work immediately after a good workout, I leverage my best focus and flow. If I shift that work to later in the day, the same work can take double or triple the amount of time — if I’m able to perform it at all.
At a certain point in the day my brain loses capacity to organize ideas or create sentences.
For those of us with ADHD, activities must be strategically planned based on when our best resources are available to us.
Not every hour of the day is the same.
Timing, context, and sequencing matter more than you think.
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