Executive Functioning Tip #5: Digital Clocks versus Analog Clocks

Attended your session the other night and enjoyed it. Although I’m ADD myself, and can define and answer questions about metacognition, I don’t feel like I have a good bank of strategies to overcome some EF deficits. Thanks for your work.
When is your book coming out? Can I call you sometime? I’m interested and inspired by your work.

Just had a conversation with my 20’s something kids, who grew up on digital and can’t relate to analog clocks. (My sister and I prefer analog, and couldn’t explain why. Your tip does.

I’ve sent them the link.

Wow—you spoke directly to me! I have always preferred analog clocks, but I didn’t know why. I also have been obsessed with time management since I was a little kid, and I’ve wondered if it was because I know I’m just not very good at it. I will be reading all of your old posts. You have provided a gold mine of information that is desperately needed! Thank you so much!

Any tips for if analogue clocks don’t work for you? I have pretty severe time blindness and don’t notice time passing. Most analogue clocks tick which is a horrible sensory thing for me – I just can’t cope with a ticking clock anywhere in the house. And then unless I’m just sat staring at the clock constantly watching the hands move, I have no idea about the passage of time. I can’t seem to remember what the time said last time I looked at it, so don’t get any “x amount of time has passed” information from an analogue clock and don’t get much without manually counting all the dashes how much time is left to the next time. This could be something to do with also having dyscalculia perhaps?
Anyway for me I find clocks in and of themselves pretty useless. If I’m watching the clock, I can’t focus on doing any tasks and if I’m doing stuff I don’t remember to look at the clock. It makes no difference to me if its an analogue or a digital clock except if its digital it at the very least tells me the time, whereas an analogue one I have to spend time figuring out what time it is.

I’m trying to create a schedule for myself to work to (I’m disabled and don’t work, and so have no schedule at all, I don’t even wake up or go to sleep at the same time, let alone eat at the same time, so I don’t have anything to build on) but what I’m struggling with is knowing when it is. Its all well and good to say that at 2pm every day I should do X task, but if I don’t know when 2pm is (changing light levels don’t even help me) then I’ll miss doing it at that time or at all as I just won’t realise that time has gone by. I used to wear a watch, but stopped when I realised that there was nothing to remind me to look at it so it wasn’t really serving its purpose, it was just irritating on my wrist.

What I’m really after is something that can just notify me with an audible sound (that isn’t jarring so I don’t just jump out of my skin when it goes off) at times I choose to keep me on track. I have used the Habitica app in the past to help with that and it worked absolutely amazingly. Every two hours it would notify me on my tablet to check I’d had a drink, it would go off at the time I needed to prepare lunch and eat it, and so on for all my tasks. I was finally beginning to get the whole functioning thing. But then the app got updated and it no longer does the push notifications on the tablet versions. Now it only notifies you with an alarm if you use the version on a mobile phone. But my mobile phone is a Nokia 3220 from 2005… so I can’t use that version. I have no idea why they removed that feature and when I asked about it they said it was just a bug that should be fixed soon, but now it literally says that its only available on the mobile app, not tablet app (even though both are android so ????). Without the notifications I wasn’t remembering to do the things any more and everything fell apart again.

It seems that habits are impossible to form for me. I don’t know why, but they just don’t stick. I struggled even at school with following my time table – I’d never know what subject was next and it would take me the entire year to even get remotely familiar with it, only for it to change up the next year. So now I’m 32 years old with zero concept of how to really fix this. Its like I need some kind of assistant, but I don’t want something like the google one that means random people have access to my info, or which listens in to you. That stuff freaks me out and triggers psychosis for me (I multiple things going on with me). But I don’t really know what to search for really. Or even if there is a simple solution.

Great post Thanks for sharing very powerful post.

Hello, interesting article. Would a clock with roman numerals provide the same effect?
Thank you

All the points you described so beautiful. Every time i read your blog content and i so surprised that how you can write so well.

Marydee, thanks for suggesting that I have analog clocks in my workspace so I can control my time management issues. Ever since I started working from home, I’ve been having a hard time balancing my workload. I know I have an old analog clock somewhere in the house, so perhaps I should find it and get it fixed by a clock repair service. I really appreciate your tip!