Stuck in waiting mode? How ADHD warps time and what you can do about it
Feeling stuck before an appointment? Learn why waiting mode happens and explore ADHD-friendly strategies to ease anxiety and stay productive.
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Feeling stuck before an appointment? Learn why waiting mode happens and explore ADHD-friendly strategies to ease anxiety and stay productive.
Something strange can happen in the hours leading up to an appointment or other commitment: We enter waiting mode. Once in waiting mode, we become unable to do anything else before the appointment. It doesn’t matter if we have important tasks that need to be done. It doesn’t matter if we have enough time to do them. It doesn’t matter if we want to do them. We just wait. We wait, consumed by a vague sense of anxiety around the upcoming appointment and, if you’re anything like me, feelings of guilt and shame for being stuck and not managing to use this time more effectively.
While waiting mode isn’t unique to neurodivergent folks, it is much more debilitating for people who already struggle with executive functioning. These folks, including those with ADHD, Autism, PTSD, depression, and/or anxiety, find themselves in waiting mode more frequently and often fall into waiting mode longer before the appointment.
At its core, waiting mode is an attention regulation problem related to anxiety. In many ways, it resembles rumination — a thought pattern where our mind focuses on a distressing situation and continues to return to it even after being pulled away. No matter how hard we try, when we’re stuck in waiting mode, our mind keeps getting dragged back to the upcoming appointment, our anxieties around the appointment, and our plans to cope with them. This connection to rumination and anxiety offers us the first chance to get unstuck.
For ADHD and autistic folks, anxiety often kicks in as a coping mechanism, making waiting mode even harder to navigate. When your mind is buzzing with everything you need to prepare—like crafting a social script or remembering key details—getting it all out of your head is essential. Write down every thought, no matter how messy or disorganized, and sort it later into actionable steps, such as creating a checklist or draft. Breaking these thoughts into manageable steps is key. Tools like visual reminders or digital lists can help keep things clear without adding to the overwhelm.
While mind dumping is a particularly useful strategy for capturing and organizing the information bouncing around inside our head, it’s also a form of mindfulness. In general, mindfulness refers to a state of self-reflection that allows us to observe our thoughts without being consumed by them. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation, but can be a part of many different activities or strategies. Because mindfulness is all about observing our thoughts without getting attached, it is a solid strategy for coping with anxieties generally and waiting mode particularly.
However, there’s more going on in waiting mode than just rumination. It also serves as a barrier to beginning a task in the first place. In addition to the normal amount of energy it takes to start a task, having an appointment adds the need to plan an endpoint for that task. While this may seem like a small difference, it makes getting started even more energy intensive. Considering that executive dysfunction can make it much more difficult to muster up the energy to start tasks at the best of times, this additional barrier can really be the difference between getting started and remaining stuck. To overcome this, we have two options: 1) remove the barrier, or 2) add more energy. And since the appointment isn’t going anywhere...
While the specific task requiring the least energy will differ from person to person and situation to situation, the general rule is to look for tasks that are interesting, challenging, urgent, or novel. Tasks that involve any combination of these four elements are going to be easiest to start, but are often not the highest priority tasks on our to-do lists. That’s okay. After all, getting something accomplished during the time before an appointment is always better than just waiting.
If none of your tasks involve interest, challenge, urgency, or novelty, you may think that you're doomed to being stuck in waiting mode, but this isn’t necessarily true. Trying to complete ordinary tasks in a new way can build a sense of novelty or interest, while racing a timer or another person to complete a task can serve as a healthy sense of challenge or urgency.
The final element that makes waiting mode such a common experience for people with neurodivergent conditions is Time Agnosia refers to the way ADHD and autistic folks don’t have a naturally strong feeling for the passage of time. This weakened relationship with time can lead us to losing time, such as when we hyperfocus and hours pass as if they’re minutes, or to struggle with estimating how long tasks are going to take us. The anxiety of waiting mode, then, could be a coping mechanism attempting to prevent us from hyperfocusing and missing our appointment entirely or attempting to stop us from starting a task we won’t be able to finish in the time remaining. I recently wrote an entire article on Time Agnosia with more in-depth focus on specific coping strategies, but the main strategy relating to waiting mode is:
If you’re constantly checking the clock to make sure that you didn’t blink and miss your appointment, it’s going to be hard to focus on anything else. Setting reminders can be helpful, but hyperfocus can plow its way through those as well if we’re not careful. In order to give these reminders the best chance of working, we need to make sure that they force themselves into our consciousness. This could mean setting multiple alarms so that you have multiple chances to disengage from the task at hand, using alarms that require an action to turn off or outsourcing the reminder to someone with a better relationship with time (especially if they’re coming with us).
Ultimately, waiting mode is a tricky mix of anxiety, executive dysfunction, and time agnosia. Breaking free often requires a variety of approaches, from getting thoughts out of your head with a mind dump to finding simple tasks you can start with minimal effort. Accommodating your relationship with time—whether through tools, reminders, or support from others—can also help turn waiting into a more productive, less stressful experience.
What works best for you? Everyone approaches waiting mode differently, so I’d love to hear your strategies. Let’s keep the conversation going—feel free to share your tips with me on X!
This article was updated in December 2024 to provide the most current and accurate information.
Feeling stuck before an appointment? Learn why waiting mode happens and explore ADHD-friendly strategies to ease anxiety and stay productive.
Something strange can happen in the hours leading up to an appointment or other commitment: We enter waiting mode. Once in waiting mode, we become unable to do anything else before the appointment. It doesn’t matter if we have important tasks that need to be done. It doesn’t matter if we have enough time to do them. It doesn’t matter if we want to do them. We just wait. We wait, consumed by a vague sense of anxiety around the upcoming appointment and, if you’re anything like me, feelings of guilt and shame for being stuck and not managing to use this time more effectively.
While waiting mode isn’t unique to neurodivergent folks, it is much more debilitating for people who already struggle with executive functioning. These folks, including those with ADHD, Autism, PTSD, depression, and/or anxiety, find themselves in waiting mode more frequently and often fall into waiting mode longer before the appointment.
At its core, waiting mode is an attention regulation problem related to anxiety. In many ways, it resembles rumination — a thought pattern where our mind focuses on a distressing situation and continues to return to it even after being pulled away. No matter how hard we try, when we’re stuck in waiting mode, our mind keeps getting dragged back to the upcoming appointment, our anxieties around the appointment, and our plans to cope with them. This connection to rumination and anxiety offers us the first chance to get unstuck.
For ADHD and autistic folks, anxiety often kicks in as a coping mechanism, making waiting mode even harder to navigate. When your mind is buzzing with everything you need to prepare—like crafting a social script or remembering key details—getting it all out of your head is essential. Write down every thought, no matter how messy or disorganized, and sort it later into actionable steps, such as creating a checklist or draft. Breaking these thoughts into manageable steps is key. Tools like visual reminders or digital lists can help keep things clear without adding to the overwhelm.
While mind dumping is a particularly useful strategy for capturing and organizing the information bouncing around inside our head, it’s also a form of mindfulness. In general, mindfulness refers to a state of self-reflection that allows us to observe our thoughts without being consumed by them. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation, but can be a part of many different activities or strategies. Because mindfulness is all about observing our thoughts without getting attached, it is a solid strategy for coping with anxieties generally and waiting mode particularly.
However, there’s more going on in waiting mode than just rumination. It also serves as a barrier to beginning a task in the first place. In addition to the normal amount of energy it takes to start a task, having an appointment adds the need to plan an endpoint for that task. While this may seem like a small difference, it makes getting started even more energy intensive. Considering that executive dysfunction can make it much more difficult to muster up the energy to start tasks at the best of times, this additional barrier can really be the difference between getting started and remaining stuck. To overcome this, we have two options: 1) remove the barrier, or 2) add more energy. And since the appointment isn’t going anywhere...
While the specific task requiring the least energy will differ from person to person and situation to situation, the general rule is to look for tasks that are interesting, challenging, urgent, or novel. Tasks that involve any combination of these four elements are going to be easiest to start, but are often not the highest priority tasks on our to-do lists. That’s okay. After all, getting something accomplished during the time before an appointment is always better than just waiting.
If none of your tasks involve interest, challenge, urgency, or novelty, you may think that you're doomed to being stuck in waiting mode, but this isn’t necessarily true. Trying to complete ordinary tasks in a new way can build a sense of novelty or interest, while racing a timer or another person to complete a task can serve as a healthy sense of challenge or urgency.
The final element that makes waiting mode such a common experience for people with neurodivergent conditions is Time Agnosia refers to the way ADHD and autistic folks don’t have a naturally strong feeling for the passage of time. This weakened relationship with time can lead us to losing time, such as when we hyperfocus and hours pass as if they’re minutes, or to struggle with estimating how long tasks are going to take us. The anxiety of waiting mode, then, could be a coping mechanism attempting to prevent us from hyperfocusing and missing our appointment entirely or attempting to stop us from starting a task we won’t be able to finish in the time remaining. I recently wrote an entire article on Time Agnosia with more in-depth focus on specific coping strategies, but the main strategy relating to waiting mode is:
If you’re constantly checking the clock to make sure that you didn’t blink and miss your appointment, it’s going to be hard to focus on anything else. Setting reminders can be helpful, but hyperfocus can plow its way through those as well if we’re not careful. In order to give these reminders the best chance of working, we need to make sure that they force themselves into our consciousness. This could mean setting multiple alarms so that you have multiple chances to disengage from the task at hand, using alarms that require an action to turn off or outsourcing the reminder to someone with a better relationship with time (especially if they’re coming with us).
Ultimately, waiting mode is a tricky mix of anxiety, executive dysfunction, and time agnosia. Breaking free often requires a variety of approaches, from getting thoughts out of your head with a mind dump to finding simple tasks you can start with minimal effort. Accommodating your relationship with time—whether through tools, reminders, or support from others—can also help turn waiting into a more productive, less stressful experience.
What works best for you? Everyone approaches waiting mode differently, so I’d love to hear your strategies. Let’s keep the conversation going—feel free to share your tips with me on X!
This article was updated in December 2024 to provide the most current and accurate information.
Feeling stuck before an appointment? Learn why waiting mode happens and explore ADHD-friendly strategies to ease anxiety and stay productive.
Something strange can happen in the hours leading up to an appointment or other commitment: We enter waiting mode. Once in waiting mode, we become unable to do anything else before the appointment. It doesn’t matter if we have important tasks that need to be done. It doesn’t matter if we have enough time to do them. It doesn’t matter if we want to do them. We just wait. We wait, consumed by a vague sense of anxiety around the upcoming appointment and, if you’re anything like me, feelings of guilt and shame for being stuck and not managing to use this time more effectively.
While waiting mode isn’t unique to neurodivergent folks, it is much more debilitating for people who already struggle with executive functioning. These folks, including those with ADHD, Autism, PTSD, depression, and/or anxiety, find themselves in waiting mode more frequently and often fall into waiting mode longer before the appointment.
At its core, waiting mode is an attention regulation problem related to anxiety. In many ways, it resembles rumination — a thought pattern where our mind focuses on a distressing situation and continues to return to it even after being pulled away. No matter how hard we try, when we’re stuck in waiting mode, our mind keeps getting dragged back to the upcoming appointment, our anxieties around the appointment, and our plans to cope with them. This connection to rumination and anxiety offers us the first chance to get unstuck.
For ADHD and autistic folks, anxiety often kicks in as a coping mechanism, making waiting mode even harder to navigate. When your mind is buzzing with everything you need to prepare—like crafting a social script or remembering key details—getting it all out of your head is essential. Write down every thought, no matter how messy or disorganized, and sort it later into actionable steps, such as creating a checklist or draft. Breaking these thoughts into manageable steps is key. Tools like visual reminders or digital lists can help keep things clear without adding to the overwhelm.
While mind dumping is a particularly useful strategy for capturing and organizing the information bouncing around inside our head, it’s also a form of mindfulness. In general, mindfulness refers to a state of self-reflection that allows us to observe our thoughts without being consumed by them. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation, but can be a part of many different activities or strategies. Because mindfulness is all about observing our thoughts without getting attached, it is a solid strategy for coping with anxieties generally and waiting mode particularly.
However, there’s more going on in waiting mode than just rumination. It also serves as a barrier to beginning a task in the first place. In addition to the normal amount of energy it takes to start a task, having an appointment adds the need to plan an endpoint for that task. While this may seem like a small difference, it makes getting started even more energy intensive. Considering that executive dysfunction can make it much more difficult to muster up the energy to start tasks at the best of times, this additional barrier can really be the difference between getting started and remaining stuck. To overcome this, we have two options: 1) remove the barrier, or 2) add more energy. And since the appointment isn’t going anywhere...
While the specific task requiring the least energy will differ from person to person and situation to situation, the general rule is to look for tasks that are interesting, challenging, urgent, or novel. Tasks that involve any combination of these four elements are going to be easiest to start, but are often not the highest priority tasks on our to-do lists. That’s okay. After all, getting something accomplished during the time before an appointment is always better than just waiting.
If none of your tasks involve interest, challenge, urgency, or novelty, you may think that you're doomed to being stuck in waiting mode, but this isn’t necessarily true. Trying to complete ordinary tasks in a new way can build a sense of novelty or interest, while racing a timer or another person to complete a task can serve as a healthy sense of challenge or urgency.
The final element that makes waiting mode such a common experience for people with neurodivergent conditions is Time Agnosia refers to the way ADHD and autistic folks don’t have a naturally strong feeling for the passage of time. This weakened relationship with time can lead us to losing time, such as when we hyperfocus and hours pass as if they’re minutes, or to struggle with estimating how long tasks are going to take us. The anxiety of waiting mode, then, could be a coping mechanism attempting to prevent us from hyperfocusing and missing our appointment entirely or attempting to stop us from starting a task we won’t be able to finish in the time remaining. I recently wrote an entire article on Time Agnosia with more in-depth focus on specific coping strategies, but the main strategy relating to waiting mode is:
If you’re constantly checking the clock to make sure that you didn’t blink and miss your appointment, it’s going to be hard to focus on anything else. Setting reminders can be helpful, but hyperfocus can plow its way through those as well if we’re not careful. In order to give these reminders the best chance of working, we need to make sure that they force themselves into our consciousness. This could mean setting multiple alarms so that you have multiple chances to disengage from the task at hand, using alarms that require an action to turn off or outsourcing the reminder to someone with a better relationship with time (especially if they’re coming with us).
Ultimately, waiting mode is a tricky mix of anxiety, executive dysfunction, and time agnosia. Breaking free often requires a variety of approaches, from getting thoughts out of your head with a mind dump to finding simple tasks you can start with minimal effort. Accommodating your relationship with time—whether through tools, reminders, or support from others—can also help turn waiting into a more productive, less stressful experience.
What works best for you? Everyone approaches waiting mode differently, so I’d love to hear your strategies. Let’s keep the conversation going—feel free to share your tips with me on X!
This article was updated in December 2024 to provide the most current and accurate information.
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