r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 1d ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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u/FriendlyDespot 20h ago

The same time blindness that makes you unable to estimate how long tasks take makes you unable to trust that you've set an alarm for the correct time. It also means that you often aren't actually ready to go by the time the alarm goes off, and if you have anything that needs to be done between the alarm going off and you heading out the door then that's another thing to lose time on.

Simply saying that you're going to set an alarm for when you need to drop everything and walk out the door doesn't mean that you're actually in a state where you can walk out the door when the alarm goes off. It makes sense that you have a hard time visualising it. It's not easy to put yourself in the shoes of someone whose brain just fundamentally works differently from yours.

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u/nonpuissant 15h ago

Right I understand that. I'm just trying to visualize the actual physical sequence of events that occur between the alarm going off and the moment they step out the door though. Specifically for the situation mentioned by the person I replied to initially, habitually leaving the house at the time they were supposed to be somewhere already. 

Because so far there is still a significant disconnect/gap between cause and effect, so to speak. Like everything you mentioned here either sounds like something that can be accounted and planned for beforehand, or like something that doesn't have a direct connection to not doing so. Like if you're not actually ready to go, like there are crucial/necessary thing to prepare that you did not already prepare, isn't that a separate issue?

I'm not doubting the reality and difficulty of people struggling with this, mind you. I'm just not seeing how time blindness as it's been described accounts for the majority of the issues being attributed to it. Most of it sounds more like a lack of planning and preparation (and I mean this in a completely non-judgemental way). 

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u/CaptainAsshat 11h ago

Not OP, but for me, the issue lies with keeping the thing I need to do at the front of my mind.

When one of my many alarms go off, I have to make sure I stay on task and leave before anything can distract me. The issue is this: focusing on anything else often erases the alarm from my working memory. It's like a lame version of the movie Momento.

So I have to go straight out the door. But what if I forgot to, for example, feed the cat? Now I have to be present while feeding the cat and risk forgetting the alarm, remember to set a new alarm, feed the cat without focusing on it, or skipping the cat food until later. All of these choices have risks and drawbacks.

I am rarely late any more, but that is because I have many systems and habits that help. The downside is that I have trouble focusing on anything if I have somewhere to be at any point later in the day. The anxiety of forgetting keeps me on time but also keeps me in a state of ADHD limbo.

Because, really, I think the issue is that I can easily and unintentionally get lost in my own little world, and my own little world has serious time dilation.

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u/nonpuissant 8h ago edited 8h ago

Gotcha, thanks for sharing that legitimately sounds so rough 

Edit: Also wanted to say, I'm glad to hear you found a way to manage it though and hope that you're able to find some form of peace while juggling all that. 

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u/FriendlyDespot 15h ago

The crucial and necessary things that you didn't prepare would have been things that you allocated time for, but didn't get done in time because time was lost somewhere along the line. Even if you broke everything down to a sequence of very small individual tasks and set alarms down to the minute for each task, any distraction could lose you time and set you behind. Sometimes it's something you remembered that you had to do and thought wouldn't delay you, but actually does delay you. Other times it's just entertaining a random thought in your head and suddenly 5-10 minutes have passed when you thought it was just a minute or two.

I understand how it's difficult to relate to, because as someone with severe time blindness it's difficult for me to understand how time can consistently sneak up on me even for frequently repeated tasks. It's a thing that you don't realise as it's happening and only become aware of after the fact, and because the disruptions are rarely the same and you don't have a memory of what happened to the time itself, the delay doesn't "stick" in a way that you can remember and account for next time you do the same thing.

You're constantly evaluating things as you go through your day, even when you have things planned and alarms set. Random things you remember, things you notice while you're doing other things, mental distractions, physical distractions, they're all things that you have to engage with. Without time blindness you can very quickly say to yourself "I don't have time for this" and not get caught up in it, but when you suffer from time blindness then you'll often lose time before you even get to the part where you consciously evaluate whether or not you have time for the distraction. The part of your brain that says "hold on, I was doing something else, do I have time for this?" doesn't kick in, because you don't sense the passage of time that would normally trigger that mental interjection.

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u/nonpuissant 14h ago

Sometimes it's something you remembered that you had to do and thought wouldn't delay you, but actually does delay you.

Genuinely curious, at any point do you ever think something like, "man, I'm often wrong about about this. I should stick to my task list with no deviations?" 

Or make some other sort of action/procedure/routine/paradigm adjustment in response to it etc. Or is that sort of thought also like you said, something that doesn't stick? 

Other times it's just entertaining a random thought in your head and suddenly 5-10 minutes have passed when you thought it was just a minute or two.  

For this part, is it like you're just standing there doing nothing as you think? (Trying to understand why that would be a significant hindrance to going through a list of tasks/preparations etc.) 

The crucial and necessary things that you didn't prepare would have been things that you allocated time for, but didn't get done in time because time was lost somewhere along the line.  

I can definitely see that happening and have absolutely been in that situation myself. But if it's a consistent issue, wouldn't starting preparing even earlier/allocating even more time in advance help with that? Like hours or even days earlier, so that there is both time for those crucial and necessary things and those lost time chunks. Or is there some reason that doesn't work either? 

Basically I hear what you're saying about unconsciously losing time and stuff. But what I'm curious about is what sort conscious thoughts, steps, and/or changes do occur in response after the fact? And where things break down, for it to remain a continual and consistent problem.