Where Did the Time Go?
Five minutes to get dressed turns into twenty. Ten minutes of a game feels like one. Here's why time can feel so slippery, and what actually helps you catch it.
Sian Trombley
9 min read
Updated AUG 22, 2026
You sit down to put on your socks. Just socks. Somewhere between one sock and the other, you notice a loose thread on the carpet, then a sound outside, then you're halfway through building something out of a sock and a hair tie. Twenty minutes later, someone is calling your name from downstairs, sounding annoyed, and you genuinely do not know where the twenty minutes went. You were only putting on your socks.
This happens with games too, just backwards. You start playing for "ten more minutes" and it feels like maybe ninety seconds have passed when someone says time's up. It's not that you're lying about how long it felt. It's that your brain measures time differently depending on what you're doing — and that's a real thing, not a character flaw.
Time doesn't feel the same to every brain
Most people have a kind of inner clock that quietly ticks along in the background, nudging them: it's been a while, you should check, you should wrap up. For a lot of kids with ADHD, that inner clock is much quieter, or it only turns up loud when something is genuinely urgent — like the bell already ringing.
That means time doesn't get measured in minutes as much as it gets measured in feeling. Something boring, like getting dressed, seems to stretch out forever, even if it only took two minutes, because your brain wasn't tracking it closely. Something fun, like a game or a show, seems to vanish, because your attention was so locked on it that no part of you was checking the clock at all.
This isn't about not caring, and it isn't about being lazy. It's about a clock inside your head that doesn't automatically report back to you the way it does for other people. You usually only find out how much time has passed after the fact — which is exactly when it's too late to do anything about it.
What this looks like in real life
What this actually looks like
- 01Getting dressed for school takes way longer than it "should," not because you're stalling on purpose, but because your brain drifts between each small step.
- 02Screen time feels like it barely started when it's actually been an hour — the more fun something is, the faster it seems to disappear.
- 03Getting ready to leave the house involves five separate reminders, because each one only works for the two minutes right after it's said.
- 04A transition — like stopping a game to come to dinner — feels sudden and unfair, even though you were told it was coming, because your brain wasn't tracking the countdown the way a grown-up assumes it was.
Your brain isn't ignoring the clock. It just isn't checking it the way other brains automatically do.
Morning is where this shows up the most
School mornings are basically an obstacle course made entirely of small time-based decisions: how long is left, what needs to happen next, whether this is the moment to hurry. If your inner clock is quiet, every single one of those decisions has to be made using effort instead of instinct — which is exhausting before the day has even started.
That's why the same ten-step morning routine can go fine one day and fall apart the next. It's not about how much you want to get to school on time. It's about how much of your limited attention got pulled somewhere else along the way — a toy on the floor, a thought about a friend, a smell from the kitchen — each one stealing a few minutes you didn't notice leaving.
Try this
Make time something you can see
Since your inner clock doesn't always speak up loudly enough on its own, you can borrow tools that do the job for you — ones you can see, not just hear.
- 01Use a visual timer (one where a colored section shrinks as time passes) instead of a regular clock, so you can see time running out, not just hear a number.
- 02Break a task into the smallest physical steps and check them off one at a time — socks, shirt, teeth — so "getting ready" isn't one giant blurry cloud of time.
- 03Ask for a warning before a switch happens — "five more minutes, then it's dinner" — and pair it with something you can see, like a timer, not just a voice you might tune out.
- 04After a task, guess how long it took, then check. Doing this often, over weeks, slowly helps your brain build a better internal sense of time.
You're not bad at time. Your brain just needs to see it, not just sense it — and there are real tools that do exactly that.
This article is general educational information, not therapy, diagnosis or individual medical advice. If something here matters for your situation, a qualified professional who knows you is the right next step.
