In a Minute

A companion to episodes 10 and 11 of Different at Work. In episode 10 we named the brain’s in-house project manager; in episode 11 we opened the toolbox. This is the small, very ordinary place where the two meet: getting out the door on time.

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You need to leave at 10:00. Getting ready takes about 25 minutes. A brain that runs the math says, “Start by 9:30,” and starts at 9:30.

Mine says, “In a minute.”

At 9:15, “in a minute” feels completely reasonable. At 9:40 it still feels reasonable, because I’m fast, I’ve done this a thousand times, and besides, I’m in the middle of something. At 9:54 the something evaporates, the adrenaline arrives, and I’m hopping down the hallway with one shoe on, looking for keys that are, as always, in the last place I look. I leave at 10:07, stressed, apologizing in my head before I’ve apologized out loud.

From the outside that looks like procrastination, or not caring, or a character flaw. From the inside it feels like being ambushed by a clock that was standing there in plain sight the whole time.

It turns out there are names for the two things doing the ambushing.

Problem one: the estimate is from my best day

Positive illusory bias is the research name for rating your own competence higher than your actual performance, or higher than the people around you would rate it. It shows up a lot in ADHD research (Owens et al., 2007). Fair warning, same as in episode 10: most of that research studies kids and teens, and the findings in adults are more mixed. But not absent. In one study of college students, the students with ADHD were more likely to overrate themselves on two of three measures, and the measures were about work and driving (Prevatt et al., 2012). I’d bet a lot of you are nodding already.

Here’s how it plays out at 9:15. The question “how long does it take me to get ready?” doesn’t get answered with my average. It gets answered with my personal best: the one morning everything was where it belonged, nothing needed ironing, and the coffee made itself. Five minutes, tops.

It isn’t arrogance. One leading explanation is that the bias is protective, a shield a brain builds after years of being told it’s falling short (Diener & Milich, 1997). If you’ve spent decades hearing “you’re so smart, if you’d only apply yourself,” of course part of you insists you’re about to apply yourself beautifully. Next time. Definitely next time.

And to be fair to all of us: everyone underestimates how long things take. Psychologists call it the planning fallacy, and it was documented in ordinary college students, who predicted their finish times by imagining how the work should go while ignoring how it had gone before (Buehler, Griffin & Ross, 1994). Positive illusory bias is that same blind spot, turned up.

Problem two: 10:00 isn’t real yet

Temporal discounting is the tendency for a reward, or a consequence, to lose value the further away it is. Everyone does this too; it’s why retirement savings are hard for everybody. But a meta-analysis pooling 21 studies found that people with ADHD discount the future more steeply, a medium-sized difference that held across ages (Jackson & MacKillop, 2016).

Dr. Russell Barkley has a shorter name for the experience: time blindness (russellbarkley.org). The ADHD world has an even shorter one: there are only two times, now and not now.

It isn’t just a figure of speech, either. Two meta-analyses of timing studies found that people with ADHD judge the passing of time less accurately and less consistently than people without it (Zheng et al., 2022; Marx et al., 2022).

At 9:15, being late at 10:00 is a “not now” problem. It’s abstract. It weighs almost nothing. Meanwhile, whatever I’m already doing is very much now, and it weighs a ton. Look at what tends to be on that side of the scale: sleeping in, scrolling, one more episode, breakfast. Every one of them pays out continuously, second by second, for as long as I keep doing it. The scale isn’t even close.

That’s also why the shift happens so violently at 9:54. The future didn’t change. It just finally crossed the line from “not now” into “now,” all at once, with no runway.

Put them together and you get “in a minute”

Either one alone is manageable. Together, they cover for each other:

• Temporal discounting says the consequence is far away and doesn’t matter much yet.
• Positive illusory bias says that even when it does arrive, you’ll handle it easily.

So there’s never a moment when starting feels necessary. Not because you don’t care about being on time. You care a lot. You just never get a signal that says now until it’s too late to use it. And the more rewarding the thing you’re already doing, the longer that signal takes. It’s easy to stop folding laundry at 9:30. It’s much harder to stop sleeping.

Why the switch itself is the hard part

There’s one more piece, and I think it’s the one people miss. Getting ready isn’t just a task. It’s a transition: stopping one thing and starting another. And the trade on offer at that moment is about the worst one you can hand a brain that discounts the future.

Look at what you’re actually being asked to swap. On one side, something that’s rewarding you right now. On the other, a task whose reward comes later: brushing your teeth doesn’t feel like anything; arriving on time and unflustered is the payoff, and that’s 45 minutes and a car ride away. Every transition like that is a tiny version of the classic lab experiment: a small reward now, or a bigger one later? And we already know which way a steep discounter leans. (That’s my observation, not a study. But it’s the same choice the discounting research measures, just with toothpaste instead of money.)

That’s why “just get up” is such bad advice. It treats the switch as free. In episode 11, Flo described every switch between tasks as a nail in your tire, letting out a little air. When the next task pays out later, the switch costs even more, because nothing on the other side is pulling you through it.

I lived a version of this my whole career. Every performance review I ever wrote went in on time, and not one minute earlier. People called that “working well under pressure.” It was really the deadline finally becoming visible.

And that was just the clock

Everything above is time blindness, and it’s stressful already. But we’re not out the door yet.

Then add working memory. At 9:56, halfway through the scramble: did I finish breakfast? Let me go back and check. Did I turn off the stove? Need to check that, too. Did I already grab my badge, or did I just think about grabbing my badge? Working memory is the brain’s sticky note, and with ADHD it doesn’t always stick; working-memory deficits are one of the most consistent findings in ADHD research (Martinussen et al., 2005). So every step I can’t remember finishing is a step I have to go back and verify. Each check costs a minute I don’t have, and each one is a fresh little jolt of worry. More stress.

Then add the fallout. Now I’m late. Maybe it’s a friend who’s been waiting, maybe it’s a meeting that started without me, maybe it’s a manager who’s starting to keep a tally. There are real consequences, and then there’s the soundtrack in my own head, which is usually harsher than anything anyone else says out loud: again? You knew. Everybody else manages this. Years of that soundtrack leave a mark; adults with ADHD consistently report lower self-esteem than their peers (Cook et al., 2014). Even more stress.

Then add the mask. And we still aren’t done, because a lot of us learned long ago to hide all of this. In a 2026 study of 202 adults with ADHD, more than 91% said they mask their traits, and they described the cost: exhaustion, anxiety, and an effort that drains the same attention and memory ADHD already strains (Simon Fraser University, 2026). Masking has a few flavors here, and I’ve worn all of them:

• Overcorrecting. Pouring a huge amount of energy and focus into never being late. Ready an hour early, sitting by the door, unable to start anything else in case I lose track again. On time, technically, and already exhausted. (Overpreparing was one of the most common masking strategies in that same study.)
• The charm offensive. An inventive explanation, delivered well enough that everyone laughs and moves on. It works, and then I have to keep that version of reality straight, which is one more thing for a working memory that was already full. (We did a whole episode on this: you can’t out-charm everything forever.)
• Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Making this deadline by quietly letting another one slide. The stress isn’t gone. It’s deferred, with interest.

Stress, plus more stress, plus even more stress, plus the masking bonus, adds up to a big toll. And remember:

That’s all just getting out the door

One routine. One morning. Now imagine the hundreds of processes and functions a person has to run in a single day: starting the report, switching into the meeting, remembering the follow-up, getting back to the report, noticing it’s 2:00 and lunch didn’t happen. Each one has its own clock, its own transition, its own sticky note, and its own chance to go wrong in front of other people.

You don’t have to be very creative to see how this adds up over a day, a week, a career, or a lifetime. It’s not that people with ADHD can’t get out the door. Most of us do, most days. It’s what it costs to get there, and how rarely anyone sees the bill.

And on the days we don’t make it? We’re held accountable, the same as anyone should be. That’s fair, and I’m not asking for a pass. But we also pay a second time, privately, by beating ourselves up for it. The world sends one invoice. We send ourselves another, and ours is always bigger.

What actually helps: awareness, tools, and people

None of this gets fixed by trying harder, or by feeling worse about it. What helps falls into three buckets, and all three matter in a very meaningful way.

Awareness is the first one, and if you’ve read this far you’ve already started. Knowing that “in a minute” is two named, studied effects, not a moral failing, changes the soundtrack. It’s very hard to fix something you’ve filed under “who I am.”

Tools are the second. Barkley’s rule is that help has to live at the point of performance (Barkley, 2021), so your brain doesn’t have to generate the signal on its own. Here’s what that looks like for one ordinary morning.

1. Measure it once. This one goes straight at positive illusory bias. The next time you get ready, time it. Not the dream version, the real one. When you have an actual number (it’s 25 minutes, it was always 25 minutes), you can argue with the five-minute fantasy using data instead of willpower. Remember the planning fallacy research: the mistake was ignoring how long things took last time (Buehler, Griffin & Ross, 1994). This puts last time right in front of you.

2. Count backward, out loud. Start from the time you need to leave, not the time you need to arrive. “Leave at 10:00, ready takes 25, so start at 9:30, so stop what I’m doing at 9:25.” Then add a buffer, because the planning fallacy applies to everybody.

3. Make time visible. A regular alarm is easy to dismiss. A visual countdown timer, the kind with a colored wedge that shrinks, shows the time physically disappearing, which drags “not now” into “now” a little earlier. Label your alarms with an instruction instead of a time: “9:25: stand up and start the playlist” beats “9:25.” Psychologists call that an implementation intention, an if-then plan (“when the alarm goes off, I stand up”), and across nearly a hundred studies those plans substantially improved follow-through (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). In children with ADHD, if-then plans helped them stop an unwanted response as well as their peers without ADHD (Gawrilow & Gollwitzer, 2008).

4. Leave a note from past you. Put it in the calendar alert, where you’ll see it at exactly the wrong moment. Keep it short and honest: “Past you here. It takes 25 minutes. Every time. Don’t fall for ‘in a minute.'” Past you is the one witness positive illusory bias can’t argue with.

5. Start with the fun part. The standard advice is to get the hard part out of the way first. For an interest-based brain, one that switches on for interest, novelty, challenge and urgency rather than importance, that’s backward (Dodson, ADDitude; we talked about this in episode 11). Remember the trade at the transition: something rewarding now, against something rewarding later. You can’t make 10:00 arrive sooner, but you can put a reward on the near side of the switch. Make the first step the good one: the playlist or podcast that only plays while you get ready, the shower with the nice-smelling soap, coffee that only gets poured once you’re up. Now the switch is from one now to another now, which your brain will actually make. Researchers call this temptation bundling: in one study, people who could only listen to a gripping audiobook at the gym went to the gym 51% more often at first, though the effect faded over the semester (Milkman, Minson & Volpp, 2014). So rotate the reward when it goes stale. Then ride that momentum into the boring parts.

6. Decide the night before. Every decision at 9:30 costs time you didn’t budget for, and positive illusory bias never counts decisions as time. Lay out the clothes. Put the keys, wallet, badge and bag in one spot by the door (a “launch pad”). You’re turning five small decisions into one action.

7. Leave yourself proof. For the working-memory loop, don’t rely on remembering; leave evidence. Snap a photo of the stove knobs as you walk past. Keep a short checklist on the inside of the front door and actually tick it. Rinse the breakfast plate the moment you’re done, so the empty sink answers the question for you. Proof ends the “did I?” loop in two seconds instead of a trip back to the kitchen.

8. Talk to yourself like a coach, not a cheerleader. This is the subtle one. “You’ve got this, it’ll be easy!” sounds supportive, but it’s exactly what positive illusory bias was already telling you. Try instructional self-talk instead: “It’s 9:30. If I stand up now, I get there calm. First step: shoes.” Sports psychologists have studied this: in a meta-analysis of 32 studies, self-talk improved performance, and instructional cues beat motivational ones on tasks that need precision (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011). Finding your keys counts. And if it’s 9:54 anyway, skip the shame spiral. Even mild stress can rapidly take the prefrontal cortex offline (Arnsten, 2009), and that’s the very part of the brain you need to find your keys.

People are the third, and the one we talk about least. Tools live on your phone; people catch what the tools miss. The partner who says “it’s 9:25” without a sigh. The friend who’s fine meeting you there instead of picking you up. And at work, the manager who notices the pattern and gets curious instead of keeping a tally.

If you’re that manager, swap “getting ready” for “the quarterly report,” and 10:00 for the Friday deadline. The project that’s “a couple of hours, tops” on Monday. The deadline that doesn’t feel real until Thursday night. Someone who does great work at the last possible second might not be gambling. They might be waiting for a signal their brain doesn’t send until late, and they may be paying the whole stacked bill (the checking, the fallout, the mask) to make it look easy. The same scaffolding helps: break the work into checkpoints with real dates, ask for an estimate and then gently ask what it took last time, and make the timeline visible somewhere other than inside one person’s head. Most of all, make it safe to say “I’m going to need more runway on this one” before it’s 9:54.

I still say “in a minute.” I just don’t believe myself anymore, and between the timers, the notes from past me, and a few very patient people, I get out the door with a lot less left on the bill.

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Sources

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