I can have one appointment at 3 PM and somehow that becomes the thing I’m doing today.
Not literally.
I might play a game. I might clean. I might do something around the house.
But I’m also checking the clock.
10:30.
11:00.
11:30.
Every 30 minutes or so, I’m making sure I still have plenty of time.
And I always do.
Until somehow I don’t.
Around 2 PM, I’ll think:
Alright, I should probably start getting ready.
Which sounds reasonable when you forget that “getting ready” isn’t ONE thing.
I have to shower.
Get dressed.
Find my stuff.
Get out of the house.
Drive there.
Park.
All things I apparently forgot take actual time.
Then Mayra might tell me:
“Remember, we need to stop somewhere first.”
And immediately I’m irritated.
If I knew that, I would’ve gotten ready earlier.
Except sometimes I did know.
She told me.
I forgot.
Now we’re rushing.
And after spending most of the day making sure I wouldn’t be late for this appointment…
I’m late.
I don’t know how I manage to pull that off.
But I do.
So What Is ADHD Waiting Mode?
“Waiting mode” is what people online have started calling this feeling of having something scheduled later and struggling to fully move on with the rest of your day.
It’s not an official ADHD symptom or diagnosis.
And there’s not much research specifically studying “ADHD waiting mode” as its own thing.
It’s more of a name people have given to an experience.
And when I first started reading about it, one part didn’t completely fit me.
I kept seeing waiting mode described like you have something at 3 PM, so you sit around all day unable to do anything.
That’s not really what happens to me.
I can do things.
The problem is that whatever is happening at 3 never completely leaves my mind.
If I’m playing a game, I’m checking the clock.
If I’m cleaning, I’m checking the clock.
If I’m thinking about going somewhere, now I’m calculating whether I have enough time to go and get back.
Everything gets measured against 3 PM.
So I’m not exactly frozen.
I’m just never completely in whatever I’m doing either.
Part of my brain is still at 3.
Why Does ADHD Do This?
We don’t really know that ADHD does this.
That’s an important distinction.
Waiting mode makes sense alongside several things researchers actually have studied in ADHD: difficulties with estimating and managing time, planning, working memory, executive functioning, and switching between tasks.
But that’s different from proving those things cause waiting mode.
Research on time perception in adults with ADHD isn’t even as clean as some ADHD websites make it sound. Some studies find differences in estimating or reproducing time; others don’t. The research in adults is still relatively limited.
So I don’t think there’s one neat explanation.
I can tell you what it feels like from inside my own head, though.
I’m trying not to forget the thing.
That’s probably why I keep checking the clock.
I’m also trying to figure out how much time I have before the thing.
And that’s where I seem to screw myself.
Because 3 PM feels far away at 10 AM.
It still feels pretty far away at noon.
At 1 PM?
I’ve got two whole hours.
And at 2?
An hour? I’m good.
Except I’m usually calculating how long one part of the process will take.
I’m not accounting very well for everything between:
sitting here right now
and
actually being where I’m supposed to be at 3.
Those are very different things.
How Am I Still Late?
This is the part that gets me.
If I’ve spent hours thinking about an appointment, you’d think being late would be almost impossible.
I’ve been watching this thing since breakfast.
And yet here we are.
I think part of my problem is that I mentally compress a bunch of separate tasks into one:
Get ready.
If I tell myself I’ll start getting ready at 2, my brain seems perfectly happy with that plan.
But “get ready” might mean shower, get dressed, find my wallet, find my keys, grab whatever Lucia needs, get everybody out the door, drive, park and walk inside.
Then there are the things I didn’t account for.
Traffic.
Gas.
Something I can’t find.
Something my fiancé needs to do.
Something she already told me we needed to do that I forgot about.
That’s how an hour disappears.
Not because an hour literally felt like ten minutes.
I just gave an hour way too much credit.
And that’s the ridiculous part of waiting mode for me.
I’m doing all this clock checking because I don’t want to be late.
Then my planning is what makes me late anyway.
What I’ve Started Doing Differently
The easiest solution I’ve found is also the one that requires the least amount of work:
Give me the morning appointment.
If I can choose 9 AM or 3 PM, I’m taking 9.
I wake up, get ready, go do it, and it’s over.
Now I don’t have something sitting in the middle of my day that I have to keep remembering.
Obviously, I don’t always get to choose.
So when something is at 3, I’m trying to stop treating 3 PM as the important time.
Because it isn’t.
The important time might actually be 1:30.
That’s when I need to stop whatever I’m doing and start getting ready.
Then maybe 2:10 is when I actually need to leave.
That’s a lot more useful to me than staring at “3:00 PM — Appointment” on my calendar all day.
Same thing with alarms.
An alarm reminding me that my appointment is happening when my appointment is happening isn’t particularly helpful.
I already lost that battle.
I need the alarm that tells me:
Stop what you’re doing.
Then another one telling me:
You should be leaving.
Basically, I need my phone to remember the appointment so I can stop personally supervising it for six hours.
I Still Don’t Like 3 PM Appointments
I wish I could tell you I figured out waiting mode and now a 3 PM appointment is just a normal part of my day.
Nope.
I’d still rather do it at 9.
And I’m probably still going to check the clock more than I need to.
But at least I understand what I’m actually doing now.
I’m not necessarily sitting around doing nothing.
I’m trying to hold onto something that’s happening later while also figuring out everything I can do before it.
And apparently I’m not great at knowing how much time all of that actually takes.
Which is how I can spend half the day thinking about one appointment…
and somehow still be the guy walking in late.