20 Time Management: Tools for Getting
Your Aspie to Be On Time

How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?

— Dr. Seuss

Helpful Hint: Time management is difficult for most of us, but especially Aspies. They need help to stay on schedule. That help can come in the form of Aspertools. A system of rules, rewards, and consequences will encourage the Aspie to be punctual. Another Aspertool, a simple checklist, can help relieve the anxiety that often hinders an Aspie trying to be on schedule.

Principle: Time is our most precious resource. When I think how God gives us only a certain amount of time on this planet, and how much of it we squander, it motivates me to get as much done each day as I can. As my longtime friend, the great sports handicapper Lem Banker, once put it to me, “God made all of us equal. He gives every one of us twenty-four hours each day. What we do with those twenty-four hours is up to each of us.”

To a neurotypical, time is a simple unit—a second is 1/60 of a minute, a minute is 1/60 of an hour, an hour is 1/24 of a day. But to Aspies, time is yet another pathway in the convoluted maze of activities they navigate every day. Not only do they have to remember what tasks to do hour by hour throughout the day, but also they have to remember the order in which to do those tasks, which ones are higher priority, as well as “down-to-the-minute time assignments” for each one. The world they live in is an exact, demanding, and unforgiving one. It’s hard for them to chunk it out.

Because Aspies tend to have poor executive function, they don’t fare well at the little details that neurotypicals take for granted, such as prioritizing to-dos, assigning a proper sequence to their tasks, and keeping on schedule. This is why routine is so important to Aspies. Being in a good routine reduces their need to continually connect all the dots of daily living, a task that their circuitry is ill-equipped to handle. A routine helps them not to have to reinvent the wheel.

For example, George is a fourteen-year-old Aspie with a high degree of anxiety. Although he’s an honor student, a lot of his anxiety is related to attending school. As a result, he started getting to school at least a half hour late every day. This went on for weeks. Finally Pati called George’s mother in for a meeting. The mom said she had tried everything to get George to be on time for school. From her experience, Pati sensed that George was “playing” his mom.

To address the situation, Pati “pulled out” several tools from her Aspertoolbox. First, she had George and his mom create a checklist of all the things he needed to do each morning before leaving the house. Then came the rule. From having observed George, Pati knew that he liked leaving school the very second the final bell rang. So Pati established the rule that if George was not at school at 8 am sharp, even thirty seconds late, he’d suffer the consequences for breaking the rule. And the consequence was that for every minute George was late to school in the morning, he’d be required to stay after school for the exact same amount of time.

The next day George was twelve minutes late, so he had to stay twelve minutes after school. Every one of those twelve minutes George had to stay after the final bell was sheer torture. Pati’s consequence worked. George didn’t repeat his mistake again. He came to school on time every day. His mother can’t believe that a single, simple Aspertool could make such a difference in her son as well as her mornings.

Another illustration of this principle is something from Rebecca. Every Friday at 11 am, Rebecca has a workout scheduled with her trainer, Ian Pyka, in Coral Springs, about twenty minutes away. I’d swing by her independent living facility at 10:15 am to drive her there. (I’d built in a fifteen-minute buffer to allow for traffic and the fact that Rebecca was habitually running about fifteen minutes behind.) Rebecca always had a different excuse for being behind schedule. She had to go to the bathroom. She had to pack her lunch. She hadn’t slept well the night before due to anxiety. I got fed up with having to wait for her every time and messing up Ian’s schedule.

I finally decided it was time for the two of us to get to the bottom of Rebecca’s habitual lateness. We used our Aspertools. After observing a typical morning for Rebecca, we determined it was a combination of poor executive function and her anxiety over whether she had everything she needed when it was time to walk out the door. Next, we established the rule that she would do as much preparation as she could the night before. Then Rebecca and her coach created a checklist, which would eliminate the panic she often felt, fearing that, as I was waiting, she’d forgotten her meds, her food, her water, or something else. The checklist scheduled all her “getting ready tasks” down to the minute. With the help of all these tools, Rebecca is now on time for her workout with Ian every week.

ACTION PLAN: When you get frustrated because your Aspie is always running late, you need to help her compensate for her inherent difficulty with time management and her lack of executive function. Use all the tools at your disposal to motivate her to be punctual. Help her to create a trusted checklist and incorporate it into her daily routine, including down-to-the-minute “time assignments.” Make sure she has enough time to accomplish the tasks she must perform to be on time.