Making Time Concrete

Every January, I buy two calendars: a traditional monthly wall calendar for the kitchen and a whole-year-at-a-glance calendar for the office. This is in addition to my digital calendar. 

Some might find this to be overkill, but each one does something different for my brain. 

• The yearly overview helps me see the big picture ("Wait, spring break is only six weeks away?"). 

• The monthly calendar keeps family events and deadlines visible when I'm making my morning coffee. 

• My digital calendar has everything. That's where I live day-to-day, blocking out time and making sure I actually do the things I said I'd do.

There's actually a brain science reason this works for me. Time is inherently invisible and abstract; calendars make time visible and tangible. 

Creating a multi-sensory experience of time is helpful for everyone. It is absolutely essential for individuals with ADHD or learning disabilities. 

Why Some Individuals Struggle with Time Management

Time is like Santa! It only exists because we believe it does. We can’t see it, but it controls so much of our lives, making it one of the trickiest concepts for our brains to manage. For individuals with ADHD and learning disabilities, this challenge is even more pronounced.

Leading ADHD researcher Russell Barkley calls a difficulty perceiving, tracking, and managing time time blindness. In his work on executive function deficits, Barkley explains that people with ADHD often struggle with "temporal myopia," or nearsightedness about time. They can focus intensely on the present moment but have difficulty projecting into the future or learning from the past.

A study published in Child Neuropsychology by Toplak, Dockstader, and Tannock found that children with ADHD consistently underestimate how much time has passed and struggle with time reproduction tasks. It's not that they're not trying or don't care; their brains literally process time differently.

For students with learning disabilities, the challenges compound. When reading, writing, or math already require significantly more cognitive energy, planning, and time management become even more depleted skills. The working memory demands are simply too high when time remains abstract.

How to Make Time Visual

We need to make the invisible visible, the abstract concrete. To improve time management skills: make time concrete. Externalize it, give it shape and color, make it something you can see and touch. Here are five powerful strategies that work across ages.

Strategy 1: Circular Calendars

How it works: Unlike traditional linear calendars, circular calendars display the entire year as a wheel with months arranged around the perimeter. Events, holidays, and important dates are marked around the circle, creating a visual map of the year.

Best for: Elementary through high school students, and adults who struggle with long-term planning

Why it works: Our brains are wired to understand spatial relationships better than abstract sequences. The circular format leverages the brain's visual-spatial processing system, which is often a strength for individuals with ADHD and learning disabilities, even when sequential processing is challenging.

By transforming time from an abstract concept into a physical space you can point to, you're activating the parietal lobe's spatial mapping abilities. This makes questions like "How far away is my birthday?" or "How much time until summer?" answerable at a glance. The brain can finally see that March comes after February comes after January, creating a mental model of time's cyclical nature that linear calendars can't provide as effectively.

Strategy 2: Visual Timers

How it works: Visual timers show the passage of time through color, shrinking pie charts, or diminishing bars. As time runs out, the visual representation literally disappears, making time's passage concrete and observable.

Best for: Elementary and middle school students, though beneficial for anyone during focused work sessions

Why it works: The prefrontal cortex, responsible for time perception and future planning, is one of the last brain regions to fully develop and is often underactive in individuals with ADHD.

Visual timers bypass this deficit by offloading time-tracking to the visual system. Instead of relying on internal time estimation (which requires constant prefrontal cortex monitoring), students can glance at the timer and immediately understand how much time remains.

This external visual cue reduces the working memory load, freeing up cognitive resources for the actual task at hand. The color change or shrinking visual also triggers the brain's alerting system, providing natural reminders without the executive function required to self-monitor.

Strategy 3:  Backward Planning

How it works: Start with the due date and work backward, mapping out each step that must happen before it. Use a physical monthly calendar and sticky notes or a large whiteboard. If a research paper is due March 15th, identify what needs to happen March 14th (final proofread), March 12th (complete draft), March 8th (finish research), and so on back to today.

Best for: Middle school through adult, particularly for multi-step projects and long-term assignments

Why it works: Forward planning requires strong executive function to imagine future states and sequence steps logically. Backward planning flips this, starting with a concrete endpoint (the due date) and working toward the present, which feels more tangible.

This approach reduces the cognitive load on the prefrontal cortex's planning centers by breaking one overwhelming question ("How do I complete this project?") into a series of simpler questions ("What's the last thing I need to do? What comes right before that?").

The physical manipulation of sticky notes or writing on a calendar also engages procedural memory and motor planning areas of the brain, creating multiple neural pathways to the same information. Moving pieces around externally means the brain doesn't have to hold and manipulate all the steps in working memory simultaneously.

Strategy 4: Time Blocking

How it works: Divide your day into visual blocks of time on paper or a calendar, assigning each block to a specific activity. Use colored markers or digital color-coding to create distinct visual chunks: homework (blue), exercise (green), meals (yellow), free time (orange). The key is making your entire day visible as a series of containers, not just listing tasks.

Best for: High school students and adults, especially helpful for those who struggle with task initiation or lose track of time

Why it works: Time blocking transforms time from an abstract flow into concrete, bounded containers; this leverages the brain's natural ability to understand objects and spaces.

For individuals with ADHD, the biggest challenge isn't necessarily doing the work but initiating it and knowing when to stop. Time blocks create clear start and end points, reducing decision fatigue about "what should I do now?"

The visual color-coding also helps the brain chunk information more effectively. Instead of seeing "12 things to do," you see "three blocks of time," which is far less overwhelming to the brain's processing capacity.

The visual boundaries also help with transitions, one of the most challenging aspects of executive function, by making the shift from one activity to another explicit and expected.

Strategy 5: Weekly Calendar Check-Ins

How it works: Set a consistent day and time each week (Sunday evening, Friday afternoon, whatever works) to review the week ahead using a physical week-at-a-glance calendar or planner. Look at all commitments, identify potential problems, and make a visual plan for the week. This isn't about detailed daily planning but about seeing the big picture of the next seven days in one view.

Best for: Upper elementary through adult, essential for anyone managing multiple responsibilities

Why it works: The brain craves predictability and patterns, which activate the reward system and reduce anxiety. A weekly check-in creates a predictable rhythm that helps the brain prepare for what's coming.

By seeing the entire week laid out visually, you're engaging prospective memory (remembering to do things in the future), which is particularly challenging for individuals with ADHD. The physical act of reviewing a calendar moves information from abstract future plans into working awareness, essentially "loading" the week into your brain's active processing.

This also reduces the cognitive burden throughout the week because your brain has already created a mental map. Instead of constantly trying to remember what's next, you're simply referring back to a framework you've already established. The consistent ritual also strengthens habit formation, making planning itself more automatic over time.

The TLDR

Making time visual isn't just about getting organized. It's about transforming how your entire family experiences daily life.

When you implement these strategies for yourself, you'll likely notice less stress about forgetting appointments, more control over your schedule, and fewer moments of "where did the day go?" You're modeling executive function skills while actually managing your own time more effectively.

For your child with ADHD or learning disabilities, visual time tools can be transformative.

If time management challenges persist despite trying multiple visual strategies, it may be a sign that your child would benefit from educational therapy. Persistent difficulties with time awareness, planning, and organization (especially when they significantly impact academic performance or daily functioning) often indicate that underlying executive function skills need direct, targeted support. Educational therapy provides systematic instruction in these critical skills within a structured, individualized program.

Your Action Plan: 

1. Pick one strategy from this post and try it for two weeks.

2. Notice what changes.

3. Then come back and share your experience, I'd love to hear what worked (or what didn't) for your family.

And if you're wondering whether educational therapy might help your child develop stronger time management and executive function skills, reach out. Please schedule a consultation, and let's talk about what support could look like for your student.