Time Management Deficits after Brain Injury

Time Management Deficits after Brain Injury: Quinn Part Twenty-Eight

Executive functions can be thought of as the brain CEO, the manager of the brain’s resources.  Foremost among managing those resources, is time management deficits after brain injury.  I asked Quinn’s wife about this:

Time management deficits after brain injury is a gigantic problem.  Neither of us were great with it, before his accident, and he is very poor with it now.  The main thing I think is he doesn’t prioritize.  If he has many things to do, or even more than one thing to do, he takes a long time and he doesn’t do what’s necessarily the most important thing to do at the time.  He just does whatever he feels like at the time, and doesn’t realize that an unimportant task is now taking two hours, and he hasn’t done any of the things that need to be done.

Why does he stay up so late?

Probably because he sleeps so late in the morning; often doesn’t tire himself, physically, especially days he doesn’t feel that great, he doesn’t do enough strenuous physical exercise that he isn’t tired.  If he doesn’t feel that well, he’s often napped, during the day; and, therefore, he’s not tired, as well, so.

You think that’s partially time management deficits after brain injury?

Yes.

Do you go to bed late, too?

Yes, and that’s my lack of time management, as well.  So, we don’t complement each other with that.

Quinn acknowledged time management deficits after brain injury:

If I need to go to the bank to make a deposit and go to the grocery store and be home before you showed up here today – I would’ve been circling around the house trying to get ready and trying to figure out, and going back to okay, what time are you coming, how much time is it going to take to do Part A.  How much time is it going to take to do Part B. And so the multi-tasking issue is what I have a hard time with.

What you’re describing is what we would probably put under the category of time management and planning.  You have trouble with time management deficits after brain injury? 

Sometimes, yeah.

Can you give me another example of time management deficits after brain injury ? 

I guess the same thing, like I, you know, if I’ve done too much today. I’m going to go to hockey tonight, and I need to rest, but I also needed to go to the bank or I needed to go to the grocery store and get something, you know, and eat dinner before I go to hockey  And if she’s not home to help me with some of the tasks I kind of will be off in my own.

Next in Part Twenty Nine – Initiative and Follow Thru Problems after Severe Brain Injury

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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