Frontal Dysfunction – Time Management

 

By Attorney Gordon Johnson
Call me at 800-992-9447

 

Time management for the football quarterback, is not just about getting the play snapped within 40 seconds, it is also making sure that all resources necessary to achieve the goals, are applied to the task in the proper sequence. If players are out of time sequence, penalties get called, players get hurt. A block thrown after the ball carrier gets where he s supposed to go, does no good.

Executive functioning requires sequencing of the tasks it takes to complete a job. Think of what a factory manager is responsible for in making a finished product: Combining resources which include parts, labor and management. In the brain, those resources may include sensory inputs, memory access and thought. In all these examples, if the resources are not allocated in the proper sequence, the part won’t work, the thought won’t compute.

Quinn and his wife were interviewed for TBI Voices. Quinn is the survivor of a severe brain injury, which included severe secondary consequences. I asked the Quinn’s wife of about time management:

Time management is a gigantic problem.  Neither of us were great at it before his accident. He is very poor with it now.  He doesn’t prioritize.  If he has even more than one thing to do, he takes a long time and 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. He doesn’t realize that an unimportant task is now taking two hours, that he hasn’t done any of the things that need to be done.

Quinn agreed:

If I need to go to the bank to make a deposit, 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.

Can you give me another example? 

I guess the same thing, 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 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.

For the beginning of the Quinn story, click here.

 

Contact Attorney Gordon Johnson: 1-800-992-9447

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