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So that's why you're always late. You're perfectly capable of being on time if you're motivated enough. If I called you up and said, "Hassan, I have a billion dollars for you. If you get here at 5 minutes to , you'd be there at 6 minutes to . Why am I always late? Well, let me ask you this question. In school, you have trouble paying attention." Correct. Do you tend to lose things? Yes. Do you find it easy to get disorganized? 100%. Okay. You probably qualify for this diagnosis called attention deficit disorder, which is the topic of my first book, Scattered Minds. After I was diagnosed with it, being late is one of the aspects of it, and what it is is a lack of time maturity. In Scattered Minds, my book on ADHD, I describe how it's 5 minutes to , but I have to be somewhere at 8. Yes, but at 5 I still think I have an eternity in front of me. This has been my problem since I was a child.
Yes, because your time sense didn't develop early, correct? So that's why you're always late, and I can also tell you why your time sense didn't develop early. Why is that? You see, kids don't have a time sense. To a baby, a present moment is eternity. You can't say to a one-year-old, "You'll have dinner in 5 minutes," right? All they're aware of is that there's no dinner. Five minutes is eternity. Time sense has to develop. The brain has to develop, and for brain development you need certain conditions. Here's what I can tell you without knowing anything about your specific history. There are two things that are true about you. One is that you're highly sensitive. Yes. The other is that when you were small, and even as an infant, during the pregnancy, your parents were stressed. How did you know this? Because that's why you have ADHD. You're tuning out, and your lack of development of time sense has to do with the stress in your environment. The more genetically sensitive the infant, the more they pick up on their parents' stresses, and that actually interferes with the brain development of certain circuits. It's really that simple. It's not a disease that you inherit. It's a response of sensitive infants to a stressed environment.
When I have something important to do, I will immediately find something not important to do. Yeah. So I'll be like, "Oh my god, I have to organize this drawer right now." Yeah. Or I'll be like, "I saw an Instagram ad about jogging pants. I really need jogging pants. I should probably buy them now." Yeah. Or I'll get mad at myself and go, "You know what? Grow a [ __ ] pair and do the hard thing right now, but before you do that hard thing, you should probably go to the bathroom." Yeah. Why am I procrastinating? Well, procrastination is another trait associated with this syndrome called ADHD, and typically we put off things until the very last minute. Yes. And then we rush to get it done. I never, in university, when I did my undergraduate training before I went to medical school, began an essay until the night before it was due, and I'd be up all night writing it. Again, it has to do with time sense and with lack of motivation. Things that you're highly motivated to do, I doubt you procrastinate very much. You'll do them immediately. So ADHD is really a question of motivation. There are certain circuits in the brain to do with motivation, and those have to develop, again like all circuits. Nobody's born with a developed brain. The motivation circuits have to develop. They run on a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is essential for a sense of vitality, for curiosity, for seeking. Yes. And when you're under high pressure, there are high dopamine levels, and then you get more really motivated. So you're waiting for that dopamine hit before you get down to doing what you need to do. It's a matter of how environment shapes brain physiology.
Now, to offer some polite pushback: do I really have ADD, or do I have a childlike sense of wonder? Why is there a contradiction? People with ADHD tend to be more playful and more curious, and in some ways more emotionally alive, and they tend to become comedians. I've seen that probably 90% of comedians could be diagnosed with ADHD, because you've got a brain that jumps all over the place, which is the essence of comedy. Yes. Just about every comedian I've ever met, I could diagnose within a split second with ADHD. [laughter] I think we have ADD, and many of us, unfortunately, have clinical depression as well. That's what gives us a very dark sense of humor.
But I want to go down this a little bit with you. I will also be late to things that I care about. Even as an adult, I'm 39 years old, I am aware that, oh my god, I'm about to be late. I've been late for dates with my wife. I've been late for pickup of parents or children. Underneath this lack of understanding of time or procrastination, there is something else. I have a theory and I'd love for you to unpack it. I think at the core of it, there's something that I want to do, and as an adult now, I know the path to it will either be painful or humiliating.
Well, let me put it in simpler terms, if I may. There are two things going on for you. You can agree with this or not; I'm giving you my view. One is that you really don't have a good time sense. I have a horrible time sense. If there are 10 minutes left, it's not here yet, so it's not happening yet. That's why I mentioned it before. Absolutely. The other is that you're emotionally immature in the sense that emotionally you're fun. You can be intellectually very advanced. It's the law of uneven development: some aspects of our personalities and our brains can develop highly, while others are underdeveloped. And there's a lack of responsibility there. If you really perceived yourself as responsible, and other people's experience mattered to you as much as your own, you'd be there on time. I promise you, if I called you up and said, "Hassan, I have a billion dollars for you. If you get here at 5 minutes to , you'd be there at 6 minutes to ," I'll be there at . Are you killing me? Yeah. A billion, because you'd really care. And by the way, I'm the same. All my life I've always been late to some things. So I'm not criticizing you or anybody else. You can call me emotionally undeveloped, but I'm calling myself emotionally developed in that same sense. Great. Appreciate that, brother. I'm not here to point fingers at anybody. I'm talking about the dynamic underneath it. There's a certain degree of lack of maturation, which has its charming aspects. You get to be playful and kind of childlike in a lot of ways. But it also leaves you with a lack of responsibility. Again, I'm telling you, you're perfectly capable of being on time if you're motivated enough. If I promised you a billion dollars, you would be