Toward Control Over Time: Participant Experience of Attending the Let’s Get Organized Group Intervention

Abstract

Importance: Time management is crucial for managing daily activities but is difficult for many people with neurodevelopmental or mental disorders. Few sustainable interventions have addressed time management in daily life.\n Objective: To describe the experiences and meaning of attending the Swedish version of the Let’s Get Organized (LGO–S) group intervention.\n Design: Qualitative design with interviews 1 to 4 mo after the completed intervention.\n Setting: Outpatient psychiatric and adult habilitation clinics.\n Participants: Twelve adults with neurodevelopmental or mental disorders.\n Intervention: LGO–S, a manual-based group intervention that focuses on time-management skills.\n Outcomes and Measures: Semistructured interviews analyzed with qualitative content analysis. All authors took an active part in the analysis process; consensus was reached.\n Results: The overarching theme, “a roller-coaster process toward control over time in daily life,” describes the participants’ process during and after intervention. Four main categories describe the meaning of understanding why time management is difficult and how to use tools for improvement, a process of change that was facilitated by the learning environment. Participants described the process as a struggle to take control over time, but they noted that the positive changes in daily life made it worthwhile.\n Conclusions and Relevance: Participation had a positive impact on daily life. The opportunity for skills training with support over an extended period, a changed view on failure, and the group format appear to be important success factors.\n What This Article Adds: The LGO–S, with its structured training of time-management skills, contributes to occupational therapy practice with an intervention that clients experience as bringing meaningful and positive changes to daily life functioning.