Executive (dys)function

Before my autism diagnosis, my executive dysfunction was often one of the most frightening things in my life; it seriously led me to question the nature of free will and whether I was losing my mind, because of the disconnect between what I intend to do and what I actually end up doing. I'm grateful that the psychologist at my autism assessment spent quite a while explaining the concepts to me, otherwise I might still be feeling that somehow my mind isn't always my own to do what I want with. The lack of agency that it's left me feeling has been a huge factor in my depressive episodes, I'm absolutely sure. It's bad enough having to swim against the current in the outside world all the time, never mind inside my own brain.

There's no decision large or small that I can't manage to procrastinate about for any arbitrary length of time. Then, if and when I finally get to the end of that, it doesn't matter whether I know how to do what I want, have the resources for it, have done it before successfully, and really, really want to do it; I just can't guarantee that I will, and definitely not within any given time frame. I then look back, completely mystified as how how it didn't happen, often with little idea at all how I filled the time. Of course, onlookers only ever notice this happening when it's something that they want me to do, and love to imagine that I must be doing it on purpose, or just because I'm lazy.

I'm pretty sure that this is where a lot of my repetitive routines and habits come from. They're not obsessions or rituals, as many people seem to think, they're "auto-pilots"; sub-conscious routines that my brain has taken up so that it doesn't have to run the risk of getting my screwed up executive functions involved. I can often perform these without applying any conscious attention at all, and often don't even remember doing them; "oh, I've come back from the shop with exactly the same things that I always buy, how did that happen?" In fact, trying to take "manual control" when I'm running on "auto-pilot" is usually disastrous; the surest way of messing something up that I'd otherwise do completely effortlessly.

Task switching completely does my head in. I've had so many problems in jobs in the past because the boss has interrupted me from something I'm immersed in, and my brain hasn't switched into "conversation mode" fast enough to pick up a word that's been said. My "conversation auto-pilot" can even parrot a nice, chirpy agreement to something without me having the faintest idea what was agreed, or even that I spoke. "Was the boss just at my desk, or am I just remembering something from yesterday? last week? six months ago?"

My sense of the passage of time is absolutely atrocious. I very often have no idea whether I've been doing something for a few minutes or a few hours, lose track of what day of the week it is, or even find myself thinking it's a completely different season of the year just because of how the air feels. If I'm hyper-focused on something, even more so; in which case, I also won't notice my hunger, thirst, temperature, where my limbs are, or otherwise very obvious external stimuli.

"Away with the faeries", as my gran always used to say.

You should be good at this :-).

For anything that needs to be done split it into small pieces and identify the "must haves", and the "nice to haves".   If necessary split each thing down so that each piece of it seems of a manageable size.  Make a realistic estimate, based on time constraints, of have much you can complete in the time available.  Make sure as many as possible of the must haves get done.  Prioritise your list of "nice to haves" and try and fit in as many of the nice to haves as you feel able.  If you're running out of time, sacrifice nice-to-haves to make sure the must-haves get done.

Make sure to write things down - it takes stress away from your mind knowing that you don't have to remember things.  Also, try and plan when you'll do bits, but leave some flexibility and slack so that the plan itself doesn't become a thing of stress.

The more you do it, the more you should find that this gets easier and you can manage more things with less stress.  Also your estimates of how much you can do in a time period improve so you end up with more predictable outcomes.

When things don't work out to plan, reflect on why that was, and how you could improve your process in the future to try and not have the same thing happen again in the future.  Also be aware that for things that are really important to you, you can "sprint" for a short amount of time and get more done that you would normally.  But try and reserve "sprinting" for really important things and use it infrequently.

Windscale said:

You should be good at this

I've been told that rather a lot of times in my life by people who were very mistaken!

Seriously, though, I do appreciate the advice, it is good advice, and those things do help me to an extent. However, part of my frustration with my EF is that although I have felt for a long time that those things ought to work, I have tried repeatedly to put them into practice and I have even been trained quite formally in some of them for work related project management, yet they're just not enough to overcome the problems with awareness, attention, and volition. This is particularly true during periods of burn-out, when I don't have the self control to prevent my autistic traits from bubbling up to the surface.

What I think I really need, is some kind of support worker who could help me to establish those things as "auto-pilots" in their own right - they need enforcing until they become a habit. Whenever I try them, even the process of introducing them becomes something that I can procrastinate about indefinitely. The procrastinating is my planning, gone completely rampant, whether I do it in my mind, on paper, or using a computer program. I can always find every little tiny ambiguity that prevents me coming to a concrete decision, no matter how small the problem. My Mum was right when I was a kid, I do need bossing about sometimes; without the prompts, things just seem to drop out of my working memory, and the hyper-focus and inattention mean that I can sabotage my own plans at almost any moment without being aware that I'm doing it. I also find that I have to re-learn skills all the time because I lose them very quickly if I'm not using them; I make the same dumb mistakes over and over again even though my intellectual mind knows that they're dysfunctional.

For example, a post-it on my computer screen would seem a wise way to get myself to remember something; but at the precise moment that I go to turn on the computer, my brain just says "something in the way" and I stick it on top of all the other post-it notes littering my desk without even noticing that I'm doing it (I was asked why I bothered with the notes at work once - they're usually illegible anyway!) If the landlady calls me downstairs while I'm in the middle of writing a post, I'll come back upstairs with no memory that this was what I was previously doing, and absent mindedly turn the computer off and start playing my bass, getting lost in hyper-focus for hours. I might then even believe that I did send the e-mail and played bass as my reward, and be confused why the post I knew I had written isn't there (deducing what I did wrong is all part of the fun!) There really is only so much of the day that you can spend second-guessing and checking up on yourself (which then recursively become more tasks that I have to remember to do!)

Just making a cup of tea can take me hours by the time I've put the kettle on a few times and let it go cold, left my mug behind on the way to the kettle (again), got distracted because I got back to my desk and forgot that I was going there to retrieve the mug, waited around for a kettle to boil that I didn't even switch on, got distracted petting the cat and then stared into space for a bit cogitating about something that happened twenty years ago, noticed a magazine that I meant to put away on the way back to the kettle and ended up reading half of it because my hyperlexia decided to kick in, had to go back to the kettle because I forgot to put sugar in the tea, then left the tea by the kettle when I've gone back to the computer, forgotten entirely that I wanted a cup of tea in the first place, and choked on the cold tea I just drank from the other cup of tea I made earlier and forgot was already there.

That isn't a compilation of my life-times worst tea related ***-ups, that could easily be the story of a single cup. If these are just the "brain farts" that other people get, then my brain is a perpetual whoopee cushion! Honestly, if I set a video camera up in my little "man-cave" it would be funnier than Laurel and Hardy (I'm good at the slapstick stuff as well - my poor co-ordination can be a riot!) It's OK to laugh at me - I often do; it's the only thing that keeps me (relatively) sane!

I don't know if I'm getting this across at all well, it has always been by far the hardest aspect of my autism to explain to anyone, including myself. If the talk of "attention" makes anyone think of AD(H)D, then I suspect they might be onto something. I was supposed to have seen an occupational therapist following my autism assessment, specifically to look into my EF, but unfortunately their ever growing waiting list for autism assessments meant that it never happened. I notice a lot of commonality when I speak to people diagnosed with AD(H)D, specifically the purely-inattentive version, and it is a very common co-morbid with autism; IIRC, at one time you couldn't be diagnosed with both, because autism was assumed to include the same EF effects. I really ought to get around to procrastinating about whether or not I'll think about doing something about that!

[Ha ha! For some reason writing this post (and, of course, editing it for, um, dunno, but it's getting light out, so I guess a long time) has reminded me that I've left my laundry in the machine all night again!]

And apologies to the OP for rambling on your thread!

Windscale said:

You should be good at this

I've been told that rather a lot of times in my life by people who were very mistaken!

Seriously, though, I do appreciate the advice, it is good advice, and those things do help me to an extent. However, part of my frustration with my EF is that although I have felt for a long time that those things ought to work, I have tried repeatedly to put them into practice and I have even been trained quite formally in some of them for work related project management, yet they're just not enough to overcome the problems with awareness, attention, and volition. This is particularly true during periods of burn-out, when I don't have the self control to prevent my autistic traits from bubbling up to the surface.

What I think I really need, is some kind of support worker who could help me to establish those things as "auto-pilots" in their own right - they need enforcing until they become a habit. Whenever I try them, even the process of introducing them becomes something that I can procrastinate about indefinitely. The procrastinating is my planning, gone completely rampant, whether I do it in my mind, on paper, or using a computer program. I can always find every little tiny ambiguity that prevents me coming to a concrete decision, no matter how small the problem. My Mum was right when I was a kid, I do need bossing about sometimes; without the prompts, things just seem to drop out of my working memory, and the hyper-focus and inattention mean that I can sabotage my own plans at almost any moment without being aware that I'm doing it. I also find that I have to re-learn skills all the time because I lose them very quickly if I'm not using them; I make the same dumb mistakes over and over again even though my intellectual mind knows that they're dysfunctional.

For example, a post-it on my computer screen would seem a wise way to get myself to remember something; but at the precise moment that I go to turn on the computer, my brain just says "something in the way" and I stick it on top of all the other post-it notes littering my desk without even noticing that I'm doing it (I was asked why I bothered with the notes at work once - they're usually illegible anyway!) If the landlady calls me downstairs while I'm in the middle of writing a post, I'll come back upstairs with no memory that this was what I was previously doing, and absent mindedly turn the computer off and start playing my bass, getting lost in hyper-focus for hours. I might then even believe that I did send the e-mail and played bass as my reward, and be confused why the post I knew I had written isn't there (deducing what I did wrong is all part of the fun!) There really is only so much of the day that you can spend second-guessing and checking up on yourself (which then recursively become more tasks that I have to remember to do!)

Just making a cup of tea can take me hours by the time I've put the kettle on a few times and let it go cold, left my mug behind on the way to the kettle (again), got distracted because I got back to my desk and forgot that I was going there to retrieve the mug, waited around for a kettle to boil that I didn't even switch on, got distracted petting the cat and then stared into space for a bit cogitating about something that happened twenty years ago, noticed a magazine that I meant to put away on the way back to the kettle and ended up reading half of it because my hyperlexia decided to kick in, had to go back to the kettle because I forgot to put sugar in the tea, then left the tea by the kettle when I've gone back to the computer, forgotten entirely that I wanted a cup of tea in the first place, and choked on the cold tea I just drank from the other cup of tea I made earlier and forgot was already there.

That isn't a compilation of my life-times worst tea related ***-ups, that could easily be the story of a single cup. If these are just the "brain farts" that other people get, then my brain is a perpetual whoopee cushion! Honestly, if I set a video camera up in my little "man-cave" it would be funnier than Laurel and Hardy (I'm good at the slapstick stuff as well - my poor co-ordination can be a riot!) It's OK to laugh at me - I often do; it's the only thing that keeps me (relatively) sane!

I don't know if I'm getting this across at all well, it has always been by far the hardest aspect of my autism to explain to anyone, including myself. If the talk of "attention" makes anyone think of AD(H)D, then I suspect they might be onto something. I was supposed to have seen an occupational therapist following my autism assessment, specifically to look into my EF, but unfortunately their ever growing waiting list for autism assessments meant that it never happened. I notice a lot of commonality when I speak to people diagnosed with AD(H)D, specifically the purely-inattentive version, and it is a very common co-morbid with autism; IIRC, at one time you couldn't be diagnosed with both, because autism was assumed to include the same EF effects. I really ought to get around to procrastinating about whether or not I'll think about doing something about that!

[Ha ha! For some reason writing this post (and, of course, editing it for, um, dunno, but it's getting light out, so I guess a long time) has reminded me that I've left my laundry in the machine all night again!]

And apologies to the OP for rambling on your thread!