Doing The Things You DON’T Want To Do

Like most ASDs I am incredibly focussed on the things I am interested in.

But the mundane (and important) day to day things like paying bills, time sheets, household admin, insuring the car, writing reports, shopping etc, I have less than no interest in and I live a life of procrastination, waiting until it is critical before giving it any attention. This literally ensures panic and anxiety rule much of my interaction with the world.

This is where the "Super focussed autistic" label is misleading, because we are super disinterested in anything we are not interested in. Which is the majority of life.

In an attempt to get on top of these critical chores I write to-do list after to-do list - I enjoy writing out clear, prioritised lists - but it’s impossible to prioritise boring task 1 from boring task 2, or 300, so I still don’t actually do any of these mind numbing chores, and I just end up with lots of really long lists that frustrate me because they are:

a) endless and

b) no one crap task is any more important than any other crap task!

Does anyone have any success in organising or motivating yourself to do the crap you don’t want to do and staying on top of the endless train of uninteresting $h!t that is critical to conducting the everyday business of life?

Any advice is welcome…just don’t reply in the form of a to-do list…unless it’s well prioritised.

Parents
  • When I didn't like doing household chores, I'll fill my mind with videos of people who loved doing household chores, people who excessively did chores all day, to try to rewire my own mind to think that I can at least do a bit of it, that it doesn't always have to be a boring and tedious experience, that I can make it a positive experience.

    And for bills, I set up automatic payment processes, so I'm not manually doing every step every month, or worrying if my phone will be cut off because I forgot to pay, it's automatically billed, and then I only just devote one day for paying off bills, and the rest of the 29 days of the month is just spent on doing other more enjoyable things. 

    I also got myself into a routine that I enjoy doing, so like there's step 1 and step 2 to brewing coffee in the morning, there's also steps that I do in the morning, so when breakfast is cooking I can wash a few dishes, tidy up something, and then when I finally have breakfast I've accomplished something already, which lightens up the pressure of the oncoming day. 

  • Thanks Slight smile

    I'm also a big fan of rewiring my brain (mental reprogramming) to remove negative behaviours and responses. I just can't seem to do it with chores Disappointed

  • There's your first step. Redesign their function. Essentially, doing the washing up at night rewards your Tomorrow Self, so that self can step into the day AS IF an Imaginary Secret Elf Society (ISES) were there last night to serve the Tomorrow Self (TS). If you've never rewarded yourself like this, it's worth a try. Imagine TS living in this curated cozy space luxuriously. Things are in their space and tidy, no more spending hours finding a pen. ISES put the pens where they belonged the night before. Maybe they even hovered up so all you have to do, is Oh. Make coffee and breakfast in clean dishes and start your uncluttered day! Voila! 

    Yes, I thank myself out loud sometimes. Not ashamed. 

  • Thanks :) 

    I'll give that a try

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