Published on 12, July, 2020
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.
I had a conversation with a support worker a couple of weeks back after there were concerns about me not doing housework as often as i should, for the reasons you mention above, i just don't care about it. It doesn't completely answer your question, but it is somewhat related so i might as well mention it.
He was asking how i motivate myself to do chores and stuff i don't want to do. I honestly couldn't think of an answer, i just know i have to do it, eventually, and usually at the last possible moment. He said that 95% of people motivate themselves to do something, by thinking about and planning doing it. Seems like a plan. The problem is, that when we start to think about something that needs to be done, we then discover smaller steps in that process that also need to be done, and before we know it, we have this mission ahead of us with so much needing done, that we don't know where to begin and give up.
In the simple case of doing the dishes, i need to clean the sink because apparently you cant clean dishes in a dirty sink. That means i need to find somewhere to put the stuff that is already in the sink, which means clearing some other space of something else. This is of course only a small example of the above, but i want the dishes to be done and out of my mind as quickly as possible, i don't want to be farting about moving things to do other things to make the process perfect.
Supposedly, the best way to do something we don't want to do, is to just do it. Don't plan to do it, don't schedule it for later, just do it. I can tell you now, that this so far isn't working that great for me in general, not because its a bad idea, but more because i don't really think about my chores all that often unless they are right in front of me. I have started doing the dishes more often without too much fuss, but the rest of my housework, not so much.