Obsessions taking over my work time

I am a classic day dreamer, which isn't good because I work in hospitality where you have to things very quickly, so I can work slightly slower than others, but I think I can cope, I need to focus on the goals more, I think that is good advice, I have to remind myself to focus on the work as well, sometimes someone says, get a move on then I can come back to earth and focus on the work,  I think enthusiasm is very important, but it is very hard to get enthusiastic about work when you arent doing a particularly interesting thing, but bear in mind, a focussed mind leads to promotions, good references, and many other benefits.

I may not have any tips, but I can relate to this.  A lot of my school reports contained the word 'daydreamer'.  I'm in a job right now where I could go far but I'm not enthusiastic about it.  I'm in IT support and having to deal with people all day is quite difficult, especially on the phone.  I go by the reasoning that if someone has contacted IT for help via email then they must want an email reply back, but our team leads want us to try and phone back as much as possible.  I see the sense in it but it's not something I like doing.

I find I get bored so I end up only picking jobs I want to do and find interesting rather than higher priority stuff.  I've moved off the phones and onto a more technical role, so I'm a lot less stressed, so I now keep asset databases up to date and only cover people on the phones when they are off sick or on holiday, which is a lot at the moment, so I don't get to do anything I want to.

I've started a degree course in Chemistry that will take 6 years to do because I have to work full time because I don't think I can cope with this support role forever.  I really want to do a job I am passionate about, not one I'm just capable of.  But I can't work out if that's normal for most people and that I should just stick at this, or follow my dreams.  The ones that take up my mind during the day.  I find I thin kabout it a lot more if I'm bored or not challenged, and I am both just now at my job. At school I used to act up and get in trouble because I was really bored, but give me a challenge where I use my brain and I can concentrate no bother on the work.  It doesn't help that my employers don't really have much of an understanding of the autistic spectrum.  They understand I have it, but not what it's about.  So if I say I'm bored or under-challenged they just give me more work to do, not different work.  It's not the same thing.  

Thank you Longman, I like your suggestions about trying to make the boring things more interesting by taking different angles on them, and setting goals.

Also the bit about having a ready excuse, something noone seems to need for the social chats (unfair!)

As you say, NTs are good at what is sometimes labelled "displacement activity". Huge amounts of work time are wasted on social chat, and on socially based skulduggery (as in the comedy series The Office for example).

The thing is, with office social networks it is hard for managers to find out what is going on, as all the little "cogs" in this social machine protect each other. Individuals time-wasting are easier to spot, and particularly any mis-use of computers for external chat sites, porn, sport or video downloads.

I've had terrible trouble with "reading up" over the years - so many jobs involve reading the explanatory manuals, or using computer based self-training sites, or reading up component or system specifications. These can be so boring I was often in the position of being on the same page at the end of the day from when I started, through day dreaming and switching off. However nobody seemed to notice.

My way out of this was to structure my time to achieve certain objectives by the end of the day, and I would try to find different angles to the work to make the assimilation process more interesting.

One of my worst experiences of this was during a period of low business. I was working in a systems management house (this is in my R&D rather than teaching years), and company rules required we had to appear to be doing something, even if we had nothing productive to do - so no reading fiction or magazines, unless you could hide it in a manual. To make matters worse, one of the Directors, a rather short character, would sneak round the office jumping on anyone he perceived insufficiently engaged. The numbers going sick through stress was considerable, but the Directors were too stupid to realise this pretend doing something approach wasn't practical.

In that same company, one bloke was managing a wine importing business on the side, using the phones and company paper, and photocopying, and they never noticed. You see he looked busy.

I think you just have to remember that collective social time wasters are more efficient at avoiding being caught. If you are on your own you have to take safeguarding measures to ensure you have a good story if challenged.