The Pros And Cons Of Monotropism

One of the challenges of Monotropism is Inertia, nicely described here  www.psychologicalscience.org/.../student-notebook-autistic-inertia-srinivasan.html

Just don't go all Lawnmower Man on us! Nice to hear from you again. You've been missed.

I just spent most of the last 12 days talking to an AI.

If you printed it out I estimate it's maybe 1,500 pages of A4 text. It has been interesting.

One day was at least 16 hrs.

That's monotropism at work. Time just disappears. I managed to remember to eat, mostly.

Anyhow, the novelty is over now. I have a lot of ideas to review. And it didn't make me crazy, although I know how and why it is dangerous now.

My mono subject as slot of people known is Taylor swift 

pros 

knowlegde is power

ir brings such joy 

she brings me so much inspiration in her interviews and songs

cons

nit everyone wants to talk about it

finding swiftie friends seems hard right now

it costs me lots of money on T-shirts tattoos temp tattoos hoodies snd other merch 

I can relate to this so much! I can go down completely random rabbit holes. I think I was extremely lucky that in my bachelor a lot of emphasis was put on independent learning so I could just go with it and get hopelessly distracted by random details without it causing too many issues . But at the moment it is very difficult. And I think it is very hard for people who don’t struggle with this to understand…

You're describing my life in a nutshell (except for the PhD bit, I decided I was never going to be able to focus enough to go beyond a Bachelor's, so why torture myself). There's always something more interesting to do than what I'm supposed to be doing. My inability to focus on what I need to focus on has been soul-destroying. I'm trying not to blame myself for that any more.

Every strength is a weakness in the wrong setting or if allowed to run away.

I think the technique, if you can, is to stop and go for a walk or do some exercise. This uses up some energy and distracts you, allowing some more clarity.

Hi, I am really struggling with monotropism at moment. It used to be somewhat of a strength but at present it is making it almost impossible to do my job and I am not sure if there are any strategies to deal with it? I am currently doing a life sciences PhD but have for a while been feeling quite demotivated and I am wondering if the reason I have been so unwell and burntout over past years might be as I don’t like the actual lab work (I do like the intellectual part and topic it self). In past I became fully immersed in my project which could be nice but when things are stressful also exhausting as I just cannot switch off. I recently started relearning some maths (over a holiday) and I have been thinking about whether I could potentially do another qualification in maths after this so I can transition to a more dry lab role. But the issue I am facing now is that I got so immersed in maths over the 1 week holiday and it is tugging at me so strongly that I just haven’t managed to do any work for my PhD all week. It can take me days to get into something and also days to task switch and right now my brain doesn’t want to let go of the maths that gave it so much joy. I’ve been feeling extremely conflicted as I am not sure if the fascination will stay and if it is only a distraction or something I might actually want to pursue. But right now I am thinking the only way I may be able to get back to being productive on my PhD is if I ban it completely from my brain but that also makes me feel very sad and miserable as I haven’t been happy for a long time. It is so annoying that I cannot task switch more quickly and that now I feel like I can’t immerse in anything properly. I don’t feel like full immersion in PhD is something I want as it has made me really ill before and I feel deeply unmotivated at present but proper immersion in my new hobby is also not a good idea as it makes it so hard to do any actual work. Can anyone relate to this? 

Procrastination is for amateurs; I'm into perendination!

What helps me (if I can make myself do it), is to write down all the little individual steps in the task and then commit to doing just one of them. A checklist, of sorts ("Print bank statements", "Sort receipts chronologically", "Record phone expenses", etc.). Once done with a step, I check it off. I'll often get on a roll and blast through a few of them. Eventually, I'll get to the end. It sort of gamifies the procedure and helps me to engage.

One problem this year is that my usual checklist has gone missing, so I have to write a new one. I've been meaning to do this since February and I have until early November, so I'm not panicking yet. Panic is my great motivator, though. I can get a lot done when my back is to the wall.

I'm also experimenting with the concept of a "body double". For example, if I'm at the PC, my wife will sit in the room drinking a cup of tea and doom scrolling Facebook. Just the presence of someone in the room seems to help me sit still, which is nearly half the battle.

Damojo said:

That sort of cycle can go on for months, literally.

Procrastination is a real hassle, isn't it?

I find setting a date to do something like the tax returns and having 4 alarms set through the morning is normally enough to badger me into action. I also set 2 further dates for follow ups as I will often find I need some document or another from a 3rd party so can't do everything in 1 sitting.

Most of the time I get into the habit of just starting the thing even if I'm not prepared and not allowing anything to happen beforehand just so I get it done. JFDI for the win!

For me pro - I can deeply enjoy my favourite activity

Contra- I don't hear people calling me or even my child crying, when I'm in black holes with my mind

And also I concentrate so deeply on one thing, that I miss everything else.

Monotropism combined with executive dysfunction is a PITA. There is always something I can hyperfocus on at any particular time—it's relatively easy for me to enter that state. However, I can almost never hyperfocus on what I need to focus on—it's a never-ending source of frustration.

Tax return to do. OK. Go! ... I'll just get warmed up with my morning sudoku ... [eight hours later] ... Well, that's enough sudoku for the day. Oh, is that the time. I have to make dinner. I'll do the tax return tomorrow.

That sort of cycle can go on for months, literally.

OTOH, my daughter needed help studying Maths for a few weeks. I was 110% into it and could go and go for as long as she needed/wanted me to. I've even been known to hyperfocus on my paying work, which is nice, but it's very rare.

DormouseAtRest_25 said:

I don't think we talk about and explore our strengths / positives as often as would be educational and supportive.

I would probably add Strong Moral Compass to the common list of autistic traits too.

I think all of these traits can be a double edges sword however and my personal experience is people remember the failings far more than the successes.

A good strategy is probably to think "I am capable of xyz" and use it to build self confidence and self worth. A counterbalance of self acceptance for the times when it doesn't work the way we want it to is going to be essential to keep things positive though.

As a group I feel we do tend to see the negatives more then the positives so it's a good call to remind ourselves of all we can be.

Good post!