Unexpected and important tasks

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Just had to find out that I messed up once again.

(I accepted a registered letter with mail, put it on a sideboard and totally forgot about it, somehow believing that my employer would see it; she on the other had expected me to tell her about it.)

Now this is fairly typical of me. When I know what I'm supposed to do I do the job well. When I do not know what I'm supposed to do it often enough ends up in a mess. I'm giving my best by simulating possible occurrences in my imagination so that I at least have something to fall back to, but that only works for a very restricted world ...
I'm also pretty bad at coping with mistakes. In normal situations, when I observe new things/situations I play possible actions and reactions through in my mind, decide on a good way of acting and replay those pictures a couple of times until they seem to have sunk in. When I have mad a Mistake, however, I am so upset that I can't think straight and need all my reserves to fix my own fear of losing everything I have that I can't learn from it at first.

How do deal you with unexpected tasks or situations, especially when you have to do a lot of other things and have little time to come up with the Perfect Solution?
And how do you cope with making mistakes/possibly learn from them? Also, how do you apologize when you messed up?

Whatever tasks are the most urgent, those are the ones that should be finished first.

How do you know what is most urgent?

> I accepted a registered letter with mail, put it on a sideboard and totally forgot about it

What happened the previous time your employer got a registered letter?

If it was the first time, I might have mentioned it to her, but then again, isn't there a standard place for mail to go? If something unusual happens -- like an unexpected delivery of an unusual type, or whatever, you have to somehow make sure it gets integrated in the flow of things and not missed. Sounds like you signed for the letter (accepted it) and so that was your responsibility.

Maybe more big picture thinking is needed -- and try to fit the various little things into the big picture. What the big picture is for your situation depends on what your job is and what the organization is. I often find that making the effort to think about the big picture helps me know whether some little thing is important or not.

In this case it was that I treated this letter like the ones before, but it was more important than the others.
It's not that I didn't know about it being important (I think I must've realized that), but once the next thing came up I completely forgot about it until she asked me directly. (Maybe that's part of the problem, I hear people preaching to me that you can't just forget important things, and the fact that I obviously do might have led me to the conclusion that I do not know to tell important from unimportant things, as is has to be true that one doesn't forget important things.)
We decided that I would either write a note or if possible immediately tell her, and for now that's alright. And I'll try to come up with a habit to frequently check my memory/notes for that kind of thing.

Ladarzak, can you think about the big picture in a short time span?

> Ladarzak, can you think about the big picture in a short time span

Sure. Sometimes in a rush I won't think to, and sometimes that's the cause of a mistake. I just find it's a useful approach to things that really didn't come naturally to me and I heard it's a typical aspie problem as well. I'm not sure why you ask that.

About the letter, I guess all registered letters should be considered important enough that they must not be forgotten. They're registered because the person who sent it cares that the receiver got it, and usually wants action. Legal materials are often sent this way. I guess that's the general rule in this case. Unfortunately, often people will be kind of slack with rules and then blame you when something slips through the cracks. I see that a lot! But you're just following the way it's usually done. Grr.

The nice thing about writing a note or whatever other routine you come up with is once you've automatically done that, the thing is no longer your responsibility. Yay! I can't remember things short term very well, so I come up with routines that force me to deal with things. Like if something has to be followed up on but I don't know what to do right this second, or I have to do something else, I put a reminder of the easy-to-forget thing in an obvious place, where I'll basically trip over it or have to move it before I can leave/move on to the next job.

Sounds like the problem's solved and you did good.