Poor performance/ slower productivity at work

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Hi my name is Samuel,
My aspergers causes me to have poor performance and much slowed productivity at work . What can I do to help greatly improve things? Any tips, or medication that I can take to help?

Okay, one thing that has helped me is the 80-20 rule. 20% of customers buy 80% of products and services, and many similar versions (taken with a grain of salt of course). And my favorite version is, 80% of the benefit comes from the first 20% of the effort. For example, in vacuuming. Well, I could pull out furniture, but really, as far as the room looking better, quickly running the vacuum over the most traveled area, the room looks 80% better, or more! This gives me a reason to be nonperfectionist and another approach, and for that reason I like it.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 04 Mar 2011, 6:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

what about lack of focus? and have you took any medications to improve performance/productivity in the workplace?

for potentially anxiety or depression, I am open to 'better living through chemistry.'

Focus? Not so much. I tend to overfocus on a job and not realize that co-workers just aren't taking the thing that seriuosly.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 04 Mar 2011, 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Another thing that has helped me,

The analogy from baseball that a good pitcher finds a way to win even when he doesn't have his best stuff.

So, I tell myself, just a reasonable good B game. (plenty good enough for most jobs)

The library is literally closing, or computers, 2 minutes. More later.

can u recommend anything else?? what wud help me stop daydreaming so much?

Hi Samuel, welcome! I have the same sort of problem at work. I provide excellent and thorough customer service, but my employers really value speed above all else.

Since getting my diagnosis of AS I have been doing
a lot of reading; I think the better I understand what's different between aspies and non-aspies the more successful I can be.

These forums have provided lots of good info, a place for me to get some great non-judgemental advice, and an opportunity to vent, as well as reassurance that I'm not alone. I've also found some really good books, like A Field Guide To Earthlings by Ian Ford and Solutions For Adults With Asperger Syndrome by Juanita Lovett.

All of this has given me enough understanding to try to make some changes in the way I work and interact with people, and in a few short weeks I've already made a small but encouraging amount of progress. It's an exhausting and frustrating undertaking, but well worth the effort.

i'll have to check them books out and the books ive been reading are "how to find work that works for people with asperger syndrome by gail hawkins" and "aspergers employment guide by tony attwood"

I've experienced this many times, especially when an employer changes my responsibilities. I'm resistant to change and I can't multi-task. You didn't say what kind of work you did but I'm in a technical field. For years with my current employer I was mobile going between towns and cities taking care of and troubleshooting equipment in the field. I didn't get bored and I was very good at fixing technical problems, I was able to focus and logically troubleshoot and fix them at my own pace. My own pace wasn't admittedly the fastest, but in the long term it was the fastest because you only had to send me once. Quicker guys would often go back multiple times because they misdiagnosed the problem.

In the past 6 months things went downhill, the organization restructured after a merger and I was stuck in an office environment with multiple duties. I made too much money to be in the field, they didn't want field guys troubleshooting, they just wanted them to follow instructions. Guys in the field would call me with stuff they couldn't figure out, and I would help them but communicating with them to find out what the actual problem they were having was very frustrating. They'd tell me all sorts of irrelevant details and more than once they'd get upset with me for not having a lot of patience with them. Along with that I was expected to do software configurations in our network, network maintenance in our main switch sites and ship circuit packs to where they needed to go. All of that was fine, but I'd be in the middle of doing something and I'd have to drop it to help with a field tech calling in with a problem. When I finished with the tech my whole previous train of thought would be gone and I'd have to start over on whatever I'd been working on. The lights were too bright over my desk and all the people jabbering around me were very distracting. I became despondent and I started having less and less enthusiasm for the job and started missing a lot of days and showing up late often.

I sat down with my boss and I showed him my Asperger's diagnosis from the Neuropsychologist and told him the problems I was having. It was very difficult for me to do that but I knew I was on the verge of being fired. He worked with me to accommodate my needs.

The bright lights over my desk were removed. When techs call in and I'm in the middle of something I make them wait until I'm at a point where I'm comfortable stopping whatever I'm doing. Then I don't let them control the conversation, I make them just answer my questions so I can narrow down and troubleshoot their problem logically. My hours shifted so I have 2 hours with hardly anybody else in the office and very few calls so I can really focus on my other duties. Recently on a conference call my boss's boss called me one of the brightest minds in the company, things are going 100 percent better for me here.

Oh, and as far daydreaming goes, I try to focus that in line with what I'm doing. Whole microscopic civilizations rise and fall because of my actions, love stories and tragedies abound amidst the mundane minutiae. Maybe I can multitask, but it would be one daydream and one task at a time, 2 real world tasks at a time tends to be too much.

Good for you for taking a chance! It sure beats the heck out of doing nothing. Now, to lay it on the table, and I'm sure you'll probably agree: Whether to disclose as Asperger's / Autism Spectrum is a personal decision, and one on which a person should rely on feel and texture. That is, maybe intellectually come to the decision and then wait a little bit and pay attention to whether it emotionally feels right. And really, once things get this bad, nothing is guaranteed to work. A lot depends on how reasonable the boss is. And your boss sounds like a halfway reasonable individual.

Now, Mack27, it still is a corporate job, and I would like to respectfully pick your brain regarding Internet businesses. On the side, part-time, I have thought about Internet music, in large part because enough people are comfortable paying for music. So, a web site that respects the music, represents its listeners, and pays the artists standard percentage without asking for an exclusive (which I think is just stupid, and against the way I believe music should be). Any thoughts?

This sometimes happens with me, too! It’s magical, as if I’ve caught a moonbeam, and the whole time I feel like I am in very good flow with my work. On these occasions, I'm open to just riding with it while it's good, and give myself permission to be approximate and nonperfectionist about my work, which is usually better anyway.

On other occasions, I can try and become a little bit more deliberate about my work (not overdoing it). And sometimes a piece of paper for taking brief notes helps me focus.

My boss is too nice I think, he has a hard time saying no to things and puts himself in tough positions. I'm very loyal to him though and I try not to take advantage too much, I know I make him look good fairly often. As far as a music internet business goes, well I'm a telecommunications guy, I'm like the king of layer 1. That being said, if you're passionate enough about the business I suppose it could work. There's a lot of competition in that business, I think it would be hard to gain appreciable market share against entrenched players and since it's so easy to get free music there's a lot of people who will never pay for it. Of course if you give the artists a bigger cut than anyplace else and you get a few big names to toot your horn then the sky could be the limit.

If you're worried about your productivity, the best thing you might do right now is find a graveyard shift job.
The hours will stink obviously, but you'll have a set list of tasks that you can complete at a reasonably slow pace. Then you can continue working on how to do more every time, while still in a relatively low pressure environment.

how would I go about finding grave yard shifts? im looking on jobsites but nothing seems to be coming up.

Maybe a night shift at a hotel? And maybe just say something like 'I like it when it's a little quieter' (that is, use measured disclosure).

And then trust and develop your gut instincts regarding how to do the job safely and whether it's safe enough.

Search for "third shift" jobs.