Time management and multitasking for Autistic people

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Does anyone know of good resources on how to combine all the responsibilities of a normal life, specific for people with Autism?

When I focus on my career, I lose touch with my relationship and my household responsibilities. When I focus on my responsibilities at home, I struggle with my doing what needs to be done for my job.

I'm very good at doing one thing at a time for many hours straight, but I have problems shifting focus between activities and organizing myself in a way that allows me to consecutively complete multiple tasks of a very different nature. Right now, I've come to a point where I risk losing my job AND my relationship if I don't take drastic measures very soon in how I organize myself.

Do you know of any online sources on time management and multitasking you'd like to share? Or do you know of any books I can purchase on Amazon that might help me?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

I'm afraid you are experiencing the standard work vs life balance that most people face.
This quite common for everyone who is career driven to face this dilemma repeatedly in life.

I'm not career driven, though.

I just want to be able to find stability.

It really depends on how demanding your job is with your time.

You just need to try and set aside regular amounts of time to meet up with people and do life stuff.

How many hours you are working and the ability to disconnect from work matters.

When I was trying to deal with both I had a pretty detailed day planner. I used it for everything. What work projects needed to be worked on at a specific time or matched that to my to do list at work to make sure I was working on what was a priority. For a while I even used the day planner to note the time I needed to do something as minor as making dinner so I could just look at that when my brain was reeling or I was having issues refocusing. Or worse yet, had multiple people distracting me about irrelevant things while I am trying to make sure I am on task.

I have also used various reminder and timer apps when I need to do more than one thing at once. So doing laundry while working on something, or needing to check to see if a piece of information I need has come in by a certain time would get those prompt type reminders. I found that helps me not have to try to juggle that additional piece of information in my head. I can ignore it and let the app or computer program remember when it needs to be addressed again. For me that seems to help with focusing or changing task issues.

Lists and time blocking seemed to really help me deal with all this stuff in a way I could visualize. It takes all that crap and makes it into a system. I tend to think in flow charts or file trees when trying to organize things so lists usually take that sort of structure or are done in ranked groupings. I had assumed everyone organized themselves this way until I noticed that my NT coworkers didn't keep lists and most barely used planners.

When I was working FT for a company I found I really had to set boundaries on my out of work time in order to find some balance and to have any sort of a life.

I recommend the Skillful Means series by Tarthang Tulku. That is more about keeping the focus right, while remaining available for the important things in life. Not that I have really followed the exercises he proposed, but just reading the books had a very powerful effect on my perception at work. It was really very different from other self-management books my ex-boyfriend had.

I dont have bigger time management or multitasking issues, tough.
I am neither on the spectrum nor am I buddhist.

For me (see my first post today, yay!), The focus is the problem.

My brain latches on to tasks it knows it can solve and will not let go until the problem is dead, buried and a comprehensive tool and / or instructions for killing it and any possible variation of it is posted on internet and made available for download . Problem is, that only seems to work when nobody asked me to do it in the first place, or they need it yesterday. At that point the focus just seems to disappear.

It's also great until someone else asks me to do some paperwork or some planning or other aspect of the job my brain is not geared up to fixate on. At that point I fall asleep; literally. I go quasi-narcoleptic. I have to approach the problem sideways: how I can organise it to make it interesting / worthwhile / re-usable. Then I just get bogged down in that aspect instead of the real work. If anyone is familiar with Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf and his revision timetables, that's me.

Problem is, I am a teacher now, and the education system has no flexibility in time. So my time has to flex to fix the Aspergers, for which read two hours sleep a night: uuurggh .

I do a normal 38-hour week, although I have the privilege to start working between 9 and 11.

I do a little bit of extra work to compensate for the first few hours of the day, when I often struggle finding focus.

A usual working day starts between 10h30 and 11h and ends around 19h.

I work as a web programmer and I need to be able to hyperfocus to work optimally.

When I fail to get into hyperfocus, I sometimes end up eg. wasting my time on Twitter throughout the day (instead of working) and feeling forced to do extra hours, to make sure I've done at least something useful that day.



My main problem is : failing to either enter or leave hyperfocus.

This prevents me from picking up the next task in my schedule and makes any mid-long term planning nearly impossible.



Sounds very familiar...



Really? My stress levels just tend to rise, to the point that I scare the s*** out of my girlfriend.

And when the stress levels get too high, I get soms sort of mental block / meltdown and my entire schedule is blocked until stress levels drop to a somewhat manageable level.



Sounds familiar as well.

I usually am very passionate about a project at the start, get bored with it half-way through and find my focus again only when the deadline adrenaline kicks in, which is when there's only just enough time left to fix the project before the end of the deadline.

Whever I'm bored with a project, I usually end up focusing on some rather irrelevant detail of the project or some other -- often less important -- project.



Bloody hell!

Sounds like you need another job yourself!

Yeah, most people who suffer from stress manifest the "fight or fly" response; I get "freeze / play dead", which in my case can mean I actually nod off ?? Emotional stress particularly causes it. Funny that, although the "freeze" response is quite common, most stress management courses omit it. Annoys the beeps out my missus - she just can't relate to it. Her response to stress is to go into nag overdrive and I am definitely not staying awake to listen to that!



Teaching is the job I love though, the first I've really found enjoyable and worthwhile. For an Aspie like me, the personal interaction is such an unexpected buzz.

I quit systems development work seven years ago, because I hated the pointless stress of it.

Teaching is like something of a mission for me. Problem is, qualifying and doing the job well have become my Great White Whale...

A few weeks ago, I came to realize I've probably been living in a "fight or fly" mode for several years straight after experiencing my most extreme burn-out so far.

Hence my starting this thread, looking for solutions I haven't thought of myself.



For me, it's programming.

I'm starting to think it's too demanding, though, so I'm considering re-educating myself as an electrician... or another technical job that requires less intellectual effort.