Laziness?

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Ok, so this is a rantish sort of topic but I'd really like to hear about your experiences. I've been reading some stuff on here about executive dysfunction etc and quite frankly I just don't know what to do with myself. I think I have it. But then, I might just be being lazy. I guess it has something to do with the fact that my exercise schedule has been rather irregular lately. But it has always been there to some degree.
Some days it just feels like there's too much going on in my head to study, not practical things like good ideas and stuff, but just all sort of pictures running through my head, random stuff. And I can't concentrate although everything around me is peaceful. So I keep procrastinating things but that's no way to go through school. And I really need good grades right now. Not to mention that I have test anxiety so that makes things even harder. It just feels like I can't remember anything, no matter how hard I try to force myself.
I've tried to make study schedules and stuff but I just end up not sticking to them. Computer programs that alarm you, everything...Maybe I'm just hopelessly lazy:S I really don't know why I can't bring myself to study. Or to go into school on time. Skipping classes etc...I just don't understand this part of myself. Everyone should be able to do this. And I am ABLE. So why is it so hard for me:S

I can't say. I think I have executive disfunction but it seems to manifest slightly differently for me.

For instance if I don't have a routine written down that I can follow (I have on posted in the bathroom for showers, or morning hygene and afternoon hygene) I get confused and don't do any of it. For instance my morning hygene list consists of "toilet, drink of water, exercise, shower (seperate shower list), dress (seperate dress list), breakfast (seperate breakfast list), bathroom (seperate hygene list), Day (seperate list - into workday, nonworkday)

if I don't have those I find I get confused and remember to do certain things but not others. Like I might get up and go straight to the gym (because I know I do that every morning) and then come home and brush my teeth, have breakfast, get dressed and then go to work. Forgetting a shower after the gym and all sorts of things.

Your memory might manifest differently from mine, but I find that if I know what to do, i don't really have a problem doing it (or getting motivated to do it). A good site I recommend for tips about these things would be: http://thiswayoflife.org/ef.html (site also has lots of other good tips and information)

if you find that that does not help then perhaps some introspection about your motivations for doing certain things such as exercise or study would be in order. Thinking about why you do them or what else you could be doing instead etc...

I've had a lot of problems with this. Six/seven years ago, I was at university and doing reasonably well. Then, all of a sudden, my life fell apart and I just couldn't function anymore. I still don't have a definite reason as to why all of this happened. The problems I mentioned in Callista's thread about sleep/mental organisation have always been present to a certain extent, they just became a lot worse when I was at university.

These days, I am able to start things and work on them when they are fresh and something a bit out of the ordinary. The problem is when they become part of the daily grind and start to feel like a responsibility rather than something I want to do. It's not a personal choice; it's a complete inability to function.

As far as I know, I'm not particularly disinclined to exertion, as long as I understand the need for it. In fact I enjoy the challenge of finding out how much I can achieve in a given time, and when I'm working on an obsession I usually don't even realise I'm working. I only seem to be happy when I'm active and convinced I'm doing something worthwhile. I get very bored when I can't think of anything to do.

But I have a lot of problems with the concept of laziness when used as a pejorative term. I suspect that the concept is deliberately overblown by politicians, employers and managers for the purpose of guilt-tripping their employees into doing more work for less pay. Ultimately, employers are probably the laziest of us all, because they usually pay less than the value of the fruits of the empolyee's labour, so they acquire unearned income and effectively live off the backs of the rest of us. Sure, they often "work hard," but the sole purpose of that "work" is to maximise their accumulation of wealth, and they do that to get themselves into a position where they don't have to work at all unless they particularly want to. Meanwhile, the rest of us have no such choice. As somebody once said, in a sense working purely for yourself isn't really work at all.

Nonetheless, if I'm busy and there's somebody else just hanging about whistling with their hands in their pockets, I feel like telling them to get some bloody work done. I think that's natural enough, though very often it'll turn out that the other person just didn't know they were expected to muck in, or didn't know how they could help. As an Aspie I've been in lots of situations like that, where I'm the "lazy" one because of my tendency to do nothing until I'm clear about what, where, when, why and how to do it. Most people don't bother to tell me all that, so I just sit about feeling embarrassed and out of place. If I ask, I risk being labelled as deliberately obtuse - the classic Aspie mis-label.

I'm definitely not lazy. But I had 'fibromyalgia' for many years (turned out to be Lyme) and it makes phyiscal exertion very painful. So then I am accused of laziness. It's not laziness, it's not wanting to be in even more pain!

This is probably going to piss people off but here it goes:


I think "executive dysfunction" when it comes to procrastinating and not getting yourself to do something and "lazyness" are both the same thing. People just don't want to be lazy and admit they are so they use the word executive dysfunction. I can say I have it or I can admit I am lazy so I admit I'm lazy because I'm honest and have no problem admitting my stupidity and lazyness. If I do something stupid, I admit I am stupid and admit I'm lazy when I am.

This whole executive dysfunction crap gets on my nerves so I try and avoid threads about it because every time I read them, it was always about lazyness, not about other things I have read about ED and I wanted to scream and chew all those people out but I knew it cause me a conflict and drama if I called them out and I just didn't want to face it. I guess this all comes from an ex I had who was lazy so now I can't stand other people who are like that. No one wants to be told they are stupid or lazy or other truthful things they won't admit. I think it has to do with pride.

I am sure there are threads that talk about genuine ED but I just don't take the chance to click on the thread because of other threads I have seen about fake ED.

End of rant


Some problems you listed don't sound like lazyness at all. I have been there myself. I have a learning disability so it's very hard for me to learn and do school work that is abstract and I have a learning different style. I might come off as lazy because it might look like to them I am not even trying and they might be thinking "How hard is it to do a book report and do five pages on it?" "How hard is it to read a book and comprehend it?"
and also I can't listen for long periods of the time. I zone out. If I was refusing to listen, then that be lazyness. If I was trying and I still missed what the teacher was saying, then no. Studying has always been my weakness but that may be due to my ADD and tests have never been my forte. I also tend to be forgetful so I misplace things so I have to keep them in a certain spot. I even forget to do things too if I get too preoccupied with something like computer. A reminder would help but if I am alone, then I forget and I go "Shoot." Luckily I remember to pay my bills on time.

I don't know if I have ED or not but I am not up for placing another label on me and I don't think it's an actual condition, just a word for problems people have caused by their conditions such as autism or ADD or learning disability. There is erectile dysfunction, sexual dysfunction so I think there should be other dysfunctions like social dysfunction, organization dysfunction, learning dysfunction, etc.

I know someone w/AS & while at times he can be an incredibly hard worker if it's something he doesn't want to do he'll procrastinate forever. He also has a horrible time with prioritizing his life & can easily get get side tracked by some goofy ass pointless thing he wants to do rather than the thing he needs to do. Time seems to just be a concept to him rather than a reality at times.

Maybe it's a matter of how NT see things vs how people w/AS do. Someone who is an NT may go, "Well, this is a pointless task but I need to do "A" so I can accomplish "B". An aspie may not see the logic in it and will never get past that first stumbling block, forever debating the logic of what needs to be done. I dunno.

Is it possible that the reason you have “pictures running through my head, random stuff” is because you are distracting yourself from feeling a need or emotion?

What do you really feel like doing? In other words if you could do anything you want what would it be?

How does what you prefer to do make you feel and in what way is it different than what you should be doing?

What kind of “pictures running through my head, random stuff” when you do something you like?

To Spokane Girl:

How would you explain someone who can unload trucks or do computer programming ten hours a day but can’t get themselves to do a book report? Would that still be laziness?

It depends on why. If they are choosing to not do it because "it's boring" and they don't feel like it and they have plenty of time to do it because they can do it on their days off, then I would say it is.

When I was diagnosed with Executive Function Disorder I really did think it was just a fancy way of saying I'm lazy

Spokane Girl wrote:

The following deffinition of “lazy” is from Merriam Webster’s. If you have another definition for it I would very much like to see it.

1 a : disinclined to activity or exertion : not energetic or vigorous b : encouraging inactivity or indolence <a lazy summer day>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lazy


As far as “choosing” to do something, I may choose not to sleep, sneeze or eat from now until the rest of my life but my chances of succeeding would be very much in doubt and believe me I have excellent will power. I think I can probably manage to starve myself to death and even not sneeze but I don’t think I can stay awake indefinitely. Your expectations from people may be tantamount to asking the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the mute to talk. Good luck with that.

*Sigh* You just want to pick a fight by deliberately taking my post out of context.

Fail.

I'm not generally a lazy person at all. When it's something to do with my special interests I can go days doing just that and nothing of anything else. Not even eating properly. It doesn't feel like work at all, though it does tire me. Those are the days I go to bed feeling good and like I've really done something. But studying about my special interests does take a lot of energy. So while I've always thought I can do both, part of the problem might be that I'm not getting enough rest.
I used to get good grades and I know I'm very well capable of getting all As if I put my mind to it, none of the subjects at school are hard for me to understand. Esspecially with the teacher explaining them. I just don't get what's wrong with me.
Coadunate- if I could do anything that I want I'd only do things regarding my special interests. I think it's like that for most aspies, is it not My special interests don't really make me feel all that different, I'm just fascinated by them. I'm good at them and understand them but I understand most school subjects as well, they just don't have the same "feel" to them when I'm reading about them. I have the mind noise all the time, but it sort of fades out when something in the outside world REALLY interests me.
Spokane_Girl- I'm sceptical about ED as well. I don't think healthy scepticism is anything to get offended about. I'd never even heard of the term until I came to this message board. Maybe I am just lazy, I wouldn't be afraid of that conclusion.
I still wouldn't know what to do with myself though. There aren't any pills that can make a person less lazy And I refuse to accept that I'm just doomed to being an underachiever.

No, I would say it's normal for AS. One of the traits of AS is an inability to focus on that which does not interest you. I saw it a lot in my school days: My class mates complained about how much they hated for instance maths, and then they sat down dutifully and did the assignments, where as I could not wrap my mind around it at all, and couldn't focus and was extremely frustrated and restless. I realised that they didn't even know what it meant to hate something.

Also, it's easy for some of us to space out even when we do things we like... Now for instance, I'm in a phase where I have big difficulties concentrating. There are books I wanna read, but when I sit down to read them, I find that I can't focus on them. My mind wanders or I space out. Half an hour later I still haven't finished one page... And it's not due to the book being boring or lack of will.


On another note, it's not uncommon for spectrum people to be very inactive/passive by nature. I sure am.

my doctor described my "executive dysfunction" with me and she said it was that i could not adequately time the steps between my actions that are devoted to achieving an outcome, and i could not adequately sequence the actions.

so when i go to a meeting at work (i iusually work from home), i realize i need a white shirt and a good pair of trousers to wear. i know i have to leave at 8.30am to get there by 10am.
i know all the papers i have to take and i know what i am going to say at the meeting.

but then it becomes a jumble.
should i find my papers and assemble them in my bag first, or should i find a white shirt first?
it is a dilemma. and i also know that i have to eat some food before i go, so in what order of proceedings should i eat?

i can not determine the priorities of all the things i need to accomplish in order to perform an action that is complex like going to work well dressed and fed with my briefcase filled with relevant material.

i am feeble minded when it comes to what actions to perform in what order.