Anyone else have this problem?

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Like when I have to do many things and remember to do many things at once, I quickly become overloaded. This is why I never did good in school because I could never get anything done. I'm the type of guy where it's hard to me to self-initiate things and get things done especially when I have to remember and do multiple things.

And when I have to do something incredibly boring like study for math, my brain quickly becomes fried and it hurts. Like I have no willpower at all to do things I don't want to do at all.


Most people don't have this as bad as I do. This is why I could never go to college, why I could never do good in school, why i'm seen as lazy. I feel like it's gotten worse as iv'e gotten older. I just want to be on my computer all day.


Wtf is wrong with me?

Yes this sounds exactly like me. It is really horrible.

It's as though there are just too many things to do and even if there's only a couple of things to do I still can't do it because I over think the task until I'm burnt out.

What I have started to do is to get myself into a routine and do my best to stick to it.

My daughter who is 23 has a similar problem. She rights lists every night before she goes to bed so she knows what she has to do the next day.

I don't even think it's a motivation thing I just feel as though my mind gets so cluttered that everything just seems impossible.

I think I can relate. At the job (I work for my dad's company) I can only hold things in my head for so long. So I can really only remember one task they give me, because I become so absorbed mentally in doing that one thing and dealing with all the sights and sounds around me that anything other than that task my brain just dumps and I forget completely. If someone give me a string of tasks I have to write them down or I will only remember on of them. I cannot hold multiple steps in a sequence in my head while I'm working on one step. I'm too detail-oriented.

There's a similar discussion going on here http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=291783 about how it affects older WP members. I recognise a lot of what you say from when I was your age, but had no idea what the problem might have been at the time, and I doubt if anyone else would have done either all those years ago.

I used to think I must be lazy, but that didn't seem like the right explanation. It fits with being a problem with Executive Function, but I only discovered that yesterday!

Yeah...I screw up when I get overloaded, too.

The way I get around this problem is to stop thinking about doing things and start doing things.
Less thinking about what I am going to do is better.
Small steps at a time, doing works and takes the mind away from thinking about doing things instead of doing things.
I have an eggstremely large number of complicated things to do all the time, and this not thinking about doing things is the only way I can make progress with doing things.

@darkphantomx1 Do you happen have brain fog all the time?

Yes I start feeling tasked out if I have more than 2 or 3 things to do. Don't know if it's down to getting older as such, or not. The earliest instance of it I can remember so far is when I was about 37 years old. I'd started a research job working on one particular protein, and after a few weeks I was horrified to hear that the same unit worked on several proteins. I wasn't particularly expected to work on those, but the very idea of it scared me. It had been a huge effort for me to get my brain round all the new stuff I had to know just to do my own job, for which I had little natural enthusiasm. My only previous job hadn't been so demanding.

These days (retired), I rarely have such a full plate, and when I do, it's usually mostly optional stuff with few hard deadlines. But I still feel tasked out when life forces me to take on complex, boring work at an uncomfortable processing speed.

My current theory is that it's largely the fault of the world of work, which (especially these days) expects employees to work very hard and to be flexible, and the main motivation is often the fear of losing the job. So if it's mostly intellectual work, the autistic brain (which has difficulty in focussing on boring matters and in shifting focus quickly) finds itself being pushed beyond its limits, and NT management expectations and judgements present a real danger. Anxiety further nobbles the brain's fuctioning. After a few years of that, the mind responds like that automatically to such a demand, so the debilitating effect often gets worse over time.

The first time I remember having a complete block about doing something was when I was about 12. My dog died, and my parents said I could have another one when I cleaned out his kennel, but I didn't clean it. Getting another dog would have been a really positive thing, and it wasn't a big or difficult job, but I still didn't do it. In my 20s I remember that sometimes particular jobs would sit in my in tray at work for ages, and I just couldn't/wouldn't get started on them. There was nothing difficult or unusual about the job, and was just like other tasks I did without a problem. I used to worry about not doing it, but it was as though something in my head was defiantly telling me not to do it. I still get that, even though I've currently put the difficult things in my life on hold, and am trying to do just things I enjoy and want to do.

I can relate to this. I've never been able to focus on multiple things at once. If I attempt to, more often than not I will end up using up all my energy and what little concentration I have. I also find it extremely difficult to focus my attention on things that don't interest me for more than 10 minutes at a time. I often end up day dreaming or just 'blanking out' completely.

It's gotten even worse recently though; I've been finding myself with such little motivation to focus on things which don't interest me, probably because subconsciously I know I won't last long at all and that it's just not worth it. I had to quit sixth form because I just couldn't concentrate on anything. For example, I was taking Psychology but only really had an interest in the memory and biological aspects to it and couldn't remember anything else no mater how hard I tried.

Now I'm looking for a job as an alternative to education, but when I miraculously find a job that doesn't stress me or cause me to get anxious, it is often a very boring job that I can't focus on.

I am this way also. Although it is funny that for me studying math is one of the few things I can manage to do for long periods of time. I feel this way about cooking. Getting all the ingredients together, planning the meal, cooking multiple things at once, all while learning new cooking skills: these things feel very overwhelming. After cooking I have often felt overwhelmed and discouraged.

Like previous posters, I also write out lots of lists to keep me on track. However, I still often find the things I have to deal with each day to be overwhelming.

Yes, I am very low functioning too, when it comes to tasks and errands that I HATE doing.
And society makes you feel very bad about yourself for that.
Society is a pile of s**t, basically.
They'll make you feel guilty for every little thing you do wrong (or don't do),
and make you live out life in mind-numbing zombie-like conformity.
Which is why, I think, many autistic people commit suicide.
Well, the ones who are smart enough to understand what's going on, and what's happening to them in this society.