Neglecting other areas of life - symptom of AS?

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I have a supervisor who seems to operate on an "absorbing interest" basis. He tends to focus on one person for a few days or weeks and then shifts his attention to another person or another thing and so on. Recently, he has had a very full schedule for the past month and a half. His colleagues, including myself, have sent him several e-mails asking for a meeting or other information and he has not replied to any of us.

We have him as a friend on FB and while he has commented on the statuses of a few people during the past month and a half, he seems to be avoiding colleagues, on whose FB walls he usually likes to comment. For a while we thought that maybe he was depressed or might have found a new love interest but this is apparently not the case.

Is this simply a shift in interest on his part or does he associate his colleagues with a negative feeling? We're all baffled!

Yeah, it is a symptom of AS and I can definitely identify with this behavioural pattern. Does your supervisor have ASD, though?

This is a symptom of executive functioning issues. Autism frequently has executive functioning issues, but isn't the only place they occur.

This is what naturally happens as a result of having an absorbing interest.
The interest takes over the mind, and other things are neglected.
I have been doing this for the past month and don't plan to stop until after the conference that I am preparing for in mid-May.
Then, I will stop this level of obsessing and go back to a normal default level of obsession.

Check.

Also, sometimes it's as if there is limited bandwidth, and the thing you are interested in used it all up. It's not necessarily that you don't want to talk to the other people --there just isn't any energy left or capacity left to do it.

Sounds like the usual procrastination of a busy person trying to avoid some stuff they can't be bothered with. Not a sign of an ASD.

It's definitely an aspie thing. I should know as I've done the same thing myself.

One thing, don't let work be your only positive. Maybe also have some Internet project going, or some local volunteer work / political activism, or a local sports league. I encourage you to experiment with a light touch.

And please realize, that even if you do it entirely right and have several people talk to this man's supervisor in a polite way, it still might be perceived as an attempted coup.

Maybe build on an existing relationship. If there is someone who currently has a good relationship with this man, hopefully someone who is a peer to him in the organization structure, ask him or her to speak with him in a respectful way. And maybe limit it to the two or three most important things that he is currently neglecting.

Well, it's most unusual. It's been over two months now and his colleagues are being neglected both in real life and social media. I wonder why? Is there something else going on in his personal life? Someone suggested maybe he is spending more time with his wife, but why would that be a reason to neglect a group of people you were once close to?

This is also a sign of ADHD. The exclusion of all apparently unimportant outside stimuli at the hands of some all consuming interest. This then shifts to something else in a pattern somewhat reminiscent of a particularly determined bumblebee XD

I can be like that too. I'll fall head over heels with a project and then my passion cools and its onto something else. Although Scifi has been my passion for a good few years now. That's going to be with me for a very long time