losing sense of time passing

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I'm 53, self diagnosed aspi. this is now getting a problem, losing the sense of time passing, ie things should have been done businesswise, getting sour letters n e-mails from customers wondering where their product is, has it been despatched etc. I give nice polite "yeah it'll get sent Monday" responses then totally forget.

time, weeks go by, i cannot remember what i did, i think i went to work most working days, tho too much in love with my extra curricular activites. after three decades of working alone pehaps i am sick of it all, for years on end can be very uncertain financially. very small wage so i never am gonna make much effort. had to pack in working with others when 25 and its seldom been easy since, tho better then the downward spiral when among others. my work is/ was top notch, tonight i refused a prestigious $2k one-off ... brain fcked, can't do it. so i dig gardens instead.

had a brain scan fr dementia n blood tests, so far i'm clean.

help and advice please. PLEASE.

Where does the time go is a common problem for me also. I would be lost in my thoughts and not realize that I should have done something. My wife would get angry at me because I would totally forget to pick her up. Customers would get frustrated because I didn't finish the work or even start it.

I did several things to remind myself and break me out of being lost in my thoughts

1.) When I make a appointment for someone, I would enter the appointment right away into the calendar on my phone. Also later enter it into a calendar on the computer

2.) Review the calendar when I get up in the morning and set alarms on the phone to remind me that I have to do something in.

3.) If its a long term project I would make appointments on the calender to do so much of the project each day.

4.) Commit to actually doing those things when the alarm rang on the phone.

Some people think I'm rigid in the way I plan out my day, but it was the only way to make sure I didn't get lost in my thoughts .

I have to compile a simple 'To Do' list if I have things that need attention.
I also keep a desk diary with appointments written in and a wall calendar, I don't use the calendar on my pc so much as some days I don't even switch it on.

It could possibly be a feature of a dissociative disorder.

lists ... i have 'em stuck on the kitchen cabinet and stuck on the side of my briefcase. now its as if i'm shutting them out and never look, fear is a big element too.

my wife and I both agree it looks like i am losingany 'respect' for my customers,especially the bigger to order handmade stuff .. i eithergo into the countryside with my dog or go to my work and do repetitive batch work (which i enjoy and is quite mindless) ..

tks Shadwell..... I shal now google dissociative disorder

Not sure its that serious, but loosing time is one feature of those disorders.

Can your wife assume the business functions and act as your manager? Trying to teach yourself to do something you are obviously struggling with may not work so well. Maybe a friend from your church, etc... could help you sort out the business aspect, like an office manager? Where there is a will there is a way. If there are any autism support groups in your area they may have some ideas to help you as well.

draelyn... i know no-one (or that could help) and don't trust anyone, the church idea is a non-starter; i find the latter to be full of shallow self serving posturing ##### 's ...sorry. the church in my experience is near non-existant. my auntie lives in a village and never once (and she is 93) has a clergyman shown his face. sorry i'm a bit bitter about the 'church' .. i believe in God yet its a personal thing and somehow think its been hijacked.. maybe it was seeing so many people at my dads funeral that still haunts me , not one silly s**t came to ask if i / we needed help.

shadwell...i have been reading online re disassociative and it seems could be an explanation. it seems a strong factor is childhood trauma and a building of identity..i was moved around and by 7-1/2 at the latest school had stopped talking to any peers, locked there frozen with my back against the wall, totally isolated.so, it seems obvious i invented / created my own world, hobbies/ enthusiasms, i again gave up speaking when 15 for the last year at school, could talk tho never to peers, dad died when i was seventeen and six months later i'm in lodgings, no support, nothing, yet then i was happier than evr because i was able to read and walk as i wished, no longer feared of stepping out the front door as i had been for a decade ina little sh***y village. theres more but thats enough of that bit, needless to say parents were garbage.

three decades working alone and i seem to have lost my drive at my work, or what drove me was to prove myself and actually quite a lot of hatred of my fellow man. i also think interests change.

being unable to decide is a big handicap with me, driving up and down roads and roundabouts, unable to decide .. work or countryside, its near disabling. flip flopping all the time. i also have great trouble deciding what work it is that i should be doing. ,,, it goes on endlessly .....

I need to do all the most important things first thing when I get up because I like to feel that my life is in some sort of order.The worst that can happen is when I wake up too late and everything gets pushed into future time.Its stresses me and I tend to not do it at all then and things pile up.I dont scrambe up those important things.I just have to get them done and then Im free to do whatever the rest of the day, work hobbies etc.Im self employed so that makes it easier ofcourse as I can control how I spend my time, but Ive also learned this means I need to be more disciplined than I was before.

As far as time goes, in general I tend to be the other way around.I will feel like I havent talked to someone for 2 weeks, while its has only been 1 week, etc.

my days have to be structured tho can be variable in what i do in those 'blocks' of time. the first three hours of every day are 'my time' thats when my vbrain is best i wouldn't squander it on anything work related. thats had enough of my life already.

the web wastes so much of my time when i would be in my garden or reading and exploring/learning. i am like a moth to a lightbulb.

I can relate to the Internet part
but then its actually a relief sometimes when the Internet goes out for 3 days.
I would just prefer if it didnt happen to often.

Then sometimes, I like to just sign out for quiet time and read instead.

It sounds like your work is of a creative nature. The time-zone-warp is characteristic of being an artist. I can blink my eyes and whoosh! Ten hours has gone by.

When I was diagnosed, I was told the technical word for this is hyperfocusing. Aspies (artsy types or no) get thoroughly focused and engrossed in their one topic of interest to the exclusion of all else, to an extreme. Alarms and calendars often don't work for me because in order for them to work, they need to be of a type of sound that my brain will actually hear and process and wake the rest of the brain up and go, "HEY! Snap out of it! Go do this other thing!" But as it is, the sound goes entirely unheard and then I miss whatever that appointment was. I got around this problem by not making new appointments. When I have work ready to sell, I sell it. No more custom orders. Until I have an original work ready, I sell copies and prints on online art stores like Zazzle. This way I don't deal with the shipping or inventory or anything.

I also will try and schedule similar tasks in the same day so that I don't have to keep "switching" back and forth between unrelated tasks (called cognitive inflexibility).