I struggle with motivation

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I have struggled with motivation all my life and it has been a great obstacle to me in progressing in the direction that I would like. I want to be more successful etc but everyday my motivation is some kind of random battle that descends on me and i never know which way it is going to go. I have had a lot of depression and trauma in my life and I see this as a factor but also I think change or something going wrong that day however small it seems might be enough to throw me off course. I dont feel in control of it and dont know how to take control. Can you relate to this? Have you any suggestions on ways to deal with this? I appreciate any input yu can give.

you have to find something that catches your imagination and won't let go, and when that happens you have to give as well as you get from it.

Yes I agree completely. But I do find real life gets in the way. Paying bills keeping up with my complicated working life there isnt much left in the fragmented bits of time that i have. i find it difficult to switch various roles on and off like a tap.

I sense that you are needing fewer bills, and sometimes the only way out from under the pile is to change the scenery.

Motivation is kinda reverse of what most people assume.
It's kind of a chicken or the egg scenario.

Real motivation comes almost before the task is known, it drives a person in a certain direction, and to accomplish certain goals, there is rarely much choice involved.
If one has (or chosen) a task to do, it's already too late to look for motivation and something else must be found to energize and prioritize the task.

Lack of motivation for some things and hyperfocus for others is related to executive function deficits common with people with Aspergers. That means we only have a certain amount of mental energy. Christine Miserandino came up with a way of explaining this. While not about aspergers per say a lot of people on the spectrum have found her "Spoon theory" helpful
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpres ... on-theory/
Her website
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpres ... 30_things/

With a limited amount of mental energy we need to prioritize and drop things from our lives. First things we need to drop are those non necessary things we do solely to please others. Some things we do not like like paying bills we obviously have to do. In cases like these what a lot of people have found helpful is to break it down into a series of small tasks instead of thinking of it as one big task.

^^^
the spoon theory is EXCELLENT

TL/DR: So it took two things to find my motivation. Caving to pressure of others who were watching out for me, and finding the right environment to cultivate motivation.

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I wasn't motivated to do anything but subsist. It took moving in with my grandmother during high school to get me out of that, but that was only temporary. Once in the real world and away from my grandmother, I just didn't care about anything. I was content to just work at nothing important, and sit at home, playing vid games or browse the internet, never dealing with anything beyond the immediate needs of myself.

I got pressured to go to college, and finally I caved. I had problems. Lack of motivation I thought. But eventually I found a school that allowed me to get in a routine, and it kicked off.

I realized after the fact, that how things were structured before, just didn't allow me to want to do anything. I was so stressed, out, anxiety, depression, and a few other things, that I just wanted to hide more than do anything. The college I went to had a different class schedule they followed than semesters. I took classes month after month with no break for 3.5 years to get my bachelors. When I say no break. We had most federal holidays off(not martin luther king jr, which I thought we did but didn't and that ruined my perfect attendance up to that point) and a two week christmas break. But other than that, classes started immediately after the previous one ended. It was no longer stressful to go out and do this higher education thing. I found that I liked it and found my motivation to go forward.

Yes the spoon theory is very good!! ! Christina is very good with words.

However, I barely understand that it is my executive function struggles that are causing me to flounder. it is a new idea to me. One of my students who sits next to me and has two dyslexic children was explaining to me that they only have a small working area of their mind im not explaining it very well and i have an undiagnosed dyslexia - this described me so well and i had never thought of it that way before. It sounds like its the same with AS. I am not used to talking to other As peeps. I usually talk to NTs who just say be more organized, prioritze etc. grrrrr.

Stardraigh it is interesting what you say about just subsisting and then when you found something that was right for you you began using your time much better. That is like me. I thrived really well at University and was lost once I left Uni and had to work as an illustrator and completely drive myself through it all. It wasnt difficult intellectually the work wasnt hard just the motivation and procrastinating etc. I am much happier as an art tutor as I have to be out by a certain time to get to my class and that works very well. No time to procrastinate.

Thanks for your input. It is good to know that I am not alone. It has been a revelation to hear about these problems and that they have a name. I have been diagnosed with AS for 13 years but seeking more help now to try and overcome ongoing problems.

Once out of college, it was confusing for the first two years. Other than being motivated to find a job, my motivation tanked in that time. Finally when I adapted to life far from anyone I knew, I was able to focus on motivation. I was able to come out yet again as transgender and motivate myself to start transitioning. I also learned to motivate myself for small things like any of the hobbies I picked up. Other places, I am just not motivated at all, but I feel I should be.

I also like the parable of the spoon. It struck a chord with me. I can only hold so many spoons and if I try to do to much, then I drop my spoons and have nothing.

YOu've done well. It has taken me years and years to get to know myself and work out how to get where I have wanted to go. All the best with your plans. x

In a nutshell, yes. I have always struggled with balancing motivation and hyper-focusing. I am relatively new at knowing that I have AS, so I need to do some more reading on executive function. When things aren't going well for me - any kind of external or internal stressor - the fewer spoons I can manage.

For NTs, I think that when things aren't going well (some traumatic life event, for example), they may be able to use that as their motivation for getting things done. In fact, I always hear from people (since I'm going through a grieving process these days) that I should "keep busy, that'll take your mind off it." I always found that to be simply a bizarre concept. It's impossible to get motivated to do anything I don't absolutely HAVE to do, much less any activity that's optional.

Conversely, when things in my life are going well, I can get more accomplished in a day than most people can in a week (unless it involves manual labor, LOL).

when something makes me good and angry, I am more productive.

Anger is actually a good motivator for me, too. Sadness, depression, and anxiety are serious anti-motivators for me.

Yes, Eureka I agree that sounds very like me but when I am motivated I can move mountains as you say. But that happens less often than the paralyzed feeling i get. Yes external stressors are a big deal for me too. I have lived with that so long and namelessly it is all i know and thought everyone operates like that!! ! how little i knew.

Executive Functioning deficits in Autism does not get talked about nearly as much social "deficits" because social abilities is the priority for the nueromajority world so when they write about us that is what they discuss. And after years of being told how "wrong" we are socially we prioritize that also.

What do executives do? They plan, organize, prioritize, delegate. If executive functions are not working well due to neurological difference we are not going to do these things well.

Low working memory is a theory of why people have poor executive functioning. I don't know if a computer analogy will work for you but I will try. A computer with tons of memory that can hold gazillions of bytes of data will still not work correctly if the cache/working memory is small. If I give that computer a really really complicated task it is going to complete it in a split second. But if I run a few games,open up a bunch webpages the computer is going to slow to a crawl. A cheap laptop with a decent size cache may not be able to handle the extremely complicated equations, but you can run a few games, and open up a bunch of webpages without a problem.

That is why we are notoriously bad at multitasking and doing things out of our comfort zone is exhausting but when dealing with one task we like hyperfocus and as you put it "move mountains" . If somebody is giving us verbal instruction we have to multitask. It involves looking at the person, trying to read their body language and trying to understand and retain the verbal information and possibly deal with hyper sensitivity and do it with low working memory. Either we will not look at them and try and concentrate on the instructions and be considered rude or concentrate on their facial expressions and not retain the instruction and be considered dumb, or try to do it all, fail and be considered rude and dumb.