ASD and too difficult tasks

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I would like to hear your thoughts on this (especially if you have experience being a teacher):
I sometimes try to do too difficult tasks and seem to have difficulties assessing what I am good at and have problems with. Too difficult doesn't mean that I will never be able to do the task but that I am not yet ready for it.
Could this have something to do with ASD?
What sometimes happens is that a teacher or another person helping me allows me to do what is actually a too difficult tasks? Why would anyone allow this? Could it be that it is difficult to see what is too difficult?
Do some of us look like we are better at something that we actually might be? I think I've been told something similar to that and I guess we can look like people have less problems than NT's. What do teachers and other helpers need to know?

My thinking is that ASD can make organizing a bit difficult, ie focusing on much at the same time can be a bit difficult for us (some speak about issues with executive functioning). Sure, everyone can have problems with it but we might be less good at it, I guess. Also, many of us really want to understand what we are doing, ie not just do it and be happy with that (I've been told that I often, or too often, ask why I do something). Perhaps people with ASD can't skip learning all of the fundamentals they need in order to do the more difficult tasks.

Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. Sometimes I just underestimate the time stuff takes, other times I keep with something even if I can never finish it.

ASD is associated with Executive Functioning challenges. One of the executive functions is a sense of time.
Also: starting, stopping, adding goals, changing goals when conditions change.

EF challenges can make correctly estimating the size of a task difficult - because past tasks get muddled on the way to memory - and also can make it hard to change course when a (perceived to be) small tasks turns out to be a big task or a giant task.

I taught school very very briefly (less than one semester before I quit). My sense or time management, project management and time budgeting was one of the factors. It is still a challenge.

Re: executive function
One of the big things about executive function problems is with working memory. Externalizing things is very helpful for organizing, planning, or even just thinking about a complex issue or a potentially multi-facited solution. Examples of "externalizing" are:
-writing down all the situations
-using post-it notes or note-cards to re-organize things in sequence or date
-printing papers out and highlighting them
-talking out a situation/problem/solution with a coworker, friend, or loved one (vs trying to solve it all in your head & on your own)
-dividing up big problems into much small bite-sized tasks AND then focusing on getting only one task at a time done

That last one is a big one.


PS AttentionTalkVideo has a lot of short tips about getting things done with ADHD.

Three areas are long time challenges for me - time management, project management and budgeting (time, money, resources)

Read lots of books and web pages on these topics - still hard.

Sometimes I make a spider map of everything on my mind.

One suggestion for getting better at estimating is to carefully record estimates and actual costs - still hard as I often don’t keep good records and have panic attacks at the idea that someone might find out how I Really used my time. Easy for small things that repeat like driving some place - harder for bigger things- I also have a hard time because I feel like I have no way to estimate unless I know EVERYTHING about a project before I start - analysis paralysis- and there tends to be a lot of variation in my actual performance. More than most

It is a little hard for me to understand what difficulty you are experiencing without a more detailed example.

But I will pass on my experience. When I approach a difficult task, I lump them into all my tasks. Otherwise I have a tendency to focus solely on that particular task until it is completed. And that approach brings me to a dead stop very quickly. [As an example, to complete a task, I may have to order a piece of equipment and wait for it to arrive before I can move forwards.]

I generally have many things to do and I need to accomplish them efficiently.

I will take the task and if it is a complex task, I will break it apart into several pieces. I solve the pieces, all of the pieces FOR ALL OF THE TASKS as quickly and efficiently as I can.

In other words I solve as many tasks as possible in as efficiently as possible in a piecemeal manner.

the big questions is: why would a teacher think that we are better at organizing and planning than we are.
My thinking is that we often show an intellectual side and people interpret it as something it is not, ie us being good at organizing and planning without specific strategies. Could this be a reason why this happens?

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating myself - perhaps b/c the World has and I've internalized it. It's "easy" to mix sugar and butter; it's "hard" to put reassemble a piece of equipment you've never seen. Actually it's reversed for me --- but I've bought into the bologna even though I know better. Too often it has to do with circumstances outside my control. If things are going smoothly, sure I can do A-B-C and D-E-F and G (which nobody expects), but if there is a hiccup then I am near useless and can't even do A (which nobody expects). How does one anticipate or explain that?

Just this weekend I asked for help and a customer service person invalidated my request. She probably thought I was acting entitled rather than genuinely needing assistance. I tried to assert myself but ended up trying it her way --- I might be able to do it! --- well, it didn't work and I went back for assistance in tears. Thankfully a different and understanding customer service person completed the transaction. Next time, I will continue to assert myself and/or be very specific about what I need. Kind, calm, FIRM.

I'm extremely bad at certain things....some of this inability is quite lamentable, especially when it comes to the ability to take care of a physically-needy person.

you can't measure the difficulty of a task.

not everyone finds the same tasks difficult.

your skills are not constant.

you either overestimate or underestimate the difficulty of a task. too many significant digits.

you either overestimate or underestimate your skills. too many significant digits.

it appears to me that autistics tend to be extremely good at some things, and much worse at other things. sometimes autistics are bad at things that appear easy to most neurotypicals. (for example, interpersonal communication.) as a result, some precious lil "people" have had the nerve to act like i was intellectually challenged, or say something to that effect (without proper terminology). (halo effect, pattern recognition, overgeneralization)

nobody is perfect.

nobody is great at everything.

just because you are bad at something today, does not mean that you will always be bad at it.

however, some things just come more naturally to some than others.

teachers might ask us to try new things to see if they are difficult for us or not. sometimes things get better with practice. Its OK to find things too difficult, but if we did not try them, how would we know if they were too difficult or not? ( everybody is different, how would a teacher know?).

I have experienced this. I was always good at my studies and called gifted so i thought of myself as having high intelligence. My poor performance at the workplace says otherwise.
Nowadays i Just assume i am a bit on the slow side and not a fast thinker. So i expect less from myself.

Example: goal do laundry. Condition: someone else is using the machine.

(Good) change goal - eat lunch then do laundry

(Bad) stand staring at the machine until it is free then do laundry then eat lunch

Someone else gave an example of ordering a piece of equipment (goal: fix washing machine) - you can do nothing until the equipment arrives or you can do something else until the equipment arrives.

People who drive into a flood are bad at changing goals when conditions change.

This happens to me at work a lot- I will stick with a goal even when dropping my solution and rethinking would be better.

There is a joke about the American space program developing a ball-point pen that would work in zero gravity - write upside-down and even under water - while the Russians used a pencil.

THIS^^

I'm a software and electronics engineer, and so I get to deal with projects all the time. And every time someone asks me "So how long do you think it'll take?" or "Is that something we can accomplish with the resources we have?", my anxiety kicks in because I know that I'm going to give a wrong answer. Every. Single. Time.

[sigh...] Life with autism is never boring

Computer work is like that. One reason why programmers command such decent salaries is that their bosses can't successfully analyse the work in terms of time and motion. I think the more arrogant bosses just guess how long a job will take, halve it, and then insist they call it done when the deadline comes round. We used to get the same problem in my research job, which similarly doesn't lend itself to time management, because by definition we didn't know what we were doing. I learned to reply very carefully when I was pressurized to promise an early result - I'd say things like "There's good hope it'll be done by Wednesday if nothing unexpected happens." And I learned to admit it when I didn't know the answer to a question. The managers who had experience in research recognised the problem and were often very understanding about it.

How long my computer music projects will take is always a mystery to me until they're completed. Sometimes I'm done within an hour. More often, I find something or other not working right, and what was supposed to be a vocal recording session begins with a technical troubleshooting job, by the end of which I'm no longer in the mood for singing. And I always feel I have to write up the troubleshooting steps in a way that will be clear to me if I have to do it again some time in the future, and I struggle to find the language to explain it all concisely. I end up writing reams of stuff that takes ages to fathom when I next try to read it. Most of the ideas I think of to fix the problems seem very simple until I try to put them into words, but if I don't put them into words I soon forget how to perform the fix.

But most things I've attempted haven't turned out to be too difficult to get done, given enough time. To my mind there's a difference between a job that's too difficult and a job that takes too long, though given that time is a finite resource, it probably amounts to the same thing in practice.

I was on one job and I was worried my work was sticking out like a sore thumb - not in a good way - I asked a manager I respected “how long would you say it would take one of your engineers to trouble shoot a bug?”

He glared at me as if trying to figure out if I was serious then said in a very frank voice “how long is a piece of string?”