Special Interest Discussion

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So, I've recently discovered that I'm autistic and there's a heavy realization embedded for me. I have a doctorate and I wrote my dissertation about my special interest and it's intersection with society via economics and wellbeing. But the reason I pursued that research was because I was trying to understand this incredible urge I have to engage my special interest, this overwhelming desire I have to think about it and be in it every day for decades. I was looking at evolutionary biology and social engineering and trying to understand why I felt so compelled to do it all the time. I realize now it's because I'm autistic. The people I interviewed to try and understand this behavior were not autistic. I thought everyone felt the same urge and now I realize they didn't even know what I was talking about. And I developed this incredibly flawed framework for understanding my own behavior. I felt like I finally had a piece of the puzzle and it was such a relief. I know this happens in science all the time, Einstein replaces Newton and on and on, but man, it's painful to rewrite all my narratives again. I have not felt much relief with a diagnosis, (female 46, so later in life) despite reading that others do. Maybe I'll get there.

My special interest is making practices. I'm an artist; stained glass, wood working, fiber art, and leatherwork, are my mains, but I do a lot of other things as well. I'd love to know what your special interests are and if it compels you most days? I wonder if you feel like me.

Welcome to WP! I hope parts of it interest you, as well.

When I'm busy on a project, I like to stay on it and fill my short-term memory with nothing else. My interests range from art metalwork, to advanced composites, to engineering, and on to the psychology that keeps better engineered products off the market. My most recent push was to use the dregs of my scrap wood collection to make a set of shelves for an odd space. It was like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, but I managed it with very little cutting, so the wood will be available for later projects.

Here's a few thoughts about my special interests, if they can rightly be called special interests. I suppose they arise from the same brain-wiring thing that pushes most of us into adopting special interests, i.e. a strong tendency to hyperfocus on details and a powerful fascination for the subjects that happen to arouse our curiosity.

Quite a bit of the time I daren't start working on the stuff that fascinates me, for fear that it'll take over my life.

I don't so much have "special interests" that can be simply defined. I'm more interested in a wide variety of subjects, and can easily get pulled into ridiculously tiny details.

Last night I worked for a couple of hours on putting a couple of shortcuts on my laptop taskbar that automatically flip the sound settings from internal speaker & mic to wireless headset and back again. The damned thing fought back every inch of the way but I got my result in the end. It could be argued that I wasted my time, because although it's made a somewhat fiddly procedure easier, it's probably unlikely that I'll ever recoup all the time I spent in setting it up. But I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge because it was just the right level for me, being hard but not so hard as to cause me to fail. I get a lot out of trying to do something difficult and succeeding. It helps my self-confidence, stops me getting bored, and keeps me from falling into morbid thoughts. And although nobody in their "right mind" would have bothered, now the work is done I've at least got something of practical value to show for it.

Perhaps unusually for a "special interest," I've very little desire to go back to it, apart from using the end product. I'm glad it's over. A lot of my "special interests" are like that. In a way I dislike them, and getting to the end point is often very important to me.

Ha ha! My projects are really doing well if I can finish them in only double the time I expected them to take. If you go to an expert boatbuilder and ask for an estimate on a repair, he will carefully inspect the area, poking around for rot, etc. Then, he will list all the material needed, and estimate the hours, adding these together. Then, he will multiply by four and present his offer. If he is inexperienced, and hopes to stay in business without a second job, he will multiply by eight.

Racial mixes, racial ambiguity. It's not something I think about much; the interest usually arises ONLY when I see someone with racial ambiguity. However, there've been times when I just felt like perusing Instagram hashtags for mixed races, and just studying all the features of the people in the images, so intrigued by the descriptors of their racial/ethnic breakdowns, and how they "come out" in terms of physical features, hair texture, etc.

First name spellings and other facets of first names. Do you know which well-known nickname or "short," has the most potential root names? For instance, the name "Mel" could be for Melanie, Melinda or Melvina: that's three.

But there's a short that can have over a dozen possible root names.

Did you know there are over 2,000 ways to phonetically spell Carolyn?

What female names are also surnames? Christie, Lindsey, Ashley, Casey, Courtney, Taylor, Shirley, Beverly, Grace, Rose, Leslie, Holly .....

I have more onging SI's and some past doozies of them.

I have three names, and each can be used as a first or a last name. It took my bank three tries to get it right.

When I worked in science research, a commonly-held view was that a project would take 4 times the expected time if you were lucky. Which suggests there's something strangely wrong about the way labour time is forecast, at least for some tasks, if we have to apply a large fudge factor to get it accurate. I wish I knew more about exactly where the original thinking is flawed.

The flaw is not basic, but diffuse. A drill bit breaks and is stuck in the hole. Someone gets sick, needs family time, is not working out, or just quits. Parts are out of stock, discontinued, faulty, or mis-shipped. A new feature is added. There was a math error. Ma Nature sends her extra-special weather. The landlord won't renew the lease.
The B-1 bomber was a year late because someone forgot to remove a release film deep in the wing spar laminations.
When aircraft were designed "by hand,", they were expected to take 120% of the rated load and g-force. They were designed by highly trained engineers, and then a separate team checked their numbers. You would expect the test figures of various prototypes to plot to a bell curve centered around 120%. Actually, it was almost a square wave form, from 50% to 150%.

^
I suppose the mistake,then, is to try to predict the time a job takes at all. As you say, there are too many possible random snags, so the forecast is imponderable, unless perhaps it took way longer to figure it out than it would to just do the job. I once had a boss who frequently asked me how long I'd take to do this or that. Rather than risk offending her by saying "How the hell should I know?" I usually gave an estimate, but preceded by the words "If it goes smoothly......" People seem to like to be given a number, even when it's openly admitted that it's not a reliable one.

I was surprised to learn that if I got a bank loan on the strength of a business plan, I was not expected to stick to the plan except in the most general way. I was expected to be learning on the job, and adapting to news. Start-up companies routinely return for additional rounds of financing even if their results are mostly about what didn't work.
Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed Skunk Works worked on time and on budget until the SR-71, but he insisted on full control, and truly exceptional staff, who could work from sketchy instructions and verify the critical details or spot conflicts as they worked. He was also very good at not getting stuck on details. To get started in a hurry, he used a circus tent. Hoover Dam came in ahead of time and under budget because the boss was promised a bonus for that, and he regarded anything that keep him from collecting it as outright robbery, but didn't mind a high accident and fatality rate.
However, on the mundane side, most working people know just how much time they need to get from bed to job. People who delay commuters for even a second become very unpopular. Once something has been repeated a few times, predictions can get quite good, to the point that many companies have tried "Just In Time" production - supplies go straight from the receiving dock to the production line. It's a high-stakes gamble for small gains, and can be very hard on the people responsible.