I’m in the not organized category then at other times, I hyper-organize to a point that is not necessary.  Most of the time–not organized.

My mum said that as a child, I had stacks of papers and books in my room, and she couldn’t figure out how I could find anything.  I kept and still do keep lists of activities I must remember to do, such as household chores, when children are coming over (the ones that don’t already live here), or when to run errands.

I also keep papers of thoughts or ideas that I don’t want to lose, and in OneNote in my computer, I have pages upon pages for both personal and work.  I end up with repetition, so I have to stop myself sometimes, ignore the lists, and just do.

I often wonder if that is behind the autism inertia some adults have reported online.  Is that analysis paralysis?  I want to know all the details before I begin or the task or project doesn’t make sense to me–this doesn’t fit well in the regular job workplace at all, but that’s another post.

“What is the priority?” I ask myself.  So I get one of my many clipboards and make a new list of only priorities and fill the entire paper.  I now ask hubby to help me set ONE priority to get done, which helps tremendously.  He says I can’t do all things at once, so just do that one thing while ignoring everything else.  It works.

What has helped are online organizational tools and a list of what I am to do each day at work with specific blocks of time for specific activities that I keep on the wall in my office.  Reducing visual distraction helps a lot.  I also have three large whiteboards I use to plan and work through ideas using multiple colors of markers, which is a great visual help for me.

I have learned so much about organization that after my business, maybe I’ll be a professional organizer.  Kidding.

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New!  For parents of autistic children, I started Autism Community Conversations by conference call.  And, it is free.  Join the mailing list and you will be notified of upcoming calls.  Spread the word!

Confusion from Distraction

I have a very chatty family.  I used to wonder why people said things that had no purpose.  I still don’t understand, but hubby explained to me that small talk is a way that people connect.  I have learned to do it on purpose at times.

Beyond the lack of purpose, the constant or intermittent flow of chatter distracts me, and I become either immobile or roam the house doing little things because it’s hard to have my own thoughts.  I feel angry, but as an adult with autism, I have learned to keep it to myself to a point.  Children usually don’t know how to regulate themselves to not “act out” or have a “melt down.”

Once I added my business to the mix, the interruptions increased to a degree that I hadn’t dealt with before.  They are normal and good interruptions that are par for the course of a day of a business owner.  It took two years to learn strategies to cope so I could get projects done.

Okay, I’m not super adept at it and may never be, so I find time to hyper-focus.  Such intense concentration on a topic or project is a feature of autism, and it relaxes me so I can deal with the rest of the world.  It takes me away from distraction and envelops me in serenity.  It quiets my mind and my feelings.

Maybe hyper-focus is autism meditation.

Thinking is pure pleasure

I’m not a box.  I don’t think in one or outside of one because with autism/Asperger’s, the thinking runs through a different maze in the brain than neuro-typical people.  Oh, I haven’t a study to quote to “prove” this, because the proof is all in my head.

Before I was diagnosed (as an adult) I knew, and other people said, that my thinking was unusual.  I spent time analyzing how I think and mentally observing myself thinking.

“Observing” is the right word, not “hear” or “knowing” or “feeling” because I see my thoughts in pictures.  Temple Grandin had it right with the title of her famous book, Thinking in Pictures.  Often I don’t see the thoughts as they are coming together, but the end result is always a visual.  I’ll give examples.

I go to an adult spelling bee once in a while at the 331 Club in Minneapolis.  The emcee always calls me The Speed Speller because I spell the word so quickly.  The reason is that I see the word in my head then just read off the letters.

Doing art is a passion of mine I wish I could indulge in more.  I already see in my mind what the next picture is going to look like, even with the new medium I will be using.  When I do the art, it’s like connecting the dots or paint by numbers on a blank canvas.  It’s very satisfying to see with my eyes what I have enjoyed in my mind.

When the concept of mind mapping became popular in the eighties, it made sense to me because I already thought that way.  People said I was creative with my wild ideas that worked.  I didn’t put two and two together because it didn’t happen that way in my mind.

I have taken in so much information from my intense drive to find out and understand when I don’t know something.  I have read the gamut from poetry to engineering.  So my creative ideas are really concepts and pieces of information that clang together in my mind.  For example, what if we took an idea from poetry and applied it to engineering or vice versa?

I don’t think about it; it just seems to happen, and the result is a picture.

I don’t know if I should write this, but I spend hours thinking up scenarios, which I call “meandering,” but I end up applying the new ideas and connections to something in the real world.

I saw this article last night and wrote it this morning.  I came up with the idea for the blog post as I was drawing in my mind the design of a new kind of weighted blanket for my business, Cozy Calm–my mental meandering.

“When you hear a sound, your brain responds.  When the child with autism hears a sound, their brain responds too, but a little bit later.  What we’re seeing is a…split-second delay in recognizing that sound,”  Tim Roberts says.

Ms. Chetry asks, “How does that play out in how children with autism learn and communicate?”

“What happens is that as speech becomes more complicated, we have more and more sounds building up, and these delays cascade on each other leading to a difficulty in perceiving or recognizing the word.”

Can you imagine how long it took me to transcribe the above sentences from the video?  I had to see, hear, understand, translate into a visual of the word in my head, type what I saw, while still hearing more, and more, and more! going in.

I was lost after three to five words each time I tried, so I played the video in a different window so I could just listen and type without seeing the heads moving, but the delay in my mind was just too much, and it all became garbled in my brain.  I didn’t understand the sentence and didn’t “see” the words in my head.  I had no clue what they were saying.  I was so quickly lost.

My typing speed is not the issue.  My preferred form of communication is email, and I write every day, so my typing speed is incredibly fast.  So, I tried another approach based on my experience.

One Source of Input

Only so much input at once, is my rule.  So, say the bare bones of what you have to say, then stop–unless you are communicating with facial expressions, tones of voice, and hand gestures.  Then you will have to state those unvoiced messages because I didn’t receive them.  They are visual distortion of the message.

This is why I tried transcribing without looking at the video to rid myself of the moving heads.  The moving distraction was enough that I lost understanding of the message very quickly.

The Next Try

Playing the video without watching while trying to type didn’t work either.  Without the visual, the delay wasn’t as slow, but I was quickly tripped up and way behind what was hearing.  It all turned into a mess in my head and my agitation increased in a millisecond.  I raced to the mouse to get to the video window so I could click “pause.”  I breathed out.  I had freaked out inside.

But, I have a Great Visual Memory

This time, I watched the video to understand a complete thought and paused the video.  Then I clicked to this window I am typing in and wrote the thought word for word without error.  I waited to let it integrate and to anticipate what they would say next, then I switched back to the video and repeated until the transcription was done.

I “saw” what they were saying.  I literally see the words in my head as they are talking.  The words have time to form into a visual then when I stop the recording, I see the whole sentences.  I worked at my usual fast typing speed because I was literally copying what I saw.

Advice for Teachers, Bosses, Parents, and Spouses

1. Public speakers use dramatic pauses to let a point “settle in.”  All people need pauses, not just the ASD people, so they can catch up with what is being said and integrate what they have heard.  Do the same for your loved one, pupil or employee with Asperger’s or autism.
2. One of my children summed it up best when this child said, “Okay, okay.  I get it, now stop talking.  You don’t have to keep explaining!  Stop talking!”  This child’s frustration level escalated rapidly if I didn’t “talk, stop, talk, stop,” so that day it resulted in a door slamming.  I understand the frustration completely, yet I forgot to start with a short summary then stop completely.
3. If you notice a person on the autism spectrum watching your lips when you are talking, it is a sign that you are talking too quickly and not pausing or not letting any silence hang.  Related article…
4. If you like to make a lot of facial expressions, body and hand movements, to make your point or “drive home” your point or “communicate what you are saying,”  don’t; it will muddle the message.
5. It is the easiest for me to understand speech in the morning, so my meetings and phone calls are generally in the morning.  In an afternoon meeting, I often have to get people to repeat points they are saying.  So, afternoons, I usually focus on a task with little environmental distraction.
6. Teachers, your autistic students may have more trouble writing in the afternoon because they are thinking of “what to say.”  Subjects such as math, graphic design, art, physical education, cooking, reading, or computer programming are relaxing in the afternoon.

Did You Notice how I Wrote This?

Some sentences, which make them more difficult to understand, have thoughts split.  Some sentences run on explaining point after point and linking thoughts thereby diluting the one necessary thought.  Some sentences are concise.  Choose the latter, then stop.  Believe me, it will be much appreciated.