Hello, I am new here and wanna share experience & get other peoples opinion and maybe help myself with understanding my ASD and even helping someone else with ASD.
Anyway let me introduce myself, I am 24 years old and was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome disorder around 16 years ago. I have been struggling last few years after I left school & collage, having no routine or structure in my day to day life. I am hoping to get some structure in my life and try have a good career in something but I am unsure what. I wanna do something fulfilling and I enjoy but I don’t even know where to start. But I’m hoping I can find advice & talk with other people here with similar experiences.
Welcome, Callum.
Executive functioning is a common topic. As you know, our daily lives are full of distractions and opportunities to procrastinate. I take a lesson I have learned from my work at the hospital. My work is absolute chaos some days, and frankly, those unplanned disruptions in my day can be legitimately life-threatening events with infants and children. So, I can't just blow them off. I have to react immediately. Yet, when I come into work at the beginning of the day, I still have a very long list of tasks to complete amongst the background of this chaos. Being able to flex and pivot between all those interruptions that pull you away AND still be able to get your work done is an executive functioning nightmare. What I do is I make a list of my tasks at the beginning of the day, with little check boxes by them. I start on my list, get interrupted, go back to my list, get interrupted again, go back to my list, get interrupted again and again, go back to my list.
I typically get irritated with other people making me a list, so I have to make it myself and force myself to finish it in a timely manner.
I'm also an educator for respiratory therapists, nurses, and doctors. We are currently going through a corporate merger with another large hospital system right now. I am looking at having to create, update, and edit three different lecture series for each set of students to accommodate a much larger and diverse audience. I have about 30 lectures to redo within the next few months. We are also have to merge each and every policy and procedure into one, all the editing, the back and forth, etc. I also have changes in policies and procedures, charting practices, etc. that have been put on the "back burner" until all of this is finalized over the next several months. The thought of it is daunting and don't know where to start. I have to find a beginning, make a check list, and start knocking it out. I have lectures scheduled on the calendar and people are depending upon me. No excuses. I have responsibilities and am accountable. Executive functioning.
The other thing to do is create some routines in your life. Probably the most important one is the times that you wake up and go to bed. Biorhythms are going to be one of those things that can make the difference between having an energetic, productive day, and one that causes you to be dragging butt all day. Whether I am working or having a day off, my bedtimes and wake times are about the same, within an hour or so. I don't ever have that mindset like, "Oh, finally, a day off where I can sleep in." That doesn't happen without bad consequences for me. Just stick with the routine.
