How I Get Things Done and manage my energy as a neurodivergent.
An essay on philosophy, parenting, and managing a work/health balance.
ONE—How social cues make things complicated in the working world.
When you’re neurodivergent and living in a world that wasn’t made for you, but it’s a world you have to live, work, and play in, that working world still encroaches on your life. You have to have a job that gives you the ability to provide food, housing, and basic needs for yourself and your young family, but the world will still expect you to perform at neurotypical levels. Try as you might to not let into your life. You still have to go live in the world. And it’s unlikely to change any time soon.
So how do I do it?
Many neurotypicals are ableists, which means they vocalize our ability to blend in and work in the world because so many of us have master’s degrees and PhDs and have successful careers. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people but they don’t know any better. Just look at all the engineers in the world. And while that’s true, many neurotypicals often address us as just getting over our wiring is as easy as switching on a light. It’s not. Executive dysfunction is a primary reason it’s difficult for us to work in this world. The social cue difference between a neurotypical work setting and a neurodivergent employee makes things difficult.
The best way I’ve heard the difference between folks like me with Autism Spectrum Disorder is how the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby described it. In social situations, most neurotypicals recognize who is talking and what’s important with what they are saying. For folks like me and Gadsby, when we’re in a social situation, we realize who is talking, but we process it through how they’re saying what they’re saying and why it’s crucial. We skip over the what’s the critical bit. How and why questions take significantly more processing power to answer. And it skips over the important part like the task that person asks us to do. We’re processing who that person is, how they’re saying affects us, and why they’re saying or asking us to do something. We must do twice as much “reading between the lines.”
And that causes a lot of social miscues. Because we exist in a world where most people have a conversation, they can process who it is that’s talking and what they’re asking for.
As a result, the working world was developed by neurotypicals who are natural outcome thinkers. I live in a capitalist society because that’s how you make money by thinking about the outcome or end goal, usually making money or performing some task towards making money.
Neurodivergents, on the other hand, are natural process thinkers. We love thinking deeply about things. We’re naturally inclined to try to understand how and why something works the way it does. That’s why I was so naturally inclined to teach writing because that is teaching how to develop a process of working and externalizing your thoughts so that you can see what’s on your mind, control them by editing and reframing them, and figure out how to change one’s thoughts because thoughts become beliefs and beliefs usually engender consequences.
In the X-Men comics, some mutants refer to humans as “flat scans.” They’re human beings who, when going through a scan, don’t show a mutant gene. They scan as flat. Neurotypicals can turn to focus on and don’t have an interest-based nervous system like those of us on the spectrum. They are consistent and balanced across the board in managing themselves and their place in the world.
I don’t think of myself as homo superior or mutant in this case. I think of myself as someone different from everyone else from a wiring standpoint. I have more specific needs, and I perform in a highly variable way daily. I’m divergent. If I’m anyone on the X-Men mutant spectrum, I’m somewhere between Professor Xavier and Wolverine.
TWO— My philosophy on dealing with a neurotypical world.
In my talk on how I manage myself as a neurodivergent who practices Stoicism in response to my autistic/ADHD-self with anxiety and depression, I have an intentional implementation. A saying from my hometown, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear and bad attitudes.”
I break that saying down into the Stoic disciplines: Desire, Action, and Assent. The field of desire, as I’ve come to understand it, is to think clearly, and that starts with a dichotomy of control: “There are somethings in my control, and some things not in my control,” according to Epictetus. Well, yes, but what is explicitly out of our control? The ancients what is modernly known as the all-or-nothing fallacy—which can be dangerous for neurodivergents. Things are never black or white—they’re grey. That’s what I think is the point of Stoic philosophy gaining an understanding of a middle ground.
It’s easy for someone on the spectrum to fall into black-or-white thinking or use others to model how you should live your life. I think that one of the reasons we have trouble is comparison and black-or-white reflection. Epictetus and Seneca knew this, so the former has a caveat. Things that are not in my control are things like my health (which is where I put my neurodivergence — it’s a health/body issue and a part of who I am in the world, but it is not who I am in total), your social standing, how much money you have, family, and “externals.” Like having two homes. A boat—that kind of thing. The Stoics had nothing against these things. What mattered was how you managed your self-control around those indifferent. Indifferent is something external to you and your character and how you interact in the world. Money is indifferent, it doesn’t mean you’re a good or bad person if you have a lot or a little of it—it’s all in how you respond to having some. I’ll come back to the indifferent idea in a bit.
The Discipline of Action tells us to act wisely—specifically, how we interact with others. Brittany Polat helped me understand these disciplines about parenting. She says the Discipline of Action means “Treat other people the way you want them to treat you.” (68)
For me, this breaks down into a series of questions:
Are you treating others fairly?
Are you doing a complicated thing and need help prioritizing, planning, and flexibility? (These are things I do well from an executive functioning standpoint—but only on ADHD days. On ASD days, I do the planning well but not the prioritizing or the flexibility.)
Ask for that help. My executing dysfunctions are working memory, task initiation, and stress tolerance. So I ask: Do you have a hard time getting started? Encouragement to persist with the hard thing helps me reduce stress and prevent getting upset about things that are ultimately out of my control, like how much energy I have.
Finally, the Discipline of Assent really helps me with the latter. This comes back to dealing with indifference, assenting to the outcomes of your desires and actions, or as Brittany Polat coaches, “Don’t get upset, just deal with the problem.” Stoicism works well with neurodivergent people because we’re natural process thinkers, and the Stoics are a process-oriented philosophy.
Now, there’s no such thing for anyone as being indifferent about anything, but that’s why there are preferred and dispreferred indifferents. What matters is how you respond to those indifferents so you can live your life with purpose. Of course, I can’t be indifferent about money because that’s the world I live in. I need a job to have health care, to manage my neurodivergence from medication to therapy, and to take time when I’m struggling. I need that money to have housing. What I’ve assented to is that I won’t change this capitalist society, so it tilts towards fairness for neurodivergent people. That’s a battle for someone else. Greta Thunberg, Pete Wharmby, and Temple Grandin can do that. As KC Davis writes, I am just trying to keep house while drowning. What I am in control of is how mostly I am in control of what I think, how I act, and how I deal with problems. That’s it. Here’s how I do it I again ask questions, and it’s important to frame them in “how” or “why” phrases:
How am I causing pain? Is this a health, family, social issue, or a luxury issue? Why am I causing pain?
How can I take a break to reflect?
How am I prioritizing myself over others?
How am I prioritizing others over myself? (This one is critical because I have an automatic response to people pleasing.)
How am I being inflexible? Is this a hill I need to die on? Am I stressed out and need a break?
Once I’ve asked myself these questions I ask is this a job? A project or a task? What do I need to do to solve the problem?
THREE—How my philosophy meets productivity
This is where I get things done.
I ask: is this a boom or bust day?
For neurodivergent people, our nervous systems are interest-based, not priority based. And divergent—-from one day to the next we’re never the same. Variety is the spice of our lives!
Our energy levels are highly variable, but that’s not true for neurotypicals. Everyone’s body hums at a different rhythm. Hence the flat-scan/mutant analogy. But if you reflect enough, you can begin to see a pattern. And everyone’s different. No productivity system is really going to work for you, because those people designed those productivity systems to work for themselves first. The same is true for a philosophy of life like Stoicism. It is a tool—at some point, I know, it may stop working for me. All this comes from really nodding along with Jesse J. Anderson:
This is where you come to understand your nature, so you can live in accordance with that nature, which is the statement of Stoicism’s founder—Zeno of Citium.
So again is it a boom or bust day? Who is this asking something of me? Who are they to me? My wife? My kids? My boss?
Why is this being asked?
How can I get started? I don’t like black-or-white thinking, so I think that my Autism (bust) and ADHD (boom) alternate days as the dominant wiring. On Autism Days, I’m good at planning, organizing, and making routines. Still, I’m also inflexible, get overstimulated easily, prioritize myself over others, and quit trying to solve a problem because again solving a problem involves outcome thinking. Then an ADHD Day comes around, and I undo all of that. I people please, I don’t plan, and I don’t get stressed. I keep going with the flow, even though I know I will pay for it at some point. I’m good at figuring out the steps; sometimes, those number of steps are overwhelming, and I don’t have the energy to do them all. And on ADHD Days, I try doing those steps three or four at a time, but on an ASD day, I will do one thing at a time.
So my goal in my days is to get to a middle ground, and I know that on the surface that means to be a flat-scan. But practically, I know that’s pretty much impossible, so I try to reframe the whole problem as just being my regular.
So on Autism Days, I try to be active because that’s a virtue—having the courage to do hard things. And do that by radically lowering the bar. I ask:
Can you do one physical next action that takes five minutes or less right now? This comes from David Allen’s 2-minute rule of Getting Things Done—an overwhelming book if you’re someone like me. Depending on the day. And I get that this might be overwhelming, also.
Why is it a five-minute rule? Because everything takes time and a half when you have executive dysfunction like task initiation. And I can’t help but say—if something takes two minutes or less to do something—how fucking important is it? And the answer will always be—not that important. At least for me.
On Autism Days the following physical action is writing down the steps of a project in a notebook and delegating it as a project in an area to do another day where I’ll have more energy to do it—on ADHD days. But sometimes, like last Friday, I’ll have enough power to do that five-minute action like swizzling all the bathroom toilets in the house. And pack the kids. And read a book. That should take five minutes a piece. There are three toilets, that take five minutes each. Often, it looks like sabotage at first but it will even out.
And sure, that executive function costs something, but it feeds into my nature and if that task is not done after the five-minute step, I break it down into the next five-minute step, and I try to finish the job or project or task in one Pomodoro block.
If I need a Pomodoro block of rest afterward because I got hyper-focused on dealing with the problem, well, then I’ll take that rest. Some days are maintenance days. That’s usually an Autism Day, and I’m quite grateful for the privilege I have regarding the ability that my autism says, Buddy, you gotta slow down, or someone will get hurt. Usually me. I make sure I do what I need to do to take care of myself, then go out and do the things that take care of others.
For me, philosophy is about understanding myself and my place in the world, and not so much an alternate way of thinking but having a philosophy of getting to a middle ground with others. Our nature is to understand ourselves and be social beings. Some days that’s harder than others. But if you are reflective enough and you look at the sum of your days over a week, you’ll find that there is equilibrium. And it is in your nature, so basically, you have everything you need already. It is who you already are. You’re not going to get those answers from others.
It teaches me not to be so rigid with my mindset. Because here’s the thing: my wiring is weather—there’s not a damn thing I can do about whether it rains or pours or is a lovely day outside, or it’s an Autism Day or ADHD Day, or a half day for both sides of my brain, or a day where I can’t get off the couch and just want to watch movies all day. But I can develop gear to manage that weather, and I can always have a good attitude about it. Your attitude is what you can control: your behavior, desires, aversions, and actions. Not the results of those actions. And the consequences of those actions may not always be what you intended. But intentions are the only things you can control. Your impact is up to others’ opinions, and you can change your opinion whenever you want.
As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The universe is change; life is opinion.”
I hope this helped. Of course, let me know what you think. Another part, a day in the life, will come next week.