Presumptuous Advice for Surviving Autism in Technology
Nothing in the following list of ideas is likely terribly shocking or groundbreaking to many of you reading this. At the end of the day, no matter how I dress it up, this is an un-humble and terribly arrogant point of view - to presume what I got to learn or do is advice-worthy.
Perhaps it’s not advice I should view it as, but just as a possibly useful list of shortcuts or hacks to be autistic in the business or technology world that I employ myself and I’ve seen work.
So yes, I hate life advice from know-it-alls as much as the next man, and when being asked to “come speak about my experience” I usually refuse. I’m not a motivational speaker. Why would I be? What have I succeeded so absolutely in just yet? Nothing. The day we have the majority of workplaces having a chunk of every week dedicated to the “human work” and teams are autonomous, happy, performant and psychologically safe and when the leadership, EQ, engagement and mental health crisis will have been eradicated with little to no HumanDebt left then call me, then by all means, let me tell you how this autistic changed the world of work.
Truth is we collectively hear from too few perfectionists for this very reason - they never feel they have genuinely arrived or gotten to where they can impart wisdom but now we have to have them near and ask how to grow so here’s my list of tips and hacks as I would tell it to my kiddo or best friend:
Don’t “Tame The Perfectionist Inside” - Use It!
Accept you will have to do plenty of “self-CBT” - work to better yourself. Self-improvement. Human work. You will have to intentionally work to increase your emotional intelligence and your resilience.
Naming, recognising and regulating our own emotions and those of others will likely never “come naturally” and you will have to do a degree of frustrating “learning emotions by numbers”.
Understand you will need to be good at creating and reinforcing habits to be on a journey of self-improvement.
Commit to finding out what measurements drive you - is it data and numbers? Is it the amount of praise and external validation? Is it parameters and points of difference that only you observe? Whatever it may be make sure you keep it at the forefront all the time to power you forward.
Give Yourself Grace
Be willing to always re-evaluate and analyse the success goal posts for each category you spend effort on and lower them to protect yourself.
Actually putting in place strong boundaries in terms of self-care and discipline which can include recharging alone or finding ways to safely disconnect after too intense of social demands, etc.
Know your limits, your value and your needs and wants and advocate for them continuously.
Be obsessive about the measures that bring you well-being whatever your chosen ones are and use measurements to obtain and refresh habits.
Structure your life and work in a fashion that allows you to genuinely manage your own time and then remember you are not on any stage and only owe yourself kindness and grace so take time off.
Remember your productivity and worth are not measurable in usual units of time as your contribution in 45 mins on a Sunday night may be more valuable than the 8 hours of an uninspired act of presence in the office last week so try and optimise for comfort and inspiration or “being in the zone”.
Celebrate every small win, congratulate and reward yourself at every opportunity and practice relentless gratitude. I tell my son a lot that if nothing else he must take from me. Rebuilding neural pathways around what you see that makes you happy is the single best thing any human being can do to hack their minds for well-being.
If you have a series of repetitive behaviours, tics or sequences of actions that may help or soothe you do them any time you need to. You don’t owe anyone “non-weirdness”.
Try and always afford therapy or life coaching. Having an external impartial observer can help save much of the intrusive thoughts and the black-and-white thinking that can otherwise go unchallenged. So splurge on your emotional well-being before gym or other luxuries and you’ll thank yourself.
Hack the People-ing Bit
How to cope with small talk? Plan for big talk! To avoid the incredibly painful moments of sheer inconsequential chit-chat that so many neuro-typicals seem to favour and not mind the abyss of mindless details or the lack of worth of the assaulting cliches, be vocal about the discomfort “I can’t do this, apologies, can we get to the core of this?” or even throw in a big question directly “If I were to propose we first see if we agree on the importance of ChatGPT having passed the Turing test would you be cool with that?”
How to optimise for big talk or comfortable silence mostly? In as much as you can choose to surround yourself with other autistic people and experiment with syncing and alternating social vs. recharging patterns to see what best works for you. (e.g. sync with the life partner to enjoy an active social life followed by a shared shut-in but alternate with friends so you can pull each other out of a lazy or down phase).
Surround yourself with well-chosen friends who are willing to hear every detail that will matter to your justice-obsessed literal mind if you are to trust their council.
Learn how to reframe towards gratitude on the fly and teach others too - at least point good things out on their behalf when you can.
Care! - For some people, this may entail having to increase empathy but having the ability to put yourself temporarily in the shoes of the person you are having an emotional exchange with is a tremendously efficient dialogue mechanism so always try to make that person/story/moment be the centre of your momentary hyper-focus.
Don’t “Do the Robot” at Work
Don’t try the conformity path. Don’t try to fit in. Or speak like them. Act like them. Pass as one of “them”. Be politically correct like them. Be fake like them.
Don’t buy the “being professional is being emotionless”. It’s an unexamined misconception that has become a cultural norm and it hurts our ability to collaborate. If you as an autistic person who may find social interaction hard are willing to admit you are human, and have feelings and so do your teammates, they matter and you want to work on understanding them, what right does the enterprise have to find the topic “too fluffy” and hide behind the command and control of the 90s?
Dare to express yourself however you think you’re at your most eloquent even if it will never be in their wooden, political, perfectly-chosen language that means nothing. Send memes to describe and normalise what autistic people perhaps need like less peopling, use the mug that reads “social battery recharging in progress come back later” or share the funny ADHD video, and show your teammates who you are.
Feel free to come up with as many productivity hacks to avoid deadlines or to bring them closer, to avoid demands or have them more clearly expressed, to have enough distraction or none at all, to have enough breaks or none at all and finish in 2 hours and in general to split the work day into sizes and methods that make sense to you and allow you to be at your best and ignore external pressure.
Don’t be afraid to fight for your needs -if your team has enough organisational leeway - Can’t do calls? Ask your colleagues to use mainly text with you. Can’t face the camera? Propose that the team has it as optional. Can’t “people on Tuesdays”? Set your status to busy. Etc
What else would you add? What do you do? Share it in the comments if you find it in your heart to chase the intellectual karma of having given your advice too and if you could use any of the above drop me a link and tell me so you make my day.