My biggest disagreement with life in general, and I now believe this is the fundamental difference between how my brain operates and how the average NT brain does, is how things are prioritized.
In my brain, things are prioritized per their material utility. If something has immediate utility, a visible benefit to someone, or if it's solving a pressing problem, they are on top of the importance list. It may sound like a callous way to put it but health related, life saving action is categorized in the "high material utility" bin for my brain.
In addition to this prioritization, I also tend to equate difficulty of a task with its perceived importance. "If something is very important, then the stakes must be high also" my brain says. On the flipside, if I know something is trivial to accomplish physically, it's not "important" in my brain.
In the life made by NTs for NTs, most "very important" things are trivial to the extreme. Bureaucratic paperwork, deadlines, remembering birthdays, most jobs are just mindless busywork to me, with no perceived importance whatsoever, but somehow they seem potent enough to stop the world in its tracks for the majority of people.
This creates enormous stress for me, and is responsible for most of my burnouts in my 50 year life. The dichotomy between my sense of priority and that of the world around me.
When I was still in my PhD program, the work I did, the information I and my team uncovered were the priority for me. The integrity of the work was paramount. Increasingly, through the feedback I received from my advisor, I started feeling like something was wrong and the real thing to focus on should have been how I marketed my research and my efforts rather than the work and the results themselves. This led to my burnout and me leaving before I defended my dissertation.
I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this topic. Do you also think your version of what's important is fundamentally different than the world's?
@CynAq@actuallyautistic I have pretty much the same experience. All the times I've been burned out it has been because of the profit motive, because I needed to repeatedly do useless stuff (i.e. not having time for stuff that actually helps people) in order to be able to pay rent.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic
Your post states plainly at least a way in which I work. I can do the dishes much more easily than checking my bank account or arranging a regular check with a doctor.
If someone I know needs to go to a doctor badly, I can usually just do it, but I'd struggle to do the same for myself.
This definitely describes at least significant portions of how I work, so thanks :otterlovey:
@CynAq@actuallyautistic I feel that a lot. There is also a big disconnect with the way NT's see other people.
The idea being, most NT's don't seem to have this instinctual recognition that they're talking to another person, who is conscious and experiences life with the same set of senses that they have.
It's fairly apparent in media - there is very little exploration of the mind, and a lot of surface-level emotion.
The importance and prioritization, as you say, are all out of whack with most people. There are important things (such as improvements to quality of life) that get pushed to the wayside for the sake of looks and appearances, the fear of being judged.
E.g. getting a pair of super comfy clothes, vs. clothes that other people will not complain about.
If I retrospect a little bit, a lot of my behavior has been very much shaped by trying to fit into an NT world. Not so much in the way of trying to fit an image of who/ what I /should/ be, but moreso in the way of avoiding behaviors and appearances that I knew would be criticised or otherwise lead to a bad reaction from the people around me.
Frankly, it's painful.
All I want for the future is for people to speak their mind directly, bluntly, without these social games and pussyfooting around.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic
It is clearly the case for me. Don't know if it's the autistic part, or the ADHD one (I guess both play havoc with my priorities, depending on the circumstances).
I know birthdays are important for some ppl, usually think about the date a few days in advance, then forget about it.
I'm also in a constant disagreement with my boss about the priorities, and will always put ppl on top of the list, whatever it means for the business. Useless to say he usually does the reverse...
I struggle with reconciling multiple conflicting ways of ranking priorities. I want to optimize for have an enjoyable and fun life. But I also want to optimize for accumulating wealth and achieving financial Independence to increase my security and freedom. But I also want to optimize for my family and community, doing what's best for the people around me. But I also want to optimize for my curiosities and pursuing the most interesting challenges. :blob_dizzy_face:
Hm.. well I guess I probably default to doing things that other people are waiting on. Obligation is a terrible feeling for me, so I probably ironically prioritize these sorts of obligations so as to close the loop and shake that feeling and get back to the sense that I have the autonomy I actually desire.
I struggle with reconciling multiple conflicting ways of ranking priorities. I want to optimize for have an enjoyable and fun life. But I also want to optimize for accumulating wealth and achieving financial Independence to increase my security and freedom. But I also want to optimize for my family and community, doing what's best for the people around me. But I also want to optimize for my curiosities and pursuing the most interesting challenges. :blob_dizzy_face:
I identify with a lot of this, and it's gotten me into trouble in some workplaces, and praised in others.
Now that I'm self-employed and set my own priorities, I find it much less stressful to live into what I identify as important, and let go of what's not, and the work I do for others, and their overwhelmingly positive feedback, reflects that. It's much more satisfying for me to be my own boss.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic I do see my priorities as fundamentally different from other people's, but it doesn't always mean my system is right. If that makes sense.
I try to purposely integrate other people's priorities (birthdays! "thinking of you" texts! "good morning" exchanges!) if I care about them, because it makes them feel cared about.
I expect the NT people in my life to accompany me when I do stuff that is important to me (picking up public litter; visiting the same animal sanctuaries over and over), in order to make me feel cared about, so it seems fair.
Do I understand why that stuff is important to them? Nope! But they seem to like it.
I agree that it can be good purposefully acting in ways to respect other people's priorities but my post is about the stress this deliberate action causes in my brain.
It's not that I never want to show my love and appreciation for other people through their means, it's just that I need to be aware of the effort it takes for me and somehow mitigate the negative effects of it on my own well being.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic Yeah, feeling like the rest of the world is ignoring real problems and focusing on mindless busywork is absolutely a huge source of stress for me, and I didn't mean to hand-wave that away for you. I more meant that I understand what you're saying, but I experience it a little differently.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic another ex. I'm a medical Dr working in a lab. For me, the most important aim of my job is giving the proper diag to the proper patient in due time. At the beginning in my lab, I often asked for infos to another lab, very simply and directly. But when my colleagues knew that, they turned upsed bc of tensions and a sort of competition btw my lab and the other. I needed to have my mails checked by a colleague before sending them always to a few ppl in the other lab.
1/2
@CynAq@actuallyautistic it took me months and many conflicts to work that way and still don't understand why losing so much time and energy in silly politics and dealing with professors's susceptibility instead of aiming at the best for the patients together.
Bc of that I was often considered as arrogant or bad-tempered. Always seemed unfair to me.
@CynAq
Yes. When people say things like "I used to mask but it's too hot out right now/it ruined my makeup/I feel weird being the only one masking", or when people say "yeah, I hate what they're doing to those poor animals, but I just like bacon so much" I feel like we live on different planets. @actuallyautistic
@CynAq@actuallyautistic I have very close problems.
For a very recent example : 2 friends invited me to their wedding. It's only a few days before the ceremony, by talkinh with my NT mom, that she asked me if I thought about a gift or some money and I didn't thought about it before (although it seemed obvious to her). So I asked (with great anxiety) and it was a money collect. Only on D-day, I suddendly thought that I need a card to write smthg to with the money. Another stress burst...
1/2
@CynAq@actuallyautistic by chance, I always have some neutral cards (for my defense, most commercial wedding cards are for hetero couples, which was inadapted).
But when I was invited, the only thing I thought was my friend's happiness after years of love, and mine of being invited. Thinking about anything else didn't come to my mind, but once again gift and cards seemed obvious things and I had to deal with this anxiety (in addition with being a whole day with unknown ppl)
2/,3
@CynAq@actuallyautistic and the fact that my mom (unconsciously) let me feel as someone selfish or who failed smthg very very elemental.
But for me, the most important thing was to be on time at the wedding to please my friends.
And it happened to me so many times, it's sometimes a pain in the *ss to deal with.
3/3
@CynAq@actuallyautistic
I don't naturally assign much importance to birthdays, yet I observe that they are important to most people. So I have reminders so that I at least send birthday greetings--and I'm delighted how happy it makes them.
I'm a retired research librarian Finding what people needed, finding good resources, teaching less experienced users how to evaluate resources mattered most to me. I was never good at the marketing side of being a librarian in a private sector setting.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic
"most jobs are just mindless busywork to me"
Oh yeah. it's always shocked me how people often react like if I committed high treason, when I let this on. They feel attacked or de-valuated, like if you don't take them and their world seriously. But really, we can't go on. All this superfluousness is costing us all the resources that we need for the lifesaving issues.
And then they'll come up and say things like "why space exploration, who cares what the moon does" etc.
Like, bitch, all that technology you rely on everyday to make your trivial life even more trivial comes from aerospace research (albeit 40-60 years after it's invented).
Most of that "taxpayer money spent on research" actually goes towards poor grad students so they can put some food in their faces. Nobody gets rich from publicly funded science.
@simid@CynAq@actuallyautistic Most of my IT jobs have been about sitting around doing nothing all day, or checking for errors on servers no one uses, or running tests that have meaningless results. I hate it, but it seems to be the only sort of job I can get.
The bit about the Ph.D. resonates with me. I defended mine, but still.
It seems to me that the notion that people are valued according to merit does not hold.
People are valued according to popularity, and whether that has anything to do with merit is quite uncertain.
Some people are popular and do incredible research.
Some people are popular and fudge everything, but they are good at marketing. Witness the spate of paper retractions and people in high positions stepping down.
My priorities are often at odds with what the rest of the world prioritizes.
Actually, our discussion about degrees reminded me of something that a lot of people find very important, but that I couldn't care less about.
Graduations and diplomas.
I've not been to the majority of my graduations. I did not go to my formal high-school graduation. However, I was at the informal graduation. After that, however, I had 4 or 5 other graduations, and I wasn't around any of them.
I do have some of my diplomas. However, I never got the piece of paper that proves I have a Ph.D. What would I do with it? Put in on a wall, and brag??? I know this is very important to some people. Not to me. I did my Ph.D. My school can verify it. A piece of paper changes nothing.
I'll say generally speaking "bragging rights" don't mean much to me. I'm baffled by people who spend large sums of money on dubious products only to be able to brag about the purchase. Some people are impressed. I'm not.
I had certificates and diplomas. Not many but a few. With a rebel yell, I hung on my office wall a framed copy of my Certificate for winning the Under-16 shot put at school and nothing else. For a lot of my working time, it gained a few looks but when I made director, it was strongly suggested I take it down - some BS about respect. Screw that.
I was told I had to put up a "brag wall" in my office at work - all the pieces of paper that say I have some idea of what I'm talking about when I open my mouth. My quiet rebellion demanded that I include something frivolous. @yourautisticlife@CynAq@actuallyautistic
@yourautisticlife
OMG, same!
I've only been to my High school graduation and that's because I had a girlfriend who wanted to go. Other that that one, I didn't go to any of my higher ed graduations.
I don't value diplomas and certificates either.
If anything, they remind me of my fuckups rather than accomplishments.
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