23 Results in Work

Are we 80% colleagues and 20% friends, or are we 100% friends?

My social network is quite big but there are only a very small number of people who I would call my friends. This is because when I met these people, the only mutual motivation we had, was that we liked each other's company and wanted to carry on seeing each other. There was a natural spark between us. This is in comparison to the people I've known through education and work. My initial reason for being around those people is that we were doing the same course or worked for the same company. If we had a spark, it came after the first link we had which was that mutual work project. A mutual project is a really strong way to support my attempts at friendships initially. That's why I have sometimes advised in my work that a helpful way for an autistic person to make friends might be through a particular setting, such as an art club or through swimming lessons. That common interest is an ice-breaker and makes socialising so much easier because you can talk about what you are doing.

How to have an efficient workflow

I recently embarked on a very very big project that took a few months. The project was big already, but what made it bigger was that I did not have an efficient, planned out workflow. I learned a lesson about workflow that could be applied to many other activities. This lesson may be helpful to others who have difficulty seeing a project through to an end because they feel frustrated or confused. A workflow is defined as the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from start to finish. When you do something for the first time, you probably do not have an efficient workflow yet. This is because you don't really know what the project involves, how long things will take, what order to do things in, or even what the final work is going to look like. There is a lot of 'trial and error', figuring things out as you go along, and going back to change things along the way. You might also be asking other people lots of questions. All of this adds a lot of time to the project. You might feel exhausted and stressed by the amount of work you are doing. You might wonder how on earth other people do this seemingly so smoothly. I too have been there! The positive of all your stress and additional time is that, by the time you get to the end of your project, you will undoubtedly have learned an enormous amount. In fact, the best thing that can come out of these time-consuming and stressful projects is that you have discovered an efficient workflow. 

10 tips for learning online

The internet has given us amazing opportunities to learn anything we want without leaving home. However, learning from the internet is a bit different from learning in a classroom. Here are 10 things that help me learn information when I am using the internet: 1. A clear objective I find it difficult to learn unless there is a clear objective, goal or learning outcome. That's why I like tutorials that have clear titles, descriptions or opening paragraphs that tell me exactly what I am going to learn.

How to more easily collaborate with others

Like a lot of people on the autism spectrum, I have rigid routines and ways of doing things. This inflexibility is actually a method of coping and being able to do things well, rather than me being difficult. If I don't have such rigid plans and sequences, then I feel completely bewildered and nothing gets done at all. But what happens when your workload becomes so high that you feel you could benefit from the help of others? Or when you just feel a bit overloaded generally and could do with some practical support from others? How do you fit these people into your rigid routines? This is a massive problem that I face. As soon as other people get involved in my life, things start to go wrong - deadlines get missed, schedules get disrupted, inaccuracies occur, or people just do the wrong thing despite having good intentions. Often it means I end up having to do more work. It's not their fault though. It's just that, because of my Asperger's Syndrome, my life has to be extremely rigid and accurate. If it's not rigid and accurate then my anxiety becomes extremely high and I find it difficult to function.

The work-life balance: how to achieve it

Working or studying full time exhausts me to the point where I am not normally able to do much else during evenings and weekends. I know that a lot of neurotypical people say their work is tiring but I observe that most neurotypical people can still have a 'life' during evenings and weekends. This is in comparison to autistic people. I have read so many autistic people's experiences of work and education and how it completely exhausts them or leads to burnout. 'Free time' ends up being 'recovery time' and relationships, hobbies and 'life' suffer.

Performing your best performance: 5 steps

Most people want to get the best performance out of themselves. They want to do something the best they can. These situations can be anything, such as: giving a talk, hosting an event, having an interview, participating in a competition, performing something either in front of others or just for yourself. There is a method we can follow to increase the likelihood that we perform at our best for whatever situation we would like to be at our best for.

10 ways to deal with unreliable people

I sometimes describe myself as being like a robot. In fact, other people often remark on how routine, reliable, disciplined and predictable I am. It is a characteristic that people admire about me. They tease me about it but then they also say that they wish they were more like me! The main drawback of being so reliable is that the majority of other people are not as reliable, so there is actually a mismatch a lot of the time between me and other people.

How to be disciplined and focused

As an entrepreneur and highly creative person, I find myself managing multiple projects all the time. Although I love what I do, in the past I have suffered from feeling overwhelmed. When I felt overwhelmed due to my workload, I I would freeze and go and hide in my bed, hoping that by doing that, all my work would magically get done on its own. Despite my workload being just as high, I don't feel the need to do that anymore. I have got better at being disciplined and remaining focused.

Being different affects mental health, but what can we do about it as a society?

Being autistic is just one way that someone can be ‘different.’ People can be different in various other ways such as their personality, abilities, sexuality, race, age, gender… etc. These are known as primary characteristics of diversity, which are inborn and cannot be changed. There are also secondary characteristics of diversity such as where someone… Join The Curly Hair Project Community Today This article is available only to members of our co…

Impatience vs attention to detail

I often find myself in a bit of a dilemma. Like many autistic people, my natural way of being is to be a perfectionist with a strong attention to detail. Through working, I have learned that the primary problem with being this way is that it can slow you down and really halt progress. This… Join The Curly Hair Project Community Today This article is available only to members of our community. If you would like to continue to read this article, along with receiving access to our excl…