14 Results in employment

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.

The 3 factors needed to succeed in any situation

There are three very important factors that impact on whether or not I will have a positive and successful engagement. These factors are relevant to any and every engagement - work, hobbies, friends, dating, meetings, etc. It might be very helpful for you to recognise what these three things are. You might find you can incorporate something into a situation that you're already finding very hard and find that it becomes much easier; or you might find it explains why you struggle with one thing yet excel at something else...

How could the challenges of autism be seen as strengths instead?

I have a bit of a problem looking at a lot of the literature and listening to people talk about “the positive traits of autism”. Whenever I hear or read these lists I usually largely disagree with them, because I feel that what is being listed is actually more to do with an individual’s personality rather than… 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 ar…

To lead or to follow?

I am probably the perfect example of the classic stereotype of autism. I am very, very solitary - through choice and also because of my quite complex social difficulties. Any involvement with others generally makes me uncomfortable. This experience might be similar for neurotypical introverts so I think that neurotypical introverts will also find this article helpful. One major barrier to being this way is it makes it very hard to work with others in both leader (employer/manager/teacher) and follower (peer/classmate/colleague/team member) roles.

Unresponsiveness and lack of communication in ASD people

One of the reasons that having friends is hard for me is because I am not very communicative. My friends (before they understood my condition) would contact me but my responses would always be minimal and would not encourage further communication. For example, I might answer their question but then say nothing further. I'm sure many of you will be familiar with the following sorts of interaction:

How to be a team player at work

I am naturally a very, very solitary, self-motivated, intuitive person and generally I try to avoid collaborating with others on anything. A lot of other autistic people also greatly struggle working with other people and prefer to work on their own. Realistically however, when you work, you may well end up having to work with other people on occassion. I am learning to be a bit more of a team player. Here are some of my tips on how to better work with other people when it's very much out of your comfort zone and against your natural way of being. My conclusion is that you don't have to change your personality or pretend to be something you're not, but you could adjust your behaviour a little instead.

Customer service training is conflicting!

I think it's quite interesting that in traditional customer service training, people who work directly with customers (such as receptionists, shop assistants, checkout assistants, etc.) are trained to use language in ways that are generally quite conflicting to the usual ASD-friendly communication guidelines! I also work in veterinary marketing and we work a lot with improving client communication. That inspired this article. I thought you'd find it interesting too.

ASD adjustments to the interview process

The National Autistic Society suggests that more than 1 in 100 people are affected by an ASD. They also suggest that as many as 80% of people with an ASD are not working, yet are willing and able to. If you are an employer it is likely that you will come across a person with an ASD at some point. However, it is down to the individual whether or not they disclose their condition on their application form. Some are afraid to do so in case of discrimination by the employer. (My advice to people with an ASD would be to generally always disclose (if not at interview, disclose when you start the job.) If a person has disclosed to you that they have an ASD when they apply, there are some reasonable adjustments you can make to make things better (more productive and sincere) for both of you. In this blog article, I will briefly give some suggestions on the sorts of things you could do to help a potential candidate with an ASD when you see them for interview.

How might autistic people manage projects?

I've been thinking about project management. I think of projects in three stages: Planning Doing End result A part of being self-employed and running a business is that I have to manage a lot of projects (from start to completion) and I have to think of the work in terms of the bigger picture. So I work on all three stages all the time. This is opposed to someone who is employed and perhaps is more used to working mainly on the ‘doing’ aspect of the project and might not have to think much about the bigger picture. Lately I've had to do quite a few things that I really did not like doing, however I've been very happy with the final outcome. Possibly one of the differences between me and some of my friends and colleagues is that they very much like ‘doing’ whereas I very much like ‘thinking.’ Maybe this is another aspect of introversion (me) vs extroversion (them). Here are some thoughts on the subject of project management and how it may influence people on the autistic spectrum.