Is it better for Aspies to work part time?

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ooo
Velociraptor
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29 Jun 2012, 7:25 am

Todesking wrote:
Ask your work adviser if he is willing to make a living off of part time work. :wink:


Haha, true.

If you've never worked, you could start with part-time, then ease into full-time.

Your ultimate goal should be full-time work with a good/decent salary plus health benefits.

Part-time work is better than being unemployed, so it's a good start. Ultimately, you'll want more money, and thus a full-time job.



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29 Jun 2012, 8:49 am

I much prefer working part -time - but around 20-30 hours a week (3 days minimum) if I can.

Part-time certainly a really good place to start, but it depends how much money you want / need to make as whether you can do this for the long term.

At one point I was working in a part-time job and really enjoying it but then my partner lost his job so I had to swap to working full-time. This was not what I wanted at that time, but the full-time job I took turned out to be really great for my career development, so it worked out really well.

At the moment my SO is earning enough to cover both our needs and expenses, so I can study more and not earn anything and then hopefully get the job I really want to have (we also have savings from when we were both working).

I'm hoping soon to be able to work around 25-30 hours a week in a job that's pretty well paid so it will still give me a good enough income for the standard of living I want to have even though I'm not working full-time.

For me money isn't everything; I want a job, I want to be reasonably paid, but I also want down time to get mundane stuff done like housework, without feeling overwhelmed - I also need a bit of space just to be still and quiet from time to time for my own well-being. I would rather be paid less, work less and be happy, than work loads, be paid more but not happy. Working part-time is definitely much less stressful for me.



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05 Jul 2012, 12:30 pm

Does part time cover the bills you have? How stable is your job, do you think you may loose it? Do you need to save money for something big? Does your job stress you out? Is it very customer service intensive? Do you need alot of time at home?



nolan1971
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05 Jul 2012, 2:27 pm

I think it is a matter of how severe your symptoms are.
For me 25-30hrs a week max and no more than 6hrs a day.
Any more than that pushes me over the edge!
I am bipolar also so my mood shifts every 4-6 hrs so going home before that shift helps big time! :D



DoniiMann
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06 Jul 2012, 1:38 am

Last time I worked was full time for three years. Five days a week I got up at six am to prepare for work, worked all day, travelled home, had shower, dinner, washed dishes, and tried to finish by eight-thirty pm. All my personal time was shortened to eight-thirty til ten-thirty. Two lousy hours.

Weekends was taken up by taking rubbish to the dump, cooking, swimming lessons for the kids, shopping, etc.

I [b]hated that lifestyle. It effected me so much that even though I'm not working nowadays, I get really annoyed if it looks like the dinner/dishes part of the early evening is going to be later than usual. I'm really jealous of my evenings.

Unless I was working in something that interested me, I wouldn't consider going back to full time. Unless our social security system failed and there was no more disability. Survival trumps personal preference.


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ooo
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22 Jul 2012, 12:27 am

Cash__ wrote:
I work full time. I like my job and wish I had more time to work. I often leave work and then go home and log on to the network from home and work more. I am an engineer and work alone, to me work is my wind down time. I like being alone with a problem to solve.


Perfect job, bro.



zxy3cpn
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22 Jul 2012, 3:09 am

I work full time and would hate working part time, as I'd be stuck at home more.


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Sweetleaf
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22 Jul 2012, 12:47 pm

Gaya wrote:
I think working part-time would be better, if it weren't for the fact that part-time workers get no benefits. Not having health insurance is a serious problem if you wind up in the emergency room for some reason or find out you have a serious life-threatening disease. Part-time work would be ideal for an aspie who is somehow under a spouse's or parent's health insurance.

For the record, my weekly hours are being reduced from 11 hours a week to 6 hours a week and I hate it.


Hmm, well I find not having employer health insurance to be a good thing....sucks if either of those happen but I think insurance companies are a scam. But in my state I think they have help for if you run into an emergency like that and don't have insurance.


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22 Jul 2012, 12:48 pm

ooo wrote:
Todesking wrote:
Ask your work adviser if he is willing to make a living off of part time work. :wink:


Haha, true.

If you've never worked, you could start with part-time, then ease into full-time.

Your ultimate goal should be full-time work with a good/decent salary plus health benefits.

Part-time work is better than being unemployed, so it's a good start. Ultimately, you'll want more money, and thus a full-time job.


Who are you to tell people what their goal should be?


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howzat
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22 Jul 2012, 3:17 pm

I think its good to start of with part time work if you have never worked or have been out of work for a long time and as for myself i started doing part time work as i was new to work however later on my manager was pleased with my work so decided to put me on full time work after just being with the company for a month or so.



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23 Jul 2012, 3:11 am

I liked working full time more. Got me away from people I didn't like in college.



JessicaAnne
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23 Jul 2012, 4:21 am

I agree with a balance appropriate to the individual. Personally, I'm so drained, fatigued, bored, and pissy after working too many hours in a job I dislike. It also fosters even more depression and panic over how to muster up the willpower to keep doing the banal work day after day.

Yet the problem with working part time for me is time management. I have no follow through which is upsetting.



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23 Jul 2012, 10:39 am

I agree with who mentioned severity of symptoms. As the years have moved on for me, I can only handle working full-time for a few months of the year. The other tough thing nowadays is actually working full time (40 hours or more a week) at one job. So the stress of working two part-time jobs with executive dysfunction screwing up scheduling and other things, I can see that as being the tougher of the options.

Personally I'm working at getting a steady income for myself through work I can get for myself rather than work for other people or companies. I know I have a diverse skill-set that with the right motivation could make good money, not rich but definitely comfortable. If that doesn't work the only option is disability, which if I get I'll still make things and cook for people on the side.

I think it's more important to feel useful than to "have a full-time job". It's about your personal responsibility and what makes you feel good about yourself and your contribution. I can't say for anyone else what that usefulness ought to be in life, but it can certainly be as simple as being the one to take your dog out for a walk. Consider all you do a part of the bigger whole and your actions, however others may view them, are never small because they're part of life, your life.



Lahmacun
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28 Jul 2012, 1:20 am

After many years of struggling with fulltime work, I finally discovered that I do a lot better with 30 hours a week, rather than forty, and ideally broken up into three ten-hour shifts on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. That is/was ideal, of course, and most employers can't or won't offer that kind of situation. But hey, it doesn't hurt to dream! I talked my last employer into allowing me to work that shift because of the nature of the workplace schedule: "It will be more efficient for the customers to have me here later in the evening, and other people can also stay late if they shift to working three or four ten-hour shifts a week." Now everyone loves it, and no one wants to go back to working five days a week! Me voluntarily cutting my hours from forty down to thirty saved him money, and I made sure there was really no loss of work performance. Of course, I could only do this once I'd paid off enough debt and had reduced my living expenses so I could "afford" the loss in hours.

Forty hours a week, working five days a week, was soul-sucking and physically debilitating. There was no time to do personal errands (banking, doctors, etc.), and it was an endless, monotonous grind. I would always leave these jobs because after awhile the emotional and physical fatigue of that schedule would make me so crazy I'd end up quitting. My physical health would suffer because I was too drained to exercise or cook properly, and my social life suffered because I couldn't bear talking to anyone after being surrounded by people and their b.s. all day. I enjoy working and I enjoy earning money...I just can't do it anymore on the standard fulltime regime.

Good luck!