Found a possible solution to Autistic Inertia

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I try not to talk to myself like a drill sergeant would. I would probably only rebel if I did. Similarly, I think it's very important when allocating tasks to myself, to avoid treating myself like some kind of programmable dogsbody with no feelings. So I'd think twice before committing myself to scary, impossible, or laborious things. This is a machine that is difficult to stop, so I try to make sure that I don't start it on stuff that isn't worth the pain. I only put unpalatable stuff on my plate if I'm pretty sure there's no better alternative. In short, I try to treat myself like a human being. That might seem obvious, but there was a time when I made some pretty hard and unnecessary demands of myself, and it took time to grow out of it.

If a job feels daunting, I try to ask myself what the first step needs to be, and what the best time would be to take that step. Once I have some details like that, it often becomes a lot easier to face. When the idea of achieving a goal is too much for me, I often feel a lot better about the less demanding remit of just making some kind of a start. I try to divide work up into steps, not just to make it seem less infinite, but also to make it clear in nuts-and-bolts terms exactly what to do.

Also like a good boss, I try to listen to my misgivings. If I get a bad feeling about getting on with a job, I try to work out why exactly that is. I don't try to rubbish it or jolly myself along, I take my misgivings seriously and look for ways of changing the work in response to them. Often those misgivings don't feel so huge once I've expressed them and looked at them objectively instead of leaving them in my unconscious to spook me, in which case I can just crack on. It's important not to be too weak - I'm quite happy to tell myself "oh, just have a crack at it and let's see what happens!" Often I lose patience with my own pussyfooting habits and rebel against them like that.

Another trick is to deliberately set things up so I'll be under pressure to get a thing done. That's not easy because I have a strong aversion to pressure, and tend to feel that the world is a much better place without it, but there's no doubt that fear is a good driver for me, so I might do something like promise somebody a result by a particular deadline, or arrange for a delivery of something that will need preparing for. Frankly I suspect I play a rather unhealthy unconscious game with myself of imagining that I'm weedy and will never get this or that done, because when I look at my history, I always do get the important things done in time....I often cut it fine, but basically I'm very reliable.

That's starting. I don't have so many strategies for stopping. It's definitely hard to stop (I once read that one way to tell if somebody is HFA or AS is to give them something tedious to do - the HFA person will simply stop if it gets bogged down, but the AS person will carry on to the bitter end, even when they make it clear that they hate the work). So I think it's important to be aware that we're up against a powerful force. There's also the difficulty of stepping back from the detail to see the big picture - naturally, if I can't do that then I'm not likely to consider the idea of stopping. I think I've managed to train myself to glance at the overview and contemplate breaking off, at least occasionally. Alarms can be useful for that.

I think to some extent my own coping system resulted in misdiagnosis for years. I have a really hard time starting a project, or activity, often if I think about it at all I end up not doing it, either because I psych myself out, or because by the time I am done preparing the oppourtunity is gone. As a result I often find that I need to just impulsively start doing things to ever get them to happen.

far to often a project just seems insurmaountable, leading me to avoid it, then hate myself for failing to follow my dreams

Sharkgirl, I think you pretty well summed up it all, I couldn't have written it better myself! Praising yourself for what you've achieved, always focusing on the nearest details ahead of you, progressing by little steps. It's like tacking into the wind, as ol' sailor-men say.

I always have more problem with starting than stopping, I guess I'm either lazy in a non-autistic way or it has something to do with my ADHD traits.

I haven't posted in awhile - because of autistic inertia? Perhaps a different manifestation? I seem to be able to focus on one stream of social media at a time. Face Book XOR WrongPlanet XOR <DeviantArt> XOR <other social media> XOR ...

(For those who are not computer geeks XOR is "exclusive or" meaning one or the other but not both)

Anyway ...

Executive functioning is a huge for me. I can't switch between streams of input without risking some level of overload.

As for getting started on a task, I wonder if it is partly that I see all the detail involved and become overwhelmed. Washing the dishes seems simple but if I "play the movie" and rehearse the entire sequence, I have to examine and process every frame of the the film.

This idea of just doing a little tiny bit makes sense because I would be able to look at only a few frames at a time. Instead of processing a million "frames" I only need to process "getting out of the chair" then "walking to the kitchen" then "turning on the water".

The danger in such a fine grained approach is that "getting out of the chair" does not necessarily imply the next action should be "walking to the kitchen". Without retaining some information regarding the global task of washing the dishes, I am likely yo get out of the chair and walk over to the cat. This actually happens. I will think to do something, get up, walk to the next room and do something else, having totally forgotten the original intention.

My 6-year old son gets overwhelmed with homework.

I try to get him to do it and keep doing it until he's done. He whines and fake-cries about it to try to get out of it and keep playing Geometry Dash (video game on iPad). I try to be firm and encouraging like a coach, but not an a-hole like a drill sergeant.

Sometimes it's the amount of pages he has to do, the amount of repetitions of writing a letter or word, or some type of writing exercise he claims is too hard (it's never beyond his abilities).

I try to tell him to forget about how many pages of homework he has to do. Ignore everything else on the page. All he has to think about is the very first one item (question/letter/word/math problem; whatever it is) on the page. That's all -- that one thing is all he has to think about right now. For example, "Can you write a single letter 'Y'?" "...=whine=...yes..." "Ok, that's all you have to do is write a single letter 'y'"

Then he does it -- I saw "Awesome! ...Ok, can you write a single letter 'y'?"
After a few rounds of this, he blazes through the rest of the page of whatever. But then on the next page, I have to do the same thing.

I just try to get him to get in a mindset of taking it one bite-size piece at a time instead of swirling his mind with some insurmountable journey to Mount Doom (sorry for the metaphor) that is 3 whole pages of K-2 homework. I think it will be a while before he can launch this mindset himself, if ever. But I'm hoping...

MEANWHILE -- I CAN'T STOP PLAYING TETRIS ON MY IPHONE!! !! when I'm supposed to be working on a freelance illustration for an album cover. This project requires photographing models (just myself & wife in various clothing and poses, like running/screaming scared city pedestrians) with limited space, time, lighting options, and then picking through, retouching, composing, reshooting, with constant distraction of guilt-tripping, ever-present in-laws, my older son's Intermittent Explosive Disorder meltdowns, etc. etc.

I'm having trouble dealing with my own inertia, which is pretty bad lately.

What I am trying is making detailed check list. I need to break these down to even more specific, smaller tasks before it actually becomes helpful.

This Tetris thing has really been a problem! I've deleted the game several times, and then redownload it again almost immediately. This could be a whole other thread, but it's a factor in my current inertia problem!

BUT I'm inclined to agree with the elimination of distractions and the specific, detailed to-do checklist ideas. If only I had any control of the environment I live in...

Who needs a mechanical alarm clock when they have a cat?! Those walking, talking, meowing, purring alarms are the best!

This is known as "Chunking" and is a well known coping strategy for Executive Functioning issues.
Chunking