Autism and slowness

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I was very slow as a kid and was always the last to finish. My mom used to call me The Pokey Little Puppy. I also hated getting rushed. Mom would turn into a nag machine and start screaming if I was going too slow and I used to shout "Okay" when she get impatient just to give her a hard time. But I learned to be faster as I got older.
When I worked swing shift I got told I needed to work faster so I did and then I got told I needed to finish one thing first and then do the next. But ironically I was told to do something else so I had to leave my task unfinished.

slow at anything requiring dexterity with hands. till now I can't make paper swans. slow at verbal instruction, math , rote memory. faster at abstract concepts like chemistry (I used to get top marks for it.)

I was actually called Schneckchen(little snail) by my preschool teacher(age 6)

I have been wondering about this recently.
I'm in the Officer Training Corps in the UK and I seem to be so much slower than anyone else to pick things up, especially how to load/unload/make ready/make safe a rifle. It really stresses me out because I feel I'm letting everyone down, but I just can't remember the stages, even though I've been through it so many times. Everyone else seemed to pick up almost immediately.
My old boss at my Saturday job also complained about me being too slow, especially with washing up. This caused stress too, I think I followed her instructions too closely.

Very slow at answering vague questions.
Not talking at all does not help people's patience at all, too.
I check everything 10 times in my head (I do not count, this is either a hyperbole or an approximation) and 10 more times on paper.
Surprisingly, I miss some big things a lot.
I have been told autistics usually cannot separate foreground and background information, even if it is not sensory.
And I used to be horrible separating cause from effect.
This made me think if usual crime intervention would be useless against an autistic psychopath.

I'm very slow at things. When I was taking classes on campus, I was always the last person in the class after a test. It takes me a long time to comprehend the meaning of what I'm reading, which is part of the reason.

The more I'm rushed the slower I am; however, if I'm not under any pressure at all I can usually move at a pretty good rate.

I am notoriously slow when eating. I am a slow reader, but my comprehension is unusually good. I wish I could slow down conversations. That is one reason I prefer posting on forums to on line chatting.

At work, I used to be slower than I am now. When management complained, I tried to do the same thing only faster. I ended up a nervous wreck! I now try to estimate the amount of time my supervisors want me to accomplish the task, and do what can be done in that amount of time. If I run across something that my supervisor was not aware of, I will ask for clarification from him. I often follow a strategy of doing only the minimum that is required, and then if there is time left over, I will "fine tune" to my own standards.

I am not slow usually. When someone is hovering over me or rushing me I will not be able to concentrate and I will make a lot of mistakes because I will rush through something to get them to leave me alone. I think I was slower than usual as a kid though. I remember being yelled at for it and aggravating the adults. I don't know if that is more common for most kids, though. I fuss at my daughter for it too.

When I was in leadership school I would always be first to finish the tests. We had to leave the auditorium as soon as we were done, and I would hear them uttering things under their breath when I got up to leave after 20 minutes. I had the highest scores too. One guy rushed to be done before me once , but his grade suffered. It was a joke in the classroom about me. But when we had to do a writing exam I was much slower. I was one of the few left when time was up. I still made the highest grade, though. It just takes me longer to organize a written work.

It depends on the task at hand. I can't really say what kind of tasks take me longer to finish because I've been very inconsistent in terms of completion time.

I do always have to take a moment to organize everything (tools, formulas, lists, etc.) but that doesn't necessarily make me slower than others.

All my life i've been told I am slow.. I always say I have 2 speeds - slow and stop lol

I have poor hand eye co ordination, and also poor depth perception- which are made worse if I work faster than I am able to, and I end up being clumsy and doing it all wrong, and having to re do it anyway, so I might as well be slow to begin with

I would say I'm average. Besides it's not how slow you are it's the job you did. I read very fast but am not the best at comprehension. I am very fast on rote memory things such as mental math. I can be slow on things that require comprehension. However I think things out throughly.

It depends on what I'm doing.

I'm really slow when it comes to arithmetic and basic reading. My rote memory is average. The only place I really seem to excel is abstraction. I can make sense of things in my head without much effort, yet that's not always what people test for. In a lot of cases people expect rote memory, or some sort of intellectual 'grunt-work' like arithmetic.

It always seemed like as the difficulty of the assignment/test/paper went up, the better I did compared to everyone else.

Hmm, I can relate to a lot of the stuff people here have said. People have often complained about me doing things too slowly, but I just try to make sure it's right. Also dexterity/hand-eye coordination could certainly be better, so that slows things way down if I have to do something physical.

Of course, once I learn how to do the thing well, I tend to be very quick with it... but if it's physical, I'll usually never be terribly fast. Also, reading is a bit slow, but that's likely more related to my low vision... though comprehension is still piss-poor unless it's something that's mostly informational and written in an easy to understand way.