Stress at work

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I realise that everyone gets stressed at work, but I seem to suffer from this a lot, and having just come to understand that I have Asperger's, I wonder if the two are connected. Here is what happens.

I work as an assistant lawyer. One of my seniors will ask me to do some work on one of his files, then while I am doing that another one asks me when I am going to finish the stuff he asked me to do a while ago, so I go back to that, but then I get an urgent e-mail which takes a couple of hours to deal with....

Maybe I am not good at managing my time, but when this happens the point will come where suddenly I feel I cannot cope - it is as if my mind overheats, or stalls, I get a pounding headache, my eyes feel like burning coals, and I will be more or less incapacitated for the rest of the day, and into the evening. It is as if I have been invaded, my personal barriers violated. When I get home, I sort of half-doze through the evening, totally burned out.

This should not be happening. My work is not all that high-powered, I do not work long hours, and other people in my department cope with the same or worse.

Does anyone else who has Autism or Apsergers get this? Maybe everyone does, and I am just being feeble...

Same here. I get highly anxious simply by having to fulfil the demands of everyday life. My psychotherapist has told me that most Aspies she has worked with share this characteristic. That also fits with many reports of Aspies that I have read from various sources. Life is not like that for most people, but for Aspies, it is.

The problem is that you aren't good at switching from one task to another--maybe you should see if there is a way of changing your job function so that you don't have to report to several people at once.

hi odysseus,

the same happened to me at work years ago.

six things i should have done jump out at me in hindsight:

1. prioritise ( this could be either according to importance of the task or the person who asked for it( )

2. have a rough knowledge of the amount of time each task would take and sum them up in a little note, after you prioritised them

3. once your schedule is full, inform the person who gives you a new task, and politely ask them to make the decision which one they would like to be completed first. - this does not have to come in the form of a whinge " But i've got already .... !" (no boss likes those, ), but in form of a choice: " Would you like me to complete A or B first? ".

4. learn to say "No" ( do not be scared to do so, because your superiors have seen your commitment, the quality and speed of your work and willingness to be flexible ), but offer a time slot in tomorrow's schedule f.ex.
this makes it very clear that you got a clear view on the amount of work you have on your table, know how to organize it, and are willing to fulfill your employer's demands as long as they are reasonable and "doable" ( how i hate this word, )

5. learn to delegate, things like copying, filing, retrieving files ( make a list of all you need for the person that helps you )
i do not know your office hierarchy, but if you ask, you might be able to get an intern to help you.

6. if you can, pool activities like outward bound calls, get it over with and decrease the sensory overload.
this helped me a lot, because i knew, after i collected all the information i needed, i could knuckle down and work through the cases one by one quickly, without having to deal with another person on the phone keeping me waiting, trawling through their desk and telling me their life story to pass the time....

to your consolation, i was not good at any of them! hindsight is bliss

Odysseus, in addition to PaleBlueDotty's excellent suggestions, I recommend doing what you can to minimise the number of interruptions. In particular, keep your communication tools (e-mail, IM, phone, etc.) switched off for most of the day. Check them when you arrive in the morning, after lunch, and at some point late in the afternoon/ early evening. Hopefully this will give you long blocks of time in the morning and afternoon to focus on whatever needs to be done. If someone else complains about you not responding to e-mails/ messages immediately, simply explain to them (or your boss) that frequent interruptions reduces your productivity. (There is research that shows this.)

If your office is as noisy (and hence distracting) as some of the places I have worked, you might want to try wearing ear plugs.

Finally, from time to time I have looked into organisational/ productivity software, but I am overwhelmed by the choices. Some people really like this one
http://www.trgtd.com.au/ .
Also see,
http://wikisummaries.org/Getting_Things ... oductivity .

(I wish I knew of these things years ago. Typical office jobs wore me down. Now I work a low level job that is highly structured and repetitive, and hence low stress. C'est la vie.)

Good to know I am not alone.

I can completely relate and I do think that one of the traits of Asperger's people is that we cannot multi-task. I've had jobs where that ability was not only desirable, but required. I feel fortunate that I have been able (even before I began to suspect I had AS) to recognize this about myself and seek out areas in my field that require less multi-tasking and more extended focus on a single (albeit complex) task. Unfortunately, this transition has taken place for me over a number of years, during which I suffered and struggled tremendously against my own abilities. My last boss was a very kind-hearted and thoughtful man who encouraged me not to fight upstream and my new boss is fantastic.

I'm an investment analyst and am currently engaged in a large retirement plan document interpretation project, but my boss also wants me to write an operations manual for the process I am developing as I create ways to most efficiently accomplish it. At first, he wanted me to work on the writing "in between" segments of the project. I tried, but found that the effort to switch between tasks left me wasting a lot of time "adjusting" to the switch. When I explained that I needed larger blocks of time to work on the writing project, so as not to waste his resources, it made enough sense to him on a business level that he is now using me efficiently as a resource. I just had to teach him how to best utilize my strengths, without drawing too much attention to my weaknesses.

Perhaps, your plan of attack on this issue should be twofold. First, look for areas of your law practice that most interest you and that you can be absorbed in for long periods of time without interruption and work toward specializing in that area of expertise over the long-run. Secondly, in the meantime have a chat with your supervisors about your strengths and the best way that they can utilize them from a business-based perspective. They have no doubt spent a great deal of resources on you already and perhaps they just need to understand how they can get the most out of their investment. If you go into the conversation from the perspective of trying to help them put you to better and more efficient use, rather than from the low self-esteem perspective of "I'm not like everyone else and so therefore I am a burden on your resources because you have to do things differently to accommodate me", you'll lessen your own anxiety about it. The truth is, they want to make it work for you, because then they get more out of you. And you are good at managing your time... you just manage it differently.

The only reason, in my opinion, that the modern day workplace has evolved to be so multi-tasking is that the majority of people only work efficiently in short bursts. We actually have an advantage over that in areas of work that absorb our attention... you just need an environment that takes advantage of your strengths. I hope that helps!

I used to have a job that did that to me regularly. The best advice I can give is to write down your projects on a list; I'm talking about a physical list on paper, not on your computer. Break each of the projects down into smaller tasks and work through them as methodically as possible. If someone asks for something you're not working on at that moment, let them know as politely as possible that you are currently involved in another project, but will be able to give them an answer on the other later in the day, tomorrow, on Monday, etc., whichever is most reasonable and if it's something new -- this is important -- let them see you add it to the list. This tells them that you are taking their request seriously and they are more likely to be reasonable about when they need the results. Try to work through projects in the order they were given to you unless your employer specifically tells you that something else is of higher priority. Also, take regular breaks, even if it's only long enough to go to the restroom and have a drink of water, stretch, or take a few deep breaths. Make sure that you aren't trying to do too much in a day; I read somewhere that no one's to do list should have more than seven projects listed for a single day; any more than that is simply too much for anyone to reasonably handle.

Awesome advice! I have used this before, but I think I had the wrong job and boss for this idea. I ended up having more than thirty items on the list and I would regularly show this to my boss (a few jobs back) and ask her to help me prioritize. She was constantly rearranging things to suit her whims as she was extremely disorganized and seemed to change her mind about what was supposed to be a priority on an hourly basis. It was infuriating and ultimately I was dismissed after two years of that without an official cause. Fortunately I received severance and unemployment, but that was a tough pill to swallow. I guess what I forgot to say before is that sometimes it's them and not you.

Oh yeah i can relate. There are many times at work where customers will keep interrupting something i'm doing, or there's just too many people asking for different things in a short amount of time, and i just mentally shut down... Then i just give the shortest answers possible and try to avoid having to do things for people. If the problem continues enough or some other negative factor comes in during my already agitated state, then it can lead to a meltdown. It's rare, but i've been known to get to the level of yelling and hitting things and hurting myself a few times during my two and a half years at my job. The thing is, coworkers seem to be able to handle much more without getting even close to that stressed out over it.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt128995.html

topic with a link to a PDF for employers of people with Asperger's.

from an NT perspective but it will give you a good synopsis of common issues aspies encounter at work, and some proposed solutions. problems with multitasking is very common.

some kind of partial disclosure to your employer might be helpful.

for an idea of what i mean read p 22-23 of
this book (link)
(click on "first pages" when the sample pages come up and those pages can be read online)