Inability to plan or set goals

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In many ways my life is rigid and seemingly highly planned. I operate on an 8-day schedule that blasts right through other people's weekends and holidays. I get up and go to bed at the same time each day. I eat a limited number of foods that follow one another in pretty strict rotation. And a vacation has to be of once-in-a-lifetime potential to be worth the havoc it wreaks on my schedule.

Yet within that rigid framework I seem to be unable to plan, set goals or follow instructions. If I need, say, a bookcase, going to the store and buying one will be the last thing I do. Bookcases in stores are expensive, rickety and "obvious." I will adapt something else for use as a bookcase, do without a bookcase, buy a unique antique bookcase, wait for someone to give me a bookcase, or (this would be best of all) find a bookcase abandoned at the side of the road. I seem to be frozen in place until a very special bookcase somehow materializes.

Notice that making a bookcase is not an alternative. That would require measuring, drawing a plan, acquiring materials and tools and setting aside a time and place for construction, all goal-directed activities that seem to be beyond me, unless a maximum of three steps is required.

In another example, the reason I eat a limited number of foods it that I suffer from food allergies and can buy only a few safe foods. Cooking for myself would increase my choices, but that requires following a recipe. I take a look at the fourteen ingredients, two of which are exotic and require a visit to parts of the supermarket I have never visited before, and my eyes glaze over. Instead I just throw together the things in my refrigerator and hope for the best. Once a decade this works out and I am as pleased as if I found a bookcase by the side of the road.

I'm well aware that waiting for your needs to be met spontaneously is no way to run a life. Do others have this much trouble setting and meeting goals, making plans and following instructions?

I cringe at the mention of the words, goal setting.

It's called executive dysfunction and, yeah, lots of spectrum folks experience it to one degree or another.

I compensate for not being organized by overplanning, in ridiculous detail and if any part of my plan doesn't work out I have no idea what to do. For examplee if I assign myself to read 1 chapter for X class but don't do it I will probably get ridiculously behind in all classes until I devise a new plan. I am moving in with my boyfriend next year and I have pages of "plans" -- budgets, grocery lists with approximate prices (which I researched), costs to move in together, things we'll need to buy before, things will need to do beforehand, maps with bus routes to and from my potential school and potential apartments, etc. When I was applying to college I kept every single brochure I got, and I had a list of over 80 schools and I methodically deleted them one by one until I got to a final 10. I do this because I can't do things on the spot like other people, everything has to be pre-conceived.

Like you, if say my bookcase broke I wouldn't even think to buy a new one, I'd probably just leave them in a pile. All my planning is exhausting especially since I often focus on details instead of on the end result so I may obsess over finding the exact dollar I want to spend on an apartment instead of saying here's a range I could live within. I didn't even realize for a long time normal people don't plan every excruciating detail because they can have a big picture and fill in the details as they go. When I cook I can't make different parts of the meal at the same time because it overwhelms me. I can follow recipes but I can't deviate from them at all and just do a bit of guesswork.

Same goes for me. Sometimes I can even tell myself that I have to do something, but I never get it done.
Sometimes I can feel as if I have alzheimer's, it's really bad!

The difference is though, I know that I have to do the things... It's really annoying (both for me and people around me) and can take a lot of resources too.

Sometimes people are like this in general, namely going convenient before doing things that they need to do. It is not something which is related to Asperger's in itself, but rather to what you feel for doing. I guess you don't have a responsible position or a spouse, in which case you in general have fewer inhibitions to descend down to reducing your daily house-work to the minimum sanitary precautions.

I have seen bachelors with homes that look like they've been through the London blitz, underpants and pizza packages on the floor. These people were not exactly model aspergians or suffering from any other mental, physical or neurological conclusions, but were one hundred percent neurotypical.

What you say is true of most Asperger's and Asperger's-related traits. Be it sensory difficulties, social anxieties, executive function issues, dyspraxia issues or whatever, most people will have "some amount" of that trait. It's what leads neurotypicals to dismiss people who disclose Asperger's, saying, "but everybody's like that."

The difference is a matter of degree. It's one thing to be a sloppy housekeeper and quite another to be unable to cook a burger and fries at home because there are too many steps and it's impossible to keep them all in order and do them in the right timing. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts those neurotypical bachelors with underwear and pizza boxes on the floor have zero problems if they decide to cook a burger and fries. Whereas someone experiencing genuine executive dysfunction may have frustration and tears just from trying to make a simple bowl of popcorn.

No, not exclusively ...


Yes, and that is a different matter ...

... and welcome to WP!

Thank you for your welcome.

I wouldn't claim it's a different matter altogether. While the behaviour is expressing itself quite differently, it's still of the same calibre, simply don't caring or being used to one's surroundings. It is neither a different manner because the OP is an aspie(?) or the other examples I mentioned are neurotypicals, since that would be like claiming that an aspie who is angry is having an abnormal anger due to his or her Asperger's, while a neurotypical who is angry is legitimately angry about something, or that an aspie sitting on a chair is somehow sitting on the chair in an intrinsically different manner from a NT even though seemingly identical.

Conversingly, such logical fallacies are usually launched by people in some kind of authority (whether if it is within education, work, psychiatry or some kind of bureaucracy) in order to be used as a power technique against their aspie clients, at least here ("well, you might feel angry, but you should see it all feel better when you take your medication/start that learn-to-know-yourself-course with all those nice, chubby Down's people).

The only thing I would advice the OP is to go to the supermarket and start buying some food he could eat. Allergies could really reduce one's performance.

How would you define Asperger's? If everything we do is just like what NTs do, why is there a special name for us? You have joined a forum dedicated to people who fall under a category labelled as "autistic"; what, in your own words, does that mean?



Please don't insult or speak demeaningly of other groups of neurodiverse people. It does nothing to further anything positive for anyone and it's just petty.

I care very much about my surroundings. I dream of having them clean and orderly. Yet, I am only able to achieve this maybe a few days out of the year. That is the difference.

Yes.

I'm starting to wonder if I can really ever support myself; I've been having so many problems lately remembering to do things. It's like I can pretty much master taking care of myself, but if I add anything else, things start to break down because I forget to do important things. I don't know how many important things I'm supposed to be doing that I'm not doing because I've forgotten or can't figure out how to get started. It's ridiculous sometimes...

Seems to me that the problem is that "making a plan" becomes a task in and of itself. I become fixated on the plan. It needs to cover every contingency and possible outcome. It seems that NT's don't really execute their plans so much as plan in enough detail and execute enough of it in ways the are close enough to the plan that they are able to keep moving forward.

Yes. Me too.

I hate to say it, but when I was watching Red Dwarf and Rimmer kept making revision tables (for non-Brits, that's a study schedule) and revised revision tables (because he spent so much time making his revision table that he missed out on some of the revision time he had scheduled) and then re-revised revision tables, I only half-laughed because it reminded me too much of myself to fully laugh.

(In the end, Rimmer has re-written his revision tables so many times there was never time to actually study for his astro-navigation exam so he has to go into it completely unprepared. As a result, he writes "I am a fish" on the exam paper and then faints.)

That would not change the fact of mere college-dorm "grunge" versus manifestations of executive dysfunction.

Planning has always come fairly naturally to me. All you have to do is gather information, sort it, and organize it. I like gathering, sorting, and organizing things. My goals, however, tend to be too amorphous to plan for.