Am I just lazy? Problems with motivation

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(Cross-posted from psychforums.)

My dad told me in a conversation that I've always had trouble with motivation. And that does make sense. I tend to get caught up in little projects that are irrelevant to my life. As my dad says, I don't follow the current of my life; instead, I just get caught up in the little eddies and whirls and get confused. Things are cloudy for everyone, but for me, things are cloudier and it takes me more time to work through that cloud.

Well, I wanted to share, I have a verbal IQ of 131 (WISC-III), as tested when I was 15 years old. I had just come from the bottom, a major psychotic break when I was 14, and was enthusiastic about working my way back up. I was enthusiastic about high school and college and where I could go. By the time I got to college, I had matured greatly and had moved past much of the dysfunction I had earlier. So I'm enthusiastic, I've got a gifted verbal IQ, and I'm ready to hit the books! Do you know what my GPA ended up being? Did I end up becoming a magna cum laude or something? No. I ended with a GPA of 3.0 out of 4.0, which is still acceptable, but you get the sense I didn't meet my full potential.

Here's what happened: I'd get tired. I'd struggle to concentrate on the reading assignments and homework. When a class had a lot of homework, then a lot of it wasn't going to get done. I'd often skip class or be late for class, so I'd end up being a B/C student, with some classes I made an A in because they didn't require much homework and/or I was already familiar with the subject. Of course, with a verbal IQ of 131, you can kinda get away with a lot of it, but people will look back and say, You didn't meet your full potential.

There are times when I'd feel guilty about not doing my schoolwork, resulting in a burst of motivation where I'd push myself harder, but I'd feel exhausted by all the effort within a few days and the motivation would disappear: I'd go back to my baseline. Nevertheless, I was still proud to graduate in 2008 with my bachelor's degree.

I've pretty much set my life around being able to stay at my baseline. I won't work 60 hours a week. I won't engage in much socialization. I get tired at work if before work I have to run a bunch of errands that same day. I can't stand having my routine disrupted. I've learned to compensate for it, but it still leaves me feeling a lot of guilt.

I think I get beaten by a sluggish cognitive tempo, which is highly comorbid with ADHD, both inattentive and combined type. A sluggish cognitive tempo results from a slow processing speed. The processing speed index was consistently the worst performing measure for me when I was a kid (last time for me it was 80). One of the problems I read is doing a lot of homework or taking notes; it's difficult for people with slow processing speeds.This knowledge is somewhat empowering and assuages my guilt, but it makes me wonder, How can I manage my life? What kinds of jobs can I work? (Anything highly and constantly engaging seems out of the question for me, as per that other thread.) Am I just stuck to stagnate, to keep myself in this safe situation?

Well, at work I just worked hard.

In further analysis of this, I think I can do short bursts of activity, but tire easily after a few hours. Like one time when I was working a shift where I was called in for the snow and was set to work 12 hours straight. After about 8 hours, I started getting really fatigued, and luckily a co-worker who was about to leave was willing to take my place that night. I realize that I get really tired if I work much more than 40 hours a week, my baseline, which really discourages me from doing so to save up money.

Recently, since transitioning back to being a woman (or just not looking sloppy anymore ) , I started really doing my hair and stuff and came up with a strict schedule this past week. However, after a few days of that, I started getting tired and slipping; I've kinda picked it back up in the last day or so.

My house is a perpetual mess. I do little cleaning tasks, but I am extremely slow, and I get tired after about 10 minutes or so. There are lots of stuff I don't even know how to consider and most of the time things are like shapes and colors to me. I look at it and I have no use for it, and I'm like what on earth do I do with this? Do I throw it out? Do I give it away? To whom? Do I try selling it? Boy, that'd be a pain in the butt, but maybe I'm just lazy and am supposed to try to put in the effort. And since selling stuff seems overwhelming, I do nothing and just drop it back on the floor, or maybe put it in like a box or something, but usually I just drop it on the floor where it was. I'll get a well-defined series of tasks complete, where what needs to be done just sort of comes together, then I'll start running into this problem of what do I do with the stuff, and then I see more stuff like that, and then I'm like, I'm done for now.

You're not just lazy. It sounds like you have executive function issues, which are part and parcel with ADHD. If you have sluggish cognitive tempo also, that just makes everything worse.

I have the same problem!! ! I can't get myself to do hardly anything, especially if I don't like it. Everybody else just thinks I am selfish, take advantage of others who are trying to help me, and want attention.

Congrats to you for getting a degree. I did not finish college.

Is this an Asperger's Syndrome thing? Are we just not motivated to be productive like everybody else?

This describes my whole life, and I find that realizing the cause does nothing to mitigate the damage done to my self esteem from years of not being able to do things and not being able to explain why.

This describes me also. I can't go from one task to another. I have to stop in between to lay down and stare at the pictures on the walls or do something I like, such as reading WP posts. I have to spend more time doing nothing than doing something or I get terribly exhausted. When I was taking college classes I could not handle a full coarse load, I only took 2 or 3 classes at a time. The only job I was ever able to hold on to, I worked by myself and could pace myself and get things done in my own time.

One kind of job that is part-time and high-paying is one-on-one tutoring.

I have done this kind of job since high school, and it mostly required that I knew my subjects well.

I was able to do this kind of job with generally not good social, communication, and organizational skills, because I was specifically good at teaching math and science subjects.

Many parents are willing to pay $30 to $50 per hour, because they want their children to do well in school.

I used to tutor programming languages in the community college that I went to. I liked doing that but it did not pay well. It was paid through the school's tutoring services.

Is it really due to laziness? I doubt. It should somehow because of Asperger.

For me, I can't find any tiny things around me, such as controller, a clip or a bill at my house. Last time when I invited friendly to my home, which I could organised quite well. I do cooking of spaghetti, steaks, oyster, red wine & white wines. Well, good day indeed. I can run the program smoothly as I have time to prepare. But after finishing the dishes, I become blank. What else to do? When my friend ask me how the TV controller is used, I got lost, well, my head is like "how the hell do I know about using this controller? My dad, mom and brother used it, I seldom touched it!". I replied, "I dont know." All of my friends feel really odd. I understand that, because I am supposed to know! Eventually, my broker take out some gaming cards and we played together. It's lucky that the events goes quite smoothly.

When I am at university, the only part time job that I can do is having one to one tutorial. I teach science, economics and math. All friends around me can find a internship, or got highly paid in group tutorial or even get scholarships or exchange abroad. I can hardly do those. So hard!

All of my friends, although only a few, say that my thoughts are so deep and so analytic. But it's like, I never can really get to execute what I am thinking into the real world. The thoughts just stays with my own mind. I get absent minded during my daily tasks, getting up, teeth brushing, breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. I simply do them but in a totally absent minded way. All people around me need to hospitalise me a bit since I am too clumpsy. But I have not really reached a state of disability yet, just being very "lazy". That's how everyone describe me.

Think of it this way: you're a person who's been diagnosed with a severe mental illness , a psychotic disorder at 14 and a serious developmental disability (ASD) and you have a bachelor's degree and can hold down a job. From that point of view you've done extremely well IMO. Remember that IQ isn't everything, you can have a high IQ and still have serious problems.

I haven't had to deal with as much as you, I do have mental illness but not a psychotic disorder ( GAD, mild OCD or OCD traits and episodes of depression) and then I have ASD of course. My verbal IQ is also in the superior range. Nevertheless, I have motivation and attention problems. I have my B.A with honours and had strait As when I graduated but I graduated when I was 27 years old and I have failed and low grades on my record from earlier years. I began the degree at 18 but dropped out for a few years. In the end of high school I also got severely depressed and dropped out of school for a year and then went back and finished with strait As. When I was successful in school I had a reduced course load, accommodations for exams and didn't work at the same time. I can;t find a job and am going back to school this coming September to do a certificate and get trained in a specific skill. The best I'm hoping for is to be able to work part time when I do graduate. I've been a miserable failure at holding down jobs and get very overwhelmed and exhausted easily (and show it at work) and have been fired from many jobs after a couple of weeks. If I can work part time and hold down a job for many years and contribute something to society (even if I have only one friend who I only see once a month and no romantic relationship , as is the case right now) I'm going to try to be happy with that.

Edit: *HUG* if you like them

daydreamer84,

*hugs back*

Anyway, I have 3 life goals. I'm concerned now, with my recent and current foray back into mental illness, that due to my executive dysfunction, intolerance to stress*, and tendency toward social withdrawal, I may have to give them up.

1st goal: To speak Japanese fluently. I can read Japanese pretty well and listen to it OK, but speaking and writing suck. This parallels my language development as a kid, where my speaking and writing sucked, while listening kinda sucked, but boy could I read. Some actual practice in putting together sentences would help, but words don't come to mind, and being socially withdrawn, I don't interact with speaking very much.

2nd goal: To live in Japan. The best course of action for me would be to teach English over there, but there are some issues. I've read the job is high pressure. Now, I can probably adjust OK to living in Japan, especially with a provided apartment and cell phone, etc., as I've taken 3 trips on my own there in the past that turned out OK. I would speak well enough to be able to go to the store to speak in Japanese, go to appointments--the language in appointments I hear isn't as hard to learn as the back and forth give and take of friendly interaction,--etc. It's the job that worries me. Now I hear that half the day will be spent in meeting and preparing, with the other half doing actual teaching. I feel if I can do teaching by the book, either in a class, or 1on1, I can probably do OK, but if they expect me to have more complex interactions, I may run into trouble.

3rd goal: To be a woman. Now, this might have different intentions for others, who may not include SRS in "becoming a woman," but when I made that goal I had SRS in mind, and I still have SRS in mind. However, in my current situationm, with my current job+, I would have to save up for it, and my job just doesn't pay as much, and unless I'm getting way more coming in than is going out, my executive dysfunction really interferes with my ability to save. Moving to another country for it is likely out of the question as it's not covered in Japan. The best solution would be to take up that homeless mission offer in Oregon, establish residency in Oregon, and go to school at PSU, which does cover it on their plan. Only, they may give up their plan next year and what about student loans,--which I was able to avoid last year--and agh! All this thinking and scheming! My head at this point becomes a tangled web of what ifs and what abouts! How am I ever going to get SRS, save a windfall?

So I'm sure you can see my frustration. Maybe I just expect too much out of life?

* I know, people are like, but you work a full time job! However, my job is easy, compared to say working at McDonald's, though it does take intellectual ability. It utilizes my strengths, namely my ability to follow protocol. Basically, my job consists of long periods of time like how a security guard would spend, where we just monitor what's going on, punctuated by bursts of activity, where we either process requests or help put out fires. During that monitoring time, I have lots of time to think, read a book, or even browse the web.

+This job is perfect for me (and my supervisor tells me I perform well at it), which is why I don't wanna leave it. However, to accomplish my goals I may have to, and finding another job like this may be difficult. At this point, I don't think I could handle a job that would require constant activity above my baseline. There's some stress in my current job, but not much, and yet I provide real value.

EDIT: I also have FMLA at my current job, which is helpful for managing stress and for making short-notice doctor's appointments. Changing jobs would entail a loss of that.

Your job sounds wonderful. I'd like a job like that. Maybe you can get a leave of absence from your job to live in Japan for 6 months or a year. Would you want to do that or do you want to stay there indefinitely?

Good goals, they seem attainable and the third one is of course very important if you don't feel right with the sex and gender with which you were born.I can understand the frustration with not being able to save up a large sum of money for something like that though. Teaching English in another country is good for saving money. I know someone who taught in Korea for 5 years and she saved A LOT. It was really hard for her to come back when she knew she could make so much money there. As for handling the interaction involved in teaching, there are some stories of people with ASD being successful at teaching ESL in another country. Daniel Tammet is one. He wrote Born on a Blue Day. He said people were more accepting of his quirks in a foreign country because they knew he was foreign and gave him more leeway. Of course, just because one very high functioning person with ASD can do it doesn't necessarily mean you can but it's worth a try, you might be very good at it.

I'd like to learn another language too but don't think I have the motivation for that. Is your special interest Japanese culture or something similar? I guess that would be enough motivation. Also, you're already half-way there, you've got the receptive part down ( the reading and understanding speech).

I want to minimize my risk. As well, I think I am more sensitive than I used to be. How can I test whether I am capable of this? I don't want to leave my current job, find out I can't shake it and come back to shambles in America.

I've realized that motivation for doing things you should do but you don't feel like doing "always" comes from social understanding/intuition. Unlike special interests which you can be motivated doing for no apparent reason, just because you love it.

Since social understanding/intuition is often the weak spot for ASD people, we often lack the ability to be motivated for doing things that just "need to be done because that's what's best for us".

Sometimes I'm in "aspie-mode", sometimes in "non-aspie-mode", so I know how it feels myself. I think the motivation from social understanding is often much related to a competitional aspect. It's like feeling you are a part of a group, you are aware of your own social status, and you don't want to lower your "rank" in the social hierarchy, so you are "compelled" to do everything necessary to stay on top in the social league. This force is very powerful if you are properly aware of your own social status. Aspies tend to not be that.

Because I don't have a natural social understanding but learned, I have a hard time accepting that you are eventually a "product" on the social market with a price attached to it: If you're independent, your price is higher. If you have good looks, your price is higher. If you earn a good income, your price is higher. If you have good social skills, your price is higher. If you have friends, your price is higher. If you are intelligent, your price is higher. Everything that makes you are better survivor increases your price on the social market. Social motivation is eventually about desperately wanting to increase the price of yourself, because you know your probability of survival increases the higher your price is.