struggle starting things or "shifting gears"

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infilove
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28 May 2015, 1:58 pm

Do you find that you sometimes struggle with starting something, or stopping something else, or shifting a task from one thing to another? In other words, sometimes it's hard to start a new task when your doing something else, or starting a task when your not doing anything? Like if your on the internet it's hard to get your self to do a house chore? Or if your doing a house chore, it's hard to do a school or class assignment? Especially when it's a task that involves different energy- low energy work i.e. reading books, to highlevel i.e. cleaning room or kitchen? I always find that is hard. The same thing goes if I'm thinking about something interesting. It's hard to stop thinking about it sometimes to sleep or think about something else. Do you relate to this?


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arielhawksquill
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28 May 2015, 2:17 pm

It's called "autistic inertia", and it seems pretty common here.



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28 May 2015, 9:42 pm

Loads of trouble!

Maybe someone will chime in with tips to help...


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29 May 2015, 10:21 am

I also have that problem.
The best thing I can do is to think about the possibility of getting interrupted in any moment(from natural disasters to phone calls from salesmen), not get 100% concentrated in what I'm doing and get ready for everything.
The moment I hate the most to get interrupted is when I play online games, those are the times that I have to make sure that nobody will bother me and I'm done with my chores.



Crazyfool
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29 May 2015, 10:40 am

I have more of an issue making it to the finish line. I find myself overwhelmed with most tasks before they are complete and end up moving on to something less mentally taxing. So I guess you can say I shift gears way too soon... This goes from anything as simple as getting ready in the morning to more demanding things like projects around the house or at work (when I actually held a job).



dianthus
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29 May 2015, 5:40 pm

infilove wrote:
Do you find that you sometimes struggle with starting something, or stopping something else, or shifting a task from one thing to another? In other words, sometimes it's hard to start a new task when your doing something else, or starting a task when your not doing anything? Like if your on the internet it's hard to get your self to do a house chore? Or if your doing a house chore, it's hard to do a school or class assignment? Especially when it's a task that involves different energy- low energy work i.e. reading books, to highlevel i.e. cleaning room or kitchen? I always find that is hard. The same thing goes if I'm thinking about something interesting. It's hard to stop thinking about it sometimes to sleep or think about something else. Do you relate to this?


Yes I relate to all of this. It's called perseveration.

I can also have the opposite problem, where I just flit from one thing to another and never really get anything done.

I try to make the perseveration work in my favor by doing things in "marathons." Like having a laundry day where I just do several loads of laundry, maybe watch videos in between and try not to get distracted with anything else. Or if the weather is really good for working outside, then I will do that and let other things slide for that day.

Getting some sleep in between different tasks seems to help, even if it's just a short nap.