Trouble with spending my time wisely

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Hey there!

I am new to this site.
I have been dealing with Aspergers and Depression all my life.
Recently I was addicted to marijuana for 5 years as well.
I think I have pretty much defeated my Depression and my addiction to weed.
Ironically I never realized how much my Depression worsened my Aspergers until about a year ago when I really noticed it after allot of soul searching.

Recently things have been bad in my life, after which I decided to dedicate myself to changing my situation.
I immediately stopped smoking weed and decided to tackle my depression as well.
With that out of the way there is only my Aspergers left.

Earlier today, in the morning and the afternoon, I was pretty productive.
But then that stopped, I became lazy and ended up wasting almost 8+ hours on doing nothing.
Which sucks because especially right this very moment my life is in a complicated place were time is precious. (It's a long story but, I am at the risk of loosing 2 jobs).

Can you guys relate to this problem,if so what do you do to prevent this from happening to you?

Congratz on all the progresses!
Personally I haven't found a method to prevent time wasting. I have very low energy, so just making it through the day at work feels like an accomplishment. Weekends fly by in an unremarkable string of empty hours. I'd guess that having a schedule could help with productivity if you have the energy. Then there's the technique procrastinators use to be productive (check the easier/more enjoyable items off your list before the more complicated stuff).

I mostly stopped by to give you props though. None of what you accomplished is easy, so a tip of my hat sir!

I also waste time too often. Sorry, I'm too dumb to know any solutions! Out of curiosity how did you conquer depression?

Well on the progresses, I think it might be too early to get excited about it.
Although I do thank you for the compliments!

I feel like I am not as bothered by my depression right now, but that it's lurking around the corner.
Currently I feel trapped and kind of desperate.
Stopping with smoking weed and battling my depression has opened up the deepest source of these feelings, namely how much my mother has failed me throughout my life.

When I was diagnosed as a child she vowed that she would help me get through school etc. My mom has always been very "pragmatic" (to a fault, in my case).

Throughout my life I have always tried to talk to her about the things that truly bothered me.
I have always tried to talk about how I didn't fit in at school, had close to 0 "real" friends etc.

For most of my childhood and teenage years I was abused both mentally and emotionally by my big brother, whom I had to share a room with.
This was going on every day, yet nothing was done about it and my brother never received any repercussions.
No matter how often I brought up the subject she would always act dismissive and allow this to continue for years on end until my brother moved out ( I am only 2 years younger than him). He moved out when I was around 18 years old.

Not only that, but I had a bad time at school as well.

In my primary school I never fit in. Even my mother will admit that it is not so much the Aspergers as it is the fact that at that primary school most kids simply weren't that interesting or intelligent. She recognizes this because my brother and little sister had the same issue.
back then I accepted that I couldn't change my primary school because of many, many practical reasons.
I ended up having to "make friends" with the best which was available, which was not great.
All my "friends" were also bullies most of the time, even the person that she taught was my "best friend".
But I always accepted from studying the situation objectively that this could not be helped, so I held out hope for highschool.

However, I was diagnosed with Aspergers (although it was already suspected since my birth), and a bunch of other s**t happened and I ended up on a school that was intellectually slightly below my level. (all my grades were good enough except for math, which was so low that I had to go to a lesser school).

Me and my mom had decided that it would be best to send me to a normal school, however she f****d up along the way.

We had found this school that seemed pretty good.
But the problem is that from the get go I ended up being put into a pretty sh***y class, in fact really most people in my year were kinda sh***y and I couldn't fit in.
A bajillion times I would try to talk about these things with my mum. To see if maybe I could be placed in a different class, or to at least have her make note of this problem in her mind.
I need to stress that I did NOT necessarily want to be put into a special education school. In fact most people agreed that I would fit into higher education if it was not for my math problem.
But first and foremost I just wanted to be placed somewhere with people that are interesting, respectful, mostly friendly, and were I would have the opportunity to foster healthy and rewarding friendships.

So, as I said, I tried to talk about these things with my mum literally countless times. Yet almost every time I was met with a bitchy, know-it-all-attitude, and she would attempt to shut down the conversation immediately.


This made me desperate. As not only was I forced to attend a school were I had to make myself invicible just to avoid becoming a target of daily bullying. But I was also bullied at home.
There was literally no place for me to be myself and actually organize my thoughts about this.

And the only person that could help me simply refused to even acknowledge my pleads for help. To the point were she now claims that I have never raised these issues. (which I have on an almost daily basis for years).

I am now 22 years old and struggling with depression coupled with my aspergers.
I have also quit my addiction (for the 2nd time now) and hope to stay quit. However it was a severe addiction of about 5 years and using for so long, and now quitting, has also taken it's toll on me.

Because of some recent big fuck-ups at my jobs related to my depression and addiction (I have 1 small time job and a saturday job), I risk losing both.


Because of how my mother has refused to even make note of any of these things that have plagued my life for almost my entire existence she now has this very warped view of what my life has been like.


This is really f****d up because she is pretty much the only person outside of myself that can help me with these things, but to this day she refuses to even acknowledge what my life has been like.

The worst is that things have only gotten progressively more f****d up. And most things in my life are moving in such a way that I can only expect things to get even worse.

I completely understand your issue w/spending your time more wisely. That is something that I have struggled with my entire adult life. At school and work I never had an issue since I followed the rules set down by those in authority so that when I started to live on my own and there was no one to dictate my schedule I started to drift and barely got chores done much less anything else.

Recently I have found that I have to treat my home life like I do my work life, schedule a relax time, schedule a chore time, dinner time, etc. I stick to it as closely as possible since once I start to slip it all goes down hill from there and I go right back to not caring at all about my schedule.

After a few months, I started to feel more comfortable and since there was less catching up I was able to schedule more "fun time" stuff. It's gonna be hard but hopefully this will help some.

Thank you for the advice. It is something I have read before and it is indeed a mentality that I am trying to adopt.
Currently however I am dealing with allot of emotional pains, which are exhaustive. But I am trying to deal with these things and finally clean them up. Instead of just ignoring them like I used to.

But I am on the road to a better, happier, life and I think it will then be easier to adopt a good work ethic.

If you still have some difficulty with adopting a better work ethic I would advice that you should think if there are perhaps some emotional problems in your life that could be exhausting you, without you noticing it. Unresolved family issues etc. and stuff like that. You could also try guided meditation, I find that it helps put my thoughts, feelings and priorities in perspective. it also calms me down when I feel anxiety. Normally I don't feel anxiety but I have been going through some bad stuff lately.

I appreciate the advice, thankfully my work ethic is pretty solid. It's the home life where I still struggle some. You're probably right about the unresolved emotional problems, I have issues indentifying emotions and rely on physical manifestations to know if I'm happy, sad or whatever. So I may not realize that something is hurting me.

I am a huge proponent of meditation, I think it's a huge help. I use it to help with sensory overloads while I'm out and about and helps with sleep.

I have a similar problem, but without serious emotional issues. A spend a little too much time online instead of doing household chores. Here are the things I do/have done to manage:

1. Make lists of what needs to be done and put them up where I can see them or set alarms on my cell phone or computer

2. Accept limitations and plan less things to do each day

3. Give myself a long deadline to accomplish things (for example, I'll give myself until the end of the day or within 2 days rather than try to finish by a specific time)

4. Imagine myself doing the chore

5. Do what I want first and chores second

6. If a chore is big, I split it up over multiple days

7. Spread chores out over the day instead of doing them all at once