Minimalism

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I've got a theory brewing. Hear me out:

Word on the street is one of the stereotyped traits of AS is of going off on mostly unrelated tangents during conversation. I think it's a little more complex than that; my theory is that there's a spectrum of maximalism and minimalism in personalities, on which NTs tend to be near the center and aspies tend to be near either extreme. Lots of aspies resort to tossing every fact they know at people in order to convey an idea (possibly because of a weak theory of mind), but there are also some who do the opposite and can't help but get right to the point, with nothing extra added in (which might also be related to ToM).

I'm definitely on the latter end. For as long as I can remember I've had a compulsion to be "minimal" in everything I do. Way back in elementary school, I noticed I could always achieve every goal on writing assignments except for length requirements. I did what the teacher asked me, but my papers always ended up too short. Even today I have trouble adding filler to papers; I read over it and see the stuff as extraneous trash. What's really interesting is that I don't notice it in others's work! A good thing, too -- it'd be hard for a true follower of minimalism to enjoy Stephen King novels. But I've only recently noticed just how broad an effect this has on my personality. Nearly everything I do is minimal, in a sense.

- If I have a specific goal in starting a conversation, I head straight for it with little small talk. As far as I can remember, I've never done anything that could be called rambling.
- When I write prose, it's very spare, and my hate of redundant adverbs knows no bounds.
- Most of my posts on WrongPlanet are simple, direct, and rarely more than a paragraph long (this one is long only because it's a bit hard to explain and because the subject interests me so much).
- I'm the opposite of a packrat -- I only buy things I desperately need, and I immediately throw it away if it no longer serves a purpose. My mother had a hissy fit when I threw out most of my childhood toys while cleaning out my closet. No room for nostalgia in there!
- A million smaller things I rarely notice.

Am I a freak among aspies or am I on to something here?

well, you're certainly the opposite of me.

i find it hard to write in few words - i'd used up 30,000 words on my thesis (40,000 limit) before i was half way through, and so had to prune like mad. and i'm a terrible hoarder - just like my mum and nan (both of whom i suspect have/had AS).

so, are we back to, "if you've met one aspie..." etc. territory? or are we just at opposite ends of the spectrum of min/max?

having said which, you wrote a long post, and i wrote a short one. aaargh! are we cross-infecting each other?

Minimalism. Definitely minimalism. I like things expressed in the smallest number of words possible.

When I was writing papers for my doctoral program a criticism was that my writing was telegraphic. When I am ill I use fewer and fewer spoken and written words.
When I am better I tend to go on and on about something until people get sick of it.

I go back and forth between these states. The illness is food related.
I am not feeling so good today.

I hopr you stick with and develop your ToM ideas. I get pretty random, over explain sometimes and assume people already know what I'm talking about at other times. Conversation is an exercise in Newtonian approximation, I gradually zone in on the level of the person I'm talking with.

Maximalism. I find so many details to be absolutely necessary that it is unthinkable to not mention them.

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Minimalism, I find so many details to be so absolutely necessary that it is unfathomable that the other party does not already know them.

When writing an academic paper, I agonize to even approach the length requirement. I don't know why that is because I feel I have explained the matter in depth and included all relevant information. I usually use many long quotes to fill the paper up.

When I speak, though, I ramble to get to the point. My writing is clearer.

ghotistix wrote:

I seem to be a bit of a mix.

I can never reach the minimum for papers, the last report I did was two pages and the minimum was 3. I repeated the same information so many times that I felt like I was cheating almost and I still didn't reach the minimum. But I'm a huge pack rat, I don't like throwing awy a lot of things. In speech, I'm usually blunt but can ramble when I'm interested and tend to mumble when shy or unsure of myself. But my speech pattern is more ADHD related, and not very AS.

If I don't enjoy it, I'm a minimalist. If I do enjoy it, it's random.

I know I take too long to get to the point. My mom will often get mad at me because I don't always directly answer a question when she asks it. She seems to think I do it on purpose to be a pain in the you-know-what, but that's not true at all. I usually tell her that if she would just let me talk I'd get to the point soon enough.

I like your theory ghotistix. I would be on the minimalist end of the spectrum.
I also had difficulty reaching the minimum length in college essays. I had plenty of ideas, I simply did not need alot of space to express them.

I am a minimalist to a T. I don't really care to write in long boring sentences, thou that is me.

A bit of both. I prefer conciseness, but will write extensively to get my point across.
As a composer, I try to get my point across in as few notes as possible, but I am a maximalist in the sense that I tend to pour all my emotions, ideas, self, into a piece.