Anyone write SOPs for themselves?

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SOP=Standard Operating Procedures

I learned how to write SOPs in college. Now I'm starting to use the same concept to make my life easier.

Some examples:

I don't wear clothes with holes in them, or any other kind of fabric damage. This is because I can't figure out if it's appropriate to wear jeans with the knees worn out. So I decided I just won't. Damaged clothes go in the trash.

I sometimes send emails or post on message boards things that I later regret. So I decided that if there is any chance that I might regret what I write, I don't send it.

I've also written out instructions for feeding my pets when I'm going to be gone, for whoever is watching them for me. I'd imagine I could probably write a similar style SOP for other chores or things I find difficult.

Has anyone written SOPs for socializing? Something like that might help me. My son's 1st birthday is coming up, so some kind of hostess SOP could be useful.

Heck yes. I even have one for entering unfamiliar lecture halls (so I do not 'pause' and cause a hold-up in the doorway).

I haven't, but you gave me an idea that led to a question, and my question may lead to a kind of answer for you! How would you lay out your SOP? Sequentially, in mindmap form, or what?

Well the clothing and email ones are just mentally noted. For something more complex, I think I'd want it as a sequential set of instructions. What did you have in mind?

I have such for everything that has to do with routines. Needed to get anything done such as morning routine or other smaller things. It just doesn't work automatic with me, so I need to be aware of a lot of steps. Get up, open window, go to bathroom, switch lights on etc.

I have none for socialising though. It's incidentally the very thing all professional fuss over, that autistic people try to get better at socialising with standard procedures and how that doesn't work often.

I personally can't imagine either how that would work since all personal communication such as small talk and is situational based and cannot be come by with standard rules. But then, I'm also the exact opposite - my mind works situational based and can only go about following routines if environment doesn't change.

So I just have to work out social interaction which is ever fluid situational. Which is - just came to my mind! - probably why I don't look very autistic to some people. I appear totally random in social situations.

If anybody got more examples how they try to apply such standard solutions to social situation, I'd be pretty interested to see if and how it actually works and how other people react to standard solutions.

Not exactly one, but I have (at the urging of a friend several years ago, who'd developed one for herself) developed a tiered system of things not to do, in order of importance.

It goes roughly as follows, with the things most important to avoid at the top and least important to avoid at the bottom. This is mostly for short-term actions, not long-term ones, it's about basically what order to channel my self-restraint into what area, some of these are impulsive things, some are compulsive things, and some are just things I forget not to do (like taking my clothes off in public, I have no natural inhibitions on that kind of thing).

Violence towards other people, as well as anything that could be construed as threatening such violence.

Destructive violence towards other people's property.

Things that aren't destructive but that could be seen as potentially destructive to other people's property. (For example, hitting something not hard enough to break it, but the other person doesn't know you won't.)

Thoughts that can lead to violence.

Destructive violence to myself, such as head-banging, biting hard enough to break the skin, hitting things in areas where it messes with fragile joints, etc.

Thoughts that can lead to self-destructive behavior.

Non-destructive violence towards my own property, but which could easily turn destructive if I messed up.

Thoughts that can lead to violence against my property etc.

Stripping my clothes (past the point of normal standards of "decency") in public, this also includes public urination etc.

Screaming in public.

Bad manners of the sort that can actually seriously harm people, or bring serious harm to myself.

Destructive violence towards my own property.

Actions that can passively do harm to myself. (Such as suppressing repetitive movements because it looks weird, when I really need to do it because of overload stuff.) This one can also be a higher priority sometimes.

Non-destructive violence towards my body, such as biting my hand but not hard enough to do damage, hitting my body but not hard enough or in an area that will do damage.

Non-destructive violence towards my own property.

Bad manners of the sort that are basically just conventions, but that disgust people (public nose-picking etc).

Bad manners of the sort that are basically just conventions (such as forgetting to say hi to someone).

Doing things that are just considered strange or unusual.

Etc.

There are other things, but you get the basic idea.

The last tier, which is the last three things, I rarely manage not to do, because I have to spend my energy not doing the other things, and because avoiding those things can be passively harmful to me, which takes precedence. I wrote some of this out in a post awhile back I made about a book of Temple Grandin's about social conventions, because while I think it's good to know those things, I don't think that some of the statements in the book were called for, because they implied that if you don't do these things it's just because not don't know them, and that it's always a choice, and it isn't. I absolutely cannot help not saying hi to people sometimes, for instance.

Last edited by anbuend on 03 Aug 2008, 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

For simple stuff I just have a linguistically expressible rule. However, for things that require a series of steps, I tend to have both a rule that could be expressed linguistically, and break down into contingencies (for variable circumstances) that I also 'practice mentally' shortly before enacting.

Haven't most of us learned what is socially acceptable by now?

I've learned from experience what works and what doesn't.

I have certain rules for more formalised interactions. I say thank you to people and act polite. I say please when I'm asking for something.

Most of these rules are not conscious for me.

Well, I DO have sort of a mental SOP. You spoke of giving it to others, etc... so I knew you write it down in some form.

Wow, yes, I have something like that too. I don't do it right, though. And mine isn't nearly as refined and good as yours. Yours makes sense, because it's important to watch out so that nothing violent or bad happens that can result into issues with the law or similar.

I on the other hand invest my time looking straight ahead, smiling and totally not looking at the floor. And do not consider that I must pay attention to not hit somebody. I try to change that I know I work different from others.

So people think I'm crazy, because I can make such a pretty or something impression sometimes. But at other times might kick someone or suddenly burst out laughing and saying obscene things real loud in a gallery. Edit: unpredictable, that's how people say I am and that's the word I meant.

Yeah. I had two friends working with me on how to avoid things like hurting other people, and they taught me how to prioritize these things.

Screaming was an interesting one.

I didn't really know it was a problem, so I had put no energy at all into avoiding it.

Then a friend got really mad at me once for doing it. And I didn't know why. And she kept saying that screaming is reserved for emergencies, so people would treat it like an emergency. And then also asked me how I thought any veterans nearby would feel, whether they might have flashbacks or panic attacks or something because of it.

So then I realized that it needed some sort of place in there as a thing not to do, but still better than some other things would be.

I actually messed up my list a bit. Non-harmful violence towards myself and my possessions should come further down than screaming. Let me go edit my original comment.

Do you mind sharing it?

I seldom write things down but I have definitely spent my whole life on the two aspects of this that have been mentioned. I definitely decide on positive SOP's for various situations since there is no chance that these will come to me "intuitively". I have tweaked and retweaked morning routines/rituals and workplace procedures over my lifetime and I get into trouble when something happens to disrupt the flow. Usually I completely forget to do something important.

The same goes for the negative types of things that Anbuend lists. I have to learn almost by rote the things that may threaten or creep out most people and then have a memorized rule to avoid this (to me somewhat arbitrary) set of actions. I suppose the more average mind can cover all this by just following a rule like "Don't threaten people" or "Don't be weird".

Finally, like Anbuend has described, paying attention to all these SOP's gets me through the day but it can be tiring. I definitely forget to follow the less significant ones when I get overloaded by the more important ones.

At sixty-one, I don't expect that I will ever get beyond this strategy. However, I know that it works fairly well for me.

OH, I learned what was acceptable a LONG time ago! THEN it changed, and I tweaked, etc....

NOW, it has gone BEYOND what is accepted, or even what is desired, but to what is allowed(the limits of acceptance), and necessary(Something NOBODY, including myself, wants or needs, but what must be done to keep things fair to me, etc...). Where I work now, they are spending perhaps MILLIONS that they shouldn't, and mistreating many people, because FEW seem to know what to do about that last thing I listed. It is TOO LATE here though. Maybe they will end up like the LAST one I was at that was this big.

That other customer was in business for over 100 years, well respected, etc... When they were in line with my ideals, we saw growth. I got work every year for like 5 years and the group that WAS 2 people grew to DOZENS and was looking to EXPAND! The hard stuff became EASY, and projects GREW! Things were constantly getting BETTER! THEN came the political garbage. Everything was practically shut down! I bet if they listened to me, they would have been FAR better off. I KNOW it would have save millions of dollars.

It is like you are at a company and it is bought by someone that wants you to observe arab customs, and speak esparanto. You may have learned everything, and it may even work in your life, but you now have to learn OTHER things!

Well... not necessarily.

And even those of us who know, it's not good enough if we can't access that knowledge when we need to.

I wrote something about it in this post (where I also actually discussed my tiered system in less detail than here).

Here's what I wrote about a lot of this. If you're confused what "spoons" means, go to the post I wrote and click through to the thing about "spoon theory", then read my adaptation of it ("colored" spoons). Anyway here's what I wrote:

Back to the colored spoons.

Many autistic people, like me, are busy juggling a lot of spoons of a lot of colors just to do some of the really basic stuff. A lot of the things covered in this book seem frankly well over my head. I may be able to understand them in the abstract, but it would be very difficult to put many of them into practice. Not because I’m a lazy, unmotivated slacker, but because of this whole thing about spoon conservation:

I’m using a fair amount of spoons just understanding (for some senses of “understanding”) my surroundings, moving my body around, and avoiding some of the absolute most destructive, dangerous, or inconsiderate things I could do: Hitting my head, physically hurting other people, screaming, taking my clothes off, or urinating in public.

Telling my eyes or ears to scan around for human beings takes a large number of spoons. Telling my abstraction and memory to call up a long list of rules for being around human beings costs even more.

These things are not sustainable. They’re not always even possible. As the song goes, “It’s a nice idea… in theory.” In reality, I’m going to walk past people without noticing that they’re people at all. In reality, if I’m walking on foot, I’m going to possibly walk straight into people and be unable to avoid it. In reality, I’m not going to necessarily recognize and respond to a “familiar” voice calling my name in the midst of chaos.

I’ve seen a lot of emphasis lately not just in this book, on learning social graces of various kinds. Aside from being a very culture-specific thing to learn in many instances, the practical application of these social graces is an impossibility or only partial possibility for many people. I can understand learning to apply them if you’re capable and willing to apply them, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with knowing them. But I do worry about the situation of the many people who won’t be able to apply them. Are people who to the best of our ability juggle tons of spoons for little increments of typical activities, going to be simply the rude, lazy, inconsiderate kinds of auties, who won’t accept responsibility and use autism as an excuse?

I know that’s not what I am, at any rate, because I know that I am always learning and growing, and I know that I am doing my best at the spoon-juggling, being as efficient and frugal with my spoons as I can. But I wonder what attitudes towards people like me are going to be. Are they going to be simply dismissal, or will there be some understanding there of the fact that many of us are going to look at books like this and go “Wow, uh, I’m too busy juggling the basics to have nearly enough abstraction-spoons for this”? Is there going to be some hierarchy where people who can do all these things are better? I hope not.

I usually find it easy to adapt my behaviour to a new social environment. I usually observe what "normal" people are doing and imitate them. If they are doing something contrary to my ethics, then I do not copy this. I find flexibility can go a long way in such situations. As long as you obey the law, then there is not a lot you can do that is "wrong". Hurting people is against the law and could get you in trouble.

For me my ultimate guide is my own sense of ethics which is tempered by an awareness that obeying the law is a necessity and can't be ignored.