Dealing with lots going on at work: how to get organised

Some weeks I feel quite content because I don't have lots of things going on. I may have big things but not a long list of stuff and I don't like long lists...

It's when my to do list becomes the length of the weekly shopping list that I become panicky and I don't know what thing to do first. I get mentally overloaded by everything I need to do so I sometimes ignore things, hoping they'll magically go away. I end up burying my head in the sand because I am so overwhelmed by what I have in front of me. When deadlines approach, my utter hatred of failure and messing up puts me into overdrive and I meticulously work through the most urgent of items at the last hour.

But this approach put a lot of stress on me. I find that it triggers migraines and makes things all the more unproductive. I don't like it so I do what I can to avoid things stacking up in the first place. I believe that prevention is the best way to avoid a lot of the autistic meltdown/shut down reactions, if that is at all possible!

Yesterday I felt like it was getting too much at work. I had tasks coming in from one manager and another lot from another manager. All the tasks felt urgent and my head was swimming with so much to do and not a lot of clarity. So I decided I would be methodical and spend a bit of time to work out what I had to do so I could work with a bold aim in mind.

I use Microsoft Outlook for my work e-mail and I use the flag tool (follow-up) to help me identify work I have been given and I can set myself a reminder attached to the e-mail so that Outlook automatically reminds me when things need to be done. The idea is that e-mails can be "flagged" with reminders and I can colour code them with categories as well based on the type of work I have been set for my categories (also brilliant in highlighting events in my calendar). Microsoft have helpfully provided web pages to show us how to use the follow-up tool in Microsoft Outlook and how to use colour categories in Microsoft Outlook. The follow-up tool then builds a to-do list and marks what needs to be looked at in order of the dates I have set for reminders. This then helps me see at a glance what I need to do first and I can work through things in order and add to it as new things come in.

I try to keep the to do list short or the sheer length of it makes my brain hurt. I remember from my web design days of reading about the psychology of web design. The idea was that the human brain rarely can process more than seven things at a time so a website with a menu of over seven items will be hard for the end user to browse through. I take the same design concepts into my lists. Its why I have to scan each item of the shopping list to find the item to check it off since I can't easily glance at the whole thing (where it is long) and see an item quickly. Its important that my to do lists don't grow to unmanageable lengths. So my list is a reminder to me to keep flagging my e-mails so I remember to go back to them and so things aren't lost. I ensure I keep my task list not too long or else it will make me overwhelmed and I will run away until I come back with fresh and less stressed eyes.

There's often talk about reasonable adjustments and the onus being on the employer to provide the support and workplace chances but I believe we need to also help ourselves if they aren't suggesting the right things. The one way is to maximise the benefits of the tools we might already have in our workplace.

As a former ICT lecturer and IT trainer, I think that not enough time is given to staff to learn how to use their computing tools. It is assumed that we somehow just figure it out on our own. We don't. If we don't know a function is there, we won't be magically looking for it unless we have that curious disposition. Many IT users are scared of doing something wrong. Its understandable.

I have trained people to organise their e-mails so they automatically go into different folders based on the contents and who its come from. At the end of the session I see real impact to these IT users because they are no longer faced with such an unmanageable wall of information but that it is sifted by topics and senders automatically into clearly labelled folders. It reduces the stress and helps aid productivity.

I know that creating e-mail sorting rules in Microsoft Outlook or flagging and categorising isn't the only solution to information overload but its a start, right?

Reference:

McCracken, DD. & Wolfe, RJ., (2003) User-centered Website Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach, Prentice Hall

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Coping with work-related mistakes

We all make mistakes at some point. Some people make mistakes with a shocking frequency but I think the majority of us take some pride in ourselves and want to do our best most or all of the time.

Sometimes I make mistakes although I hate it when I do. I tend to internalise it and put it down to my autism as the cause, as if I would be perfect if it wasn't for some unrelenting and cruel disability. It stares at me, holding me back, like it is jealous of me reaching my potential. I become incredibly fed-up and angry at what I perceive to be caused by some genetic injustice or design error. By no fault of my own I have got this malfunctioning brain that is making me mess up in a way that no one else would do, who would identify as neuro typical.

Cue lots of tears, frustration and shaking a fist in the direction of some vague deity concept. I get all theological and philosophical, wondering about why a (possibly Christian?!) God would make me from a design that had inherit mistakes in it. I ponder predestination and if I am "meant" to experience all this supposed autistic-derived suffering because human freewill is potentially a nonexistent construct?! God has already decided before I was born of my life's trajectory and I am merely a puppet controlled by its cruel puppet master, toying with its humankind.

I think of the unfairness of why I was born with such quirks. I can recognise autism had given me lots of benefits such as thinking in the way that I do and approaching tasks in novel and creative ways. I see that if utilised properly, it could be of great use in some workplaces and wider society. I get all that.
But I fail to ever see how sensory overload is a personality style but rather it is somewhat of a curse. It appears to me to be outside of a cognitive style. I might explore this later.

So there I am, getting ridiculously over the top and contemplating some deep topics all because I had made a mistake at work.

And actually when I calmed down and started to be a bit more rational and logical, I realised the instructions I was given were nonsensical or lacked the preciseness that I required. I had a wild stab in the dark guessing what was asked of me, and in good faith I completed the task to the best of my ability.

The trouble is, the instructions lead me up the wrong garden path (not literally!). After talking with some neuro typical people, I realised too that autistic people don't have some monopoly or rather unique experience to dealing with vague instructions. Yes, we do require a higher level of accuracy in instructions and find reading between the lines a challenge, but the neuro typical people of this world do not possess some weird unspoken-about mind reading skills.

So I started lowering my fist and the last tear fell. I began to realise that in this case I hadn't made a mistake but the person issuing the instructions wasn't clear. Perhaps the system itself of how work was communicated needed revision. It wasn't about mistakes or failures, it was more about a failure in communication to get across what job needed to be done. This is not even passing the blame onto the person setting the task but as a reminder to us all that clarity in writing is important. It helps organisational efficiency and cut down the unnecessary emails required to decipher the intended meaning.

And you know what? This happens to everyone, autistic or not. Mistakes can happen because one's autism can be a mitigating factor in creating different approaches to problems and understandings and sometimes not. However being on some autistic spectrum doesn't automatically mean that every setback and difficulty must be because of cognitive developmental disorder. I think I need step away from the automatic assigning all problems and life challenges to autism. I expect if I had spoken to a colleague about what I had been asked to do, they may not have been much clearer either.

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A medical solution to a not very medical problem - occupational health

I decided that I would be proactive at work and request that HR refer me to occupational health.

What I wanted was to have my autistic needs formally recognised in terms of my seating arrangements when we move to a new site later in the year.

What I was seeking to avoid was to be placed in a large open-plan office surrounded by noise, lots of people and near a high traffic area. The last thing I would need is to sit nearby to the printers! That kind of working environment would see my productivity fall, my stress levels rise and I could be penalised in my appraisals if I wasn't meeting my potential.

Alas, to get the clout needed to mobilise various people and departments to take my needs seriously and lead to a satisfactory result, the only way I could think of was through occupational health.

So I visited this occupational health place. It was on a business park not at all accessible for those who don't drive and the lack of easy car parking was worrying (cars blocking in other cars in parking bays). I saw no evidence of disabled parking. I hope that the less able bodied would perhaps be visited at home or at other more suitable premises.

So on the day I was stressed. I didn't know the area well and finding the site was challenging to say the least since the provided map and instructions made little sense. I got there early and was glad that I had looked on Google Street Maps to visualise the turnings and road layouts. It removes some of the mystery of driving around the unknown.

What bothered me the most was the way one gets into the reception. I don't understand how intercoms work in that they seem to each have their own operating methods and the procedure of what to say into it. I often found this process utterly confusing. Some systems remotely unlock the door; others don't. I appreciate the need for security but none of it of what to do was transparent and I think a sentence or two on the instructions about finding the place would have been useful. I felt a little surprised that the door couldn't be unlocked remotely and it was so irrelevant to my day but it still bothered me that someone had to press what looked like a door bell to open it.

The doctor was pleasant enough. I won't be critiquing him but I was somewhat amused when he told me he was familiar with Asperger's Syndrome. Familiar. It made me think he'd encountered it at some point in an hour CPD session but it was clear he was no expert. To be fair, I wasn't expecting him to be. He's a generalist I suspect, who when not seeing me, would to be working with those with mental illness and stress and those who have physical difficulties that require perhaps a different kind of support in the workplace from what I was seeking.

I felt like I had to tell him what I needed. It would have been refreshing if he was leading it because he knows high functioning autism in women but I felt it was really me speaking up about what I found difficult. Sometimes I get so tired of being my own advocate. It would make a change if more people just "got it". When I meet those kinds of people, I really value their insight and experience. It's incredible to feel normal again.

Here's the thing I find odd: it takes a doctor to write a report to HR that I need a quieter working environment. The solution is very much non-medical. Anyone who knows about autism would know the kinds of solutions I am looking for. It doesn't take a doctor to know this. Teachers (those with ASC experience). Carers. Autism researchers/academics. Parents of autistic children. Autistic people themselves. Lots of other people with much more meaningful experience. And yet because these such people aren't clinicians, their expertise and experience counts for nothing in the eyes of HR.

This is what makes things so irritating because I have to get a doctor involved when I am still grappling with the idea of whether autism is even a medical thing.

I get it. The Equality Act 2010 talks about disability as one of the nine protected characteristics. This legislates about discrimination and requires businesses and so on to provide 'reasonable adjustments' in the workplace to disabled people. It also defines disability as having a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on one's ability to do normal daily activities. Autism is covered by this law.

Disabilities are often seen in terms of the medical definition and the doctors are supposedly good at understanding the whole clinical side. They can diagnose such things. It makes sense.

And here's the difficulty for me: I am disabled because my autism has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on my ability to do normal daily activities.

Well, kinda. I make reasonable adjustments for myself all the time through my coping mechanisms. If I can't stand the sound of my work colleague munching through a pot of carrot sticks, I'll make the team their tea and coffee. I win brownie points for being nice and we all chuckle that I have hit my record of making five cups without spilling it. My dyspraxia rather makes carrying hot drinks tricky so I am rather pleased that one of the ladies got a high sided tray that'll fit five cups in it. I am happy to do shuttle runs between the kitchen and office as it rests my eyes from the computer monitor.
By the time I am back with the last cup the carrot muncher has finished.

And also since HR has now listened to the doctor (I am hoping!), my new desk location will not cause me any substantial or negative issues within my working environment.
Perhaps too my husband and child and other people in my life will understand how I operate and change their behaviour in such a way that they don't put me through unnecessary upset. It comes through understanding autism and me speaking up when something is upsetting.

With all these informal and formal adjustments in place, I wonder if actually I now would be considered disabled under the EA2010?!! And yet if I wasn't legally recognised as disabled, I wouldn't then be able to have reasonable adjustments in the workplace.

Whoa... Seems a paradox?!

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