My biggest disagreement with life in general, and I now believe this is the fundamental difference between how my brain operates and how the average NT brain does, is how things are prioritized.
In my brain, things are prioritized per their material utility. If something has immediate utility, a visible benefit to someone, or if it's solving a pressing problem, they are on top of the importance list. It may sound like a callous way to put it but health related, life saving action is categorized in the "high material utility" bin for my brain.
In addition to this prioritization, I also tend to equate difficulty of a task with its perceived importance. "If something is very important, then the stakes must be high also" my brain says. On the flipside, if I know something is trivial to accomplish physically, it's not "important" in my brain.
In the life made by NTs for NTs, most "very important" things are trivial to the extreme. Bureaucratic paperwork, deadlines, remembering birthdays, most jobs are just mindless busywork to me, with no perceived importance whatsoever, but somehow they seem potent enough to stop the world in its tracks for the majority of people.
This creates enormous stress for me, and is responsible for most of my burnouts in my 50 year life. The dichotomy between my sense of priority and that of the world around me.
When I was still in my PhD program, the work I did, the information I and my team uncovered were the priority for me. The integrity of the work was paramount. Increasingly, through the feedback I received from my advisor, I started feeling like something was wrong and the real thing to focus on should have been how I marketed my research and my efforts rather than the work and the results themselves. This led to my burnout and me leaving before I defended my dissertation.
I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this topic. Do you also think your version of what's important is fundamentally different than the world's?
#ActuallyAutistic npub1mewd58tz390gcnw0ml99alkzzgcuj2yg9tdsjwt45zga54rtsj8qketau6 (npub1mew…tau6)
CynAq 🤘 /
npub1rc…jf29d
2023-09-11 12:40:57
Author Public Key
npub1rc49dl4mv4te4qhxrlf6am2tgv3ncjv0lhtfkx5s6mwxmype8desrjf29dPublished at
2023-09-11 12:40:57Event JSON
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"content": "My biggest disagreement with life in general, and I now believe this is the fundamental difference between how my brain operates and how the average NT brain does, is how things are prioritized.\n\nIn my brain, things are prioritized per their material utility. If something has immediate utility, a visible benefit to someone, or if it's solving a pressing problem, they are on top of the importance list. It may sound like a callous way to put it but health related, life saving action is categorized in the \"high material utility\" bin for my brain.\n\nIn addition to this prioritization, I also tend to equate difficulty of a task with its perceived importance. \"If something is very important, then the stakes must be high also\" my brain says. On the flipside, if I know something is trivial to accomplish physically, it's not \"important\" in my brain.\n\nIn the life made by NTs for NTs, most \"very important\" things are trivial to the extreme. Bureaucratic paperwork, deadlines, remembering birthdays, most jobs are just mindless busywork to me, with no perceived importance whatsoever, but somehow they seem potent enough to stop the world in its tracks for the majority of people.\n\nThis creates enormous stress for me, and is responsible for most of my burnouts in my 50 year life. The dichotomy between my sense of priority and that of the world around me.\n\nWhen I was still in my PhD program, the work I did, the information I and my team uncovered were the priority for me. The integrity of the work was paramount. Increasingly, through the feedback I received from my advisor, I started feeling like something was wrong and the real thing to focus on should have been how I marketed my research and my efforts rather than the work and the results themselves. This led to my burnout and me leaving before I defended my dissertation.\n\nI'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this topic. Do you also think your version of what's important is fundamentally different than the world's?\n\n#ActuallyAutistic nostr:npub1mewd58tz390gcnw0ml99alkzzgcuj2yg9tdsjwt45zga54rtsj8qketau6",
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