A challenge at work

Work is proving to be quite challenging at the moment. There is a new technology for the company to wrestle with, one that no-one here has had to deal with before. We all bring different skills to the table, and slowly we are working together to figure out what is needed. This is what work is all about, and it feels good to be part of the team that will solve this particular challenge.

There is however a problem. My colleagues keep dropping in with their take on where we are at, and it is here where I start to struggle. It takes me time to work through new material. I cannot process it in real time.

If that was the limit of the problem it might not be too bad as I can take it offline and process it later, but there is a double whammy that life has dealt me here too. I need to think about the social interaction with my colleagues so I can respond to them in a suitable way at the same time as trying to take on board the difficult technical details that they are describing.

The result? I feel stressed and terribly tired. I don’t feel able to keep up with the train of thought that my colleagues are describing. I feel a fraud – as though I’m just stumbling my way through, pretending to understand things that in actual fact have not even registered in my brain yet in any meaningful way.

This is of course a very practical demonstration of one of my most popular articles on this site - Slow thinking. I think it illustrates rather well just how challenging very ordinary aspects of life can be when you have a condition like Asperger’s. I understand how face to face chats between colleagues at work helps to cement ideas and allows consensus to be quickly reached. I see it happening all the time, and yet if you put me in a situation where I don’t already have a good working knowledge of the subject matter, and all of a sudden I find this sort of interaction to be almost impossible. It is just too much to deal with all at once – something which is not understood by people who are neuro-typical.

Which is perhaps why I try where I can to keep interaction to email in scenarios like this. Email is my secret coping mechanism for issues like this, as it provides a practical route to work around issues I have face to face. I can take my time to think things through when I work this way, and I use that time wisely, allow the ideas which I have so much trouble with verbally have the time to be absorbed properly. I can process and understand what is being suggested, and produce my own well thought out arguments for or against. And the great part is that with my colleagues split over not just different offices but different timezones, email is seen as a perfectly acceptable, and indeed necessary mode of communication.

I win! (In the end)

I’d love to hear how you deal with tricky situations like this. Do you have a secret tool that helps you to respond in a way that works for you?

 

 

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