The world is overun with memes and messages ordering us to “stop wasting time and get things done.” Actually, you can’t always be doing and you will exhaust yourself in the attempt. People can, of course, waste time and get little done as a result. We’ve all been there and done it. Or not done it, as the case may be. This describes the situation when you have just a few days or even just a few hours to get “stuff” done and yet you find that you are spending most of your time just “messing around.”
But before you browbeat and whip yourself back to the coalface, pause and consider that "messing around" might not be a waste of time at all. I know from personal experience that what to others looks like “messing around” can actually be recovering from the last time I got something done, or psyching myself up to get even more stuff done! I lead an incredibly productive existence!
When I need rebuild my stocks of energy, I go to my “happy place” to indulge my pleasures and passions, just taking the time to enjoy myself and feel glad to be alive. What can look like wasting time to more conventionally organised people is actually recovery from one or more tasks and/or preparation for tasks to come.
Time is something of a slippery concept for autistic people. I know the distinction between clock time and real time and have a very idiosyncratic relation with both. I can be a stickler for time. When someone says seven minutes past five pm, it means exactly seven minutes past five to me, and not six or eight minutes past. I get most agitated if people are slightly early or slightly late. At the same time, when I am absorbed in my special interests and passions, time ceases to exist for me. I can be late for appointments, or just plain miss them. I can also come close to burning the kitchen down by losing track of the food I am cooking. I’m a stickler for time when it comes to the actions and intentions of others, I take my time when it comes to my own endeavours.
For someone with autism, time isn’t money, it is energy, its conservation and consumption.
The simplest of things, like making an appointment by telephone, can burn an inordinate amount energy. Dealing with problems, filling in forms, making applications, and, most stressful of all, meeting people and imparting to and soliciting information from them, all bite hard into myenergy reserves. Any kind of change from the norm and the routine likewise. It takes an awful long time for me to prepare to do “stuff” and an awful long time for me to recover from doing “stuff.” “Messing
around” in my “happy place” is not a waste of time, it is a replenishing of stocks to give me the energy to do more “stuff” in the future. What looks like “messing around” and wasting precious time to others can actually be a process of recovery from the last time I got stuff done, or a case of psyching myself up in order to get even more stuff done in the future. That’s an incredibly productive existence!
