Reaching out to @actuallyautistic to see if anyone has had experience of learning how to do “enough” work rather than their “best” work, which comes naturally to them. (Note: I am not referring to perfectionism here. This about breaching personal values related to integrity).
Integrity is the number 1 value I live by in my life.
BUT, I realise now that I need to learn how to care less about doing my “honest best” in work (university studies and jobs) and find a way to do work that is only “enough”, which will be below my honest best. This feels AWFUL to contemplate. It feels dishonest, like lying, like even poisoning my own career. But there are strong reason for wanting to attempt this that have been building my whole life.
Knowing how to only do “enough” or only a little more than enough, versus doing much more when we have the ability to do so …is a skill. Some people do this intuitively. I’ve watched and admired them because they also seem to have a better life balance because of it. But I would bet a large number of autistics are like me: I default to doing my honest best, which is usually much more than is required or that someone else would do, even if it risks burnout or worse.
In an ideal world, I’d love to continue doing my honest best, always. That brings me a sense of pleasure and peace. But I cannot do this under time pressure. And I do not have all the time in the world.
While it’s great my quality of work is high, the cost of doing this to a deadline is far too great and will make my health decline if I don’t stop this right now.
In business and related areas, there is a very old framework for thinking of this. It uses a triad of concepts:
In this framework, you can only have a maximum of two of those three concepts at their optimum, so at least one will always suffer.
The idea is that you get strategic and pick what is most important to preserve, versus finding out the hard way that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to “have it all”!
Using this framework in this context, the “quality” of my work is high. But right now that is leading to either very poor “speed” or “cost”. If I work slowly (I.e. this is the part that suffers) then I can preserve my health and don’t risk burnout, while also keeping my work quality high. The problem is that I am borrowing from my future: by extending the duration of my flexible self-paced course, I am delaying the time until I can graduate and get a job (which is not possible alongside studies). At worst, I will come up against the hard deadline of my course (its maximum duration) and have to rush the final work, anyway.
If I speed up my work and try to keep the quality high like it is now (quality means here doing my honest best; not perfection), I get sick and FAST. The deterioration is massive. This doesn’t just impact my studies (cannot study at all), but impacts the rest of my life and relationships. The “cost” here isn’t exactly financial, not directly anyway, but it is expensive in terms of the widespread negative consequences.
So, I want to lower my quality of work. Because this way I should be able to work more quickly, avoid costs to my health, AND graduate sooner and so earn money sooner. I also hope this will help me keep a good quality of life, and even help me feel good about progressing at a steady pace (versus very slow).
Also, I don’t NEED high grades. I did that for my undergraduate degree and it was unexpected, and it has given me a huge boost. This Masters degree can be a pass or a Merit at best is fine. I do not need a Distinction.
I do not currently possess the skills or mindset or whatever to work to a lower standard by choice. But I want to. I need to.
This is about self preservation. This is about keeping perspective.
I love my studies and care about them, so by default, that equates to always doing my best, not matter what else suffers. How do I change this view to… loving and caring for my studies, but not going further than what is necessary to progress? I’m not talking about barely scraping by with a pass, but doing enough to meet the course requirements in a respectable, average way. And also know I can do better.
I should not need to do my best work for a purpose that no one else cares about! I want to save my best work for me, and only do “enough” elsewhere.
If you are someone who has found this intuitive to do, please be sensitive in your replies as when I have spoken to people who find this relatively simple, they tend to not realise how damn hard it is for the rest of us. So, I’d really rather hear from anyone who has actively gone from where I am now to where I want to be. I’d love to hear how you did it, any tips, resources, advice… whatever you can think of.
How do I make peace with doing work that I know is below the quality of what I can do? (Again, I am not aiming for perfect, only my own personal, honest best.)
EDIT to add: I do not currently have a job, no boss, no deadlines or anything like that. I’m seeking advice for coursework for my university degree course. What I learn now I intend to apply to jobs in the future, but I need to build these skillsets in my coursework right now FIRST.
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@AnAutieAtUni @actuallyautistic
Here's what has helped me:
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@StevenSaus @actuallyautistic Your point number 4 is huge! I like to pretend this isn’t true, but it is! Thank you for this. This is what I meant about self preservation and my whole post… I get it all on a logic level and even have masses of proof it’s true for me, but why am I not acting accordingly?! I think the answer is that it’s because I don’t know HOW, and it’s not about me needing more convincing. The motivation is there in spades.
This is where the day-to-day skillset needs to be built, I think. I don’t know how to do this. What are the skills, the habits, the tools…
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@AnAutieAtUni @actuallyautistic
Luckily, my day job is sorta consistent in its flow most days, so I've usually got a pretty good sense of what percentage of the work I need to have done by certain time points throughout my shift. For example, I often get assigned ~50 "units" of work for a 4 hour period. I'll usually do 20 in a half hour or 40 minutes, realize I'm ahead of schedule, and then adjust from there.
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@AnAutieAtUni @actuallyautistic
So it's really just pattern recognition turned on myself, then setting a ping for when I'm deviating strongly from that. (SPECTACULARLY helpful and specific, I know, lol)
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@StevenSaus @actuallyautistic Really cool to hear how you’ve found such a strategy! It makes sense.
Wish I was in a related situation, but I’m currently doing an entirely self-paced university course with no deadlines and no other students around me. I set my own deadlines but haven’t been able to keep to them. So I suspect I’m a slower than average worker, which is the opposite of your situation (wish I was like you!!)
But I appreciate hearing the success story! Just need to find something that works for me to achieve the same. 🤔
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