"This doesn't apply to me"

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I wonder how many of you share my frustrating trait of automatically (and involuntarily) assuming that the things going on around you don't apply to you unless specifically stated or otherwise made obvious.

I feel like it is a part of a sort of "inferiority complex" I may have, but I'm not sure. Say, for example, I'm in a new job and learning the ropes. I will focus on those tasks that have been assigned to me, and ignore those that I see my colleagues doing, to the extent that I make myself look stupid sometimes. I have trouble connecting the dots between the things I know and those I haven't yet needed to know. So if I'm asked a question by a client about something I'm not too familiar with, I'll be quick to refer them to the person who deals with that area rather than thinking about (or just knowing) whether I could actually answer it myself. It makes phone reception a nightmare.

It's as though I believe everything outside of what I know I know, is a kind of secret that I'm not allowed to know.

Anecdote: At work we have a fair bit of filing and archiving. The other day I needed to file a specific pile of my papers for the first time, so I asked my colleague where the boxes were for those files. She laughed at me, because I had been helping her move the boxes around just the day before, when she was doing a tidy up. But I'd seen those boxes as "something I don't know about" and therefore "something that doesn't apply to me", and failed to realise that they matched up with the paperwork I now had in my hands.

This kind of thing happens to me frequently. I just ignore those things that haven't been shown to me, and lack the initiative/ability to figure out the links between things by myself.

I have a few ideas about what the issue is here but would be interested in your thoughts. My ideas so far are that it may have something to do with:

- Self-esteem issues (e.g. an inferiority complex) that stops me from poking my nose in where it might not be welcome;
- Laziness or lack of initiative which prevents me from bothering to learn these things;
- A sort of Theory of Mind type issues which prevent me from intuitively understanding links between things (rather I have to think it through logically which takes more time and effort);
- Executive Functioning issues, meaning this is simple some kind of specific deficit in my processing abilities.

I'd love to hear your thoughts if you can relate, or if you think you know which of the above is closest to the underlying problem, or if you think it is something else entirely, or anything else you might want to say about the topic!

Not sure this is ASD-related. Supposedly, people on the spectrum understand things, not people, and boxes are things. Personally, I tend to go in the other direction and would be at risk of proposing building them an electronic document management solution after the first day of moving boxes. I wouldn't recommend going that far, but try to think of your job as a business with the task of serving its customers and making money for its owners rather than a collection of tasks you're assigned. Obviously, do the assigned tasks well, but also try to understand the bigger picture and ask yourself how you could contribute.

Well that really touches on a point that I missed. Seeing only the details and missing the bigger picture is generally associated with AS. It does feel like I struggle with that side of things...I know what I have to do in my own little bubble, but it takes ages to fit that into the larger process, and it takes many embarrassing moments before I get to the point of feeling like I have a grasp on the work my team/section/organisation does as a whole.

It seems like a mixture of cognitive deficit and esteem issues. If I only had the cognitive deficit, I'd be able to work at figuring it all out because I'd feel like I was "allowed" to. If I only had the esteem issues, I'd be able to intuitively figure things out as they arose (i.e. as they applied to me), because the links would be apparent like they seemingly are for other people.

I don't know what's causing it, but I can definitely relate to the OP.

One thing I notice is that some people are really keen and curious about what else is going on other than what they have been taught. So naturally they are paying attention to other things and pick up things that are outside of their responsibilities. Those people are not afraid of new challenges etc. I guess they have a very positive attitude.

I'm quite the opposite. I'm not exactly lazy, but the things that I don't know seem difficult and scary and I feel I won't be able to do them. I always fear making mistakes. So I just keep away from them unless I'm specifically assigned to do them. When I finally have to do those difficult-looking tasks, I often realize they are actually really easy. I can do them quite well.

So I think it's often a matter of different attitides, at least in my case. I really need to change my attitude to a more positive one. I don't know if the same applies to the OP. Well, those were my thoughts on this.

I definitely do relate to your experience.

Even though I may be intently curious about what other peoples tasks are and will observe and maybe even question, that is still in a that box over there and my tasks are over here in this box. I recall and anecdote from when I started my current job (retail/in-store and online customer service) as many times as I observed the manager answering the phone, I did not realize that was something I should do until I was specifically told I should, and how to.

I will also become very anxious if assigned a new task and exactly what I should expect is not clearly laid out for me. And if something unexpected comes up, I will often struggle to apply my knowledge, which is generally sufficient, to this new situation. I will even struggle with tasks I am quite familiar with if the context is unfamiliar to me. I have found myself quite embarrassed on many occasions when a problem I was struggling to solve, in hindsight, was actually within the scope of my knowledge.

I think in this regard, for me at least, this is stemming from a difficulty to put the puzzle pieces together and see the big picture.

I will also say that I am lacking in self-confidence personally and will often defer to a superior when unsure, even if it is a situation which I could have solved without difficulty were I alone.

I don't think, from my experience, that laziness has anything to do with it however.

That sounds very much like me, yellowtamarin. I assume it comes from my lack of initiative.

"Things don't apply to me unless otherwise stated."

I'm not sure I would describe my perception as actively thinking that something doesn't apply to me. I don't generally give consideration as to whether other people's activities have relevance to me. If they need help, I'll just help. I do think that I can describe something similar, which I would describe as my brain not automatically considering how activities that are directed by other people may be socially related to each other.

For example, I attended college, and I applied for jobs, and in my perception, those things were distinct from each other. I knew that I was attending college because having a degree would make employers more likely to hire me, but that was the extent of it. I remember when I was about to graduate from college and my mom asked me if I had made a lot of connections with other people for getting jobs, and I was completely surprised, like "People do that?"

At work, my job requires doing multiple tasks. I do them, and I don't generally give thought as to related tasks unless 1) I decided that it needed to be done, 2) I have been told that certain are related, or 3) I have done them in the past and know them to be related. As far as any two tasks are concerned, I'm unlikely to associate them socially unless I am asked to consider possible reasons that they may be related.

In contrast, though, I can notice physical similarity in a lot of things that other people don't notice, like if I'm putting something together in one activity, I can immediately notice that it's a lot like another activity in which I had to put something together, so I can generally apply my knowledge to learn the new activity more quickly, while other people don't seem to generally relate things as well in that way.

I don't attribute this to laziness or lack of initiative. I think of it as a difference in perception which causes a difference in application. My brain seems to consider the physical/mechanical aspects of things, and other people's brains consider the social aspects of things. This means my brain is optimized for understanding how systems work irrespective of other things not directly related to said systems, and other people's brains are optimized to see needs for things and activities to be combined and trying to create relationships between them and to relate other systems. It's not that my brain is actively exclusive; it just doesn't know that another thing is important, and it focuses on finding physical explanations. Other people's brains see a need for social explanations, so their brains search for social explanations.

I was crying the bitterest tears of my life after commencement. I had made it into a seriously selective school, but my entire intention behind all of that work was to find a better place to meet people. I got the diploma with a nice brand name and good grades, I got a good grad school and then a good first job, but I didn't find the one thing I really wanted from college.

Also a reason I did a Ph.D. instead of an MBA. The entire point of the better MBA programs is to make connections, yet you're on your own doing so--they don't teach it.

I actually believe there is a cognitive problem going on in there (either intellectual or motivation, I don't know). I'm not qualified to say if that applies to people with autism in general, but I can definitely say that's how I am myself.

For example, at work, I too would only focus on the tasks that I'm needed for and not even bother learning about the other tasks that I didn't have to learn. This would make me a pro at my own tasks but terrible (possibly below kindergarten level) when it came to the other tasks (even if they were supposedly simple tasks to do).

I think I know what you mean, although this doesn't happen to me as much as it used to. In my first job I used to walk between two company offices more often than most. The receptionist had trays of envelopes at her desk for inter-office mail. I noticed that sometimes other people would pick up the outgoing mail when going to the other office, but I thought they'd been asked to. I hadn't been, so I just walked past it! Eventually, the receptionist asked me: "hey, whenever you're going between offices, could you deliver any mail in the outgoing tray?" "Oh, erm... yeah, sure!" And from that day I did.

It was probably a learnt behaviour for me - a defence mechanism, if you will. After getting reproached for doing something I apparently wasn't supposed to I learnt to be careful in taking initiative. It's gotten better over time as I realised two things. Firstly, people often don't have clear expectations of me (as I would in their place). They don't mind if I do something, but they don't care enough about it to actually tell me. Secondly, other people also make the same mistakes I do, but they're better at recovering from them - they can just laugh them off and keep going.

this sounds so much like me that i was excitedly relating my own anecdotes aloud to bucephalus. i sometimes avoid doing a task because i feel like i "missed the training" on how to go about it. i look at my coworkers and wonder how they knew they should do it. tasks that don't have a set way of going about it are a bit of a nightmare, unless i am able to completely create my own procedure from the ground up.

just the other day, a coworker got mildly frustrated with me because i could not figure out how to open a door! it was kept locked, and visitors and workers had to buzz to get in. i couldn't tell if i was supposed to say my name in the intercom or what, and my coworker apparently tried to explain to me through the speaker how to enter but i could not hear her. i heard the lock "click" multiple times, but when i pushed it the door it didn't budge. she had to come and let me in. this happened every day, really. i think it worked for me once. other people seemed to figure it out somehow, but i had no idea how it made sense to them.

i have always figured that in some ways i might be reasonably smart, but in other ways i am profoundly stupid.

I have the same issue in the work place, but I don't necessarily consider it to be a flaw on my part, rather, I believe it to be an example of the NT-ASD disconnect. There are an infinite number of things to focus on in this world, we have to be selective, we could not function otherwise. In a work place environment NTs seem to be able to rely on this 'social cloud' of information to let them know what they should and should not focus on. ASDs do not readily have access to this in the same way, at least I don't seem to. In a situation where we are working for someone else to do what THEY want, it would be exhausting and counter productive for us to try and figure out what non-explicit things we are also meant to be learning. This is my take on it anyway.

This happens to me, but in an inconsistent way. I'm sure that it does get my other coworkers peeved. So then I pick up on that and start to change my behaviour, but by then it's a bit too late.

In my case, I just get too distracted by everything else that I should be doing that I don't realise anything that's going on in my environment until it's too late. My mind's preoccupied with what I should be doing next. I also move way too fast to slow down and pick up on the details.

And no one will tell you when you do something to piss them off. Instead some people just talk about me behind my back then ignore me when I try to talk to them. I actually didn't know that this one guy was mad at me until we went out drinking and he lamented that he's always the one cleaning up after I was a klutz.