Anxiety over unfinished tasks?

Post Reply New Topic

I always make lists and break things out into steps in minute detail when I have something important to do. Then I prioritize these by due date, what I can do right now, what I can do later and write dates that I plan to do them. I find this very helpful for me to be able to figure out what steps to take next and to find the overall large task less daunting.

So anytime I feel anxious about said large task, I whip out my list and re-read it and reassure myself that I've done what can be done up to this point and refresh my memory of what I'm doing next and when.

I'd probably be a complete ball of stress without my lists.


This is mostly applicable to very large, daunting tasks like moving cross-continent or completing immigration or doing all the paperwork related to a marriage with a simultaneous divorce and the related namechanges. All of which I have done successfully using the above method. But can also easily be applied to regular tasks on a smaller scale like cleaning house.

I've even gone as far to make a list of every single item that I need to pack when traveling, this helps to allieviate anxiety that I've forgotten to pack something.

Lists make it it easier to put the agenda out of my mind, but as long as I know the agenda exists, I still feel uneasy. I remember a boss of mine who would load me up with several tasks every week, usually more than I could be expected to do. He would say that it didn't matter if I couldn't finish it all, but just knowing that it was there would still bother me. I often wished he would just give me one thing to do, and wait until I'd finished that before giving me the next task, and I couldn't understand at the time why I was being so fussy. I sometimes thought that maybe it was the expectations of others that I had some kind of emotional problem with, perhaps because of my upbringing when I was told a lot that I'd failed to attain the expectations that had been laid onto me.

For me, it's things that _must_ be done, on a deadline, like TAXES, not things that I want to do, like my Special Interests. The Special Interests aren't usually that useful. Of recent years, I've learned the tactic of putting off the deadline by filing an extension on April 15, which gives me until October 15 (more like the 1st, actually, because I have to give the tax man a few days to actually _do_ it by the 15th). My problem is just getting all the receipts and other evidence together and organized. And I can't even _find_ the check registers, usually, so it takes days looking for them, and the anxiety piles up until I get panic attacks just _thinking_ about doing the work, and then when I've successfully NOT Thunk about the work for long enough, I'm that much closer to the deadline, and the panic attacks just thinking about doing the work are worse.....

I made it comfortably before October 15 this year: they were sent in two whole days before the absolute midnight deadline. But it's a strain and a Xanax-hog every year.

Then there are the minor items, like housework....

A good dose of OCD so I could get this stuff done on time, and live in a clean house, might actually be very convenient.

I've thought this of myself at times.

I just added a little column on my planner page that is customized to my thinking pattern.

"Things I need to do ... BUT FIRST I have to ....

I have AS and recently finished 3 months CBT in the Autism clinc at the Maudsley Hospital. The clinician embraced a Mindfulness approach.

My main anxiety was around organizing and priorotyzing and had so much distress and compulsity around having to finish tasks and not leave any thing 'In the tray' so to speak.

My biggest issue was. having to reply to texts and emails immediately. My logic underpinning this was that if I do things as they happen things will be mote manageable........this makes sense, but the excessive degree to which I took this was becoming OCD and my life was very effected.

I learned that the root of my difficulties were to do with my executive functioning, as this directly effects organisational and planning.

There were psychological factors too, as most of my anxiety is accentuated by my desperate desire to 'be in the world' as a result I have overcompensated and superimposed ridged stratagies, many of which (but not by any means all) are now well past their sell by date.

Understanding all this I am learning to

1 have greater compassion on myself.

2 breath through the anxiety associated with messyness in my flat.........its still hard, but it beats the madness of running from anxiety, as it only follows me and gets me eventually. This pattern often leads to meltdowns and then OCD kicks in to gain some delusion of control.

3 have realistic expectations of myself

4 challenge the thoughts that often start with "I must'

From a buddhist perspective humanity is always craving more and more security, only to end up feeling cut off and alienated from ones true nature and natural way of being.

At times I feel like a headless chicken trying to do everything at once.........I am learning to STOP and breath and listen to my deeper nature.

My recovery is slow...........However, I aspire to live more creatively within my limitations.

All I have to say about this is... try finishing a doctoral dissertation



And that was just this afternoon

Sometimes I get this way. I think it happens often enough though more than NTs. I will get absorbed into something and not want to stop until it's done. My husband is the same way too, when he has things that needs to get done, he wants them done now just to get it over with. I tend to put stuff off to the side and sometimes I want things done now. I used to be worse when I was younger and when I was a kid but I got better with it.

I often think that.
I do housework in fits and starts and go from messy to spending 2 hours tidying. It then slips a day later. It's OK as I am working part time at the moment and have more time to do it.

I did a doctoral thesis 4 years ago it took me most of a year, but didn't help that my supervisor took 2/3 months to read 1 chapter
I did have a very thorough literature review and we picked nice examiners because of the verbal side of the viva. They found I had covered most of the arguments in writing really thoroughly so didn't really need to argue anything. I just had to present diagrams a bit better as I had got sick of it by then and just produced them without much editing. PM if you need PhD reassurance........

I have horrible problems with this, to the point that if something needs to be bought I will get on Amazon at two in the morning rather than waiting a day to get it in the shop. I always want to have tasks done before relaxing. I also need to pay bills as soon as I get them. I have backups upon backups of toiletries and foodstuffs etc. Ive always been this way and it causes me anxiety to not take care of stuff right away.

I think that would upset me too. Luckily in the UK most of us are on "Pay As You Earn" - we get our pay (and interest on savings, usually) after tax, and unless we want to challenge the taxman's sums, we don't have to participate in the caculations. They used to send out a relatively simple tax return form just to double-check, and I used to dread those, but I haven't seen one for decades.


There used to be a motto for business people - "Do it now!" It's good as far as it goes, but if there's more than one task on the plate, then something clearly cannot be done immediately. So there's a risk of forgetting the task that has been postponed....I can even forget tasks that really appeal to me. I guess fear of forgetting is at least part of the reason why I'm so uncomfortable with unfinished work. As for texts and emails, I went through that "got to reply immediately" phase. It helped to remind myself that I was unlikely to forget......with emails, the "Mark As Unread" button is my friend, and it's hard to ignore a text message that stares at me every time I open the inbox. It was also helpful to look at the time it took people to reply to my messages, which provided a precedent for me to hide behind - if my friend sometimes doesn't reply for 6 hours, then he presumably won't mind if I do the same.

Dad (who had many Aspie traits) would always reply to snail-mail by return of post, and he would tear up the letter he had received as soon he'd replied...I guess that was to reassure himself that the job was over and done with. I suspect there's a hidden downside to immediately replying.....I think it can be taken as invasive; it kind of puts a burden on the recipient to reply with similar speed.....possibly NTs would find that easier to ignore.

I write down all my tasks and set myself daily schedules to make sure I do what I think needs to be done that day. The problem is I expect too much of myself and set a schedule I can't possibly keep, then I get anxious because I failed to keep the schedule and end up getting little done. Then I stay up late in order to at least get something done that day, and don't get a good night's sleep, which hinders my ability to get tomorrow's things done...

I have several aspects of my house I feel stressed about being disordered, but I know I don't have enough time to fix them the way I want yet, which is stressful again, even though my house is relatively well ordered by many peoples' standards.

My work has me checking things for operation like two way radios in cars to see if everything is ok well when I start that process and set up to do it-there is test equipment involved-once I am into the mindset to do them I wan't to do them all in one day to get them done-I cant do 1 then do something totally different and then go back to testing-I just cant do it-and if two things come into the shop whoever got there first is the first one I take care of even if the other thing is more important(whoever determined that) and I look at it as-something is broken and it needs to be fixed because the person is not happy.

I have more anxiety over tasks as I am doing them, I dont mind if they are unfinished. I would like tasks to go away sometimes.