*Inertia/Inactivity as Logical/Sane Reaction*

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My own inactivity/inertia etc is often not the result of anxiety but of not seeing the point of doing things/anything.

I remember driving my parents nuts as a twelve-year-old asking why we had to have side-plates and butter knives, a table cloth and so on, because it just made more washing up/things to clean. And why couldn't we all just bring a plate, fork, knife etc to table rather than my sister and I taking it in turns to lay the table, something which seemed to take a disproportionately long time, etc?

I tend to think "what's the point" about most things, and an awful lot of the time I simply can't see one. When I was homeless, penniless and on the road I had no trouble at all seeing why I had to ask in bakers for left over bread, though once I had discovered the riches to be found in bins, ( summer time, holiday makers etc ), I saw less point in making the effort to ask, and preferred to search bins instead.

Maybe a lot of aspies look at society and see no point in doing very much at all. Most work is "make work", most activity is consumption, most food is produced by a tiny percentage of the population; if houses and food were distributed fairly there would be homes and food for all, and most people currently working 35-40 hours a week could spend all day at home.

Seriously I think that modern society may be responsible for making it almost impossible for a lot of AS to do anything, ( unless they absolutely have to and even then it's difficult ), because there is no real reason to do so. In fact there may even be an argument for doing as little as possible, leaving as small a carbon-footprint as one can. Doing little or nothing has ecology on its side. It is the logical reaction.

Why contribute to pollution, why use a car to go anywhere, why try to make and sell things, when the sanest response now is to live on a minimum, disengage from the chimera which is infinite growth, downsize? Many aspies are already doing it. It hurts an aspie to do things which make no sense, and participating in make-work in a world already polluted and ravaged by the growth machine is actually insane.

Therefore many of us, ( especially the younger ones who have never seen society any other way ), sit under trees, or the technological equivalent.

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If not the absence of a "point" what do you think is the reason for your or other people's chronic/overwhelming inertia or inactivity?

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Who here knows from experience that, ( although they are most of the time pretty inactive/inert ), when something seems important enough/to have a point/make enough sense they can be very active indeed? I know I can.

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One of the reasons is excessive difficulty in the execution of a task. I'm quite happy to start the dishes if they are stacked, ready to go, but if they need to be arranged on the bench, it's a struggle to make myself do it because it is very difficult and even trying to imagine it out in my mind is strenuous and largely unsuccessful.

I cannot imagine (as a series of steps) how to start and move sequentially through the task, so I will find myself picking up something from the bench I am clearing, but there's nowhere on the bench I am moving things to, causing me to have to put the item/s back down where they started, and try to clear a space on the bench I am moving dishes to.

Quite what to move, and how (to create space), is then a very difficult and intellectually strenuous activity. If everything is sufficiently "higgly-piggly", it's difficult to even get my brain to make sense of what my eyes are "taking in". It just looks like a jumble of "stuff" rather individual things, that I know what to do with. I have to concentrate very hard to stack the dishes, and although physically it's a low-effort task, mentally, it's very arduous, and often enough, quite an uncomfortable task.

A lot of the time, when I experience inertia/passivity, it can be traced to the mental/intellectual difficulty of tasks, particularly tasks requiring coordination/organization.

I think mine is based in not being able to automatically visualize what a given task might entail in any detail. It's as though there is a blank there and I get stuck. It often extends to the simplest of activities such as getting food. Therefore, I will continue to be absorbed in my current activity or inactivity, not knowing how to break out of it.

The above varies and becomes much worse when overloaded, tired, or anxious.



When something captures my interest, my mind can engage very easily, to the point that it is far more natural to overdo things than to discontinue and have a break. I feel as though I'm tapping into an infinite well of energy. If something cannot capture my interest, the opposite occurs, so I tend to operate primarily under these two extremes.

Although there are only 17 respondents, the results are of interest as they result in a nearly perfect "normal/bell-shaped" statistical distribution.

I wonder why it is we tend to experience a lower "git-up-and-go" if the result holds true for the population.

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I hyperfocus on things that interest me. If I'm not interested it's hard to get myself motivated. Also when there are many things that need doing I get overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. If someone can help me get started I am usually OK but the first step is hard if not impossible so I just sit there like a bunny in the headlights.

Yes. It's really hard for me to find a reason for my inertia through introspection alone. Sometimes it's even hard to get started doing things I enjoy which is extremely baffling to a lot of people. Thankfully I have a nice geeky metaphor for my problem.

Activation_energy

My depression and anxiety have a nasty effect of making the activation energy required to do things tenfold.

Hello. This is my first post. I am a bit thrown by space to enter 'subject'.
I was intending to reply to the thread Do You "Suffer" From Inertia/Apathy/Inactivity?

So inertia is an AS thing? Ouinon and Pandd have articulated my problems so well. I am undiagnosed and attend a therapy group what once SEEMED to be the problem. I was trying to explain to the group "pointlessness" and they didn't seem to get it.

Crap- I'm just tired. Fatigue and inertia are like conjoined twins.

Once necessary work has been done, there is a choice: either sit back and do nothing, or do something worthwhile. There's no shortage of worthwhile things to do. Even if you have to resort to that "art" and "entertainment" stuff.



I disagree (though there are plenty of activities I think the world could do without). The thing that has to be done is not to abandon activity, but to find a way to eliminate negative effects of activity. Make a cleaner car. Plant a forest. Think positive! Our problem is not "how to reduce pollution" - to which the trivial answer "stop doing anything" will suffice - but "how to do what we want, without polluting."