 Good day and welcome back to the Asperger's Growth YouTube channel with your host, Mr Thomas Henley of course. Today we're going to be talking about Autistic Inertia. Autistic hyper-focusing ability that we are all very, very well aware of for both negative and positive purposes. Yeah, I made a post recently on my Instagram page, Asperger's Growth, where I talked about autistic hyper-focus. I don't eat, I don't drink, just focus. And that's a very powerful sentence because that pretty much describes a lot of the ways that I navigate through life. Difficulty of day-to-day activities, whether it be a good thing that I want or something that I don't want. I don't tend to have a lot of control over what I focus on, just in general. As some really bad effects on me in terms of my executive functioning, it can make it very difficult for me to transition from one activity to another activity. So if I have too many little things that I need to do on my list for the day, and I don't know what order I'm going to do them in, it can lead to a lot of difficulties. On the flip side of things, if I get really hyper-focused on work, I tend to go through the entire day just not stopping, just keep going. I try to step away from doing videos, I try to step away from work, and I'm instantly on my phone doing something else productive wise, something related to that. It's a very difficult thing to try and explain. The idea and the concept of autistic inertia is basically describing a state where you can't stop a task. If you've started a task, you've got into it, you've got into the flow state, and you cannot stop for the life of you. Likewise, on the other side of things, perhaps you'll find it really hard to restart what you're doing after being distracted. So if you're working, you got distracted by a little notification on your phone, you start chatting to your friends, it's really hard to get back into that work mode. This is autistic inertia. So look, the idea that you can laser focus in on a task for hours and hours and hours at a time, it's undoubtedly a useful thing when applied well. The positives, perhaps you've got higher productivity, faster learning, she being attentive and you're taking information in, and also you're in a flow state, so it helps a lot of anxiety through the counteracting of the default mode network, which is kind of the existence of your brain where it's just kind of processing thoughts and chucking things out and in and not really getting anywhere, just baseline. That can cause a lot of anxiety and focusing in on something, getting into a task, doing something tends to help a lot with that. Focuses your brain, you're not thinking about random stuff all the time. So there are some positives, but let's take a second to look at the negatives. The negatives, you can imagine. Forgetting self care, eating, sleeping, showering, peeing, all of this stuff, if you are in a hyper focus hole, it's gonna be really difficult to break out of just even for a minute or two to go and do one of these things. You can also get burnt out very, very quickly if your inertia continues day to day to day to day. You're on a roll with work and you keep going at it and you don't give yourself a break, you're gonna find it really easy to be in that focus mode, but there will come a point where your brain just has really done too much work. It consumes ATP, the energy system of the body, just slight your muscles and you need to rest it and that's why it can often lead to a burnout if you continue to let this ball rolling. You also quite often don't get to choose what. You can sort of force yourself and you can make yourself get into a state of inertia, but it sometimes just random things just catch your attention and it's really difficult to stop thinking about. Really difficult to stop doing stuff around this certain topic. I think the best way to describe this is to give you two examples. The first example is me at work doing my videos, doing all my gym stuff. I have a very, very packed schedule and I often don't tend to leave myself a lot of space to transition, to move from one thing to another and so there's been times where I've perhaps been editing my documentary during Covid where I will get up and I will start work at about 10am and I will finish at about 3am and this isn't something that I'm forcing myself to do. I just can't help it. I just continue and continue and I'm like oh well I'm already in the role, I'm already in the flow state so I'll just continue and then it gets to about midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am. Still haven't eaten, still haven't drunk, see I haven't even gone to the toilet or showered or done any of that stuff but I'm still at it. You could say that this is probably good if it was had to be out the next day, you know that would be a really, really great thing to just be able to work on it constantly but for most people, day to day life, most of the time doing that is not healthy. You have to have a variety of things in your life, rest, socialising, things of that nature, eating of course, taking care of bodily functions, important things to do. Let's go on to the second example. I recently downloaded Skyrim, well not recently but in this story recently. And I really like it and I was watching YouTube videos and it kind of got to the point I was playing an hour and the next day it was been 2 hours and 3 hours and then suddenly I was spending, I woke up and I was already in my bed and my bed is also a TV so I popped the TV up, fired up the Xbox, got onto Skyrim, got to about 4am that day and I just couldn't break myself away from it and it caused me a lot of anxiety but I just couldn't stop myself from doing it. I had to complete a certain goal. It was not a very good situation for me and there's been times like that where I've latched on and hyper-focused on something that's not perhaps very good for me and that I just keep doing it and it's very hard to stop that inertia. I think I believe that this idea of autistic inertia is based on probably three concepts that you're very aware of. One being routine. We tend to in our modern day have a routine for productivity, for work, for doing things, for perhaps work related things but we don't really have one for rest. Another side to that is the transitions. Transitioning from one thing to another. Very, very difficult, very hard sometimes. It can cause us a lot of anxiety as kids. It can cause a lot of anxiety as adults, especially if our mental health is bad. And the last thing, let me just check. Look, I'm not perfect. It could be hyper-focusing, getting in that flow state, that autistic flow state, that dialed in laser-focused, just absolute monstrosity of a productivity work machine or a gaming work machine. All of those things combined lead us to becoming this very specialized creature which we really, when done right and when organized properly, we're at absolute powerhouse. If not, and we sort of miss certain things and we don't take into consideration things like transition time, processing time, scheduling routines for rest and play and good things, then it can be a bad thing and it can be really toxic for us and it can cause us a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, a lot of difficulty maintaining ourselves as far as eating and sleeping and drinking enough. So there's a lot of things good and bad on this side. But what are my tips to help you in this situation? What's going to be some good tips that you can take away from this? Number one, set up a routine that includes both work and rest. This will help you limit your focus time to specific times. Naturally, slowing down your inertia through repetition, through routine, you know, you see that, I don't know, you might get a sense for the light outside, it might get dark or light at a certain time and you can be like, okay, right, now I need to start winding down, start adjusting things. Having that routine really does help because it stops you from getting into those day-long hyper-focusing binge streaks. I'm spitting on that lately. I hope you can't see it on the camera because it's absolutely gross. So that's the first one. Very good thing to do. The next one would be incorporate some smarter transitions. Do you find it difficult to move from one task to another, even if it's from work to rest? Maybe what you need is something to help you in that transition. Maybe you need a reason to switch. One really weird way that I'm currently sort of managing my transitions is I'm playing an idle game on my phone. It doesn't require a lot of attention and there are a lot of ads that you can sort of click on. And actually I found that although, you know, things like RuneScape and things that require active sort of playing all the time, you know, they can be quite bad for my hyper-focusing, but these things actually allow me to go around. Pop on my phone, sort of put it on during the end, you know, around the end of work. Right, okay, there's an ad opportunity. Press the ad. And then I've got 30 seconds to do nothing. And then we're like, all right, that might as well just go and lay down or something. And you can do that in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be that gaming example. It could be watching a YouTube video and just putting it on in the background or listening to a podcast in order to get down and cook yourself some tea or, you know, anything of that nature. I'd really consider different ways that you can try and get around this. And also, you know, when you're setting up a routine, make sure you give yourself enough time to transition. For me, the sweet spot, if it's been the entire day that I've been working, transition times probably about an hour. If it's just one thing to another within work, perhaps maybe five or 10 minutes. It's very variable each time to each time, but making sure the routine and the transitions are in check. Very good thing to do. The last thing that I wanted to highlight is that once you notice your anxiety rising, make sure that that is a cue in your brain to stop, to have a break. This is really important because this can stop you from getting into those hyper-focusing streaks and having, you know, not eating and all your cortisol rising and you're getting very anxious and having a meltdown or a shutdown or getting overloaded or burnt out. Try and find ways to notice when your anxiety is rising. For me, I feel it in my legs. I feel it instantly in my legs. And I know that. And it's been, you know, I've been doing that for a long time. So it's very easy for me to know when my anxiety is rising compared to most autistic people. And then, you know, this is all down to Alexify me having a play into this. You know, it's harder for us to notice and categorize anxiety rising up and sort of attaching it to external things that are happening to us in the moment. And so being aware of these physical, behavioral, cognitive signs that we're going towards a state of anxiety or burnout, notice them, write them down, characterize them. You don't need to write them down if you don't want to. Just help. And next time that they happen, take note of them and say, all right, okay, I'm getting a bit anxious. Am I being productive? Am I in a rut? And there's nothing that I can do. And I should probably take a break and approach it next day. Might be really, really difficult the first time you do it. But after a while, you will get the hang of it. And it will have absolutely massive effects for your overall productivity in general. You won't have these nasty burnouts. You will have this these awful transition times that just eat into your sleep. You know, things of that nature, eat into your your time relaxing to your time socializing, all of that stuff, noticing that stuff and stopping very good cue to keep in mind and try and develop. So that does it for the tips that I wanted to give you. I hope that you found this this video interesting. And you've got something from it. Please let me know down below. What are you struggling at the moment in terms of breaking away from a task in terms of autistic inertia? What what thing is really taking up your focus at the moment? And you really don't want it to or maybe you do. I want to hear about it. So stick it down in the comments. And of course, if you want to see some more stuff by me, if you want to keep up to date with the work that I'm doing that's not video related, my public speaking, my work in the media, go over to my Instagram page, Asperger's growth. And you can find all of that juicy stuff over there. Also, if you want to hire me for modeling, for public speaking, anything of that nature, if you want me to be on your podcast or do an interview, or you want to be on my podcast, please head over to my website, Thomas Henley.co.uk. There's a place in there, you can send me a message or an email. And I'll try and get on it as soon as I can. Although, sometimes pretty slowly, depending on my executive functioning, indeed. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in another Asperger's growth video, autism topics. See you later, folks.