A big problem for psychotic folks (thals and negroids in particular) in modern life is that you have to do lots of little things, and keep track of them. I call these behaviorisms. You need a separate spreadsheet just to shop at Kohl’s. I asked my mom how she keeps track of all this crap and she plays it off like, “Oh, I just keep in mind what I need, and which coupons I have which are expiring soon, and what’s on sale.” Here I’m thinking, lady, I don’t know even where my keys are and I haven’t seen my wallet in days. How’s about we draw up a flowchart I can use to buy a pair of shoes for less than $100?
Well, my current iteration of the organization system has me knocking one or two items off the checklist every day opportunistically. This isn’t good enough- shit usually stacks up faster than this, and during big life transitions (moving, job change, etc.) it can get out of control fast. Something else I’ve noticed is that days are often wildly different based on how the morning goes. Most days now I wake up for work, pop a caffeine pill, drink four eggs, eat a banana, and I’m out the door in less than five minutes. Not for everybody, all the time, I’m just saying that’s normal bio level 2 shit for me. Other days (bio 3 usually), I sleep in a bit, wake up groggy (low sleeping heart rate from heavy cardio, I think), and read for an hour on my phone before even grabbing a first cup of coffee.
But sometimes I’ll be riding bio level 3, and I’ll hit a hypomanic day. After four hours of sleep, I’ll give up on going back to sleep and be running around like a maniac either writing eight blog posts before 9 AM or knocking out a month’s worth of chores. That latter option is what I want to reproduce on a quasi-regular basis (speaking of which, forgot I have to do that music bullshit that nobody cares about) to keep the task list moving in the right direction. I figure even at bio 2, I could probably do something similar just by staying off the computer long enough to get in a groove.
Hence, the concept of “laundry (list) day”. A day off from work where you try to go for that dopamine “second wind” from the combination of despair and weird accomplishment that happens when you start a load of laundry, go to the bank, and the washer finishes the spin cycle just as you get back.
How to accomplish such a thing? Well, like most days you gotta get out of the house right when you wake up. And I mean fast, like ten minutes tops. Forget hygiene and fashion, you can find a boyfriend some other day, ya freakin queer. It’s okay to return to the house and even to use the computer if you’re already cruising from hitting both the bank and the library in the same 20-minute trip (such success- you fucking stud). But not for very long, and no, it’s not okay to take a break and check up on the news or start little research projects for practical stuff you have to do. Either you already know which stuff you need to do and now is decision time, or not.
If you start drifting, knock out a medium cardio workout and reassess. If you’re crashing, take a nap. If you’re feeling okey-dokey, take your shower but get back out of the house for a bit and do practical stuff to build more momentum before returning. The only thing you’re allowed to read is your to-do list. Speed-read directions if you have to. Do power-doros on administrative tasks on your computer, like with a real timer and everything.
Don’t forget to tone things down at dinner time with a heavy meal and a little drinky drink, or you won’t be able to sleep. You can’t do everything in one day. You’re an adult now, and there’s nobody around to tell you enough is enough, so you don’t run yourself into the ground. This is a big problem for thals: you have to say “no” sometimes and just take a break. Figure 7:30 PM if your typical workday is 9-5.
That’s all I got.
Aeoli Pera 
I’m starting to think I might be psychotic (as per your definition). It seems to take me an extreme amount of effort to keep all the behaviourisms (nice word by the way :D) that I’m supposed to perform for daily functioning.
Also, I seem to lack mental resources for executive function more generally speaking. Perhaps this is related to autistification of my frontal lobe, which makes it less suited to executive function. Greater time and conscientiousness is required for me to remain organized.
I like the idea of your “laundry list” day, and I think it’s a great idea for TTs, and maybe Aspies more broadly. I’m not sure whether it would be suitable for Negroids, though.
Keep focus on all the behaviourisms, I mean, durr.
Pure homo sapiens sapiens have not shown any sign of being capable of managing the behaviorisms, even if they want to. Neotids, on the other hand, have a unique system of information-sharing that I’ll describe tomorrow.
Really? I always found most of my peers at school found organization to be effortless. At least, it looked relatively effortless to me.
They are white Canadians, whom Edenism 1.0 would describe as majority cro magnon.
Executive function is certainly part of it, and that tends to be a problem for folks on the spectrum. Part of it seems to come from which executive function has control in the prefrontal cortex, left or right (thinking vs. feeling preference in MBTI). But I think with TTs, it’s primarily due to the overwhelming need to feed and care for the massive gray matter network, which dominates all considerations when considering our psychology.
Care to elaborate on the relationship between grey matter and the executive functioning processes in the prefrontal cortex? I don’t quite understand what you’re referring to.
Yeah, that’s a fair question.
The executive function makes the decisions about what we’re going to do. If we’re feeling strong emotions (feeling preference) or we have a strong belief that option A is stupid and option B is smart (thinking preference), then that is going to influence the decisions the executive makes, attempting to maximize happiness (in the economics sense, quieting psychological distress).
But if you have this giant beast of an associative neural network dominating all of your subconscious processing and half of your conscious processing, then that beast is going to have an outsized influence on the decisions of the executive. It’s needs- psychotic reading binges, singular obsessive focus on impractical hobbies- overwhelm the petty needs of, say, the limbic system (the emotional center).
Most people just have the emotional and the rational, and they try to come up with some sorta balance between them. Basically every decision is risk/reward and delayed gratification. Thals, on the other hand, have this massive intuition engine that isn’t well understood, and there’s no advice out there for how to deal with this thing or use it properly.
Ditto the pressure cooker and I want a mess kit, but not enough to go out and buy one.
In the past, I used to be like this pretty much every day. You could say that “productivity” became my special interest. Of course, that also meant I spent way too much time fiddling with external gray matter induced artefacts (text files, plans, todo managers, etc).
Currently, I seem to have gotten bored with the whole productivity/lifestyle-design/pick-up cluster, and as such I find it quite hard to motivate myself to pick things off the ol’ TODO. But, I think it is better in the long run – forces me to just do things I need to do in the moment.
For me, the majority of my tasks are not stuff like “go to the bank” (which I have the conscientiousness to do generally) but rather lie in the middle-ground between bank errand and world domination. So, “research and order a new batch of supplements to achieve $insert_goal” might be an example. Before, I could rely on my productivity mania. Now, I have to actually want the goal and be motivated by the science of it.
Random:
Is there such a thing as a “Texas Arcane-style childhood”? By this I mean:
-Instinctive distrust for commies at an early age
-Side with the capitalists in fiction
-Like Robinson Crusoe and similar things
-Interest in building bunkers and storing foods
-Fascinated by scenarios of suriviving a zombie apocalypse
-Interest in science
-Reads a lot of science fiction
-Early interest in programming
-Obsession with building one’s own operating system that is more resource efficient than the normal ones (ie runs on old hardware)
-Being a “serious” kid
I had all of these as a kid.
I was a lot like that, but I also admired Stalin.