What is your opinion on being a high achiever in your Workplace?

[Autistamatic]

You can always have a job and a purpose outside the job. Job doesn't have to equal your purpose. You can work for charities in your free time or create independent art, dabble in politics even. Job can give you money but it's other activities that can give you purpose.

Summed up in the old adage:

"Work to live, don't live to work."

 

[ghostie]

I guess there's a bit more too.

When I left my job, I felt like I was doing my employers a favour because I was struggling with my projects and constantly calling in sick (wouldn't learn until after that it was near constant meltdowns just from thinking about the place or being near it that was causing my inability to be there) but on my last day, one of the partners that I hadn't worked with recently, came up to me and said it sucked that I was leaving. But in my head I was convinced I was doing them a favour by leaving.

Thankfully my ASD therapy has opened my eyes to the truth, I was doing myself a favour by leaving.

Not that the company was bad, actually it was great. I was so lucky to have found that place, they did so much for me to try to make a workplace that I felt comfortable enough to work at otherwise I never would have made it for all the years I was there. It was the industry that they worked in that I can't handle. Now my fear is that when I find a type of work I can do (and I think I have an idea) I still have to hope I can find a company that is run by bosses that are even half as compassionate.

And now that I'm learning a bit more about myself, I can begin to understand, and have to admit, that they liked having me work there because my projects were always finished on time and I have a pretty keen attention to detail which is great for an industry that has a bunch of leeches who prey on mistakes. They (with a few exceptions where I broke down) didn't see how much anxiety I was under because I got pretty good at hiding it all throughout school.

 

[ghostie]

For me a feeling of satisfaction from an achievement at work or school wanes within 5 minutes after I completed the goal. I still do it based on internal motivation, but what I have achieved to date literally doesn't matter to me. I have had work projects spanning 5-10 years that were very demanding and successful, I have my masters as well a non-work related cont. ed. certificate program that took me 2 years of sleep shortages.
Do I care about or even think these things? Heck, no. might as well have never happened.
Not sure if it's an Aspie thing or not.

My whole life I was never motivated to do school. I did ok in subjects like math and physics but I never cared about any of it and never did any homework. (I even did less homework than Moe!)

I just kind of always felt like school was "theoretical" and my life was "real life" and the theoretical and real life never seemed to be the same thing. I dunno, maybe I'm just stupid but it feels like there's a few very simple concepts that I didn't understand until I made it into my mid 30s. One of them being that you can just learn things that you want to know and then you can use that information in other parts of your life. I mean sure, on some level of course I knew that you could learn things and then you'd know things, but again, there was this difference in my mind between the theoretical and the real life so everything I learned in college went out the window and I had to learn everything for my job as on the job training. There was just no connection between the different things I learned. Each thing I learned was in it's own little room and never shall the rooms interact.

Now, things are starting to be coming together (I think it is due to my visualization training) in my brain. The wheels are turning and things are starting to click.

I have realized that I can learn the things that I want to know and so I have been out studying the plants around here to learn to identify them and what their uses are which is super fun, also I am learning how to program and loving it so much! It's like learning a secret language that you can use to create something from nothing, reminds me of the old Myst games and books I used to love. Hopefully I can get a programming job eventually.

Sorry I started to ramble, but the point is... I'm not sure what my point is anymore haha. But at least I'm starting to unravel my issues and figure out my brain, better late than never!

(I hope you don't take offense that I aimed my ramble at you by commenting at you, I think in my mind the point I was about to make was a lot more relevant to what you said but now I'm not so sure)

 

[Shenandoah]

(I hope you don't take offense that I aimed my ramble at you by commenting at you, I think in my mind the point I was about to make was a lot more relevant to what you said but now I'm not so sure)

It's not offensive in the slightest
I can see that what you are saying is sort of adjacent to what I was trying to express.
Can't say my education was all irrelevant to the professional path I took after, but a great deal of it was. However I was always told that it's not the subjects but the development of thinking skills is what's important.