Please be patient, I’m reticulating splines. - Monotropism and Task Switching

The splines are stored neatly into associational categories. Photo by Georg Eiermann on Unsplash

I've been thinking a lot about monotropism, a theory of autism, and how it relates to my difficulties with inertia and task switching. You can check out Monotropism.org for more explanations. The basic idea is that autistic people (and some ADHDers) "have a thinking style which tends to concentrate resources in a few interests and concerns at any time, rather than distributing them widely." (Fergus Murray, Starting Points for Understanding Autism) Theories and Practice in Autism (Fergus Murray 2018) introduces six starting points for understanding autism (español) in terms of monotropism:

1. Coping with multiple channels is hard
   This can be sensory channels or other information streams.

2. Filtering is tricky and error-prone
   Sometimes I can’t tune things out, other times I filter them out completely.

3. Changing tracks is destabilising
   Task-switching is hard, and new plans take work.

4. I often experience things intensely
   Usually things that relate to my concerns and interests.

5. I keep looping back to my interests and concerns
   It’s hard to let things drop.

6. Other things that drop out of my awareness tend to stay dropped
   I may need reminders.

Interruptions scatter the splines. Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

Now that you have a basic idea of what monotropism is, this article is what I really want to share today. Splines Theory: A Spoons Metaphor for Autism. Spoon theory is a great for describing energy capacity issues, but this article describes the particular way that task switching takes a lot of spoons and more time than allistic people might expect. And it’s funny, at least to me. So if you want a better understanding of why I might not answer right away, take a long time to get started on something, or get annoyed when I get interrupted, please read this article. If you start to feel frustrated with what appears to be a lack of response. it’s safe to assume that I’m too busy reticulating splines to answer, and I’d have to reticulate a whole other set of splines to speak.

But they don’t function until the splines fit into the correct holes.