Autism

A slew of organisational tools to help me keep track of things and prevent overwhelm:

• ClickUp is really good for big projects. I can break them down into smaller pieces, set dependencies and priorities, etc. so that only the next relevant steps are shown and I don't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved in a large project.
• Trello I find really handy for day-to-day stuff. I have a weekly template card with a checklist for each day and the regular activities on it. This reduces the amount of bandwidth I need to plan my day or week, as I already have a rough structure in place to build upon.
• Google Calendar (although really any calendar app should do). Use repeating events and take advantage of the email reminder options. If it's something important that I need to prepare for, I can set a reminder email a day or two (or even a week) in advance so that it doesn't sneak up on me.

Beyond that, I find it very important to keep my space organised, neat and tidy. Too much visual clutter is overwhelming. Making sure everything has its own place and is readily accessible takes a lot of hassle out of anything I have to do, whether it be day-to-day stuff or one-off tasks.

The Uncanny Valley is real.

I was undiagnosed my whole life until early adulthood, and therefore always tried to pass as NT, because I never knew what's wrong with me.

I trained myself for years to mimic NT behaviour, including facial expression, gestures, voice tone, and much more.
Everyone here can probably relate to that how incredible hard it is to achieve that, but I somehow did! Great! Right? Right...?

NOPE!

While I was 99% there, the 1% missing made everything worse.
Those are the tiny tiny nuances that you just can't replicate, like microexpressions, or some minor mistakes you made, like looking at the wrong direction while "thinking" or whatever shit they made up.

And those tiny incoherences are what will destroy everything. Many people will dislike or mistrust you, and the worst thing about that is that they don't even know why!
They'll accuse you to being a liar, because you act sketchy, or that you are "fake", or whatever you can think about.

I'm currently in the process of un-learning all of that and stop being someone else. Sure, many people will dislike you just for who you are, but seriously, if someone doesn't have a good time around you just because your voice sounds too flat or because you don't laugh back at them then fuck that person.
We have 8 billion people on this planet, there will be at least one person out there that appreciates your weirdness

Seek internal validation over external validation. Once I learned how to value my opinion of myself over other peoples', my life improved tremedeously.

~~I can sometimes do a sort of manual override and force my brain to behave a certain way. Doesn't always work for very long, though, and it's also worth noting I'm quite low (if there is such a thing as a low) on the spectrum.~~

EDIT: Turns out this is masking. Please ignore me.

A good Calendar and notes app has helped me considerably

Try to find a way to incorporate one of your hyperfixates into how you make money. It makes work suck a little less.

Not autistic but my partner is. One of her hacks is having me put alarms on my phone so I can gently remind her of things. The alarms are too jarring for her to have them on her own phone.