Rest breaks

If you’re autistic, people can be exhausting. You have to concentrate around them all the time – speaking “people” isn’t your native language – it’s exhausting and like having to speak a second language all day. But your job is all about people so – what to do? I rely on having breaks during the day when I can be quiet and not have to communicate so that my brain can recuperate. It might sound like something everyone would want – an hour of quiet in the middle of the day. Surely everyone should have a lunch break, so what’s the big deal? Or maybe you work in one of those places where “lunch is for wimps” and it’s the prevailing culture that everyone works continuously and a break in the middle of the day is an unattainable luxury.

As I’ve got more senior I’ve found my day fills up with meetings and it’s increasingly hard to protect that time in the middle of the day. I don’t mean it’s hard to get people to leave me alone – I mean it’s hard for me to remember to accept that “powering on through” is not a good choice. Supposing I do – like I’ve done quite a lot recently. I can keep working through lunch and all seems to be well. But during the afternoon my brain sort of stops working. The effort of “peopling” without stopping has made it impossible for me to function normally and I get very little done. So counterintuitively, if I want to be productive, I have to devote part of my day to not working. It feels wrong – I have a sense of an unspoken social pressure to keep going. But I have to remember to do what works for me, rather than what others expect to see.

If you’re autistic and you’re happy for your manager to know, it might be worth telling them that you’re going to build some rest breaks into your work calendar. It can be an entirely valid reasonable adjustment. Or even if you’re not open about your autism, you might find it helpful to protect bits of time in the day for getting away from people. Faking “normal” is all very well, but sometimes it’s just more effective to go with the grain of your brain, rather than fighting it.