Passion. For me its being passionate for thinks i really love: My Friends, Family Sometimes and most of all current projects aka current Hyperfixations. And a big one: my Job, it’s a real saver when you found the thing you can work at every day and still being hyper passionate about, even after many years. Hope that gives a perspective.

The ability to hyper focus on one of my (many) special interests. For example, I’m currently working on two christmas quilts at the same time, one uses a pattern and one is a crazy crumb quilt. I sew pieces from one and then chain piece both one after another. For those outside the quilt world, chain piecing is sewing multiple pieces, one after another, in a production line.

Let autism be your executive function. Let ADHD, your executive dysfunction, go hog wild and move a million miles an hour creating plans and ideas and doing it’s thing. But let autism, who loves executive function, drive the bus.

So yeah ADHD goes fast, but autism reigns it in by telling you “okay, great set of ideas you just came up with bud. Now let’s immediately birth them into the world, or make peace with possibly never birthing them into the world” this allows you to go at ADHD speed, but it is reigned in by the structure and rigidity of autism. Autism helps gives you tangible results.

For example, I have 3 ideas pop into my head. I deem them all good and correct things that would be worth my time to do. So thing 1 gets written down on a sticky note and put on my keys for tomorrow so I remember my lunch and some papers I need. Thing 2 gets written in a list on my phone for further research later, maybe I’m writing a list of good decoration ideas for an upcoming party. Thing 3 gets done immediately. I immediately go take my laundry out of the dryer, for example.

I know this is a lot of words, but letting autism drive the bus/train of thought has changed my life. Letting him create systems to overcome executive dysfunction that work for us has been massively impactful and I now get so much done.