I know the DSM criteria for Asperger syndrome state that aspies stick to their interest and strongly prefer them to any other task. But all that says IMO is that we prefer to do our own stuff. The criteria says nothing about reactions to boredom, as opposed to ADD where boredom/concentrating on boring tasks is part of the criteria.

I'd like to know how other aspies react to boredom so I have something to compare with.

Now I can decide what to do and when, but back in my school days this wasn't so. If I wasn't interested in schoolwork (and usually I wasn't), I just couldn't read. When I tried I found I had no idea what I had just read, and then I stopped. I couldn't make myself read and understand. If it was a non school book and an interest that I had, I could get absorbed.

Boring things can make me feel physically ill.

As an example: One of the dullest things in my life were maths lessons. I had no motivation whatsoever, and I have always been unable to focus for more than a couple of minutes at the very most. Usually it wouldn't even take me that long before I started spacing out.
I don't just mean when I was a kid; the last time I tried to get through maths I was 27.

I can't even find words to describe how bad those lessons were. It was literally mind numbing, like a brain freeze, I couldn't focus, I felt like I wanted to escape my own skin (bad image, but the best I could find) just to get away.
When other pupils said they hated maths and that the homework s***ed, their words would be followed by them sitting down to do the math without hesitation once the complaining was done, while I usually found myself unable to even start, not to mention being anywhere near finishing it. So their version of boredom was far from mine.
I pretty much counted the seconds to the lesson was over. When class started after the recess, I always made sure to be 5 minutes late, so I was among the last to sit down. Then the teacher would often have announcements to make during which I brainstormed myself for questions to ask to put off the maths a little more. When we were done with the messages, I would waste as much time as possible in getting the books and the pencils from my rucksack to the desk, leaving me with about 30 minutes that felt like 30 years.

Dyscalculia didn't help but it's not just an issue about it being hard for me. I was told I was skilled in some other subjects like norwegian and english, but since the topics there were boring I was as mindnumb in classes there as I was in maths. I did well in spelling forinstance but when the tasks were lame I wasn't able to write well at all, and got way lower grades.

So I'm wondering: If you feel certain that you only have AS, how does boredom feel for you? Are you able to concentrate despite being thoroughly bored with a topic?
Or are you like me?

If you have ADD or suspect you do, is it like it is for me?

And if you're NT (not autistic), what is boredom like for you?



There is a book called "All dogs have ADHD". I read a review of it by a person with ADD only who wrote that alot of the things listed there were true for ADD as well as ADHD. These hold true for me:


I know ADD (or ADHD-PI as it's actually called now) is not an uncommon comorbidity for aspies, but it's hard to find out more facts on the differences between normal aspie reaction and ADD reaction on this issue.

I dunno, depends I guess.. bad sometimes

I wouldn't qualify any of this as boredom, actually. Boredom for me happens on the rare occasion that I can't occupy myself with something I'm interested in. I can usually do that, even if that means daydreaming for a long time. But sometimes I get bored & restless because there's nothing to do. There's nothing new to learn about anything I'm interested in & my brain is too cloudy to daydream well.

But as for learning, it's very hard for me to learn anything I'm not interested in. I'm exactly the same as you when it comes to math. It also makes me physically ill. Just having to go to a class I hated & was not the least bit interested in & try to pretend I was interested in it & try to pay attention to what the professor was saying, to the book, to the examples, I just couldn't do it & felt sick. I would get nauseous & queezy just at the thought of having to do math again. The last time I had a math class was about a year & a half ago, & no matter what I did or how much I tried, I just could not force myself to learn or understand it. When it comes to text books, I can't read most of them because I find most of them incredibly uninteresting. I have trouble reading & learning anything I don't find interesting. It's why I've mostly taken classes that I might not even need-- because they're things I find interesting. Other than most of my history classes & my English classes, everything else I have taken I just haven't done well in. Even with my English class, one required that I read stories from a certain book & write about it. The book was full of stories I had ZERO desire to read. All a bunch of CRAP. Because of that (& family problems), it took me forever to finish the class. I just couldn't read the material because I couldn't make myself focus on it. The last class I took which just ended around a month ago, was a United States history class. My history classes are my favorite classes, but that one was very hard for me because I really didn't like the material. I guess because I'm an American, I didn't really care about learning about my own country. I'd prefer to learn about other countries. If it hadn't been for the fact that it was an online class & I found nearly all the answers to the tests online, I probably would have failed the class.

I don't really give a crap about Asperger's or any of that psych stuff, but I experience boredom WAY too damn much. I often find that life is nothing but a big time-sink where I'm constantly trying to find stuff to do so I can ignore the passage of time. I never have drama or any problems. (I'm a NEET after all haha). All of my physical needs are met. (food, water, shelter, clothing) Sometimes, I wish that I had something serious to deal with so that I'd be less bored, but I dunno. My plan is to keep holding out for a full-time job and finally getting a place of my own. Maybe my view on life will change then? If it doesn't and I am still just as bored, then that would suck. Damn you, modern society!

But how hard is it for you guys to do things you find dreadfully boring?

For me boredom is never about having nothing to do, it's about being forced to do things I find painfully boring, like 90 something % of anything that happened in school. It doesn't just leave me bored, it leaves me mind numb and desperate to escape, it's impossble to focus and I check the clock several times a minute each time thinking that now at least 10 minutes must have passed, maybe even half an hour.


Krysti, think you could elaborate a bit? And do you have AS or ADD?

not that bad. i hardly get bored i always find something to do. but im still a very boring person to other ppl.

work is much worse, its boring AND exhausting

I have no attention span for things I'm not interested in. It's part of the reason why me and institutionalised education have never gotten along. I prefer to learn what I want, when I want. I know that makes me sound like a stubborn brat, and that's because I am.

When I get bored, I panic. However, boredom to me is, as Skillpaddle said about herself, my boredom is associated if I'm in a place that I don't like and I'm doing something I don't wish to do. It is so rare for me to be bored that ti freaks me out when I realize it. I'm far more likely to be too exhausted to do something than bored with something. When I'm bored, it's like I feel mentally trapped. I start stimming furiously and my breathing gets erratic. I can usually avoid this by either concentrating too hard to think, or allowing my mind to wander to mroe interesting things, or simply writing on paper stories that I want to write.

I don't know much about aspergers or the likes and I'm not going to even think about whether or not I have it, since I have already been diagnosed with a ton of disorders anyhow and don't need any more additions on that list ^^; But most points on the dog list do apply to me. *bark bark*

Being forced to do stuff I don't want to is a total pain to me too and I just get mad at the "wasted time" I'm forced to spend on it. Having to do stupid repetitive tasks at work pretty much made me explode all the time when I was still working at an office. Their workflow was such a horrid slow mess that each time I had to wait for a progress bar to fill till the comp responded again I feel I could have killed something. It's a feeling of limitless anger, hate, despair and numbness.
If at all possible boring work simply does not get done at all
Either that or I try finding a way to transform it into something that I can get into.
School lessons like math and history and physics and what other useless crap I knew I'd never need and I knew I could cheat my way around made me so mad about all the wasted time, I decided to teach myself some japanese and draw scribbles for website to rpg designs or to read more about rendering/shader theories etc instead. I learn to script my own plugins rather than to accept a workflow I'm not happy with (wasn't possible in former company's case though) and put a lot of effort into completely reconfiguring everything I work with to the smallest detail to eliminate anything that bores me/repeatedly annoys me(hello hotkeys <3). That way I'm always facing an ocean full of things to do in almost any situation (though mostly it's literally so much that i sometimes drown in it :p).

But yeah if there's something really really horrid with no way to avoid it or transform it into something interesting minutes can turn into hours and it's just unbearable (hello taxes and business paper stuff ). In that case I will still try procastinating with all my might and probably have to force myself to finish the stuff under lots of pressure in the last minute possible.

If I'm working on something that I understand fully, then I can work for ages and actually enjoy working. But if I don't understand part of it and cannot complete the work, I completely lose interest, end up distracting myself and it never gets done. It's been the same throughout all my school life, but I'm hoping when I finally get a job and have been trained etc, I'll be able to get on with it.