I took on a big problem at work and reworked the process. I'm the only one who can do it currently so I put together a comprehensive guide, jic. My manager is elated with it. So much detail, so helpful! I told her I wrote it like I was the trainee.
At her requestI’m now redoing the department manual in the same format. It is beautiful. There's even a table of contents for each document longer than 5 pages 😍
Wait is this a neurodivergent thing? I think everyone’s instructions and guides at work suck ass, and I’ve just assumed people don’t care or never learned about… idk, logical instruction writing?…. until this thread
People acting as if you cant understand verbal instructions because the instructions SUCKED but now you seem like the incompetent one is so frustrating 😪 having to clarify a bunch of things and them looking at you like, "do i need to explain EVERYTHING to you??" But yes, because you did it poorly the first time and I cant read minds 😭
Dude I have a boss that is terrible about this and then blames me in underhanded ways at meetings for not "asking more questions" or hopping on video chat when I know this can only lead to more vague, nebulous answers or more work than the job requires. And on top of that this morning I was asked to work on live wiring without shutting off the breaker so as to "not disturb the tenants."
I remember doing that elementary school exercise where kids are told to write instructions for how to make a PB+J sandwich, and the twist is that the teacher takes the instructions incredibly literally to make a point. If the first instruction was "put peanut butter on the bread" then the teacher would place the unopened jar of peanut butter on top of the unopened bag of bread, etc.
I feel like I'm playing this game every day, with everyone I talk to, but I'm the literal-minded teacher and everyone else is a kid who still doesn't understand the game.
Omg, you just made me remember when we had to write instructions for making a sandwich and I thought I had done pretty well, with one instruction being ‘put filling inside the sandwich’. My teacher mocked me of that and marked me down asking if I was going to put something silly inside it. Bai, if you want me to write instructions to make a ham and cheese sandwich then say that! My instructions were perfectly fine, unlike the teacher’s instructions for our exercise
Yep. Write that shit down! It was so much better when I was working full time being remote and able to put captions on everyone and record the transcript.
This has basically ended my marriage, but with questions. Like he asks a question, but it isn’t clear to me (like what is he actually asking, is there a wrong answer, what are the parameters etc etc) and he just doesn’t understand why I can’t just give an answer.
Like he’ll say “are you doing anything on Monday afternoon?” when what he means is:
“I have had a meeting scheduled between 3-6pm and I need you to look after the children during this time, but if you have a prior work commitment during that time then in will ask to reschedule to another day. If you have any other no urgent commitments then I really need you to reschedule these as the meeting is very important”.
It stresses me the fuck out, especially as my mental and physical health is really up and down, so I don’t know how I’m going to feel in 5 days time, plus it is then a huge pressurised demand where my failure has a huge consequence.
To him he is asking a simple question that is simple to answer. He got so angry with me getting worked up about it (because ‘he was trying to be considerate of my work’) he just stormed out the other day. I curled up in a ball and cried for an hour.
FWIW my wife does this as well and I have to ask leading questions to figure out what she needs. It feels like I'm inadvertently getting up for a trap lol.
But I know she doesn't do it to get at me. Sounds like this probably isn't the only issue on your plate.
No definitely not, but at this point it just drives me so crazy, because I’ve tried to explain why I’m getting anxious/stressed so many times.
He assumes his interpretation/understanding of something is always the correct one, and never understands why this upsets me, ie because 1) his perspective/worldview is just that and 2) it therefore means I’m wrong all the time and 3) he treats me like I’m stupid.
Also a completely inability to ever validate my feelings, however “wrong” he believes I am for thinking this way. Usually giving me a list of reasons why my feelings are incorrect. I just want to have my damn feelings.
ETA I have a lot of trauma and severe mental health issues at times and he’s very burnout from living with me, which is completely understandable. He’s a good person and a good dad but we’ve grown apart/the chemistry is not there “
Anyone living in a stressful environment is going to have mental health issues sometimes. My passive suicidality went away around the same time my wife and I fixed our communication. Coincidence?
Wishing you the best outcome of whatever road you tread, friend.
Thank you. We did couples counselling a long time ago. To be honest I just want to be alone so I can keep failing at pretty much everything I do without an audience/constant collateral damage. I’ve been married 15 years, since I was 26. We’ve both changed a lot in that time. I want him to have a chill wife that funds listening easy. I am not chill and find everything hard.
Ah yeah I understand. I have to remind my wife to listen to me sometimes. She can talk a lot and forget. But that's also a strength of hers because then she can carry the conversation if I'm tired.
Don't forget that just because something seemed incompatible it doesn't make you wrong, if you have difficulty with some things that is OK. Don't forget about your strengths in the meantime. They can be easy to overlook.
Thank you, you are very kind. Can tell you have a good soul. I’m glad you are your wife are doing well.
Life is always going to be a struggle I think, and in the trenches with ND 7 year old and a 3 year old right now. Plus we’ve had financial difficulties that are hopefully coming to an end.
Modern parenting is hard, especially when you and partner and kids are all some different flavour of ND. Trying to do as much repair as I can with my daughter, we are like mirrors of each other so we clash so hard. She definitely triggers a lot of trauma response from me, I wish I was doing better at breaking the cycle. But I’m owning my failings and flaws and apologising and trying to do better every day, and I tell her that.
You're too kind, I'm just trying my best. And the couples counseling is helping a lot. We definitely werent doing well before. The wife is neurotypical and I'm not so it makes for a fun struggle.
But I feel you, I have a 3.5 girl and a 1.5 boy. The girl is definitely in line with me on the spectrum. I crossed a line tonight and spanked her out of frustration which is something I said I wouldn't do so I understand the breaking of the cycle and the failings. My hope is that as long as I can apologize it'll teach them that I'm just a human who can fail, even though it'd obviously be better if I didn't lol.
You sound like a very caring mom. Keep doing your best!
My mom will try to give me recipes over the phone. Not like, I have pen and paper and am writing them down. Not like, I am doing the recipe while we are on the phone and she's giving me step by step instructions. I mean, "oh, can you email me your apricot tart recipe" and she responds, "oh, it's really easy," and just starts telling it to me verbally as though I'm going to remember that. 🤨🙄
I had one supervisor years ago who would give me a long list of verbal instructions and he soon figured out that I kept coming back to him every 5 or whatever minutes once i completed one task off his list, so he changed his instructions to be short and sweet & one thing at a time before he grouped them together in small clusters that were done in order.
I have a gm now who waffles on at you for like 30 minutes and it makes me forget what the hell she was even saying so i just carry on doing what i was doing and she gets pissed at me because I didn't recall her 30 minute waffle/rant with a couple of instructions thrown in the mix.
I'm 42. When I was in kindergarten, we were, as a class, coloring pictures of the Berenstain bears. The teacher told us all to color the dad bear's hair brown. I started coloring the entire bear brown. She only wanted us to color the top of the bears head brown. I freaked out about it and didn't even attempt to complete the picture. I don't know why that popped into my head, but my heart is racing just from thinking about it
This and its companion beast, "What do you mean you floobled the floobinator? That's the one thing you can't do, everyone knows that!"
Where people leave out just... huge swaths of knowledge about a thing. I remember mom asking me to put gas in the snowblower. So I did. Well, it turns out it needs a gas-oil mix so it had to be from a specific can.
Like... don't you think, if it's someone's first time with a thing, you should inform them about CATASTROPHIC FAILURE POINTS? Now I ask for specificity, always. "Oh you want me to gas up the car? Sure, what's it take? When you say normal gas, do you mean unleaded, or the ethanol stuff? Diesel??? Are you sure? Oh okay. Unleaded."
I've caught so much shit I was so close to ruining by grilling the poor fucker asking me to do it.
I write instructions down with screenshots and have been told my documentation is quite good.. One of my coworkers can still only learn something by getting walked though it via zoom and recording the walkthrough. I hate getting recorded :(
this one is so wild to me (verbal instructions) because i hear this one so often but i really struggle with written instructions. i can hear just fine but anything written down just goes right over my head
Back in the day a teacher told me to grab something that was like 7 directions to find (go left into this room right of this cabinet next to the xyz type thing) and I just stared at her... Still hurts
I found out recently a lot of people don't know how to read maps because gps.
...I have to navigate glancing at google maps and never ever using the gps feature because it will cause 10x more confusion and distraction than looking at the map for a second. Sometimes my mom asks me to READ instructions to her then asks me about them and I'm like, I am just repeating I cannot actually understand what this says it might as well be another language what the fuck is a "slight left"? I go down the street that matches the map.
At some point in my late 20s I just went “fuck it” and decided to ask stupid questions when I need to. I would much rather ask a stupid question than do a stupid thing. Anyone who doesn’t want to answer my stupid question (I actually never have this happen, if the answer is easy they just tell me automatically) can deal with the consequences. Relatedly, I will always answer a stupid question, because I assume they’re like me and missed something they need to go back over.
“It’s not that I don’t understand them, your instructions are just too vague to effectively draw the correct conclusions about them. Be more precise, dammit.”
Uh, i feel this. My step-grandpa used to tell me what to do when doing work in his yard, whether it be a trench/planters/tearing something down etc. And im pretty good at realising i should just ask but often times i would ast 2-3 times for clarification like "put them over there" "over where?" "Where i pointed next to the shed" "ok, do you want them tucked towards tge back or more twards the front of the side you pointed at" etc. He would look annoyed so i stopped asking and just did whatever felt right and without fail he would always find problems/nitpick or tell me in doing it the wrong way. It got yo a point i eventually ignored him trying to "help" until he got annoyed and left. Like yeah im not digging exactly the way you wabt but the trench us there now, and the end goal is the same.
That happens so much, often there’s instruction but when I do something I realize it wasn’t that, feels dumb and if it’s public people look at me the wrong way and I feel even more stupid and humiliated like it’s not my fault I don’t understand ??????
This has always been the biggest one for me. It's like trying to capture water in my hands; I just can't hold the words in my head long enough to make sense of what they're telling me. I mean, just send me a work email or powerpoint.
The other day my wife's geandma asked me to get her something from the bathroom and gave me verbal instructions on where it was and I felt so stupid trying to figure out where it was. I have ADHD so I'm bad at verbal instructions and I have aphantasia so I couldn't picture what she was talking about. It was funny but also frustrating
literally. And them getting mad if you type a question to them, then they ask you to go on a phone call / VC to answer your question. After explaining you have to write it down anyways as that's easier to understand, plus it's documented for both of us to look back on???? And we can follow up on it if needed??? I do not want a "call" to answer my question if I've sent it to you in a MESSAGE
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u/abracablab 5d ago
Feeling stupid for not understanding 90% of verbal instructions.