Efficiency, Productivity and Order. Not important to other people as they are to me.
Oh Great NT. I have a mind incessantly preoccupied with pattern analysis, problem solving, efficiency. Before, when I was a mee misfit, I saw it as my goal to bring to this Vast, Disorganized World the truths of Efficiency, Productivity and Order.
Growing older, I came to see that my overriding Truths were perhaps not universal, but my own subjective predilections. That not everyone worked like me. That, quite often, many people seem to not only tolerate, but to thrive in disorganized, mismanaged, counterproductive, nothing getting done work environments. I.e., your typical office environment. Dilbert.
I have tried to become a wiser, more tolerant person, but still, when placed in a disorganized, counterproductive work environment, I have a very hard time accepting it, it's like my mind is screaming, "Must fix this! Must organize! Must have things make sense!" This, naturally, leads to conflicts with those who don't place such a high value on productivity and order. Thus, my ever unstable work history.
Wordily, I ask you, Great NT:
1) What in the world can be done to help a hyper-efficiency person not lose his/her utter-loving mind in typical work environments? and
2) I've often fantasized about losing this hyper-efficiency and meta-theorizing in my brain, about just being, letting go, becoming one of the "nothing really matters" type. What exactly goes on in a person's brain that they can't see how setting up an effective document management system would save them an average of 10-15 hours a week in confusion?
Wow Spectrumdweller, this may be a hard one for me because I am an NT who tends to be, and likes things to be, pretty organized myself. As you well know, many NTs are not like this at all! In any case, I will give it my best shot:
1) To be honest, I think this is a question that may be best answered by other people on the spectrum - what works for an NT may not apply here. That said, what works for me - and certainly not all the time - is to do in a sense what you mentioned in question two - that is, let it go. Organize things at the job in whatever way you are allowed to do so and if you make a suggestion that is rebuffed, don't push it unless you are really sure that doing so won't cause tension with your boss, co-workers, etc. I know it's sometimes hard to tell until you've crossed the line but even then, most people will allow for that once or twice. Beyond that, in my opinion, the best thing is to just accept that other people, for whatever reasons, like or even thrive in a certain amount of chaos, or what others perceive as chaos. I can imagine though, how frustrating this must be on a daily basis.
If it helps to release the pent up energy that may be caused by being unable to create or organize inefficient systems at the workplace, then do what you can to take breathers. Make sure to take breaks when you are able, take a walk, go outside a bit during your lunchtime, get yourself out of the environment for a bit. When you're not at work, write about it, do something creative with the energy - do a blog or a comic or find some outlet for the frustration that builds up.
2) A lot of unorganized NTs don't notice, or care, when things are disorganized or appear that way to others. For example, some people I work with seem very disorganized to me on the surface, but when I need something - they can pull it out of their pile right away. For those people, there is organization - it may just look like chaos or clutter to another person. Ahh if only I could say what goes on in another person's brain! I am thinking that the person who doesn't want the new system, in your case, feels that things are organized in a way that they can easily understand, even if it doesn't seem efficient or is even blatantly inefficient to others.
I also think that for some people, if you take away 10-15 hours - then suddenly their job becomes unnecessary or obsolete and possibly eliminated. Therefore they have a very large stake in keeping things inefficient.
If you could say a little more about how the person reponded when you presented your idea of setting up the new system, I may be able to better interpret that person's thought process.
Any people out there have thoughts about how someone on the spectrum can maintain sanity in an NT work environment?
-- Karen