I think there's something NTs don't get about ND people - our executive function is VARIABLE.
We can increase the chances of it being better on a given day by resting and avoiding stress, and we can ensure we have almost none by being in stressful situations, but on any given day, it's a badly weighted dice roll.
And no matter what we come up with, it's limited. On a good day, we can maybe steal a little from the next day, but the cost is incredibly high.
The other thing NTs don't get is that if we go through a long period of functioning above capacity, we break.
And I am honestly not sure how to make that better, at least in my case.
Huh. I thought this is a universal property of humans (for basically any axis of capacity I can think of).
@robryk Sigh.
Ok, I'm not sure I want to get into this, but some people start out with significantly more restricted executive function capacity than others.
There's a different between occasionally having bad days, and having it be consistently disabling.
Sure, I get that _this_ is very different (both in mean and variance). But aren't the effects of trying to stay well above the-value-that-got-randomized-for-today similar? (Or are you saying that for many people this range starts so high that they never get to experience trying to stay in it for more than a day at a time?)
@robryk Something like that.
Sure, people can burn out the same way, but yes, I guess that is one way of looking at what I'm saying.
What's different is that for one group, writing a disseration over the course of months leads to that kind of stress, but most other things don't. So it happens rarely.
For another, showering and remembering to eat every day for a week leads to a similar level of incapacity.