A Perseverance Algorithm
27 August 2025
I am pretty sure I'm not the only person in the world who has trouble getting through my daily tasks. This time, by "daily tasks", I mean everything from house chores and cleaning, to studies and work, to my creative long-term projects, which technically count as hobbies but still require a notable amount of organization, self-monitoring and discipline.
To be completely honest, to this day I couldn't say if my struggles organizing and keeping up with my own life are unique to neurodivergent people, or rather they're just general human struggles. When I present my organizational problems to neurotypical people older than me, in casual language, they generally do seem to understand and relate, and have valuable advice to give; but sometimes, seeing how other people navigate their life, I truly feel alien in my experience. I know that certain things that would have stunted me are nowhere in those people's minds. It is likely that it's a mix of both. There are things we all have to deal with now and then, as humans, and there are things that are unique problems for each of us, as individuals.
I say this because, with summer being almost over, I realized I have valiantly battled to keep my work perseverance during this year, and mostly these last months, in very interesting (and mostly successful!) ways; but also because during the last week I've possibly had the roughest time dealing with executive dysfunction, to the point of seeing previously successful techniques no longer working for me.
So... I am starting out the post with a little analysis of how I successfully persevered this summer with everything I needed to do, the struggles I came across, and how I have been attempting to overcome them; and finally a little personal theory about what exactly happened last week that made my work crumble apart. Then (and this will be sort of a small feat), I am going to try and condense all of this knowledge into my own personal "daily algorithm" to successfully keep my brain and body going. I feel like it is very important that I do this in writing, not only so I can come back to it, but also to truly give it structure; and I also think it may be fitting to publish this as well, in case it would help somebody else.
If you are reading this and you're hoping I will give you the definitive answer to git gud at keeping up a schedule and persevering in your work, then I'm sorry to say, this is not it. This is a personal blog and thus I am sharing some things that have worked for me, as an autistic person with an overactive, compartmentalized mind (even though they have not been 100% infallible for me either). Pick and choose from my own experience, but also, don't neglect the task of figuring yourself out first.
With that out of the way, let's start with some personal context about my life.
Me
The most relevant things about me, in context, are that I am unemployed, independent (in all aspects except economic) and currently studying rather than working. A couple years ago, I had an important talk with my mom regarding what I wanted to do in life, and all of that. There are many things about me that she struggles to understand, but she knows I am terrible at finding jobs. I am, however, fairly good at studying. So, these last two years I've been applying for exams that, if passed, could grant me a permanent government administration position. I wouldn't ever need to look for a job or struggle for money again. This is, for lack of a better word, my stated primary goal. It is also incredibly difficult and draining; I have gone through two exams and failed, and am waiting to do my third attempt. In addition, law and spreadsheet software aren't the most fascinating topics. In the meantime, I am trying my very best to support myself with art commissions (which also often take a fair deal of struggle to complete) and possibly other job opportunities that might come up; but the reality is that, every other month or so, it is still my parents who pay my rent (in Madrid, no less; our capital city and thus expensive to live in). This fact weighs on me every single day, and in the recent past, shame has prevented me from keeping regular, open communication with my family. As a creative, it is important that I add that the main motivational pool I have to draw from, what actually gets me out of bed every morning, are my own creative projects, and the pure distilled joy I get from the act of creation. Working on my projects is not optional for me. Art is my reason for living. It is not something I can just put away while I fully focus on studying, because if I tried to do that, I might as well have ceased to exist. I was there during the COVID pandemic, and I absolutely do NOT wish to go back. So, I currently have two main projects that I'm working on, with varying degrees of constancy, but which are very much alive and well. Suffice to say, given all of this, that I have a bunch of important stuff going on in my life that I both need and want to do.
How I've been handling me
This is my first go at life, and it is my first go at adulthood as well. I am fumbling, and fumbling a lot. However, this year I found that I am getting better at it. Amongst many other things that happened, it really helped me to know that I am not the only person fumbling, and that it is perfectly okay to do so.
When I moved into my own (shared) apartment for the first time, I quickly realized that I had no idea what to do with myself, or how. It wasn't as simple as just learning to cook and creating a CV. It went deeper than that. For a while, it really was like I didn't really know myself, like, at all. I couldn't identify or handle my own impulses, my own thoughts, my own reasons for acting or not acting the way I did. It was so stark a realization, after having lived with myself for two decades, that it truly stunted me with shame and guilt. It took some processing to go from blaming myself, or autism, or like, social media for making me a useless blob, to actually accepting that my adult mind was still unknown to me, and to start studying my own behavior with honest and kind intent.
I really cannot stress enough how important this was. I have a feeling that eventually everyone gets here (or at least somewhere close), but to get any kind of work done in my life, I needed to learn things such as: what I wanted in life, what kind of activities I wanted to do every day, what kind of stuff I could/could not do, why and how I could/could not do it, what I needed from others, what I needed from my environment, what I needed to provide for myself, which things made me feel good, which things made me feel bad, which patterns of behavior were/were not helping me, and why. I am my zookeeper, and I am the most complex and most important animal in the world.
You do not learn these things overnight. I am unsure about the answers to most of these myself, after years trudging through them. It not only takes self-reflection, but also a LOT of experimenting, and trial and error, and hard conversations with people who know me, and sharp, constant attention, and time, and honesty, and TONS of mental strength. For example, not everything that feels unpleasant is something to avoid; some things are unpleasant and to be avoided, but some things are only unpleasant in the context of their avoidance, or they are unpleasant but very necessary (as is fairly common in life). It is never easy to judge these things, and it is even harder to get oneself to act upon them, because it implies you have to change, like, really change, and really study the effects of those changes.
In my personal case, all of that self-reflection and experimentation, together with a few fortuitous life circumstances, led to the following discoveries about myself.
- I NEED structure and routine. I do think that, in many ways, all people (and other creatures) benefit from clear structure. Our brains are wired to learn from experience, and to form pathways that make it easier and easier to do necessary tasks with every single repetition. In my case, this is my absolute golden rule. Not only structure and routine help me; without them, I am simply and utterly lost. I am almost non-functional (and in my case, that pretty much sentences me to misery and entering a cycle of mental punishment). Being able to keep up with my own routine and the goals I set for myself always makes me happy, and taking a break (especially a non-scheduled, "feeling very sick/sad/tired today" kind of break) has a risk of killing my groove for good. My brain is made of clockwork and it will never run out of energy, as long as I keep its cogs steadily rolling. Upkeep of structure, for me, comes before everything else, even if I have to force myself to do something I dread, even if I have to physically ensure it; I have learned that this is necessary and amounts to more motivation and energy, and less fear, in the long run. If you are autistic yourself: I know it sounds exhausting, but PLEASE do not rule this possibility out. It requires a tremendous amount of discipline to test this theory, especially if you are unemployed like me or otherwise expected to completely self-organize, but it may just do the trick for you.
- My expectations NEED to be very low and flexible. I am only expected to start. This goes hand-in-hand with my previous point. Personally, I have very rarely had problems carrying out a task all the way to completion, once I have started it (the times I have dropped certain projects midway were always because I hadn't given them enough thought in the first place). My biggest, most insidious, most disabling problem is always starting tasks, because I get caught up in mulling over my own feelings toward the task. This is why I have been focusing all my energy into training myself, best as I've been able, to start things, and not necessarily to setting timers or more rigid goals for myself. Basically, I've been working on growing a spine and taking initiative. Because routine is everything to me, and my absolute golden rule, low expectations are actually essential to keeping my sanity and balancing my life. I am expected to routinely study every single day; whether I just read one page, or half a page, or managed to spend the entire morning studying, I have still carried out my routine for the day. I made the effort to at least show up for my task. 10-15 minutes of studying every day for a week is better than "taking a break" that accidentally might extend to be seven days long. Most of the time, if I manage to start a task, I will do the best that I can with it in the mental state I'm currently in, no further monitoring necessary. This means that, if one day I'm feeling tired, or sick, or out of sorts, I get to just "show up" for my tasks, and have it still count. I will get rest AND the necessary serotonin from having kept up my structure. A similar thing happens with tiny interruptions, such as important emails, or texts from my fam, or maybe little messes while I cook. I need to tackle these immediately after they come up, especially if they can be dealt with quickly or without previous consideration; otherwise I will probably start unnecessarily mulling over their existance and never actually get to solve them.
- I NEED to acknowledge my own feelings, but NOT let them take the reins. I barely show it from the outside, but my feelings tend to be really deep, and really intense, and sometimes explosive, for no good or logical reasons. Whether negative or positive, they have the very real potential to completely derail me and affect my ability to keep up with life. For this reason, it is very important that I keep my feelings in check, that I "save them for later", that I keep going back to my set structure; but it is just as important that I know which feelings they are, how they originated, whether acting on them is justified/useful, and which thought patterns they're creating, so I remain in control of myself. Being angry about some stupid fandom thing, or really excited about a date, or expecting a package, are all inane things that could cross entire days off my month before I knew it, if I let them take over me. Unpacking feelings is a skill. I have also found that actively practicing kindness, which is also a skill, helps me a lot. My anger, both toward others and myself, can be extremely disabling, so I consistently train myself to recognize anger and use logic-based techniques to avoid its bait. Likewise, I monitor the way I talk to myself in my mind, and I'd say I'm getting fairly good at clocking and defeating self-deprecating thoughts.
- I NEED to keep my bare necessities met. I have consistently found that, when all else fails, the most likely problem is that some of my basic needs are not being met. I need to drink and eat enough, I need to sleep, I need to be clean and live in a clean home, I need to be outside, I need to move about, and I need to physically be around people now and then. For me, these things don't always come naturally (not until it's a bit too late, anyways), so they take some effort and mental load to monitor. Together with ALL the other things I keep monitoring every day, it can get draining, so I usually come up with little routine "hacks" to implement basic needs into everyday behaviors.
So, how have I been using this knowledge about myself to keep my life in working order this summer?
In order to train my brain for routine, I decided to create a daily ritual for myself. Every single day, I would have breakfast, tie my hair for business mode, get dressed, pack a lunch, a large bottle of frozen water and an afternoon snack, grab my laptop, and walk down to the library. Once there, I would set the water bottle on my chosen desk, and work on commissions until lunchtime. After having lunch in the nearby park, I would head back there to study and to have my personal creative time until the library closed. Once back home, I would check that my food and water for the next day were ready, engage in one non-work activity (such as watching a movie or reading) and go to bed.
This system has worked actual miracles for me this summer, and most of the effectiveness of the ritual lies in the fact that I have made my "working place" be different than my own room, AND a place I need to get dressed and clean up for. Not only does this system create easily distinguishable steps to follow and clear-cut limits for them; it also has allowed me to start my day with fifteen-to-twenty minutes of walking, to naturally keep up with my own hygiene, to have food available immediately when I get hungry, and water when I get thirsty; plus it saved me tons of money by offering free wifi and free AC in Madrid's hellish heat, along with some other cool things that I really wanna make a library-specific post to talk about. During the weekends, because the library was closed, I found public rooms with climatization that the city had set up to combat the heat, in which I was allowed to work.
Honestly, if I were able to do this consistently every day, I would be thriving. But life for humans is never this predictable, sadly. Of course, it hasn't been a foolproof system; all sorts of things can come up to mess with this library routine. Some days, I am expected to stay home. Some days, I am not in Madrid at all and there's family coming over at indefinite points of the day. Some days, I let my feelings or my fixations win, and then I have to make double the effort to get myself back where I was. Some days I just didn't have enough time/motivation to cook, and didn't have a library meal prepared for the day.
In short, I am not saying I figured out the perfect system for myself this summer; but I AM saying I am getting better at it, and am living happily with myself like never before.
What I learned from last week
The last week (and a half) was an absolute mess. I wasn't able to get myself to the library, wasn't able to get myself to study or do commissions, didn't go out for the fun little summer activities I had planned to do this month, was barely even able to do personal stuff. All I found in me to do was watching videos or movies or shows. I felt miserable. So... Analysis time. What happened last week?
Everything happened last week. Everything was against me.
First of all, I was already starting the week with an increased difficulty level, because an episode of insanity about having to finish coding this here website (oops) had already butchered my routine the previous weekend. I was also feeling a lot of sudden apathy that made it very hard to reset my brain and to do house chores like cooking or laundry, which I later deduced might have had to do with it being my period. I am lucky enough that these aren't painful for me, but I often have a hard time accepting that periods do have mental effects too. Plus, period means I was feeling especially filthy. Add to that the fact that the batch of food I had prepared for the week turned out... not very good, way too salty, and attempts to wash the salt off of it made the flavor tolerable, but the texture ickier. It was an extremely hot week in Spain, so hot that fires were destroying everything everywhere, and the nights weren't any cooler, so getting good sleep was harder. Last week, I also got the news that my old english teacher, whom I really adored and whom I owe so much, and I knew had suffered from cancer all year, passed away.
Over the last couple years I have gotten fairly good at trudging through the small inconveniences of the day, so I was feeling guilty for my poor discipline, but looking back, I keep finding a bunch of reasons I was just not feeling quite myself.
Therefore, here's the most important thing I learned from last week: when everything goes wrong, I NEED to be kind to myself. The wronger it goes, the more kind I need to be to myself. And like I said before, kindness is a skill that must be trained. It isn't some abstract concept. Kindness involves doing a conscious effort to review what somebody did (or in this case, didn't do) and choose to understand, sympathize and help, rather than guilt-trip.
Me? I'm a little freak. I help myself by coming up with algorithms.
My daily perseverance algorithm
During my web programming classes, I learned the definition for algorithm. It sounds like some fancy, techie thing, but actually all it means is "ordered set of instructions". That's what an algorithm really is. Any guidebook or instruction manual you have ever read is an algorithm. Mental algorithms are my way of getting through the day. Now, here's my attempt at writing my daily instructions down.
- Morning checkpoint. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I do a mental checklist that includes the following:
- Acknowledging what day it is, where it sits on the week, and whether there's anything special in my calendar.
- Changing clothes and cleaning myself up.
- Breakfast.
- Checking that there's food ready for the day.
- Figure out the additional tasks for the day. Based on my morning checklist, I will figure out whether anything special needs to be done that day, and make a judgement regarding when and how to do it (for example cooking, big laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, appointment with someone, etc). By this point, my whole day should be laid out for me.
- Prepare for & do my 3 daily tasks. I set up a maximum of three main things that I am expected to "show up for" EVERY single day of the week. If I try to expect more, I likely won't be able to keep up. "Prepare" involves physically moving to my place of work with my packed lunch. This summer, my three tasks in order of priority have been:
- Study.
- Commission work.
- Work on personal projects.
- Lunch when hungry. So far, this has been working fine because I'm not tied to a company's schedule, even if lunch ends up being unfashionably late. I'm my own judge anyway. May need to change this to "Lunch when the alarm sounds" if I need to adjust to a fixed time.
- Do any additional tasks. If they haven't been done by the time I finish with the daily tasks, then it's time to try and tackle them afterwards.
- Evening checkpoint. When the day is done, I do another mental checklist that includes the following:
- Going through what was and wasn't done during the day, what worked and what didn't, and (important) patting myself in the back for it. This helps me figure out what needs to be done tomorrow too.
- Getting comfy.
- Dimner.
- Checking that there's food ready for the next day.
- Leisure time. Lately, I've been reading comics and/or watching a movie or show when I'm done with my day. I find that reading/watching new things that I hadn't seen before is most enriching for me. It's even more fun if it's serialized material, that way it helps me find a natural daily rhythm during the week.
- Sleep time. Generally, I will fall asleep without problems and wake up 7-8 hours later ready to start the day, so if I'm going to bed at a decent time and don't need to be somewhere specific early, I shouldn't need an alarm.
That's it.
I feel like this was a bit long and convoluted just to get to that little list... In my defense, I did warn you that this wasn't a revolutionary formula. It isn't rocket science either. It's just something that I have recently figured out how to do, and wanted to write. I also wanted to preface it with an explanation as to why it was important for me to note it down. It is likely that eventually my life and my circumstances will change, and I will have to adapt to it, maybe make another algorithm altogether. But I am so freaking serious when I say this has helped me immensely. It has allowed me to do what I need to do, what I want to do, what's good for me and what's fun for me, and keeping it flexible enough. It has also allowed me to constantly evaluate both my system and myself, and to keep my neurospicy brain busy and rolling.
All of this may not be for you (may even be the opposite of what's for you!), but if you got this far reading, thank you so much for indulging my ramblings, and I hope it served you in some way at least!
