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How do I deal with people not reading things? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm autistic. This problem shows up for me all over the place, to the point that I typically don't recommend reading anymore except when strictly necessary. However, it is showing up now because I'm working with people on a project (and generally everyone I have worked with at school so far) who will not read, particularly documentation for tools and programs, data sheets, and application notes. How do I get people "up to speed" if they refuse to read the things I send them?

Some concepts are simply too complex or too lengthy for me to explain correctly in a real conversation. It's really the fact that nobody seems to want to read in any field of endeavor suggests that it's something wrong with me and how I perceive things.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

If we put aside everyone who's unable to literally read more than one sentence, I can imagine a different scenario as well.

I have a coworker who's very likely autistic and his type of working is, writing down everything. At first that sounds helpful, you can always go back into the documentation and every ticket has all the information. But for me personally this incredibly annoying. Why? Because he has no filter of compacting information. Some easy tasks, like for instance "CEO wants access to test results of XY", will result in a 20 pages essay.

Again you might think that I'm maybe overreacting, but when you have 20 or 30 tickets that way and are busy solving something that requires more brain power and you got to jump in between issues - because sometimes you're waiting for a reply or other people to act - then it's super frustrating if you jump and it's again a 20 pages essay you got to read. This is super time consuming, frustrating and literally makes me angry.

This might be useful if you have a super complex project and important scientific workflows where you're highly urged to not do mistakes, but otherwise it's way too much. In my eyes this is not efficient working.

My coworker is smart, maybe too smart to work with us, but he also lacks a filter of what information is important and which isn't.

I try my best to not work on any projects with him and skip over most of his writing. Going as far as writing it down myself, to not have to go into his tickets and read his unfiltered "brain puke" and waste time and energy trying to find the gist.

Have you tried to be brief? Maybe throw the text into chatGPT and compare a condensed result with your own?

Also btw, if you're really autistic, then your brain literally works different, compared to how most other people process information and sensory impressions. At least that's what I'd assum autism is about, but maybe I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

I have a coworker who's very likely autistic and his type of working is, writing down everything. also lacks a filter of what information is important and which isn't.

This is figuratively me, because yeah I'm autistic and I personally have a dogshit memory. To that end, I've not shown them like 90% of my notes.

This might be useful if you have a super complex project and important scientific workflows where you're highly urged to not do mistakes, but otherwise it's way too much.

See that's the thing though, we really are working on a super complex project where we really can't afford to make mistakes.

Have you tried to be brief?

Yeah I have. I guess not brief enough.

Maybe throw the text into chatGPT and compare a condensed result with your own?

I'll give that a shot!

Also btw, if you're really autistic, then your brain literally works different, compared to how most other people process information and sensory impressions.

Yes I am actually autistic, and I'm aware my brain works different. That's why I decided to get other people's perspectives on the matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Executive summaries are a good approach to cut down the chaff. 2 or 3 lines saying what the document is covering so people can at a glance decide if it is relevant to what they are doing.