This is Autism Friendly Jobs by the Faultspot. Let's have a look at what jobs we could possibly engage in as autistic people. See if there's anything that I can add to this, my fault, my faults. Let's have a look, because I feel like a lot of people sort of in the mainstream would assume, okay, coding, computer science, mathematics, physics. I don't necessarily think that that's a whole heartedly, kind of, not wholeheartedly, a whole sort of representation of what autistic people are good at. I find that a lot of people within the autistic community actually tend to be a lot more on the creative side. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. On today's video, I wanted to talk about some things to look for when you or your loved one are looking for jobs that can more so fit your needs as an autistic person and therefore be more sustainable. Hopefully as well, more fulfilling. Now, I wanna share with you guys a statistic. At least 85% of autistic adults with a college education are unemployed. And this is according to the 2023 statistics from the US Department of Labor. Let me repeat to you guys. Also, if you have a co-occurring learning disability, I think the chances of you having any type of employment is like 5.8%, don't quote me on that. It's not looking good. And I think in the UK, when the last sort of statistic that I looked at, think about 23% are ever in full-time or part-time employment. There is a big issue with that. And that statistic that the fault spot put out, it kind of makes you realize you have a college graduate obviously got the capability to work a job. Why not? You guys, I am not great at numbers, but 85% of the whole US population, right? 85% of autistic adults that have college education are unemployed. So this isn't even a matter of your intellect, you know? That is a high number, 85%. I just want to read off a little bit more from this article before I get into what I have to talk about because I think along with learning about ourselves, it's also important to learn about the systematic ways that we are influenced and the ways that society influences us. A 2020 study of the performance of autistic job seekers by the UK's University of Bath and University College London found that autistic applicants are less likely to engage in impression management, which is the conscious or subconscious process in which someone will attempt to influence how people perceive them using strategies such as persuasion and self-promotion. This causes autistic applicants to often rate poorly in confidence, communication skills, and likability. That's interesting.  I reckon that they do pretty good, a good job at this. I also want you guys to note that just because it says that an autistic person struggles with this doesn't mean that it's impossible, right? There are a lot of autistic people out there who are high masking and high camouflaging who can to a degree succeed at impression management but to the detriment of their own mental health and physical health. I want to keep that in mind as- Yeah, because you gotta upkeep it, you know, to some degree. Over time.  Well, once you perhaps passed a certain probation period, then you can sort of unmask and be yourself a little bit more, but I don't know. I've had experiences in the workplace where I have started to feel comfortable with my colleagues and I start to unmask. I do start to have a little bit less of a, you know, talking as much. You know, I tend to just kind of sit back and listen and pitch in whenever and I don't necessarily have this kind of bubbly attitude all the time, because sometimes I'm not in a bubbly sort of state of emotion. And people have pointed that out and they said, you know, you need to bring a bit more kind of pizzazz to your work, a bit more enthusiasm. And I'm like, I do. I just, it doesn't, on the outside, it's not necessarily something that can be viewed, especially when I'm unmasked and myself. In the moment, masking I can do, like for interviews and things like that, that's probably one of the only areas that I will consciously decide to mask. But just like first impressions, you know, that kind of thing that tends to be the case. People don't really understand autism and the way that it presents and what it means. And, you know, they have all sorts of preconceptions about what other people's behavior looks like, the way that they say things, you know, how that has into play and what kind of person they are. You know, it's all very different when you employ an autistic person, when you're speaking to an autistic person. Definitely need to find a better workplace where I'm accepted more, 100%. I'd say that before you start your job, try to get into a routine beforehand. If you're with a company or a business, which is very nice and you have a nice manager or they're aware that you're autistic, then, you know, you might not necessarily have to do that as much, but you might have to, like, get yourself into the rhythm of working at certain specific times and you can sort of replace the time that you would be working with other things that are productive and sort of get yourself into the habit of it beforehand. That'll just sort of ease you in, transition you into the workplace as sort of seamlessly as possible. There will obviously be change and you're not always gonna be able to know how to do things or what to do, there's gonna be a learning period, but all organizations are aware of that. So, you know, they will train you if you don't understand how to do things anyway. But yeah, just have a bit more confidence in yourself. I'm sure you'll be fine. There can be scary and daunting and represent, but I'm sure you have the capability of it. Find as well. Not only are the conversational contents of interviews more stressful for people on the autism spectrum, but the nonverbal aspects can put them at a disadvantage. 43% of hiring managers view things like poor body language, including a lack of eye contact, not smiling or fidgeting, all things adults on the autism spectrum may present as an instant deal breaker according to a report from a career insights platform. Unlike their neurotypical coworkers who can often maintain productivity in office settings while navigating conversations and distractions, employees on the spectrum often need a quieter space to work or they may even need headphones while they're working. Neurodivergent talent also often needs more clear and concise written instructions rather than open-ended instructions that are confusing or misleading. Bullet point checklists, the best thing. If you can get your employer to condense what they're asking you to do in a bullet point or two, you found a good place. And sometimes they don't even know what they're asking of you. They're just kind of within their own sort of workflow, you know, and they're like, well, that would be a good thing to have. What do I actually want from this person?  It's so funny as I read this article because I feel like instructions should be clear, right? All the time, regardless of neurodivergency, but I guess that's not common or like reasonable to ask for, I don't know. I think it's reasonable, but society's weird. Of course, none of these misunderstood nuances mean that autistic workers aren't capable of producing meaningful work and value. In fact, the Harvard Business Review released a study that found that people on the spectrum are 20% more productive than their neurotypical peers if they're given the right environment and right opportunities. So that's something really interesting that we will touch on in my advice. I haven't seen that before, that's really interesting. I'm definitely gonna have to set it up and use it for a future post. Really good C stuff like that actually. So remember that. These are things to keep in mind and have in perspective when we are thinking about what we wanna do about our struggles when it comes to working and what type of work we want to go into. I want you guys to practice your discernment all the time with any of the videos I talk about. I don't want you to take my advice so literally that you go out there and you just follow the steps I have to give and expect that it should work for you. It should be a jumping off point for you to build off of whether that's taking the advice I have to give and tweaking it to fit your needs in a more personalized way or even just having it be a conversational point between you and your partner or you and your caretaker or you and family member as to what you wanna do about it, what you think about it, things like that. Maybe you can ask them for some advice and input but either way- Yeah, you always wanna get a good spread of information and experiences from lots of different people. I'd say that's probably the best way of going about anything really, especially if you're watching content online which is very experiential based, not necessarily got that. Kind of the facts and logic and stuff if it's something that's a little bit more nuanced and social and emotional and whatever, 100%. This is just giving you some sort of format for you to begin this conversation and give you little bits of guidelines to follow. Of course, my advice isn't going to work for everyone and in that sense feel free to take what resonates and leave what doesn't. Feel free to take certain things and tweak it to fit your needs better. You have full permission to do that and now that we got that quick disclaimer out of the way, let's get straight into the video and the advice. I'm gonna have to shut that window. Relate. So when it comes to autism friendly jobs, I want you guys to think about four things and I listed the most important thing at the top. Of course, this will vary person to person. It is people, special interest, purpose and sensory sensitivities. Now, depending on who you are, I feel like people and special interests will fluctuate between which one's more important. And a good way to gauge which one would be more of a priority for you is to think about who you are naturally as a person. Are you more of a physical and mental person? So I guess more objective or are you more of an emotional and spiritual person? So more subjective. That whole thing of like people or things what you might more interested in. I used to be a lot more interested in things but I think just through my lifetime of trying to understand myself and neurotypicals I just naturally kind of moved a little bit towards the more subjective kind of side of life. You know, I wanted to be like a biomedical scientist which like the genetic side of it. So it's a very hard pivot but this is good 100% like, you know if you're wanting more objective things you might wanna become like a mechanic or, you know to do with your hands or coding or like, you know, something like that. Whereas if you're more subjective you might wanna work a little bit more in teaching or care. I've tried to stay away from doing care work if I was you, if you're autistic because can definitely lead to burnout over the long term and even with teaching to a certain degree as well. Depending on what kind of role you have what were the other points? Because if you are working in a job that constantly forces you to work against your natural self then you're for certain going to reach a burnout because of that job. So what does that mean? Your natural self. If you are someone that naturally operates in a more spiritual and emotional sense you wanna find jobs that allows you to tap into that part of yourself rather than ignore it, right? So you wanna make sure that the people within your job is allowing you to tap into that rather than ignoring it. So for example, if you are an emotional and spiritual person and you are in a job that has a lot of people that you don't really get along with and you find yourself needing to numb yourself a lot around and you begin to find yourself needing to rely more on your intellectualization or the physical aspect of your job then you will begin to feel more and more detached and unfulfilled and have a lower bandwidth of dealing with sensory sensitivities because you're losing that sense of spirit. And likewise, if you are a more physical and mental person and you are working in a job where you are completely disinterested in what you are doing and you are not mentally stimulated it doesn't matter if you have the best coworkers or the best customers you will feel unfulfilled all the time and that in and of itself will whittle away at your spirit as well. Spirit. This has a lot to do with personal values and if you haven't done any values work before I highly recommend it. Try and understand what are your core values and operate based on that. I feel like that's kind of a more general way of approaching this. Like, I had a very good conversation with quite a high masking individual who's very, very extroverted and social, autistic, works in banking. We had a very good conversation at like a party we were talking about that. I was like, man, that's impressive. You know, I don't feel like I would get any value out of doing that because like you're trying to get those numbers up. You know, I don't find that very gratifying. Is that the right word? Value valuable to me. Whereas like seeing that I've impacted someone's life positively or hearing about it is 100% more valuable to me than making more money. So it really depends where your values are. I think you can both have a job that has aspects which are in your special interest and also fulfill your values. So like it's kind of, they're kind of splitting it up into two separate things where I think you can probably get both of those things. Like you care about people, perhaps you work for a charity that works with people. You don't necessarily have to be doing work with other people. You could be like, I don't know, like filming a project or doing some other more technical side. So you can kind of fulfill both of those if you really wanted to. I am thinking that maybe they're approaching this by like the types of people that you're gonna be around maybe. Spirit is a big part of work that I feel like it's just not something an autistic person can sacrifice when it comes to work because I feel like society is already set up to make it so much harder for an autistic person to operate. You need to have a sense of spirit when it comes to work in order to have it be somewhat sustainable for you. And so whatever it means for you, whether it's working in a field that lets you tap into your special interest or working in a job that allows you to tap into connecting with people that you love to connect to, make sure you understand who your natural self is, what your needs are in that sense, how you naturally operate and know how to prioritize those things when it comes to thinking about what type of jobs you wanna work at. So going back to that list of four important... I mean, the alternative to this to not pursuing a job that's meaningful to you is you pursue a job that's kind of a bit chill. You know, if you've got a PDA profile, she don't get as many demands from people and you can kind of work by yourself and you just, you can get the money that you need. And then do things that are valuable to you or that interest you outside of work. That's also an option. You don't necessarily have to make work like your sustaining life force, but it definitely helps, I would say. Like being passionate about your job is a very, you know, good thing. But it's not necessarily the way that a lot of people want to go to be honest. Like, and I can understand that too. For important things, right? Let's start with people. I feel like a really big misconception with autistic people is that we are anti-social. We don't crave to connect with other people. We don't care to connect with other people. We keep to ourselves. We are introverted. In reality, autistic people, just like anyone else, craves social interaction, human connection and authentic connections with other people. A big reason why a lot of autistic adults struggle with maintaining jobs, struggle with mental health issues is because our social needs are not truly met a lot of the times because of all of these barriers in society. A lot of us are deeply lonely, deeply unfulfilled because we are not able to find a job that can fulfill us. We are not able to find a way to connect to people that can fulfill us. And that- Yeah, definitely speaking facts, yeah. Like we definitely do have a problem when it comes to loneliness and isolation. It's a really tough aspect to be autistic. I have had many times in my life where I was incredibly lonely and isolated. So I don't necessarily think that's all to do with work though. Like, again, like for me, social interaction is kind of- I mean, it's somewhat a part, especially a part of my work if I'm doing like collabs and podcasts and stuff like that. I do interact with people, of course, but I kind of like the separation between work and socializing. I don't really like the mix in the two. You can have that separation too. Like I don't want to go into work every day trying to connect with people, you know? It's not, I want to get the job done and want to get the work finished and then I can chill and socialize in my free time. That really starts to wear on your spirit and your soul over time, right? And when your spirit starts to go down and society's already not really set up for you, it makes it harder and harder to function. And so when I say to prioritize people, what this means is think about the people that you are going to be interacting with whenever you are at work. People like your boss, your coworkers, your customers. Are these people that you can stand to be around? Are these people that you want to be around? Are these people that you are happy to be around and look forward to be around? A good way to start to understand what type of people you want to be around at a job and what type of job in general has people that you want to be around. I think a great way to dissect this is to think about the people that you naturally get along with. A lot of the times it's a specific personality type or people who are just interested in the same type of things that you are. Think about the places that these people go to. Also, think about places that you yourself would want to go to. I understand what they're trying to put across. I think that's quite a valuable sort of thing to think about. Yeah, I mean, if you're working customer service and you don't particularly like interacting with the general public who are usually like busy, not so like happy and friendly to talk to. Some people are, some people aren't. Probably not a good job or like a phone, working the phone lines. I mean, I think about a lot of the industries that perhaps I have taken a shine to. Things like the media industry tend to be people who are a little bit more outspoken, perhaps a little bit more, have a bit more candor about themselves. And then as well, like within the charity sectors, it's like people working together towards a group cause to make things better for a certain group of people. You know, I would really love to be around those people. That's why I went to work at one of those places and it was generally better. Again, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a boss who's like that. Doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna have coworkers like that could be very much a chance. You can very craft it as much as you like, but until you are actually in a position, if you've given it enough time, you've talked to the team, you've talked to the manager over a long period of time, you won't really have a true idea of whether it's something that you want, but it's okay to try things out. You don't necessarily have to stick for something for a long, long time, if it's not for you. For example, I feel like I get along really well with people who are very creative and very open because a lot of the times, even if we are very different, creative people will be open to authentically connecting with you because even though you are not within their norm, they will still be interested in connecting with you and learning about you and vice versa. And that's something to consider is, are you going to get along with your coworkers as much as anyone else that you're gonna be interacting with because if you think about it in an objective way, you are going to see these people very often. And if you naturally do not understand or get along with or take interest in or care to connect with these people on a day-to-day basis or a weekly basis, and you have to consistently force yourself to interact with them or force yourself to try to think of ways to mask around them, script around them. If you have to constantly think about this, all of that energy that should be used to do your work objectively is now being used up in all of these subjective interactions, right? And so now what happens is you're empty, you're completely empty when it comes to having energy left to finish and do your work. So what ends up happening is you draw the energy from your reserves. The reserves are usually something that you would draw upon in emergency situations, but for a lot of neurodivergent and autistic people, drawing on those reserves is a very common experience. And that's why we reach these ultimate burnouts. When I think back to the year- Yeah, we overextend ourselves because I feel like a lot of us kind of, I mean, as the thought spot said, you know, we do tend to, was it 20% more productive than our neurotypical peers? 100%, I can imagine like, giving a task to an autistic person, you know, and then just like being more productive, getting it out quicker, but also like to a higher standard. I have no problem saying that that would be a common occurrence. If they have the right environment around them, if they're happy, if they don't have any stressors or like social drama or anything like that. I think a really good way to approach this if you are wondering like what type of person am I, what type of people person do I get on with a little bit better? There is the Myers-Briggs, I think also that called the 16 personalities test. If you do that test, it will give you somewhat of an idea of what your personality is like. And I say somewhat of an idea is because a lot of the stuff that might be talked about within that personality type might not actually agree with you. You might not agree with it. But for me, I did the 16 personality test. When I was younger, I used to be the thinker. In adulthood, I'm now the advocate, which like, you know, I took this after deciding that I wanted to to be an advocate. So it was quite interesting to see that reflected there. And they also do have some suggestions for jobs and things like that. And also stuff around relationships and everything like that. And it's mostly good because it's a good, it's a good talking point, or a good thinking point to think about. If you see something that's quite relatable within that personality kind of trait, I wouldn't follow it to the letter you can use that. Another one is the big five personality test, which is used in a lot of psychological research. They were talking about openness and there is one of the traits is someone's openness. I'm very, very high in openness. I scored like the max that I could on the openness side. You also have all the things like conscientiousness, which I scored fairly high in. I scored very low in agreeableness. So I'm a very disagreeable person by nature, which I think it's a very strange combination being a very high in trait openness, but low in agreeableness. It very much gives someone to be a bit more competitive in nature. So it makes sense with like my sporting history. There's also a couple of others. There's one that's to do with like negative emotion, like how intensely you feel negative emotion. There's a few more, but I highly recommend having a look at both those two tests if you're struggling to like understand what your values would be, what kind of person you are, what kind of people you might like to interact with. It can be a good like springboard to thinking about those things.  Johnny Cash, Crash says, starting out I worked outside at a lumber yard, had an excuse to wear sunglasses and earplugs, yeah. Blue collar fellas are usually gregarious and appreciate just getting the work done. My dad's that kind of person too. He works as a linesman, which basically means he goes up like the big power towers and works on live wires with like really big rubber gloves. He's been in that job for so long and he really enjoys it because it's, they just get the work done. They have like some chats with the lads or whatever, between the work rakes, but they just get it done and they know what they have to do and it's a repeatable thing and it works for him. It does not work for me, but it works for him. Years and years of work experience that I had before I started my own business, it was such a cyclical experience and it makes so much sense after my diagnosis that it was so regimented how every two years I would enter a new job and I would enter this job so high masking, use up all this energy and all of my reserves to pass as high functioning when in reality it was so unsustainable to ultimately reach a burnout that lasted about three months where I couldn't do anything. All I could do was just lay in bed, eat, sleep, shower, repeat for three months straight. I could not look for another job. I could not. Highly empathized with this situation. I was in one like a month or so ago, three month long burnout, not fun, not fun. I feel like a lot of these issues could be solved by going self-employed. Also a lot of different things that are also very stressful about that. Could not see friends. I could not socialize. I could not process. I was emotionally numb. I was disassociated from my body for three months straight until I ultimately came out of that burnout to look for the next job. It would always happen that same way. Two years of work, three months of burnout, two years of work, three months of burnout and depending on how debilitating that job was. Come on, you're getting two years in between this. Oh, I'm living it on easy mode. Every year. The thing is with burnout, it's very difficult to tell if it is actually being autistic and having this very long burnout or whether it is my mental health dropping. It's hard really to tell the difference. It's quite hard to differentiate burnout from situational depression anyway. Sister is spitting bars, 100%. I feel oddly connected to this person, even though I've never talked to them before. I feel like they have a very similar sort of approach to making videos or style of making videos that I do. There's a lot of emotion actually that's going into this, which I find very, very awesome. Was the burnout would last longer? And this is such a common experience for other autistic adults out there, whether you're diagnosed officially or not, is these cycles of repeated, pushing yourself past your limits, working an unsustainable job, and then reaching these ultimate burnouts that could be so debilitating and could last for so long, right? Until you ultimately pick yourself back up, maybe barely to work another job that's unsustainable. This is reflecting entirely a video that I made, a presentation style video. If you've seen one of my other ones about addressing fake autism and things like that.  Defined four different stages, and it kind of goes in a cycle. I'd highly recommend having a look at that if you find yourself also like Irene, struggling with that kind of cyclical burnout slash hyperproductive slash, way too productive slash. Going back into burnout, recovering, all that stuff. Highly recommend checking out my video there. And also while I'm on the topic of talking about YouTube, if you are enjoying this so far, please give it a like. Be much appreciated. And if you wanna support me to make more of these streams and also to make more of my videos and do my podcasts and stuff, I mean, Instagram blogs, I do a lot of stuff. You can support for as little as 99p, which is about a pound a month really helps. You get a little badge next to your name and I will be actually producing some stuff just for members soon. So there'll be sections of the video that I put out, particularly my presentation style videos that I will sort of separate out into more members video and cut a little bit more out of the main ones. So if you wanna see that stuff and you wanna support me, membership would be greatly appreciated. More than anyone else, you cannot slack on prioritizing the people that you're going to be surrounded by and interacting with. But if you think about it, if you're surrounded by people that you can ideally look forward to interacting with, seeing at work, talking to, and maybe even socializing with outside of work. If you're gonna also be seeing and interacting with customers that you would naturally get along with and can have conversation with, it makes interpreting and socializing easier outside of the objective work so that you have actual energy to give into the objective work. Now, another thing to look for is a job that surrounds your special interest and something that you're very passionate about or at least something that you're very skilled at, right? I think I can guess what the four spots is. Is it perhaps autism? A lot of the times they kind of go hand in hand, something that you're very interested in is also something that you're very skillful at. That is a superpower of neurodivergency and autism, I feel like. I'd say that as well as trying to find something that fits your special interest. Also trying to weed out jobs that have aspects to them that you just can't do sustainably. For me, that is communication, that is organization. If I've got any of those two elements which are integral to my role, I will really struggle with that, without support. If I have support with it, I'll be fine, but over the long term, I can sort of handle it for a few months, but after a while, it definitely comes very, very difficult. Thank you, Mr. Johnny Crash for joining the Autilegian tier. Much appreciated. This one is also really important. I feel like when you find a job that surrounds your skillsets, surrounds your special interests, it already kind of makes the environment a lot more conducive to you. This also goes hand in hand with people because it also makes it easier to interact with someone when you are interacting around a specific topic or skillset that you are genuinely interested in and you are genuinely good at. So if you are a person that loves computers and video games and you work at a video game store or computer store, you will never really get tired of talking about something you have to talk about with customers because it is something you're super knowledgeable about and something you genuinely like to talk about. And so socialization at that point and interaction at that point doesn't have to feel like a burden necessarily because you actually have that feel to talk about that specific topic and you don't necessarily have to use fuel to mask. You see how these all tie into each other? 100%. I suppose when I was thinking about using your special interests, I was like, okay, thinking about the actual work things, but if it's just around a specific topic that you enjoy, I suppose that that could also be quite good, I guess. Like, if you're really interested in tech, you don't necessarily have to be a designer for tech items or like a, I don't know the subsections of the tech industry, but that could be a way in for you to enjoy, I don't know, working at PC world. I don't know if we have PC world anymore of it all queries, any kind of... These are stalls that I think are very UK based. There, if you're surrounded by tech and people ask you about tech, you're like, great, I'd love to talk about it. It's my special interest. I suppose that's another side of it that I didn't necessarily thought of. And the same goes for, let's say if you work at an arts and crafts store, if you are a creative person and you work in a store where a lot of other creative people are coming in to buy products and you are talking to them about their next project or you're talking about a specific product to do a certain type of art with, you never really truly get tired of those types of conversations. And if anything, it actually gives you a vessel to connect with other people and tap into something that feels almost spiritual to you in a sense, even though it could be very objective, right? Now the third thing. I always get lost. I'm a very not spiritual person. I have a friend called Nika who is very spiritual. I don't know, I just hearing the word spiritual and all of that stuff, it just kind of, you know. Oh my God, I'm just not at all, not religious. I'm just like, I'm a atheistic determinist. Third thing on this list is also important but won't always get tapped into. If it does, you have the trifecta and that is purpose. If you're able to tap into a sense of purpose, which means being able to help people in some sort of capacity with something that you're passionate about with the people that you can actually care for. I feel like we don't really talk about purpose enough when it comes to jobs. We tend to think about jobs in a very objective way. A lot of neurotypical people kind of talk about jobs as just this thing that you go to to make money and everything you need from life outside of. I feel like this covers kind of the values aspect of it as well and represent, like, you can get something that aligns with your values, some piece of work that actually makes you feel like you're contributing, that you're helping, that you're doing something. I don't think it necessarily has to do anything about anything with people. Could be making the next scientific advancement, you're making, like, you're writing a blog, you know, you're getting some stuff done. I don't necessarily think it has to do with people Money is able to be fulfilled outside of your job in your personal life. This is really difficult for autistic people because your job is a necessity, right? It's where you make money, it's where you earn your living. So in a sense, that is more important than your personal life. You cannot really have a personal life without a work life. Work life takes precedence, at least in our society. And so for a lot of neurotypical people, they could just go to their work, numb themselves or whatever, make it through, still get their jobs done, and then it's almost like they come home and party. It's fun for them, it's where they let loose, it's where they get their needs met. It's where they have their fulfilling, flourishing life, right? That's what I was talking about when it comes to life, you know, you could have something that fills your purpose and that fills your meaning in your job. Also, you can get those needs met. You can have a purpose outside of like what is considered to be employment, something that you paid for.  Now it's a little bit more now that I'm self-employed, but in the instance, you know, this was kind of like my passion thing. And I did that alongside my degree, my studies, things like that. You don't always have to align with this, although I'd say that you probably enjoy a lot more of life if you can make working enjoyable for you and good for you. But for a lot of autistic people, that's impossible because they're using all of their energy reserves, everything they have, we're using it at our work life to get by. And so when we go home, we have nothing left within us to do anything. And so if your job is not surrounded by people you wanna connect with is not allowing you to do something that you're even interested in or passionate about, then you have no energy to tap into those outside of your job either, and you end up feeling empty in your personal life and in your work life. Again, this is not gonna be for every autistic person, right? But if you are someone that has autism and you find yourself not having a job that you're happy with or fulfilled in, and you're also having your personal life flounder as well, you might feel this deep sense of depression, this deep sense of emptiness because what's ultimately happening is you're not able to tap into a sense of purpose in life. You're not fulfilling it at your job. You're not getting it in your personal life. So why am I here? What am I doing, right? We ask ourselves this, and every human being needs that sense of purpose. That's why when I say working at a job... Not every human being needs it. I think it's a very valuable asset to feel like your life has a purpose, but I think it's definitely 100% important if you have a tough time with life, if you have mental health issues. Man, like, if you can find something that gives you a purpose, that's gonna withstand, help help you withstand the storms of life. You know, no matter how you feel, you still have a purpose. If you're feeling good, you still have a purpose. If you're feeling bad, you still have a purpose.  Hey, love, I just found out at 47, it's been a rough year. I agree with the job concept, very important. Are you saying that you just found out that you were autistic at 47? Is that what you're saying? If so, congratulations. Job that can fulfill your needs is important. I really, really need it. And I hope that I could bring some sort of hope in a sense with all this. Like, yes, in many ways, jobs and work is such a big cloud that looms over all of our heads and is so difficult. But if we put that effort into trying to find the perfect environment that we could fit into, if you think about it, it could start to meet so many of our needs in such a fulfilling way that can make everything flow so much smoother than an average neurotypical person. And this kind of ties into that quote that I read from that article in the beginning of this video where a lot of neurodivergent autistic people can end up being a lot more productive than a neurotypical person. And I feel like usually when that happens is when a neurodivergent autistic person finds the intersection of people, purpose and passion. They find a job that they care about. They are surrounded by people that they get along with and they could help people in a way that they could feel good about. And of course, the last thing on this list is sensory sensitivities. It's a lot of facts being spoken here. 100%. This is a great video. Well done. I think Irene, the full spot. Tensory sensitivities, big aspect. Let's see what she has to say about this. This one is always something to keep in mind because even if a job may have people that you would get along with or a job that you may be passionate about, if it's constantly whittling away at your sensory sensitivities, it of course makes the job a lot less sustainable to work at. You could also keep in mind whether or not this job can accommodate those sensory sensitivities. So if they can accommodate those sensory sensitivities, that's great. But if they can't, then you may have to give that job up because it's not sustainable for you and it's not healthy for you. So an example of this is I may be completely interested in animals and I may get along with other animal lovers, right? But I may not be a good fit for working at a dog grooming service or an animal shelter or at an animal farm because the sensory sensitivities I have surrounding smell and textures, just things like that makes it really hard for me to deal with that on a daily basis. Yeah. And I'd say personally, my own sort of experience with this is working in teaching. You know, I love kids and I really enjoyed working with the autistic children. But the thing is the sensory environment is not always the best. You have a lot of verbal stimming going on, a lot of noises, lots of things to be hyper-vigilant about. Really just didn't match like what I can sustain long term, if that makes sense. So it definitely filled most of those areas. Filled my special interest in autism. It also gave me a purpose and it made me feel really good to be able to be like a role model for the kids and also to help them with their education that was really valuable to me. But just long term, it was just so difficult to maintain that because of those sensitivities. But also because of the hyper-vigilance and having to be so wired all the time to make sure that the kids are safe if I'm found that very exhausting. Yes. Oh, so you were diagnosed at 47. Victoria Spirit says, I just found out that I'm autistic and I'm 41 hence the reason why I'm trying to find a community now. Wow. Well, I'm glad that I can be of somewhat service to you guys trying to understand the crazy world of autism. Much appreciate you sort of being here and finding what I do valuable. A day to day basis. So even though that environment is something I would love to subject myself to those sensory sensitivities on a day to day basis within that job, it makes it a lot harder for me to be in that environment and be able to show up at my fullest capacity. I want you guys to leave in the comments down below. If you are someone with autism and you are someone who found a job that fits one or maybe even multiple attributes of that list that I gave you guys, please leave that in the comment section down below. What do you do? And tell us how does it feel to be an autistic person that can have a job that you are genuinely passionate about and maybe even as well, allows you to tap into your sense of purpose when it comes to helping others. I feel like it's really important to have a space within our community that talks about the positive aspects of being autistic, not just the hardships of autism. I think it's important to have hope. I think it's important to encourage others. It's important to allow others to understand that there are autistic people out there that, yes, are struggling, but also in many different ways we are thriving. It also gives people an example as to what they can look to if they're feeling a little bit lost with what job they wanna work or go into. For me personally, I have always found being in the world of art very enriching for myself in many different ways. And I've experimented with different types of jobs surrounding art. Some didn't really fit. Some weren't really fulfilling, but I feel like I ultimately ended up in a creative field that at this moment works best with my needs and therefore is extremely sustainable for me. I'm able to tap into something I'm extremely passionate about when I talk about these types of things. I feel like at this point I would have already been reaching a burnout around this time, but because I'm able to tap into these three things, I am nowhere near burnout. I genuinely love what I do and I look forward to doing my work. If that could provide any sort of hope for you guys or any sort of inspiration, I hope that it does. Thank you guys again for watching today's video and I will see you on the next one. Take care of yourselves. Bye. So that was autism friendly jobs by the Thought Spot. I would like to highlight, I guess, what I'm trying to do with my self-employment because I feel like it's very applicable to what Irene was talking about. I really, my special interests tend to be stuff around relationships, stuff around autism, stuff around fitness and sport, things like that. That's why if you go onto the various pieces of content that I put out, you know, whether it be on Instagram, particularly, I do a lot of fitness stuff over on that. I don't do that necessarily because there's necessarily a crossover between them, but I'm basically trying to go for the things that I'm interested in and do stuff around the things that I'm interested in and that definitely gives me a lot more motivation to do my work and there is also a really massive component to me being self-employed and that is the PDA. I like to make decisions on what I'm doing, you know? And that's useful for me, but I guess in both our situations, both myself and the Thought Spot, we are basically doing self-employed stuff, you know? And I'd say that that is probably the best way forward if you can at some point, become self-employed. Do that, obviously there's a lot of risks that come with that, a lot of difficulties, but 100% you can craft something that obviously if it works, you can craft something that suits your interests, your style, what you like to do at work. You can meld in a lot of those different things together and make something completely new. I suppose it's a little bit more difficult to talk about employed employment places, you know? I think it's definitely possible to find somewhere good, 100%, can be quite hard. And one thing that Irene didn't mention was a disclosure of autism, which is a very hot topic and I can imagine why because in my eyes, if people can tell their employer that they're autistic and keep the job and also get a reasonable adjustment, so it doesn't actually negatively impact them, then great, that's the best thing. Doesn't always work out like that, sadly. Go over and check out the Thought Spots video on the channel, Autism-Friendly Jobs. Go give them some love for making this awesome video.


What concerns you most about the current state of play with regard to disinformation? Is it that the problems are so intractable that we find ourselves at a status quo that seems untenable that we can't get out of? What really keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night is the absence of trust in any referee. And anything that might feel like an umbrella under which it's like, all right, you know, I mean, just take an example from the foundations of a legal system and a court system. If two people have a dispute, so intractable and important to them and they really wanna be right or win whatever that means. And if one wins, it sure feels like the other one's gonna lose. And it's that bad that they are willing to endure litigation. They're ready to go into a courthouse and spend potentially years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to just get an answer from a jury or a judge and an appellate court and all that is to like, who's right here? It would sure be nice to know that at the end of that, when somebody wins and somebody loses if they don't settle, that both parties, obviously the loser's gonna be disappointed, but doesn't feel like and it is in fact not the case that they were robbed, that it was a corrupt system and like, I go, why did I even have the faith to go into that courthouse? And how valuable it is to have a legal system that can settle disputes without the system itself being rightly called into question in every case as to whether it is the problem rather than solving the problem. And however much rightful worry there is about whether, say, the American legal system meets that standard, how much less confidence there is in any credible party that is in front of us here, any possible party, like, do you want Facebook answering this? All right, well, how about Snopes? Can Snopes be trusted? The fact that we don't have a significant majority of people trusting anything is a huge problem because it's like, you can move the pieces around wherever you want, but unless you can create more trust and more buy-in among us that we may disagree or we may favor different political candidates, but we'd all kind of like the truth and we can achieve it among us as a shared thing and work towards it, we're lacking that right now. And I do have some ideas on that front, some of which were really, or some of those ideas were really inspired by these discussions, such as, instead of Facebook throwing up its hands and saying, we're gonna allow all political advertising, but in nearly every instance, don't expect us to judge the truth or falsity, and Twitter saying, yeah, you don't want us deciding either, that's why we're just not gonna allow any political advertising at all. My thought was to have political ads when submitted to a platform like that, they get assigned to an American high school class which under the guidance of their teacher and a grade from that teacher and maybe the health of the school librarian work through whether this ad contains such material disinformation or misinformation that it shouldn't be allowed on the platform. And they write up their findings, they get graded as to how well they do it and their findings are binding. And so that class or maybe it's three classes and then it's like two out of three is what the decision is, they decide. And it's my way of saying, all right, we don't trust anybody, do we trust our own kids? And if we don't, what does that say? Yeah. You can't trust them because they're gonna be the voters in a few years. So that's an example of an idea that I acknowledge is clearly crazy. And I'm hard pressed though when I think about it to say why it's worse than the status quo which is clearly unacceptable to me. Do you think that this lack of trust and traditionally respected or trusted institutions has sort of the result of the disinformation sort of situation that we're in? Or do you think that there was sort of the sentiment that preceded it? And this has just sort of exacerbated it because I can remember something I talked with Renee Doresta for our first episode of the series and she said something so interesting to me which is that social media has sort of had this democratizing effect in terms of who we consider to be a credible source at the same time we're experiencing so much disinformation that degrades the credibility of traditionally respected sources. Where do you think that this has really come from? Yeah, it's likely a sadly mutual cycle if the number of people that would find credible some tale about 5G and how 5G relates to COVID.  But the fact that that could have purchase and among how many would be a way of kind of asking that question, is it all you needed was to have your eyes and counter those words and then it's like a mind virus and it's just, you can, if that's the case, then even the employees at Snopes might need special gloves and masks and eye goggles to encounter so much disinformation and not become persuaded by it. But I don't know that that's the real model. So I think some of it is, again, it's a taxonomy. Some of it is stuff that almost anybody after encountering it, it might get them wondering and wanting some more information. That's partly the worry about deep fakes, that you see something, you feel like your eyes aren't lying and all right, somebody better explain what I'm seeing versus people who were already inclined for various reasons, including just wanting to rationalize what they already believe or wanna have happen about the world to having that smaller group of people, then persuadable by some random conspiracy theory. And they're both very different kinds of dangers. And in fact, when you look at platform responses, you'd probably want them tailored differently. If it's a, you know, what was Lincoln's quote, if it's some of the people being fooled all of the time versus all of the people being fooled some of the time and what those false beliefs might drive them to do. So our forum wrapped on May 12th and we had our last two sessions were really heavily focused on COVID, of course, it's topical on so much of what we're seeing online as COVID related or COVID focused. In our last two sessions, platforms, researchers and others in our group talks about the challenges that they've encountered as they really should work to manage the sheer volume of disinformation surrounding this issue. And then just recently, sustained attrition has really shifted to issues of racial inequity and justice and police brutality. So I think as we saw in the early months of COVID, the pandemic, just that focus on that sustained attention on a really high interest issue can pollute the information environment in a way that normal news cycles just don't, right? Normal news cycles, you focus on something that it moves on and it just keeps going. As you take stock of the challenges that are mounting in the world at large and maybe amongst the countering disinformation community as well, are there particular reforms that you hope to see? Well, I think part of the through line of the examples you're talking about is particularly disinformation that could contribute to violence or to harm, including self-harm in the health context. And it makes the stakes real. If you're thinking about a particular person choosing to look for something about whether people really landed on the moon and then consuming videos that say they didn't, you might have one view, a kind of permissive one that just says, whatever, people upload videos, other people watch them, it's called the marketplace of ideas. Tempered in the first instance by, all right, which videos is YouTube recommending? And how are you saying that that's a neutral choice? For which there's a lot of debate. But once you're talking about, all right, I go up to Bing or Google and I'm asking for a poison ivy remedy and what it tells me is to do something that's like the opposite of what you should do and then you're gonna end up in the ER. What's the marketplace of ideas argument around that? And it's not a good one. And so with COVID out there, it's in fact, not even just well, people have to buy or beware. Like if that's, if you're just gonna trust anything you see on the internet, that's your fault. Well, if it is your fault, it still might mean then that you're gonna be transmitting a virus to eight other people and it's not their fault. So that's an issue. And when it's about disinformation that could lead to violence and conflict where people are putting it out exactly for that purpose, it makes it awfully hard to just say this is too thorny a problem to start judging it.  And so while acknowledging all of the difficulties that come from figuring out who's supposed to be the truth police here, having no police here is also the stakes are very real, very immediate. And when the denominator of people involved is in the billions who are tuning into these platforms and you know that a slight tweak to the platform here could greatly change the views of tens of millions of people. It is not a non-neutral position. There's just whether you're gonna be stirring the pot or whether third parties, including state actors will be stirring the pot. I completely agree with you. So what is on top for next year in particular? Well, we have a work cut out for us, right? And so I think I mentioned before we've kind of taken up other issues like cybersecurity and the ethics and governance of AI and having solved those moved on to the next. And I of course say that tongue in cheek. This problem of disinformation requires calls out for more than just the one academic year's worth of kind of focused attention in this program that it's been given. And there's a lot of momentum and I think enough collective feeling within the various groups that the status quo really isn't working that it's worth putting that against the sense that and exactly how to solve it other than just keeping on with some of the measures already in place, it's really calling out for new thinking and new experiments. And I'm also mindful that a lot of the action here both in understanding the dimension of the problem through access to data about it and what's out there and what people are doing and how they're reacting and in implementing whatever the solutions attempted might look like that does largely in private hands and figuring out the right way to bridge between those private companies that happen to shape speech so much and some sense of the public interest and public availability of that data. It is a really important role that our group can play and model and work with for the coming year. So my sensibility is that we'll really try certainly through the November US elections but even beyond to be sticking with this problem with the kinds of relationships we've forged among us and the different groups we have at the table and see if we can bring more to the table as we go. Thanks so much for joining me today Jonathan. It's my pleasure, thank you Amu. Thanks.