It is evening, and I have technically finished work. The laptop is closed. Officially, the working day is over.
My mind has not received the message.
There are still open loops from work: one thing I did not finish and an answer I meant to send. As long as those loops remain open, I cannot settle. I cannot switch off or sleep. I feel as though I have to close them first, or they will continue circling in my mind.
From the outside, it looks like someone who cannot let go. In reality, something else is happening: I cannot leave one thing in order to enter the next. In this case, I cannot move from work into the evening.
That is task switching. With autism, it is one of the things that makes daily life hardest for me.
It is not stubbornness; it is the transition itself
For a long time, I thought I was simply inflexible—a control freak who could not stop. Other people close their laptop and enter their evening. I remain at my desk for another hour, internally trapped in something that officially ended a long time ago.
Now I understand that the problem is not that I do not want to stop. The problem is the transition itself.
The old task is not necessarily difficult. The new activity is not necessarily difficult. The leap between them is difficult: that exact moment when I have to leave one and enter the other.
Once I understood that distinction, it changed everything.
Why switching costs my brain so much
One concept finally gave me an explanation that made sense: monotropism.
Put simply, attention for many autistic people is more like a deep tunnel than a broad spotlight. My brain concentrates almost everything into one channel. When I am engaged in something, I am fully inside it—deeply, with everything I have.
That is the positive side: hyperfocus, depth and the experience of becoming completely absorbed in one thing.
The other side appears when I have to switch. Switching does not mean briefly looking elsewhere. It means leaving that tunnel entirely and beginning to dig into a different place. I have to dismantle everything currently open and then rebuild it somewhere else from the beginning.
For a brain that does not tunnel so deeply, switching may be one step sideways. For mine, it is a complete move.
There is also something known as autistic inertia. The name can sound like laziness, but it is the opposite. It means that once I am in a state, I tend to remain there. When I am resting, moving into action is hard. When I am active, returning to rest is hard. Beginning is difficult, but stopping is just as difficult. Both transitions take energy.
That explains the open loops in the evening. My system is still running in work mode, and bringing it down is real work rather than simply pressing a button.
Being pulled out or choosing to stop—both are difficult
You might assume the problem only occurs when someone interrupts me. It is more complicated than that.
If the doorbell rings while I am in the middle of something, it is horrible. Not because I am rude, but because I cannot simply end the loop I am holding. I am pulled out, the tunnel collapses with me, and everything I had been keeping together in my head falls apart.
But this is the part few people understand: deciding for myself when to stop can be just as difficult. It is not only about wanting to stay in control. Even when I am the person who has to make the cut, I often cannot do it cleanly.
Being pulled out is hard. Stopping by myself is hard too. The interruption alone is not the problem. The transition is.
The leap from Sunday to Monday
The same thing happens at a larger scale.
The transition from Sunday to Monday is a small hurdle every week. Over the weekend, I am outside work and in a different mode. On Monday, I am suddenly supposed to enter again: into work, into the week and into everything waiting for me.
Other people seem able to flip a switch. I have to dig myself back in. The tunnel I occupied on Friday has filled in over the weekend, and on Monday morning I stand in front of it and begin digging again.
That is not simply disliking Mondays. It is the same mechanism stretched across two days.
Moving towards something is easy; moving away can feel impossible
I have noticed something very clearly in myself: some transitions are easy.
Moving towards something that interests me happens without difficulty. I can jump into it immediately and without resistance.
Moving away from something I am already immersed in almost never feels easy.
That matters because it shows that I am not generally unable to switch. My brain simply does not willingly leave the tunnel it currently occupies. Going in feels like being pulled. Coming out feels like a fight.
When ADHD and autism collide during a transition
I am not only autistic; I also have ADHD. That combination is often called AuDHD, and the two can pull in opposite directions when it comes to switching.
The ADHD side constantly wants to move. Every new idea, every notification and every more interesting possibility pulls me away from what I am doing. When something bores me, my mind immediately jumps elsewhere.
The autistic side wants the exact opposite: remain inside, avoid disruption and finish the sequence.
The result is a constant back and forth. Sometimes I switch far too often because ADHD drives me from one thing to another. At other times, I become completely stuck because the autistic side refuses to leave the tunnel. It rarely feels exactly right.
Those two sides do not make switching half as difficult. They make it difficult in two different ways.
What genuinely helps me: planned spontaneity
For years, I tried to become more flexible. It did not work. What eventually helped sounds contradictory: I plan for spontaneity.
I realised that real spontaneity and planned spontaneity feel completely different.
Real spontaneity is a nightmare. Someone rings the doorbell, an appointment appears from nowhere, and I have to leave what I am doing immediately. It knocks me over. Afterwards, I am not merely interrupted but confused and irritable, even when the event itself might otherwise have been welcome.
Planned spontaneity is manageable. If I know three days ahead that someone will visit in the afternoon, I can adjust. My brain can prepare for the transition instead of being ambushed by it.
Four things make the difference for me:
Advance notice. When I know about a transition a few days ahead, I can move towards it internally. The appointment is no longer a bomb that suddenly explodes. It is something I approach gradually.
Buffer time. I need at least 30 minutes before an appointment. That half hour is not wasted time. It is the ramp that allows me to leave one thing and enter the next. Without that ramp, every transition is a hard impact.
Permission to cancel. This may sound strange, but knowing I am allowed to cancel removes a great deal of pressure. Often, I do not cancel at all. The permission alone makes the appointment feel less threatening.
Closing loops before I switch. Where possible, I bring the current task to a clean stopping point before I leave. It does not have to be finished, but I need a point where I can let go without the task continuing to circle inside me.
The common idea is this: I no longer try to be strong at the moment of transition. I build the transition in advance, on a day when I still have capacity.
What you can try today
If you recognise yourself here, begin with one thing.
For your next appointment, do not plan only the appointment. Plan the transition. Add a buffer before it, during which you begin nothing new and instead finish the old activity cleanly and arrive mentally.
Not: “Appointment at 3 pm.”
Instead: “2:30 pm: stop, settle, get ready. 3 pm: appointment.”
That half hour may be exactly the part your brain cannot create automatically. Move it outside your head and put it somewhere visible.
That is enough to begin. You do not need a perfect system—only one planned transition instead of a hard cut.
That is one reason I built meinsystem.app. It holds not only appointments but also the transitions between them, so I do not have to carry every switch in my head. You can explore it for free.
If you found yourself thinking, “I know this,” these articles may also resonate: I wrote about why I miss appointments even when I can see them and how I structure daily life with AuDHD.
You are not stubborn
Finally, I want to say something I needed to hear for a long time.
You are not stubborn because transitions are difficult for you. You are not inflexible, controlling or too sensitive.
Your brain goes deep rather than broad. It remains where it is because leaving takes real work. That is not a flaw in you. It is part of how you function.
You do not have to learn to have a brain that jumps back and forth without effort. Instead, you are allowed to design the surroundings so the leaps become smaller—with advance notice, buffer time and permission for every transition not to work immediately.
Be patient with yourself while you learn.
Do not give up on yourself.