How I Work (Neurodivergently) - Gene Melzack

It's been a bit of a hiatus, but we're back with this series! If you don't know already, I've started this series to raise the visibility of?#neurodivergent ?people and particularly how they go about work. This week we're featuring information management professional Gene Melzack !

As always, if there's someone you'd love to see featured, or you're interested in sharing how you work, please let me know! We all have something to share.

After this week we'll be moving this series to a fortnightly feature, alternating with articles on #neurodiversity , #evaluation , #dataviz , and sometimes all three. So stick around!

Name: Gene Melzack

Location: Boonwurrung country, Naarm (Melbourne)

One word that best describes how you work: Integrity

Neurodivergent? Yes, I’m Autistic.

First of all, tell us a little about your work background and how you got to where you are today.

I’m an information management professional, with a background in records management and data curation. I started out working in a temp role, essentially as a government file clerk. The government agency I was working for was in the process of transitioning from hardcopy to digital recordkeeping, so I got involved with the implementation project team. I developed technical skills in working with information technology systems, and knowledge of recordkeeping and information services and change management.?

I found what I was doing interesting, but wanted to improve my technical abilities and learn more about data management, programming, and software development. So I started studying part-time, while continuing to work in digital recordkeeping in the public sector. After a few years, an opportunity came up to take some of the data skills I’d been learning, and put them together with my information management skills, by moving into data curation in academic libraries.

Data curation is about collecting, storing, managing, and archiving data to ensure that it can be appropriately used, shared, preserved, or destroyed. Effective research data management and digital preservation are both important aspects of data curation. These are all things I have a strong interest and deep passion for, so working in this field has been very exciting for me. I ended up pursuing a Master of Information Studies with a specialisation in Records and Archives management to explore some of the theoretical underpinnings that support this type of work.

What’s your workspace setup like??

I have a home office so that I can do a substantial amount of work from home. It’s important to me to be able to see greenery and sky when I’m working, so I set up my desk so that I can look out of the window. I live in an urban area, but I have a view of a few trees and bushes, can see what the weather is doing, and watch birds and neighbourhood cats coming and going.

I keep my workspace utilitarian, functional, and free of adornments. This is because I find that the more items I have around me, the more overwhelmed and confused I feel, and the harder it is for me to concentrate and think clearly. So I regularly tidy my working areas to keep things neat and prevent papers building up. This doesn’t mean that my workspace isn’t personalised, however. For example, I use a mug that my mum made and glazed in my favourite colour to drink tea out of while I’m working. It’s functional and has a lot of meaning for me.

My digital workspaces mirror my physical workspaces. I use green colour themes and images of trees and plants as my desktop backgrounds. My files are kept very tidy and organised (this is my job, so they’d better be!). I only open three or four windows or tabs at a time, and close down whatever is not in immediate use.

What apps, gadgets, or tools can’t you live without?

I have a pair of Earasers, which are noise cancelling ear plugs. These are invaluable, both when working at home and in an office environment, for cutting out background noise such as the neighbour’s leafblower, construction noise, or a colleague’s telephone conversation. They help me concentrate without getting distracted by the background noise, while also still allowing me to hear just enough when someone speaks directly to me.

I have a RocketBook, which is a reusable notebook that I use to take handwritten notes that can then be scanned. The scanning gives me an image of the handwriting as well as converting the handwriting to text using optical character recognition (OCR). Despite my messy handwriting, this latter feature is surprisingly good! I find that I can’t take notes during meetings very well – I can’t focus on two things at once, so I can’t write and listen at the same time. Instead, I use the RocketBook for preparing for meetings in advance by making notes of what I want to talk about, which means I already have an outline and structure for jotting down key decisions or details that I need to remember during the meeting. I also find it useful for working through thoughts and ideas, especially when I’m in the early or planning stages of a new project. Getting away from a screen and writing things out by hand, or diagramming things, feels very helpful to me sometimes, and being able to quickly convert what I’ve written in the RocketBook back into something digital is very handy.

I couldn’t live without email, calendar, and to do apps, but I’m not wedded to any specific app. I use whatever enterprise apps my employer provides, as I understand how important it is for data management and information security to use employer supported information systems.

Do you stim? If so, how and when??

Yes. I stim when I’m talking to people. I take my RocketBook and a pen to meetings with me, not so much because I’m intending to take notes, but because I stim by playing with the pen. I find it easier to stim more naturally when I’m in videoconference meetings or on telephone calls, where other people can’t see my hands. It helps me to be present, take in information, and order my thoughts. My natural inclination is to flick my fingers or start picking at the skin around my fingernails. The latter can be quite damaging, so to prevent this, I have a couple of fidget toys on hand around my desk. I have a variety that let me explore different textures and movements with my fingers.

I also stim when I’m thinking deeply. I stroke or scritch my head with my fingertips when I’m thoroughly engrossed in deep work. It helps me concentrate and process my thoughts. So I can see where the idiom “scratching one’s head” comes from – I do it literally!

How do you align your neurodivergence with your work environment? (e.g. planning, supports, environmental)

I choose roles that align well with my interests and passions, as well as my natural skills and abilities as an Autistic person. Believe it or not, I find recordkeeping and data management very interesting! I could go on and on about why, but I won’t. Needless to say, I’m able to learn about various aspects of my profession in great depth, incredibly quickly, and remain endlessly engaged with my work, because it’s something I have an abiding passion for. I also choose roles that tend to require attention to detail, concentration and focus, and systems thinking, all of which I excel at.

It’s also important for me, as an Autistic person, to be able to be honest and authentic. I need a working environment where I feel safe to be myself and where I feel like I am living my values. If I’m working in an industry where I don’t fully believe in the ethics of what we’re doing or if I’m working in an environment that is discriminatory towards any group of people, then this takes a huge mental toll on me. Because of this, I am quite selective about what sort of sectors I am willing to work in and what sort of employers I am willing to work for.

Other alignments I tend to seek are working part-time and doing a significant amount of my work from home. I do best from a wellbeing perspective when I work three days a week, but from a business and financial perspective that’s not always possible, so I can manage a four day work week. I need to pace myself by never working more than two days in a row, so usually take Wednesday as a mid-week break.

How do you keep track of what you have to do?

I use the calendaring and to do systems provided by my employer. This is usually Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Planner, but I’m happy to use whatever tools are available. I schedule meetings that I have with other people in my calendar. I then manage my other tasks by adding them as items to my to do list, but leave the rest of my time unscheduled and work on my to do items flexibly. This gives me room either to sink into hyperfocus and get intensive work done on one specific task, or to check off a bunch of process-oriented tasks that require less concentration, as the mood strikes me.

How do you recharge or take a break?

It’s important for me to take some time on my own in a quiet space during the day, especially if I’ve been working in an office environment. Preferably outside, getting some fresh air, spending some time with plants, birds, and insects. I will often take a book with me and read while I’m on my break. I am a huge science fiction and fantasy fan and make time to read every day.

What are you currently reading/listening to, or what do you recommend?

As I said, I read a lot and am a huge science fiction and fantasy fan. I recently finished reading Spear by Nicola Griffith, which was a gender-bent version of an Arthurian legend, and Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher and Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, both of which were light, entertaining fantasy reads. I’m currently reading The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg, which is another fantasy novella.

I also enjoy reading non-fiction about aspects of information and data management, since they are special interests of mine. I’m slowly working my way through Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star and Boxes: A Field guide by Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, and Maria Rentetzi. These are dense and conceptually and theoretically challenging, but also fascinating and relevant to my profession in a variety of ways.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I’ve had a number of supervisors or senior managers try to give me well-meaning career advice. It always came from a place of them having recognised my skills and abilities and wanting to encourage me to achieve my fullest potential. However, what they didn’t see or recognise was the toll it took on me to perform certain types of work and activities, however good at them I might be, or the supports I ideally needed in the workplace. So the advice they gave me ended up being misguided, because it wasn’t based on the complete picture.

They advised me how to take a stereotypical career path, assuming that I had stereotypical career goals, such as progressing along a traditional, linear career ladder. I spent some time trying to follow that advice, because I didn’t have confidence in pursuing my own sense of what was right for me. It always worked out badly. I ended up in roles that were a bad fit, and in burn out and chronic pain.

The best advice I ever got was to stop listening to other people’s advice and to listen to my own gut. It’s hard to trust yourself when what you want and need out of work isn’t what you’ve been told you should want your whole life. But learning to put aside societal expectations of what kind of work I should be doing and think about what is going to be sustainable and enjoyable for me instead has been so important.?