Crafting Your Own Career Magic: Lessons from My Low-Sensory Job Search

Finding jobs and even a career that is right for you is hard enough. Add to it having a genetic condition such as Chromosome 15q13.3 Microdeletion Syndrome, autism, intellectual disability, or sensory/auditory issues can make it even more challenging. I’ve had many, many careers over the decades. While I work from home now and am very happy in the freelance/gig industry, it took me a lot of years of wrong turns to find the right low-sensory job/career for me. So, here is some real-life advice not from an expert, but as a person with challenges who would like to make things a bit easier for someone else. So, let’s kick off this post and talk about how you can get a handle on finding the right low-sensory job.

SUMMARY POINTS:

• Be realistic about your passions. Make a list of what you can do well, what you need training on, and what you can’t do.

• Make a list of boring autopilot tasks you do well. Many employers, especially entry-level, need people who will do the boring stuff.

• Sensory environments: Crowds, auditory, sensory, smells, all need to be taken into consideration. How sensitive are you to these things?

• Alternative Break Schedules

• Low-Sensory Job Shifts

Passions Only Count If You Can Do Them

Everyone always says just follow your passion. However, that’s not quite true for those with issues like autism, ADHD, auditory challenges, or sensory processing issues. I am not saying that people like us can’t follow their passions. I’m just saying you need to be realistic about what you can actually do well. For example, I love painting, but I’m not that type of artist. I love it and do it as a hobby, but would never apply for a painting job.

So, make a list of your passions. Then, you are going to put each in one of three list: ones you can do well, ones you might be able to do well with training/practice, or ones you will never be good at it. I personally have motor challenges that make it hard for me to even mix well, so most kitchen jobs are out for me. However, other things I can do amazingly well and even faster than “experts”. So, don’t forget about those, even if they seem silly.

Boring AutoPilot Tasks

You can also make a separate list of all the boring tasks that you can do on autopilot. Is it wiping counters, counting money, cutting veggies, maybe filing? Write those down because some jobs, especially in your younger years, need people who CAN do the boring tasks with a decent amount of accuracy.

Low-Sensory Job Environments

Now that you know what you can do and what you can’t, you need to think about the other parts of a job position. Let’s start with the sensory environment. Do you have super-sensitive hearing but can’t filter background noise? Then a restaurant or grocery store might not be a good fit unless you work graveyard or another slow shift. We will get more into shifts later.

If you have a good imagination, you might be able to filter out background noise and daydream. However, it’s easy to get stuck in there, or to NOT notice something really important because you are too busy checking out from overstimulation. That is an example of the cost of masking in the workplace.

Are there going to be crowds, people, or bright lights? Will there be “rushes” where the place is crazy for a few hours, then dead? Will you have to rub shoulders with co-workers? If you can’t stand people touching you, that could be a problem at certain places.

Will you have to work in an “open office,” where there are no walls? That was a sensory nightmare for me, and I only lasted a few months… despite everything else about the job being perfect.

Alternative Break Schedules

For me, I need quiet and preferably, a place where music is in the background, or I can wear headphones. I CAN work in a small gas station if it’s not a busy one, as long as they play music in the background. I also need to be able to take frequent breaks, even if it’s just 3-minute breaks more often. Instead of the standard 15-minute break per 4-hour shift, maybe you can have 5-minute breaks every hour. It doesn’t hurt to ask, especially if it makes you a better employee or more patient with customers.

When I have my breaks, I have to have total peace and quiet, with no one perceiving me. That’s hard to find in say, a call center or working at Walmart.

Low-Sensory Job Shifts

Now, this is the heart of this post. I didn’t get a graveyard job until I was in my mid-30s. As a female, many partners have issues with me working at night. It might scare some people, but I’m a night owl. Plus, in small towns, you don’t have to worry as much. I loved working graveyards. It worked okay at a restaurant, but bar rushes (Friday and Saturday nights) were pretty chaotic and hard to handle. However, I worked graveyard at several gas stations, and it worked out really well. I kept busy by listening to music while deep cleaning or doing FIFO (making sure the oldest products are in front and checking expiration dates).

Now, there are a lot of low-sensory careers, but you also need to take into account your ability to deal with the other stuff. For example, working at a hospital at night might seem quiet, but what happens when traumas make everything chaotic? If your processor speed is fine, then that won’t be a problem. However, one of my challenges is a slow processing speed (which has no effect on my IQ, just makes me seem flaky or ditzy). The processing speed limits what machines I can work with, and sometimes driving jobs too. It increases the danger of me not being able to respond quickly enough in a crisis or emergency. It also depends on if I’ll be driving in town or on the freeway.

My Best Autism/ADHD Jobs

My best jobs have been working from home and in a gas station during low-volume hours. It doesn’t necessarily have to be overnight. Managers will know their slowest days and times, so maybe pick those shifts. You can also ask for a split shift. I specially requested one, and my boss was all for it. Most people hate split shifts, but it gives me the “break” that I need from sensory overload and people depleting my system resources.

I also have a lot of fun creating YouTube scripts and doing the back-end of video editing. I also dabble in a bit of nature and architecture photography.

Most of my income comes from work as a freelance writer and I have been doing it for 20 years. I also really enjoyed working as a data entry clerk and being a housekeeper at a nursing home. The nursing home had me working early morning hours, and it was relatively quiet, and every day, things were the same.

With AI threatening the writing industry, I’m looking at other jobs to fill the gap. I personally enjoyed DoorDash, but gas is getting too high right now. So, now I’m tackling woodcarving and how to sell my handmade items.

I have always been happiest when I had a few different gig jobs instead of one full-time job. I know it makes things more uncertain financially, but I haven’t had a meltdown in quite a long time. I’m really working hard at building my own woodcarving business, as there aren’t a lot of options out there for people like me. Sometimes, if you can’t find the right job, environment, or shift, then you have to create your own.