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Obsessive-Compulsive   59%    45%

I embrace my OCD.

It does not 'rule' me... . and I do not let it 'own' me.

BUT I can out work people 1/2 my age because I embrace my OCD and make it work for me!

The rest of my scores were WELL below 55. Only a couple in the low 40's!

How do you do that, exactly? I'm a little OCD (repetitive motions), though I've lessened with age. My 4 year old son has strong OCD tendencies. I may be off the mark here, but I call him Rainman sometimes. He gets so angry when things are out if order. Organizes and stacks. Spontaneously starts counting things like ceiling tiles... . he's so utterly focused sometimes.

I organize 'systems' in my head, that I execute when working, that help me multi-task like a boss, and operate more efficiently.

I have had people sitting at the bar comment (after the rush is over) that in the midst of madness, I truly did have a 'system' and it worked.

When I obsessively count, or check something more than 3 times, I have a 'little chat' with myself.

The older I get, the more I am able to reel this in before it 'consumes' me.

My boy has a tetch of OCD (22). When he was little he was a stacker/facer with items, separeated legos by color before he built, etc. Today, he knows he has those tendecies, so he 'embraces' them to his advantage and does not let them rule him.

That is interesting. I never thought of it like that. I worked food service for 5 years (high school and college, at the same restaurant). It's the place to be to learn multitasking, and if you can't do that, you're a pretty poor worker. It was a small establishment, and I quickly learned to do everything. It frustrated me that some of our temps couldn't "get" it.

The other day, I was marching down the hallway quickly. My boss commented on me walking so fast. He said, "it comes from working in the restaurant, huh?" I said, probably, but that I had stuff running in the other lab and I had a list in my head of what the next steps were in multiple tasks, and strolling was too slow. He laughed at me the other day because I had three different tasks on 3 different machines running across the big room. Even during a 60 second acquisition (setting up a capture on a CCD, basically), I'd march to the other side of the lab, and set something else going, or stop and adjust it, then go back, then go back to another thing, then another. In over 30 years of working, he said he's never seen someone run multiple complex machines like that (not to say I have my down days). i guess it's why I still have a job.

I never tied it to OCD tendencies, but your observation makes sense. It is like running scripts in your head. Maybe the habits are the scripts looking for something to do. Short of them running on something productive, maybe this is what results in the repetitive behaviors. The scripts seek objects and tasks.

Have you ever read up on OODA loops (http://www.fastcompany.com/44983/strategy-fighter-pilot)? I won't bog down the thread here, but if you haven't, it might give you some insight as to how you think. Basically, I often go from Observe, then skip past Orient and Decide, and go straight to Act, while "opponents" are still stuck in the middle at O and D.


My MIL commented to my Ex once on my touching my hand to my chin while I ate. Other friends comment on my touching a french fry, for example, to the side of the plate before I dip it into the catsup. Some of them it drove nuts (which indicates something with them, because most people don't comment on it).


That's good to know. My is obsessed with Thomas the Train. He makes "trains" out of everything, other things are train tracks. he notices things in the environment that amaze me, hyper observant. Legos, yes... . lining them up, organzing. Stacking the jellies at the restaurant by type. Then puts them horizontally in a long "train", then puts them back into their correct slots. A friend was observing and she said, "he put them back not only by type, but into the same places he got them from though the 4 slot jelly container was empty. He remembered." The other day, we were making mother's day cards. He dumped out an entire bag of fuzzies, which had about 5 different sizes. I asked him to pick them up off the carpet and table and put them back into the bag. He sat there mesmerized and collected about 40 of the smallest size into his hand before he even touched the others (he didn't separate them by color). The annoying things are like him picking his lip in the same spot (gives himself a sore), and he recently started this heavy breathing thing that goes on for minutes. I know he's doing it on purpose. We ask him why he is doing that, and he doesn't answer. I guess the challenge is to not have it limit him, and embrace tasks (or a career) where he can use these tendencies as strengths.