Spoon Theory: Why Autism Drains My Energy 3x Faster Than Neurotypicals

I have limited energy for daily tasks. Cleaning, laundry, cooking—they all cost me spoons. Christine Miserandino created spoon theory to explain chronic illness, but as an autistic person, the decisions I make every day drain me far more than it does for neurotypicals

The Autism Difference

Neurotypicals process conversations automatically. I'm thinking about every single detail and how it's supposed to play out.

They process sensations on their skin, temperature changes, and environmental shifts without effort. On the other hand, have to process all of it manually—every sensation, every shift in my environment demands my attention. Processing audio in the background, and coversations at work even when I'm not involving in them, is still extremely taxing to me

This constant manual processing is why I've been in burnout for so long (Around 5 years as of 2026). So I feel I have to keep an extremely rigid and aggressive schedule to reduce these drains to prevent myself having another meltdown or dipping further into burnout.

And the thing is, even managing what drains me is a cost since I have to navigate (Wether to put my body wash away in my room instead of leaving it in the shower, hoping my sister doesn't get bothered by it too much when she eventually has to get in and so on). So on top of planning for possibly drains as well as enduring most of them anyways, it's makes it extremely hard to have any energy to enjoy anything else.

My Reality for trying to accomadate myself at work

I've been working at amazon for around 2-3 years now, and while as of now I've somewhat been able to make things work, it's overall failed due to unavoidable drains (Such as loud conversations from co workers) and dealing with constant unpredictablity (Being moved from one station to the next).

At a certain point for a few months, I was being labor shared from one station to the next around 6-8 times in a single day. I have to realign myself with everything on the station, hoping everything works and isn't broken or slow, as well as being accountable for how fast I was going, since if I fell short on one of those metrics, or two, or 3 stations, it would lead to a write up on my end which can stack up very quickly.

After dealing with everything and my shift is over at 5:30PM, I'm almost entirely silent for the rest of the day. No small talk at home, and no voice chatting on discord, just purely time alone.

At around 2-3 spoons left by this point: No talking. No special interests. No stimming. All desire to do anything is gone. Drawing and animation are my special interests, but I have no energy to spare. I abandoned them entirely at a certain point since I never had energy to meaningfully engage in them, and the exhaustion of learning them given I'm currently in burnout would seem to make things work.

Neurotypicals simply don't understand how exhausting it is for our brains to constantly accomadate an enviornment that seems hyper-focused on neurotypical alignment all of the time. Some managers have been pushed back on my ability to accomadate myself such as wearing blue light glasses, with them assuming to be headphones leading to another write up.

I knew I was being mistreated and clearly targeted due to my people-pleasing behavior and self-directed way of doing things. That's why it made most sense to accomadate myself since my enviornment clearly wasn't doing that, and wasn't going to anytime soon.

Why Current Apps Failed me

I tried searching on the apple store and play store to something that could at least somewhat help with the lingering burnout state I was in. Nothing was there that addressed "autistic burnout" specfically, just tracking in relation to mood and normal work burnout.

The apps for autistic people that did exist was almost entirely involving kids. Flashy interfaces and animations clearly designed to grab my attention was something I wasn't interested in nor did it help me. Burnout, meltdowns, shutdowns, nothing existed.

When I'm destroyed after my shift, I need fast, reliable tracking. No clutter. No annoying pop-ups for something I'll never use. Just the tracker. Nothing else.

What I Decided To Build Because of this

I decided to build an autism energy tracker called Spoons. An app simply designed to track my energy (in this case spoons) at any given point, as a gentle reflection point to know when I'm too low of energy (Which is majority of the time) and days where I have more spoons to spare to to perhaps tidy up my room which exhauses me less since there's less "visual noise" for me to work around.

Also to help notice drains that I likely wouldn't have picked up otherwise, since me being in burnout my memory recall has been impaired so much that I almost forget what I was thinking about or planning to do seconds later, so I feel having a history view (Specifically from the past 14 days) to pick up on subtle trends on what I might be doing that's keeping me in burnout or letting to common meltdowns or periods of shutdowns is the best way to navigate around that while not being exhausting to use like most apps seems to be these days.

My name is Omari a 23-year-old autistic adult who's been managing chronic burnout for 5+ years while working warehouse shifts.

Drawing and animation are my special interests, but they require spoons I don't have because my warehouse environment drains me completely. Tracking my spoons and reducing sensory overload gives me more energy to engage in things that actually replenish me, rather than exhaust me.

It can be drawing, or simply being able to go to an arcade or just go walking outside without feeling an immense surge of having another meltdowns just from dealing with something I ultimately couldn't control.

The app itself launches on April 2026. getspoons.app - You're more than welcome to enjoy the waitlist if your interested. There's only one email once the app released, involving the download link and some additional data to get started.

— Omari

Note: I'm sharing my personal experience as an autistic adult, not medical advice. If you're experiencing severe burnout or crisis, please consult a healthcare provider familiar with autism.

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