Deep Dive Into “Working With Me” Documents and How They Can Peel Back Your Brain

Do people find you hard to understand?

And do you sometimes ask yourself the same thing?

Am I a confusing person?

As a wise philosopher once said, the inner machinations of my mind are an enigma, at least to other people.

As far as I'm concerned, I have most of my brain pretty well understood.

I still learn something new about myself every day.

But then I also discover things in the workplace, in my life.

and throughout tons of different experiences that really make me question things and be like, how did I not know about this before?

And why am I discovering this for the very first time?

No matter how self aware you are, it can be frustrating to realize things about yourself and then forget them and then we discover them and forget them a second time.

It may be helpful to be able to put this information into a single stored place, whether that is written out somewhere in a document, notes to yourself.

And that leads us to today's topic, a working with me document has a couple of different names such as manual of me, personal operating system, personal Bible.

Lots of different terms that all refer to the same concept.

It is an explanation of who you are, how you work, how you operate, things that really make you happy, things that don't make you happy, and how to support you.

A working with me document tends to be more skewed towards the workplace, but by no means does it only apply to the workplace.

Think of it as a personal explanation of who you are on your terms.

What do you need people to know about you?

What do you want people to know about you?

And what should they expect when you are in life, when you are on the job, when you're on a call?

Helping people understand you is crucial to you being able to thrive in a job.

And a Working With Me document can help make that very explicit and clear and lay things out exactly as you want them to be understood.

When you go into a job and you say, hey, I'm autistic, you might leave that up to the imaginations of whoever is listening to you.

Or you can have a Working With Me document that very clearly codifies what somebody should expect with you when it comes to your neurodiversity.

You being autistic, you being ADHD, you being OCD might look very differently than it does for other people who are on your team who know somebody who has OCD, who has ADHD, or who

has autism.

Everyone's working with me document those a little bit differently.

What's important for you to communicate on yours might be very different than it is on mine.

The idea remains the same though.

You want to be proactive about communicating with people and setting their expectations rather than reactive and having to constantly tell people different things, where there

being knowledge gaps, people coming and going.

At my company Slack, for instance, I have a direct link to my internal working with me document.

That way, no matter who it is, no matter where they are in the company, they have a link no matter where I go in Slack and they can see it, bam, this is how to work with me.

And I have it saved in our Google drop.

I have it saved on a Google Drive.

Anybody at the company can see it.

They can ask me questions about it.

They can send me a Slack message.

I have had multiple people ask me about it and say, how can I make my own?

Can I use your template?

I love it.

I have had a couple people who have some feedback on it, but people really resonate with this idea because it helps them understand me.

How do I communicate?

For instance, I really love hopping on Zoom calls and Slack cuddles to talk with people.

rather than going back and forth in a Slack message or in an email thread.

To me, Slack and Zoom are much quicker.

They're synchronous.

We get over with it.

We get on with our lives.

That may not be you.

You may not like Slack or Zoom, and that's totally okay.

You can put that in your Working With Me document and say, prefer talk about things on a Slack thread or asynchronously or in an email, and that's totally okay.

I'm not here to say the contents of what you should put in there.

but there are important things that you should be able to answer as far as the questions go.

What are the headlines and what are the titles?

I want to go ahead and share my Working With Me document and talk about the different titles and questions that I answer in my document.

When you go ahead and answer them for yours, the questions that you put and the answers to those questions will likely be different.

These are the questions that I have found work for me very well, but by no means should you consider them to be the only questions that you should have, nor should you use these

answers exactly as they are, because it is meant to be personal.

It is meant to be me.

So you may...

hear about and see things that you disagree with.

say, no, that's not me at all.

And that's okay.

That is meant to be that way.

This is about you, not about me.

I'm going to talk through the questions and answers that I have, but by no means should you see them as being verbatim exactly what you should use.

You can access the link to my manual of me on the show notes.

You can also type it into any browser that you have.

is autistic-techie.com slash working dash with dash me.

All you have to do, it'll bring you right to the page.

You can also click on it from the show notes, wherever you're listening them.

The first thing that you should include on your Working With Me document is the basics.

Who am I?

What team am I on?

This is a workplace.

What are my responsibilities?

What's the basic TLDR version?

If you don't read anything else in this document, what's going on?

When I answer this, I say I'm Shay Belsky.

I'm a tech lead too, I add up my company.

I lead a team of software engineers in a specific product group.

And I go to the office a couple of days a week.

And you'll know that you found my desk when you see all the fitted devices that are on it.

I talk about me being autistic a little bit.

I say that how I communicate with people and how I socialize is gonna be different than what you might expect.

I prefer to be direct and honest to people.

I'm not really a flowery person.

Sometimes I may come off as being a bit abrupt and I'm sorry for that.

That's just the way that my brain operates sometimes.

I try not to be that way, just the way that it is.

I talk about my sensory needs, how you'll almost always see me somewhere with a pair of headphones around my head and that's okay.

You may not need headphones, you may require headphones.

This is totally a matter of up to you.

You can include something different here for your sensory stuff.

Maybe you talk about light, maybe you talk about smell, maybe you talk about having your desk in a specific spot where the light is better, the smell is better, the sound.

You can put in here whatever you need to, to give people the basic understanding.

Maybe you're not at your desk because you couldn't get it moved and you find yourself working in a quieter spot.

Maybe you're in a sensory quiet room.

Maybe that's never part of the office, which is much better on your senses.

Entirely up to you what to put here.

I also talk a bit about how I like to move around a lot.

I have a standing desk at home and in the office.

I like to fidget with my eyes, with my hands, with my body, and to tell people that, hey, you might see me look away from the camera every once in a while, and that's okay.

That's just how my brain works.

Don't take it to mean I'm not paying attention to you.

I am, I'm just not an eye contact person.

The next thing I talk about is my absolute requirements to be able to do really great work.

I pull a little funny here and I say I like breakfast burritos.

I'm a breakfast guy.

If you hand me a breakfast burrito, I'm a really happy person.

But then I talk more practically about how I start my day.

I like having a list of things.

I like having lots of reminders, a lot of snoozes, schedules.

I talk about what is the framework within which I can be successful at a high level.

I go into more specifics later about what doesn't work for me, but this is the basically ground floor, the bare minimum for me.

talk a little bit about scheduling Slack messages here.

I schedule so many messages in Slack and I snooze a lot of them too.

I'll say, remind me about this tomorrow.

Remind me in three days from now.

I think that's a great feature of Slack and it helps me with my brain function.

You do you as far as what your requirements are.

You may want to talk about here how.

I actually need to be getting my cup of coffee.

That could be a thing that you need, and that's totally okay.

That can make the difference for you in the start of your work day.

The point here is to talk about what your really necessary requirements are from your lens.

Be honest.

I would keep it brief here, but be honest about what you actually need.

Next section to talk about is my working patterns.

I like to block off time on my calendar.

I basically cross it out and say, do not book time on this calendar at these times.

I am working.

I am focusing.

If you absolutely have to book time with me, it should be time sensitive or there's no overtime on my calendar.

or there's no other time on my calendar.

Pretty please of a cherry on top.

Don't do this unless you have to.

And I give people some flexibility, but it really depends.

Your working patterns might look different.

Maybe you don't need focus time.

Maybe you can just thrive off of having little pockets of work.

I also talk about flexing my hours here.

Sometimes I will start my day early or start my day late, depending on if I'm going to an event, if I'm doing something in the morning.

I like to flex my hours that way I can go do something then come to work.

I still work for the same amount of time.

I attend all my meetings.

I do everything that has to happen, but I just might switch things up a little bit every once in a while.

And I tell my team when this happens.

That's just me personally, but you do you as far as what your actual working hours look like.

This is where it gets more into neurodiversity and how my brain works.

The things that prevent me from doing my best are having those meetings at awkward times that are spread out.

If I have a half hour meeting, then a break.

Half hour meeting, then a break.

That sucks for me.

I can't work that way.

I would much rather clump all my meetings together and have two hours of uninterrupted meetings and then have a two hour block where I can focus it off and say, don't book time

here on my calendar because I am working.

That's just me.

You do you.

that may be totally okay for you.

But my brain needs to have that focus time, otherwise the house of cards is gonna knock over at the slightest wind and I will not be able to focus if that's the case.

I also talk about neurodiversity here and people can really get stubborn about it.

And it's funny how some people are more stubborn about my autism than I am about other things.

So I say in this section, like, I get annoyed when people are pushing up against me if I ask about something.

and I communicate in a way that's weird or unexpected, I just get really stuck on that and that stops me from being able to do my best work.

I talk about how you can check in on me in the next section.

If you want to reach out to me, if you have a question, if you need to support me in some way, if I have something that you need, I'm a big slack guy.

Emails sometimes, but at the workplace, I'm mostly a slack guy.

And I like a lot of slack statuses.

I will put up a slack status which says, not disturb if I am focusing, if I'm in a meeting, if I'm doing something else, or I can't respond to somebody immediately.

I'll have pause notifications as well.

I'll use focus mode on my computer.

I'll have focus mode on my computer.

There's a lot of ways in which I really direct my attention to whatever's in front of me at the time.

And that's just how my brain works.

And if you need to get something from me, then you just might have to get in line with everybody else who's messaging me as well.

And this is how I like to receive this.

You do you as far as how you need other people to check in on you.

Maybe you're an in-person desk person.

Maybe you're a phone call, text person, entirely up to you here.

stress management and self-regulation and what happens with dysregulation is a really big thing that I think about all the time.

I am a very big go for a walk person.

And so if I'm dealing with something stressful, I will see the situation out and excuse myself from it as soon as it is reasonable to do so.

I'm not going to walk out in the middle of a meeting, but I will make sure that following the meeting at the most appropriate and reasonable time, I will go outside and

process it, whatever form that looks like it might be a walk, a run, I might go around the block, I might hop on a bike.

I am a very physical dealer with my stress and that physical exertion helps me work.

That's not for everybody.

You might be a simmer, you might be a video gamer, you might process your stress in some other way.

You wanna talk about that here, how you process that stress, how you get back to an equilibrium or as close to a regulated point as possible.

Next section talks about how you want to receive feedback.

I'm a direct person.

Talk to me, tell me what's going on if I did something great.

If it is something not great, I just need people to be able to tell me these things and also points to examples.

I am a type of person who requires examples of what's going on.

That way I can say, do more of this or do less of this or change this behavior.

That helps me a lot.

And that's just the way that I work in my brain.

You may prefer somebody to show you.

what has to happen.

You may want them to do a demo or a trial of something so you understand this is the way something is meant to be done.

And if you're doing something well, but can do it better, you may want more specifics about that detail.

I can generally extrapolate from things without needing to get into specifics, but I'm not like every person and neither are you.

So you talk about how you need to receive feedback here.

This is an easier one, but I talk about my working hours.

I'm kind of like a nine to five person.

I mentioned before that I'm pretty flexible.

I also set slack statuses.

So if I'm on vacation, I'm out of the office, I had to go run an errand, go do something, I'm on a run or a walk or a bike, I will set a slack status.

That's just you.

You say whatever you got to say here.

This one's a little bit more personal, a little bit more fun.

I like to add some more color to this.

That way it's a bit more obvious as far as I'm a real person.

I'm not.

not just an employee, I'm a peer, I'm a real human being, it's hard as it is to believe.

And I talk about some things that I've done recently that I'm really proud of.

I signed up for the Beamtown Marathon in September, and the goal is to hopefully run the Boston Marathon with the Doug Flutie Foundation in April 2026.

Doug Flutie Foundation is absolutely an awesome autism advocacy and acceptance organization based out of Boston and are a huge sponsor of the Boston Marathon.

I've been a really big fan of the Stars of the Spectrum concert that they do.

showcasing autistic artists and entertainers doing incredibly impactful and powerful things.

Go support them if you're listening to this in the Boston area.

And if you're not, go give them a follow anyway.

Other things I had to put on here as I'm gonna cook a paella dish.

I've always wanted to do that and I'm really happy with how it came out.

I got a lot of leftovers from that.

And on a more work-related note, pulling off a complicated refactor that was a very massive

tendril spiraling project that took a lot of time and effort to do.

That's more work related, but it helps to understand what I take pride in, that I can be a work person and a people person.

Another personal thing here, I talk about how I thrive at work.

When I get my cats, I have two cats, you might've seen them, I heard them on podcasts before, on video, Sugarplum and Bailey.

But on a more serious work-related note, I thrive when I work with people who are really determined to solve problems and are really able to focus in.

And that level of focus is gonna look different.

How you thrive is gonna really be different for other people.

Maybe you don't need to rely on other people to get something done.

Maybe to you, are a one person army.

You can just go ahead and get it done.

You want to talk about that here.

How do you thrive?

What is your best state?

This goes beyond the requirements like the bare minimum from before.

And it's more about what is your peak state?

What is your Nirvana?

What is your super saiyan vinyl transformation?

Whatever term you want to use here.

What is the best state in which you can.

Last thing I talk about here is how I add value to teams and where my neurodiversity is a strength, my ability to focus, my ability to ask questions, to be honest and say, I don't

know what's going on here.

I won't be bothered by asking a question that others might perceive as being oblivious.

I will go ahead and ask the question anyway to create understanding, not just for myself, but for other people.

will cut through that fog with a giant blade and say, hey, I'm going to ask this question regardless of whether or not people perceive me or judge me for asking the question.

And that's a really powerful thing for me.

You might add value to teams in totally different ways.

Maybe you're big on your

Focus, maybe you're big on being able to multitask, maybe you're great at running meetings.

How you add value really varies based on your brain and your self-advocacy.

This was my Working With Me document, but just like every person is different, every Working With Me document is also different.

Your document should reflect you.

These are the things that I find that people need to know about me, but what those things are for you might be totally different.

You might want to cut right to the chase and be very explicit and clear and detailed.

I don't recommend being overly verbose or super duper dense, but you do need to give people enough information to be empowered to help you.

you want them to be able to advocate for you when it comes down to it.

If someone realizes that they might be heading into a scenario of lots of sound and lots of light, and they know that you are bothered by that, they may be able to advocate for

you without you having to ask.

You may not be in a position to advocate for yourself, but if your entire team is able to get behind you, that's the best case scenario.

They can say, hey, this place might be a little bit noisy.

They don't even have to call you out by name.

They just can say, hey,

This might be noisy.

Let's go somewhere else.

Let's do something else.

And that is the best case scenario that your team can advocate for you, that they can support you and help you be able to do your work because you're at a place to do your job.

And you want to be able to rely on other people to help you.

The Working With Me document is an excellent vehicle for which you can communicate with other people and tell them how they can help advocate for you.

how they can be a meaningful ally, and what to expect when they work with you.

Try it out in your workplace.

The document that I linked is from a website called Manual of Me.

You can make your own document at my.manualof.me, that's a website, or you can view my Working With Me document

at autistic-techie.com slash working dash with dash me.

This isn't just for neurodivergent people too.

This really helps anybody and any team.

I know lots of neurotypical people who filled this out too.

They talk about, hey, I might leave work early, sometimes go pick up my kids.

I have to go support family members who are at home ill or I'm a part-time caregiver.

I may have something else going in my life.

Maybe my partner is pregnant or we're expecting a baby soon or remodeling our house.

There's lots of different scenarios where somebody can use this document regardless of neurodiversity or of a disability.

Talk to your team about using this across the entire team.

That way you can learn more about how to support your team members too.

It's not just about you, it's about every team.