Instead of biting my nails or playing with a fidget toy, is there a skill I can learn/practice?
Like rolling a pen/coin through my fingers or something like that.
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Drumming
I’ve thought so much about this because I stim by bouncing my leg and strumming my fingers on stuff; I’m already basically playing drums!
Related: get a Digitakt or Syntakt from Elektron and make music while you stim with clicky buttons 🤩
Digitakt is awesome
annoying
I did magic tricks as a hobby, I would practice some card techniques with whatever I had at hand, e.g. credit or parking cards. There are several things you can do with cards or coins that are quick and cool.
Coin tricks. Especially knuckle rolling coins and learning how to change the position of the coin between various palming techniques.
That’s what stimming is for, kid!
Stimming is a natural source of the “try mind” zen practitioners speak of. Do a perfect impression of Jon Stewart. Why? Why?? Hell no there’s no why.
I drum with my fingers. The first time I picked up a tabla someone was pissed that I got it “immediately”. No! That’s the result of hundreds of hours of practice.
Stimming is a fusion reactor in the autistic mind, just waiting to be hooked up to something useful. We can practice a task orders of magnitude more than most people can, because we literally can’t get tired of it.
If nothing else, go play some music. Stimming with music is how culture began. Somebody’s gotta drag these numbskulls through their passivity to new levels of beauty. Stimming is the hacksaw that cuts the prison bars shoddy workmanship.
Shuffling cards, rubix cube, ukulele, traveling coin,
Think you just answered your own question.
Seriously though, coin rolling is great for dexterity and you can move on to some simple slight of hand magic
After I quit smoking, I wanted to do something with my hands so I bit my nails until it hurt.
Crochet was/ is something I can do with my hands and at the end I get a cool hat or a nice scarf. Yarn gets expensive, tho.
Look into flow arts! There’s something for everyone, and it’s great exercise!
Also for those who don’t feel like Googling it: flow arts include juggling, spinning, baton/staff/whatever spinning, fan dance (?), and more.
TIL there’s a general term for that.
Wouldn’t the coin on the knuckles thing count?
Coin on the knuckles is tangential but not usually considered flowarts, which is usually more of a whole body activity. However it’s close enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw someone showing off at a gathering. Similar to like hackeysack or balisong (butterfly knife).
Flow is also a gateway to fire performance, aerials, acrobatics, and other circus arts
Lockpicking maybe? Just recently got into it as a bucket list hobbies but it’s actually really entertaining. They sell practice cutaway locks that fit easily in one hand as you fidget about with the lock picks.
Whenever I have my lockpicks and a few padlocks available, I end up picking nonstop while doing things like watching youtube
This is a great idea! Lock picking is fun and super impressive to laymen (haha).
Just don’t tell anyone but your closest, most trusted friends (haha). Also, tell them to keep it a secret! Why? So your neighbor doesn’t knock on your door at 2AM because they locked themselves out of their apartment.
Also, you don’t need cutaway locks! They’re neat toys but nothing more. What you really need is a variety of locks to play with.
Head to your local hardware store and pick up a bunch of cheap locks. Or just ask friends if they have any old padlocks they’re not using (most people will have one or two).
True, cutaway locks aren’t needed. I recently heard of a neat idea where you can call around various storage businesses and ask if they have cut locks from people who lost their unit. It won’t be useful to lock anything but great for practice. Unfortunately the one near me throws theirs away regularly so I need to call around more to see what I can find.
You can get training locks where the back of each cylinder unscrews so you can put in as many or as few pins as you want, and try it again with different pinning each time.
Yup! Thats like the one I have from Sparrows. I got their Tuxedo Reloaded set and it comes with all sorts of driver pins and keys to setup yourself.
I was thinking something I could do at work without being too distracting
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Kegel exercises
ADHD here. Speedcubing. It’s a wonderful hobby for me. When I’m interested in it, I can learn some new things and time myself to see how I’m doing. When I’m not interested in it, I can solve it and it helps me to focus on watching TV. Even if I’m not solving it, it feels great just to twist in your hands.
Look up a good budget speedcube (not Rubik’s branded) and invest yourself as much or as little as you fancy.
Just recently learned CFOP from someone (still really slow at it) and it’s a great fidget. I use it during a few of my more droning zoom meetings and it makes me feel like I’m doing something semi productive while I fidget.
At some point soon you’re going to solve it in front of someone whilst you’re fidgeting, not even really focussing on it and you’ll blow their freaking mind and you’ll feel great.
Remember the GM of a TTRPG session I was playing was running a session and he noticed I’d been solving it when he’d assumed I’d just been fidgeting. He literally interrupted the session to exclaim ‘Oh my God, you solved it!’ and it took me a good few seconds to realize what he was talking about, as my attention was primarily on what he was saying and I was just idly solving.
Enjoy it when it comes :)
Absolutely knitting or crocheting. It’s very soothing.
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Compulsive skin picking for those who don’t want to have to Google it.
My most frequent stim for YEARS involves me playing along doing saxophone fingerings to whatever music I’m listening to or is stuck in my head. So, maybe a wind instrument!
+1 for almost any instrument
