As I have discussed previously, an important part of Autism is “Special Interests”. Most Autistic people have at least one topic they have devoted many thousands of hours of their life to and have an encyclopedic knowledge of. Some Autistic people have several of these, and if you also have ADHD (aka AuDHD, like myself) you may have hundreds.

Zipf’s Law (As Applied to Special Interests)

Interesting side bar (because what would this be without one): My special interests follow Zipf’s Law, which has to do with frequency of use vs length of word. In my case, it plays out like this:

  • I have a single “main” special interest, Computer Programming, which I have studied since I was 8, went to school for, and have done professionally for almost 16 years.
  • I have several other special interests that I have spent thousands of hours each(!) on.
  • I have dozens of special interests that I have spent hundreds of hours each on.
  • I have hundreds of interests that I have spent dozens of hours each on.

Insightful & Inciting Post

Anyway, the excellent Autistic advocate and author Nicole Filippone recently posted this on Bluesky:

The autistic experience of becoming an actual expert in your special interest, but having no formal education or qualifications to make a career out of it. And the autistic follow up experience of collecting expertise in various special interest areas and having no one to share the knowledge with 😆😅

— Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author (@sensorystories.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 6:39 PM

And most Autistic people would probably agree. But I have some nuance I want to add here.

I am an expert in one of my special interests. And only one. Perhaps obviously from the listing above, that is computer programming.

As mentioned above though, that is not the only area I have spent thousands of hours researching and picking up a substantial knowledge base about. Why I am not an expert in physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, or writing thrilling episodes of Doctor Who?

Deliberate Practice

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, he talks about the concept of “deliberate practice”, which I would summarize as: focus, feedback, and frequency.

This is the main difference between knowing a lot about a topic and expertise:

  • You actually go do something with the knowledge.
  • You fail, and find out how little you actually know.
  • Then you try again, and again, and again, improving each time.

It is hard

It is so easy to be “that guy” (explicitly gendered because sadly it is frequently us guys…) on a topic with all the “well actually…” interjections showing off how very clever you are.

It is much harder to consider and weigh pros and cons to various approaches, to know how (and when!) to communicate complex subjects to non-experts in approachable but not condescending ways.

It is hard to be an expert, and that difficulty is the hard-won result of years of effortful, deliberate practice, not mere knowledge.

It is worth it

But in a world of brittle fakers, it is worth being a solid expert. Society needs more of us.

So if you are Autistic and feel like taking on a challenge, turn one of your “special interests” into true expertise.

And a decade or so from now, let me know how it went.

Be proud of your progress, even if it was less than you expected.

It is always worthwhile.


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