Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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.

Not a useful skill, but you could try speedcubing

Absolutely knitting or crocheting. It's very soothing.

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!

What do you mean by "stimming"? Being on stimulants?

Edit: In case it was not clear, I am literally asking what this word means as I have not heard it before.

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.

I learned to count to 31 on 1 hand using binary. I've gotten more than a few free drinks via bar bets with that skill lol.

Coin tricks. Especially knuckle rolling coins and learning how to change the position of the coin between various palming techniques.

Drumming

Chisanbop or chisenbop (from Korean chi (ji) finger + sanpŏp (sanbeop) calculation 지산법/指算法), sometimes called Fingermath, is a finger counting method used to perform basic mathematical operations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop

You might be already doing this. If you strum your fingers of your right hand by pressing your index, middle, ring, and pinky to your desktop, and then do the same thing again starting with your thumb, you've just counted from 0 to 9. Do the same on your left hand and you've gone from 00 to 90. It's really easy to do simple math this way by counting on your fingers.

For stimming purposes, you might just start by counting up or counting down, then maybe counting up by twos or counting down by threes.

This is the approach that I've known for many decades now. I've seen YouTube videos of kids doing amazing fast calculations like multiplying large numbers using what looks like a different method in that their hands are in the air. I'll leave it to you to Google the other approaches if this direction interests you.

While I'm unfamiliar with your condition, it seems simple magic tricks, like having a playing card appear in your hand from thin air (when it was actually just well hidden) and making it disappear again.

I've gotten pretty good at rolling a pen through my fingers just through fidgeting over the past twenty years. So it's definitely possible!

Maybe knitting?

Shuffling cards, rubix cube, ukulele, traveling coin,

Drawing. I set myself the strict rule to be completely unambitious about my coloured pencil drawings. I do them only for myself, and the enjoyment while doing it is the main purpose. So sometimes I just draw some squiggles and then I fill them with colours, one layer over another. One drawing can take weeks, I do a bit every evening and it is so relaxing. Now with time they start looking really neat as a cool side effect, so I have been thinking about framing them.

Begleri is a cool skill toy

Balisongs are cool too

Look into flow arts! There's something for everyone, and it's great exercise!

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

Archery

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.

Practicing touch typing.

I don't know how many times I've absent-mindedly "strummed" my fingers by tapping out "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency...", a TV memory from my childhood.

When I first learned touch typing, I did consciously practice this way. ASDF, JKL;. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.