Professionally, my ethics dictate that I speak up and force a change whenever I see any action that can lead to a catastrophic failure. This didn’t make someone popular.

Forcing myself not to stare down other people’s misbehaving children with the “teacher look” when out in public.

I got really used to technical conversations at work going “full duplex” where we’d excitedly talk over each other and interrupt constantly, just to get to each conclusion faster. I had a close coworker join my team, and he was much harder than normal to get a word in, so I got better at jumping in to interrupt until we were at the same pace and the technical communication was synced and flowing well.

Around a month after I’d been working with him, my wife started telling me I was being very rude and interrupting her more than usual. I guess the habit came home with me. I’m still working on it, though it’s been over 5 years since I switched out of his team.

Former land surveyor. Was definitely counting my paces when I was not surveying.

Background: you’d often try to capture a grid of points, or cross section of a road, for example, at regular intervals. You’d roughly know your normal stride length conversion to metres, so if I were doing a 10m grid, it’d be: shoot a point, walk 11 paces, shoot a point, repeat for hundreds, sometimes thousands of points. It wasn’t long until you would be counting paces when you weren’t actively surveying.

I’m a software developer. I get very agitated when I have to sit next to someone who operates their computer slowly.

I have stress dreams sometimes and about old jobs. Like in my dream I’ll wake up and suddenly remember I’ll need to be at a job I haven’t been at in years. But, the time has still passed. Like I’ll be wondering why they scheduled me when I haven’t been there in years, and then get even more stressed cuz I can’t remember how to do anything.

Another one, I work from home. Off hours if I’m watching a movie or playing a game I’ll sometimes look over to check my work laptop :/

I’ve been the electronic security game for about 25 years and I swear I instinctively notice and look directly at every video camera in every building I enter, and I swear if anybody noticed they’d think I’m casing the joint.

Biggest one would be trying to login to my pc with my work password.

When I get in the car, I hit the blinker lever by instinct because on a forklift it puts you into forward or reverse gear.

I’m in IT. My personal laptop is perennially broken because I. cannot. stop. tinkering.

When riding trains I look at the concrete cable canal running along the tracks thinking about whether we rent any fibers in that one or not.

I’m a pilot. At a drive through, I read back the price as a matter of reflex.

Not catching things. I worked at a leather shop with a lot of very sharp things.

I will just watch stuff fall. Even if it’s a friend tossing me my keys or something. Watch it sail thru the air and land right on the ground. Then I normally say “don’t throw shit at me” as their regular reminder that my instinct isn’t to catch things.

Also the phrase “heads up” doesn’t encourage me to catch something either. It encourages me to check the position of me feet for possible stabs.

I’ve been working in high acuity psychiatry for 10 years. I notice when doors don’t click shut behind me and if I don’t hear a solid click or an electric lock whirring sound I get the urge to check the handle, even at home / in my apartment complex. I can feel people behind me on the street if they’re closer than about 20 feet back. I don’t like sitting without a wall behind me (it was weird going back to school and explaining that my ADHD preferential seating accommodation was the back row, not the front).

I can’t watch anyone cook without steeling myself from mentioning their risky knife grip, mess-inducing lack of flow, slapdash mis, etc. 😵‍💫 On the positive side, I always call my status (“behind”, “hot”, “knife”, etc.)