Hopko’s 26th maxim is ‘Do your work, then forget it’. For autistic Orthodox Christians, this speaks directly into the tendency to replay tasks, conversations, and projects in your head long after they are finished – editing them, catastrophizing about them, or trying to ‘perfect’ them in imagination. Doing your work means giving the task your honest attention and effort within your real limits; forgetting it means entrusting the result to Christ instead of endlessly analysing what you ‘should’ have done differently. You are called to faithfulness, not to total control of outcomes or other people’s reactions.
Because autistic cognition often loops and replays, ‘forgetting it’ will usually need intentional rituals rather than just a mental command. You might mark the end of a task with a short prayer (‘Lord, I place this in Your hands’), physically put away the tools you used, tick the task off a list, and then shift to a clearly different activity so your brain has a cue that the work is over. If you notice yourself mentally re‑doing a completed email, report, or conversation, you can name the loop (‘I’ve left the present’), briefly check if any concrete follow‑is up actually needed and, if so, do it, then deliberately to the next small thing. Over time, this maxim can become a gentle protection against perfectionism and scrupulosity: you still care about doing good work, but you refuse to let completed tasks colonize your thoughts, so that your autistic attention can be present to God, to your body, and to the people in front of you now.
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