SPINs
Where fidget spinners and special interests touch.
Imagine a coworker who knows more about Byzantine architecture than anyone in the office. Or a team member who can trace every thread of a project’s dependencies because supply chains became their obsession at age twelve. Now imagine that same person struggling to sit still in a meeting, tapping their pen, spinning their phone on the table—and being told to stop.
What if the tapping and the Byzantine architecture are the same thing?
SPINs—Special Interests—are topics that get hold of the autistic mind and do not let go. Some SPINs we choose. Some choose us. Either way, they tend to go deep: not as a performance of expertise, but as a genuine pull toward a subject that generates energy instead of consuming it.
Stimming—the repetitive movements, the fidget spinners, the hand-flapping—serves a parallel function. It regulates sensory overwhelm, sharpens focus, and occasionally helps an autistic person connect. The two are linked: stimming can unlock the door to the SPIN’s full power.
What we currently do is ask autistic people to use part of their brain to suppress stimming, while other parts are overwhelmed, and then expect peak performance. This is not a reasonable trade.
What a SPIN looks like from the inside
My own SPINs are theology, developmental psychology, psychometric assessments, AI, and metaphysics. Those who read my work regularly will recognize them—they surface in almost everything I write.
They are not separate interests I happen to have. They form a single structure. Metaphysics reveals the deep architecture of reality. Psychometric assessments map how humans navigate it. Developmental psychology shows how we mature within it. Theology asks what transcends it. And when I think about AI, I ask whether our own creations can help us better understand the world, the creation we live in. Every post I write pulls on at least two of these threads simultaneously.
I do not consider myself an expert in any of them. There are specialists who know far more than I do. What I have is depth combined with breadth—and, as an Enneagram Five, the persistent conviction that I still do not know enough.
SPINs and strengths: the same engine
Gallup’s CliftonStrengths asks what is right with you rather than what is wrong. It maps the ways you naturally operate when at your best. The underlying premise is simple: people perform better when they work in ways that generate energy rather than drain it.
SPINs work the same way. Being genuinely interested in a topic gives you the energy to go deep. Going deep gives you the knowledge to be useful. Being useful reinforces the interest. The loop sustains itself.
The question is not only how autistic people can leverage their own SPINs. The more interesting question is: can you help someone else develop a SPIN?
Waking a SPIN in someone else
A SPIN does not appear from nothing. It grows from three conditions: a person encounters a topic at the right moment, they are given space to pursue it without being redirected, and the topic connects to something they already care about.
You cannot force a SPIN. But you can create the conditions. In a team, this means noticing what someone pursues beyond the minimum—what they research unprompted, what they keep returning to in conversation. Then you make room for it rather than pulling them back toward the standard workflow.
For neurotypical colleagues, this requires tolerating a certain amount of chaos. The autistic person following their SPIN will not always follow the most direct path. They will notice connections you did not ask for. They will go further than needed. This is not inefficiency. This is the SPIN working.
The deal that has to be made
Allowing an autistic person to lean into their quirks requires a mutual agreement. It cannot be one side doing all the adapting. The autistic person cannot expect the group to tolerate infinite disruption. The group cannot expect the autistic person to become neurotypical. That second part is the harder ask—and it is the one that is more often ignored.
What is on offer, if you get this right, is substantial. A person who is genuinely in their SPIN does not need to be motivated, managed, or monitored. They are already going as deep as they can. The group’s job is simply not to interrupt that—and to learn how to receive what comes out of it.
Allowing an autistic person to lean into their quirks, in a mutually accepted way, will release so much potential that it will jettison both of you forward.
What we miss
What we often miss is this: SPINs are not merely private obsessions. They are pattern-recognition accelerators.
An autistic SPIN is not just intensity. It is sustained cognitive immersion. And sustained immersion does something to perception. It compresses noise. It sharpens signal. It begins to see structures others skim past.
This is where the group benefit becomes tangible.
Most organizations operate on breadth. Meetings move quickly. Decisions are made with partial data. Social cohesion often outweighs conceptual precision. That is not wrong; it is adaptive. But it leaves blind spots.
A SPIN-oriented mind does not move on so easily. It keeps circling. It cross-references. It integrates across domains. What looks like fixation from the outside is often slow synthesis from the inside.
If you allow that process to exist—without forcing it to conform to neurotypical pacing—you gain depth. And depth is scarce.
There is another layer.
SPINs create intrinsic motivation. You do not need external pressure to make someone return to a topic that already holds them. You do not need micromanagement. You need direction and boundaries.
That is a leadership challenge. Not suppression, not indulgence—channeling.
When SPINs are dismissed as eccentricity, you lose cognitive capital. When they are romanticized without structure, you lose coherence. But when they are integrated, you gain long-term competence.
This applies beyond autism.
Every human being has the potential for SPIN-like engagement. Not everyone has autistic intensity, but everyone has domains that energize them disproportionately. The tragedy is that most systems are designed to neutralize that energy in favor of standardization.
We ask for well-roundedness and then wonder why we get mediocrity.
Imagine instead a church, a company, or a team that actively maps the SPINs in the room. Not as trivia, but as strategic resources. Who here obsesses over systems? Who over people? Who over doctrine? Who over technology? Who over ethics?
Now imagine those intensities talking to each other. That is not chaos. That is distributed specialization.
Of course, it requires maturity. SPINs without development can become dogmatism. Intensity without perspective becomes rigidity. That is why developmental psychology matters. Growth expands the frame in which the SPIN operates.
An immature SPIN defends itself. A mature SPIN contributes.
And this is where the earlier tension returns.
If autistic people are constantly required to suppress their regulation tools, they will have less energy for their SPINs. If they are denied the right to question, their SPIN may turn adversarial. If they are welcomed but patronized, they will withdraw.
But if they are engaged as cognitive partners, something shifts.
The fidget spinner regulates the nervous system.
The SPIN reorganizes the system.
Both matter.
Which SPINs do you see in the people around you—and what would it cost you to make room for them?