Saturday, September 19, 2009

Getting Focused

Did you ever see that email about A.A.A.D.D.: Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder? It starts like this:

"I decide to water my garden. *As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing...."

It goes on for several more sentences with more distractions until the end where the guy says he can't understand why he got nothing done and he can't remember who he was going to send this email to anyway.

I'd repeat the whole text except I doubt any of us want to spend more than a few minutes reading it all. When I read it the first time, I remember thinking to myself, that's nothing! At least this old guy is getting away from his computer walking around his house as he gets distracted with the next thing. Those of us that are cyber-addicts will follow link after link reading all kinds of cool stuff and often never accomplishing our original goal!

For example, 20 minutes ago, I was cleaning my house (something I haven't done for quite awhile.) I came across an old insurance card and realized I needed to print a new one. Now getting on the computer at all is a big mistake, because I know that the endless series of links will distract me. Sure enough, there was an email from a LinkedIn Group that I glanced at (gotta keep up with this stuff, ya know) that had a link to a post that looked interesting:

"Networking and Business 101: “Excuse Me, But I Don’t Want to Talk To You Anymore”

Of course, I had to leave a comment for Samuel L Diener, telling him I'd add him to my blog roll since his blog is about Social Media. Then, of course, I had to peruse his Website. And, naturally, ask him to connect via LinkedIn. I didn't go on to peruse FaceBook or Twitter to see if he was on there because...well...I might as well be out here all day once I get on those sites. But, I did (obviously) write this blog post, which meant additional time spent trying to find that old A.A.A.D.D. article, finding an out-of-focus photo (which should have been simple if I'd perused my private stash) and then spending the time to actually write something.

How do we stay focused? I love reading, learning, meeting new people, networking, chatting, blogging.... I keep telling myself I have to schedule time and set a timer and when that timer rings, I'm off the computer! It's a beautiful day today and I need to get out and see real peopl ....DING!!!!

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