I am easily distracted. There have been times I self-diagnosed ADD. The problem is that we live in a world with no shortage of distractions. There is more than just something for everybody, there are dozens of somethings.
To make it worse, I love technology. You and I both know that the tech world moves fast and there are always new bright/shiny things coming out every day. Adding to that, I want to touch and play with all of the new technology. Obviously, that is not practical because things are expensive.
When I was a kid, I would make lists of stuff I was going to buy when I had money. I grew up working on motors and racing go-karts. I remember making a list of motor parts I wanted to buy so I could build my own motor. A few years ago I bought a go-kart to drive for leisure. I realize now that I was living out my childhood dream of building a fast motor for my go-kart as an adult.
The last few years I have been analyzing, maybe over-analyzing the way I focus and what I focus on. This has led me to realize just how scattered my focus can be at times, hence the ADD self-diagnosis. Maybe it’s not ADD, it’s just that I focus heavily on things that I enjoy and it makes it hard for me to focus on other things when I am locked on to those thoughts. Now I am realizing that sounds a bit selfish, but that is the battle.
Just like most of us, my phone is a distraction. I spend too much time on it looking at things. I don’t scroll Facebook, but I scroll tech headlines and the tweets of people I follow in the technology space. That can be distracting.
The reason for thinking about this or even writing about it came about because I have realized in the last few months there have been a few instances where I had a thought I was working on, got distracted just for a second, and the entire thought was gone. I couldn’t even remember the topic of thought. It’s like it didn’t exist. Sometimes the thought would resurface later, but a few times it did not. Call it getting older or something…
The more I talk with people, I realize that most of this can be written off as a side effect of the human condition. We all get distracted in different ways. It’s hard to hyper-focus on something. To be honest, I am not sure hyper-focus is a good thing.
Even as I wrote this, I lost my train of thought once, was distracted by email twice and my phone three times. The struggle is real.
What are some of the things that distract you? What do you do to curb the distraction so you can get things done?
Is there an app that we can get that would allow us to just jot these thoughts down as soon as we get them, so that we can go back to it and remember what it was that we wanted to get done?
There is. I use Evernote and Trello to organize my thoughts and tasks. My problem is that sometimes the thought is gone before I even think to open the app.