Web 2.0 Anxiety Disorder?
Blog Thursday, May 29 2008Perhaps I'm unusual...
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Once upon a time, my mornings consisted of having my coffee, meditation, checking my email, reading my favorite news sites online and maybe chatting with a few friends on IM to stay connected. Following that hour-long ritual, I was usually off and running writing code, documentation or other work-related tasks. The new face of the Internet has brought with it many more points of contact that I for some reason find necessary when starting my day. Now a typical morning falls into the following scenario: |
.. yawn get that first cup of coffee.
.. meditate (if I can avoid the pc)
.. check email - respond where necessary
.. check Twhirl for overnight tweets
.. load up 15 browser tabs with urls my Twiter friends posted over-night
.. get interrupted by IM and begin to read articles again
.. check MySpace and Facebook for new messages or to see what my friends have been up to
.. oh snap, I forgot to make sure I haven't missed anything - go check FriendFeed
.. oh yeah that email I was writing... finish that
.. daily news reads... get started
.. oh snap - forgot to upload those photos I took yesterday
.. hey I wonder what Mixx has for me today....
.. ooo new tweets in - going to check that new ASP.NET blog post
.. what is Scoble talking about today???
.. hey cool - new comments in my Flikr account - going to check
.. reply to survey tweets (I can't resist)
.. oh yeah I was reading the news....
.. GTD dang it - I need to check my lists for today
.. work email coming in - bugs? bah - let me check
.. ok, where was I? news, yes?
.. oh hey more tweets - more links - this looks cool
.. hey somebody bought me on Facebook - do I get a cut? - gotta go delete that garbage
.. ah yes Friend Feed..
.. wait a minute - I didn't finish reading that blog
.. I haven't blogged in a while - saw something I'd like to blog about but the phone rang and I forgot my train of thought
.. Ohhh Dilbert is funny today
... somebody commented on my comment - come up with witty retort
.. oo new tweets
.. begins to cry - I've wasted 2 hours and still haven't completed anything.
I think I have a problem. All of this technology that is supposed to make me more productive is rendering me an anxious, ADD-ridden jello head. The instant availability of information really stimulates my compulsive nature. I want to read, explore, investigate... everything.... right NOW. This is not working out so well. I can feel my IQ dropping at the speed of light. I begin to wonder if I need to trade the coffee for sleepy-time tea.
I've got to come up with a system for managing all of these communications and information tidbits without bringing out every mental disorder I might have hiding in my muddled head. I'm curious how the gurus like Scoble and Arrington do this and still manage to be so productive?
I've got an internal battle between ADD, OCD and GAD going on here, and let me tell you - I'm pretty sure there's no effective treatment at this time! I'd love to hear how others in the online community deal with this.
For now, I've got to shut off everything, open Visual Studio and get some *REAL WORK* done...
Right after I check my email again...
4 Comments and Trackback(s)
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Wow. Completely agreee. I think what we all need is a big red button on our desks that instantly turns off any time-sucking applications (twitter, facebook, etc.) and maximizes to our main monitor whatever application is applicable to the currently scheduled task on our calendar.
Also, I'm curious...how did I end up in the middle of your internal battle?
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Ya, I watch Robynn here do that same thing everyday and she says pretty much the same exact thing! :)
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You can count me in as a member of this club.
I think we need to start a facebook group, or start discussing it under #web2.0_ADD on Twitter. Maybe a flickr group showing photos of our desktops to see who has the most distractions running at once. I've got some more ideas but the boss said something about deadlines.
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Count me in as well. I get home and my head feels like mush, I don't even know where to being to catch up and feel like I'm "on top" of the incoming information. So many interesting people and topics, it's massive overload.
I've tried to cull back my lists, but then they grow again. I feel like I need a part time job to keep up with the full time social web.
For me it's made me completely unproductive and I have to get away from it for several days to get back into a normal mode of, life won't end if I don't keep up to date, and oh hey I really do have lots of hours in the day for creative work.
5.29.2008 at 8:55 AM