Appetite for Distraction

So I was minding my own business, filing bug reports and looking at email in my gmail account, when my focus was snatched by the following:

  Early Humans Were Often Eaten

That's it.  No more doing what I was doing.  Now, I was thinking all kinds of thoughts, none of which had anything to do with mod_ssl.

I've seen lots of distracting headlines up there on the top of my Gmail screen, passive-aggressively pleading for attention in that innocuous font.  In fact, I see all kinds of things demanding all kinds of attention at every turn, and I seem to fall prey to it more and more often.

I used to pride myself on my ability to multi-task.  Keeping several windows open, doing this while I'm waiting for that to finish running.  Somehow keeping score in my head.  I think I got cocky though, and I started doing more and more stuff, until I couldn't keep track anymore.  But I didn't care, because there was this other cool thing to look at.  And I slowly became more useless.

And there's an endless stream of input.  Nevermind the non sequitur text ads, the inbox itself is distracting enough.  Endless streams of mailing list posts (important ones!) and personal emails (with increasingly sever demands for responses!).  Instant messages, 3 incoming phone lines, IRC.

I'm conditioned to be distracted.  It's all I know now.  If someone is mad at me for not returning a phone call, I can always turn my attention to something else and I don't have to feel their grouchy anymore.  If I'm doing something, there's no guarantee I'll get through it.  Already in this short text, I've wandered off to other browser tabs 4 times, googling this, looking up that.  It's a sickness.

Weekends have become my time to let go.  I've never treated weekend days any diffrerently than other days, but I've begun to notice that the incoming contact dips down to a low roar.  I jump on the chance to close the mail client for a few hours - or a day - and try to get some real work done.  But my dizzy distraction prevents me from doing anything truly productive, and I race around all weekend, trying to do everything, but actually doing very little.

I'm going to try an experiment.  I'm going to change my email client to check for messages every 45 minutes, and I'm going to try setting little goals between the mail checking intervals.

It's a start, anyway.