Friday, April 07, 2006

Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder... or NADD.

From Rands in Repose
NADD is present in your life when

1) You've checked out... you don't own a TV and it's unlikely you're even reading this column.

2) You enjoy your media/content in moderation. When I asked you to count how many windows were open on your desktop you either said, "One, my browser for which to read this article" or you made yourself a note to yourself to check this AFTER completing this column. In a previous age, you were the type of person who kept their pencils very sharpened.

3) You enjoy the content fire hose. Give me tabbed browsing, tabbed instant messaging, music all the time, and TIVO TIVO TIVO. Welcome to NADD.

Point two and three hold good in my case.

And why it's good news for me

1) Folks not afflicted NADD think those who are can't focus because, look at us, we're all over the place. PLEASE STOP CLICKING ON THINGS -- YOU ARE GIVING ME A HEADACHE. Wrong. NADDers have an amazingly ability to focus when they choose to. Granted, it's not their natural state and, granted, it can take longer than some to get in the zone, but when we're there, BOY HOWDY.

2) Weblogs are designed for those with NADD. The web digested into short little blurbs of information. NADD heaven. My guess would be that the population of regular webloggers is mostly NADD-afflicted. Otherwise, they'd be writing books... not paragraphs... at random times of the day... always.

3) NADD can advance your career... if you're in the right career. Ever worked at a start-up? Ever shipped software? What are the last few weeks like? We call it the fire drill because everyone is running around like crazy people doing random, unexpected shit. NADD is the perfect disease for managing this situation. It develops the skills to sift through the colossal amount of useless noise and hear what's relevant.

I am a suffereing (pun intended) from it. Are you?

1 comment:

Mehnaz Singh said...

Yes a good post. Why is such a delay yaar. keep writing!!!!