unGrid

“Oh, Baby Mama has Tina Fay, that has to be a good movie.”

Nope.
“Oh, Vin Diesel in some Cyberpunk action film? Has to be good.”

Dead wrong.

Chuck Klosterman issues his predictions for the coming century. Featuring robot wars, near annihilation, and President Tom Brady.

NOV. 7, 2028: Tom Brady (R-Michigan) defeats Will Smith (D-California) in the race for the Oval Office.

Chuck Klosterman is pretty much as close to liquid sex as humanity can get. I want to drizzle him all over my toast in a completely non-sexual way.

I mistyped two of the words in the title as ‘Bears’.

Brag: At the Discotek’s 80’s night they start playing Never Gonna Give You Up and you start singing along since, well, everyone else is singing along.

Beat: No one else is singing along.

In the last hour I’ve hopped over to Facebook ~15 times for 30seconds to a minute each trip.

I’ve checked my Gmail account easily half a dozen times at 15 seconds to a minute.

I’ve tabbed through twitter.

I’ve checked my RSS feeds.

I’ve read my forums.

I’ve done maybe 20 minutes of work in the past hour because of what can only be N.A.D.D.

Folks, this isn’t multi-tasking. This is advanced case of Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder. I am unable to function at my desktop unless I’ve got, at least, five things going on at the same time. If your count came close, you’re probably afflicted, as well. Most excellent.

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The presence of NADD in your life is directly related to how you’ve dealt with the media deluge of the new millennium. You’ve likely gone one of three ways:

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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.

Rands in Repose - N.A.D.D.

But this goes beyond N.A.D.D. This is a timewaster. This is me hopping between 10,000 different channels in the brain to stop work from being done.

Is it apathy? Is it boredom?

When I get into spots like this where I am flipping through the noise and static instead of focusing in on the task at hand or what I would rather be doing, I make a list. I prioritize what I am doing. Am I actually working? Am I processing information? Am I sitting like a lump? Am I active?

Get up, do some push ups, reset the brain, read a chapter in a book, find a new recipe, find some stimulation to hopefully break out of a negative feedback loop. Like now. I have been flickering thorugh noise channels online and in my house looking for something. I do not know what I am looking for, but this post is my way of jolting out of it.

(So my apostrophe key just broke while writing this post. Note the neat use of contractions early on and then never again.)

A few months ago Seth Godin mentioned on his blog that he was accepting preorders for Tribes, his new book. Now, being a fan of Seth Godin I took a moment and ordered an early copy off of Amazon. I also received an early invitation to a tribe discussion group, but I didn’t participate in that.

Today, two weeks early, a copy of Tribes showed up on my door step along with a letter from Seth thanking me for preordering. It also said that this was an early copy of the book. Read it, share it, and when the copy I ordered arrives, give it to a friend.

Thanks, Seth.

I’m opening up the comments here and on The Weekly Enema. Leave a comment, say hi, tell me why you would like the book, or whatever.

I’m going to pick one of the comments at (mostly) random for a copy of the book. For free. For you to read.