Twitter: Automated Distraction for ADD

Twitter is a case lesson in ADD.  Tiny snippets of thought appear out of nowhere, exist for a second or two and then are buried beneath an avalanche of new snippets that pour in.  Each snippet claims to be interesting or important enough to exist, although that is actually true for only a handful of them. 

Some of the snippets have links that point in another, supposedly, interesting direction.  While following those links to glean information or entertainment, the snippets of thought continue to pour into your Twitter stream, each with their own information, entertainment, or links to other stuff.

In reality, the more people you follow on Twitter, the more tweets you have to ignore.  There are methods for determining which tweets should get read and which ones should be dropped into the ether or nothingness.  There are lists to help you organize your tweets, programs that allow you to flag certain people or topics as important, and methods for sending yourself emails or reminders.  Sounds a lot like organizing life!

In the end, however, there is only one lesson to be learned from Twitter, and that is that you can either pay attention to the endless stream of thoughts and distractions that continuously beg for your attention, or you can pay attention to that spreadsheet in the window behind Twitter.  Which one wins out at which particular time determines how productive you will be.

Guess who is writing a blog post about how distracting Twitter is because he just spent a bunch of time ignoring the spreadsheet instead of his new Twitter client?

Have a productive Wednesday!