There I times where I feel like I’m going crazy when I’m working. I have moments where I can’t stay on one task for longer than 5 seconds. I still get stuff done, don’t get me wrong, but instead of getting one thing done in one hour and moving on to the next thing, I have about five or six things going on at once and don’t seem to get anything done in less than half-a-day.

Since the entirety of my work day is spent on my laptop, I have to blame my ADD-like condition on this little piece of infernal, beautiful, infuriating, powerful, aggravating piece of technology and it’s annoying habit of always connecting to the internet (the place where all the bad, distracting stuff seems to originate).

The sheer amount of programs that can be run on my laptop at once is at the same time fantastic and debilitating. My laptop boots up simply enough, with just a couple of programs running, and quickly fills exponentially with window-after-window and screen-after-screen without me noticing, until I am obsessively doing 50 things at once.

My workday starts, as most people’s workday starts, with email. I answer a few emails, most of which require me to look at something in a web browser. So, I have a couple programs open at this point and usually while I’m looking at whatever I’m looking at in my browser I pop open another tab or two within that browser (Firefox) to check on the days news or make an update on my site or do something else that is equally non-work-related. So now I have the equivalent of 4 different windows open. Then I am usually greeted with at least 2 IM windows popping up with friends or co-workers on the other side saying good morning and the like. Six windows now.

In order to make updates to anything at work I generally have to open a file explorer window, or even two for the sake of drag-and-drop, along with an editor of some sort to actually make the changes or upload a file or edit an image. What am I at now? Eight windows would be conservative so I’m gonna just round up to 10. And it’s right about this time that something unexpected comes up, like a co-worker needs help or I feel a strong urge to check the newsgroups for a new album I just read about on the aforementioned news page, causing me to open two or more tabs within my existing browser window and quite possibly another program or two, bringing the total number of available screens demanding my attention to around 12 (sample).

Windows are flashing, sound notifications are going off, and this is where things spiral out of control….

So now I’m tabbing through my email as it comes in while making updates to some files for work and also reading some news or blog posts out on the web somewhere. At the same time, I am IMing with one or two people about our games last night or the changes needed in an application we built and sending a funny photo to the friend or creating a live meeting session with the co-worker to share another application that will illustrate the work I have done.

I keep up with all of the activity, for the most part, to a certain threshold point whereby the sheer number of things I have going on tends to bog me down similar to how a computer bogs down when its memory becomes exhausted. Apparently my laptop has more memory than I do as it handles all of this in stride, unlike me…

I try to break the cycle of distraction and multi-tasking by closing screens, ending programs and disconnecting from the internet. But no matter what I do, this stupid laptop keeps re-connecting, auto-starting my programs, and remembering my preferences! It won’t let me go, and I am helpless to stop it.

It’s EVIL!