The Sixty-hour hyperfocus COMA

[Anonymous]

My new “rhythm” of going to bed and getting up earlier got totally blown all to hell over the past weekend. I started researching my family on ancestry.com last Friday afternoon and I entered into a 60-hour hyperfocus coma.

My wife said “you’re obsessing again…” I didn’t hear a word she said to me all weekend long. It was pouring down rain here anyway, what else was I going to do?

I couldn’t stop myself. So much info. So many historical documents. SO MANY STORIES TO TELL. And a really cool way of organizing and cross-referencing it all so I could click, click, click to my heart’s content. I think I might have slept a combined 12 hours Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. When I woke up Monday morning it was as if the past three days hadn’t even happened. I had no concept of the time that had elapsed.

But I found stuff going back to the 15th century. And I was able to turn it into a REALLY cool Mother’s Day present.

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[Anonymous]

At least it turned out more productive than my adventures on http://tvtropes.org which tend to devour my time in much the same way. That does sound really cool though! Not the sixty hours doing it, but the website. Sounds like a place I want to wander over to once my work calms down.

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[Anonymous]

JayBird, I get sidetracked like that all the time on some very unproductive websites. Ebay is a deadly time waster. I just like looking at all the old cars. Or the old toys I had when I was a kid–Major Matt Mason ROCKED! Don’t even get me started about baseball season–I’ve wasted months on internet baseball forums. I get in a lot of fights on the internet, too.

I printed everything out and bound it this morning. It should be a really cool book, I hope Ma likes it. Now maybe I can get some sleep. I’ve stayed up until midnight every night this week wrapping up the research. The temptation to continue doing the research at work was almost impossible to overcome, but I pulled it off. But now I’ve lost interest and want to move onto something else.

Three or four weeks ago we had the same kind of weekend rain and I had nothing to do. The object of my hyperfocus then was researching new golf clubs. I looked at EVERYTHING and even found a system that some club designer has come up with to rate the clubs with regard to playability and matching them to a player’s skill level. I spent hours reading, entering the data into a spreadsheet, comparing it, running analyses of my own–THEN I went to a shop late that Sunday and hit balls into a net. I managed to narrow it down to two different models. I really liked them, but wasn’t ready to pull the trigger just yet…

All of those printouts are in a pile on my desk at home. I never bought anything.

So many times I have delved into some subject, spent hours reading or learning about it, then just tossed it aside. I can’t just casually read a book for an hour every night. It either sucks and I throw it away, or else I love it and won’t put it down until I’m finished. There’s no in-between. No moderation there.

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[Just Me]

LOL I have done the SAME things I have spent HOURS doing research on family and Ebay well there’s a BIG time waster to! Glad to know I’m not alone:-)

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[Anonymous]

Yes. I am on the same boat I’m just stopping from a hyperfocus right now its 4:27am and I’ve been online since 8:30pm. Its not to bad tonight. But I’ve had it eat my whole day from dusk to dusk again. Its nice to know I’m not the only one out there:-)

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[Anonymous]

LOL Try playing World of warcraft … I’m seen me play for hours and hours and go to get up and feel like I’m 60. And don’t get me going on surfing for family history, guitar stuff, CNC plans, Instructables, boats or whatever else i come across. There’s soooo much to dig through you can keep going for hours lol

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[Anonymous]

A little over twenty years ago I got curious about that Nintendo craze that swept the country. I couldn’t understand how kids and even some adults could get addicted to a video game.

And then, one afternoon in late 1989 I was strolling through a K-Mart and saw a demonstrator. I started playing around with it and bought one. I think it may have cost me $120, I really can’t remember.

For at least the next three weeks, every night from the minute I got home from work until 1AM I was playing Mario. If I had 15 minutes to kill before I had to leave, I’d turn that thing on and play. Of course I was late for EVERYTHING until I got Mario out of my system.

Finally, I figured the game out or at least reached a high enough level to satisfy my obsession. I put it in a closet and never bought any other games to play on it. A year later I sold it to some another sucker with ADD for $50. He did the same thing I did–complete addiction for a month, then unloaded it.

I did the same thing when the PlayStations came out. Completely addicted to Madden ’97. It took three months to get that monkey off of my back.

Video games and gadgetry are like crack cocaine to us. My birthday is a week from Monday. I’m buying myself an iPad!!!!!!!!! I cannot wait!!!!!!

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[Anonymous]

Facebook and eBay are monumental time wasters, but I do enjoy them.

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[MarkJ]

Youtube…..Youtube all night long. Going from one video to another and often forgetting where or why I started. I also noticed this when I would get lost in editing a video. I could go hours without eating, without showering….and not even notice that 9 or 10 or 12 hours has just slipped away. And why parting from such a roll could be so diffucult. “Mark come get your food…..Mark your food is getting cold….Mark your food is cold now, I’m not reheating it for you…..Mark…I’m shipping your food to Ethiopia….. Mark?!?!!?!?”

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[Anonymous]

YouTube………

I get sucked into the vortex to return hours later, having become blinded by own inability to blink after staring mindlessly at the screen……..

*Zombified*

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[BuxomDiva]

@Dogfather – I’ve been told that it’s becoming increasingly common for ADD’ers to also be diagnosed with bipolar disorder – like me and my good friend Robin Williams.

I haven’t had much luck finding any documentation on the difference between being hyperactive and being hypomanic – for me it’s the difference between having racing thoughts and having physical energy to burn – but if this is the first time you’ve experienced something like this I can’t help wondering if perhaps it was a mild manic episode?

Might be worth checking out? Just a thought. Good luck! (and I freely admit to playing Tetris until my hands went numb before I knew anything about this ADD stuff lol)

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[Anonymous]

Today’s world of internet and online tv etc makes it even harder for us with ADD/ADHD to cope with it. I’ve been online now for an hour, I only had 3 new emails but got caught up in an ADHD newsletter which led me to this site! How ironic is that?

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[Anonymous]

Was off work last week and one of the projects I decided to do was to go through my photos of my trip to New York last year.

I like to take pictures and wanted to crop and enlarge a few to frame around the house.

I was only going to do a ‘few’ Saturday morning and ended up for almost seven hours straight…’Just a couple more and then I’ll stop…’

Couldn’t stop.

ps

Got two enlarged at Costco as a trial run and they turned out great!

: )

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[Ivriniel]

Etsy is my vice. So many things to look at, for so many reasons. I can look for awesome stuff for cosplaying, stuff for my nephew, hideous stuff to suggest to Regretsy (a blog that highlights the weird, wonderful and horrible from Etsy.) and so on.

That and Wikipedia. I just keep following link after link after link….

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[Anonymous]

This is so funny, I really thought I was the only one that was obsessed with Surfing the internet. Once I stayed up until 3am (on a work night) researching the origin of my last name!

Right now Ive been on the computer since Wednesday at 2pm…it’s Thursday at 6pm now and I know I should stop and do something but I really don’t really to!

Stumble upon is great, its one random site after another filled with interesting and useless information!

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[Author]

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