I think a lot of us realize how short of an attention span we actually have. I just invented a term for it; derailing. Now, that may already be taken, but being the cocky sob that I am, I will claim it as mine.

I work as a software developer and software development is also my number one interest. My special interest it would be called in some circles. I do it every day, every evening and quite a few of my nights as well.

So with derailing I mean the situation where you’re absolutely focused on something and suddenly think of something else to do. Now, that could be a third party interruption, but most likely and most often it is just you suddenly thinking of something that you need to do.

So you switch over  to do that thing you just thought of, only to discover another thing craving your attention (maybe an article that catches your eye as you open the web browser to check on the first think that derailed your train of thought in the first place).

We all have them, no matter what you do. You think of something else, and suddenly your off down the road of a hundred other things, and you’re hard set to find your way back.

This article is a good example of just that. In fact, I am writing it derailing from coding a report print in one of my many coding projects. In fact again, this is actually the result of the third derailing from that first printing project. The first derailing I can’t even remember right now. The second was checking and accepting a comment on another article of this blog and now, as a third level derail, I’m writing this article.

I won’t go into any solution to this; google for one, there are numerous GTD oracles out there on the net. I just wanted to the write an article about this, and – to my self – accept that I am a hopeless derailer, and I probably always will be.