I've never been diagnosed as having A.D.D., but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I have it. I'm very easily distracted, especially from things I don't enjoy. If I'm watching a movie, it would take a catastrophe happening around me to get my attention away from the screen. On the other hand, when I'm at work or at home doing something chore-ish (laundry, washing dishes, etc.) the smallest distraction can lead me astray.
I’m distracted easily when I’m at a computer. At work, I get calls all day long and I recently found myself talking with a Welding Distributor from California who’s name was Gordon. Now Gordon is not a very common name, so it brought to my mind the only two Gordon’s that I’ve encountered in my life. One, I went to high school with. The other Gordon that came to mind was Gordon Shumway. Now you may be asking yourself who is Gordon Shumway? That’s Alf’s name. You remember Alf don’t you? The 1980’s sitcom about the Alien Life Form that lived with a suburban family and ate cats. He was a puppet. Before coming to earth and being called Alf, his name was Gordon Shumway on his home planet. (Sadly, this is the kind of information that takes up space in my brain, not tons of scripture, not 2 years of high school Spanish, but details about ALF.) Anyway, so I get off the phone with Gordon, and I’m thinking about ALF, and I remember that I saw every episode of that show but never saw how it ended. So of course, rather than taking time to file something or do anything work related, I decide to take a few minutes and google info about ALF to learn how it ended.
Before long, I had spent approx 10 minutes AT WORK surfing the web learning about ALF. Once I had learned about ALF's sad demise (it never really ended, just got cancelled after a cliffhanger season finale) I realized I owed my boss about 10 minutes of work time. I knew something needed to be done to help me stay on task.
That's when I found a piece of computer code. If you...
1.) Input the following code into your notebook or any simple text editor....
' Written by Robert Matusky ~~
' 2009-04-05
minutes = 20
seconds = minutes * 60
milliseconds = seconds * 1000
do
userContinue = msgBox ("Are you being productive?" , vbYesNo + vbSystemModal )
yesVal = 6
if userContinue = yesVal then
Wscript.sleep milliseconds
end if
loop While userContinue = yesVal
2.) Save as productive.vbs
3.) Click on that file you saved....
It will create a note that will pop up every 20 minutes asking you "Are you being productive?" If you answer yes, it will go away and pop back up 20 minutes later to ask you the same thing. If you answer no, it will go away and stop bothering you until you click on that file to start it running again.
Believe it or not, this has actually helped me be more productive at work.
On the other hand I've also realized that this code can have other uses. If you change the text in the code you can make it ask whatever you want...
I'll leave you with some examples.
1.) Do you look Marvelous?
2.) Should you XYZ? (Examine Your Zipper)
3.) Have you paid Shawn the money you owe him?
4.) Did you remember to use deodorant?
and of course....
5.) Have you googled ALF today?
