Obsessive Efficiency Disorder
ma.ttias.be
ma.ttias.be
Harper's Magazine, September 1996:
> From an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology. Vonnegut was asked to discuss his feelings about living in an increasingly computerized world.
>> I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “Okay, I'll send you the pages.” Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, “Where are you going?” “Well,” I say, “I'm going to buy an envelope.” And she says, “You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.
A bit of a reminder that we don't have to be overly efficient about everything we do. Instead we can simply stay mindful and just enjoy whatever it is we are doing, even if it is waiting in line to buy an envelope, or waiting for the coffee to brew.
There's also obviously a lot of evidence that meditating, which can be considered a form of intentional boredom, is very good for you in a lot of ways.
This implies that OCD is efficient. Like, "Hey guys, don't just be OCD about things, be OED!" I wonder if he has OCD, or he understands what it's like living with OCD. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but it feels like the diminishes those who suffer from OCD. Basically, it's not anything like OCD, and implying such shows a complete lack of understanding of OCD, and he is merely using it as a buzz word.
I half expected a comment like "LOL I'm so autistic in my brilliance sometimes."
True OCD is much worse. At a young age, my cousin was diagnosed with OCD in the form of hand washing. He had to wash his hands multiple times per day, whenever he perceived them as dirty. It was crippling to him, as he had a hard leaving the house to do basic things like go to school or play with friends.
It's really annoying when people use medical conditions in "clever" ways like this.
Well, yeah.
> It's really annoying when people use medical conditions in "clever" ways like this.
My children have autism, and people seem to throw that term around as well. At this point, it's simply insulting.
I don't get all huffy when I see someone use 'OCD' like the author does, that's pointless. But it does make me think 'oh this person probably has no idea what they're talking about' before I even click the link.
If, like the author, I could return to my task on time, I'd do so. Unfortunately, I just get distracted. So instead of switching desktops while a ~60 second task runs, I find I'm more efficient if I simply sit there and let it run while I play with a little desk toy or something. Sure, it feels like wasted time, but I'm actually more efficient when I don't lose track of what I'm doing and then find it at 6pm when I'm about to leave for the day.. "oh, right, THAT'S what I was planning on doing today!"
I now make a point of not ever opening up the init.el file unless it is Friday. No way in hell will I go down that sinkhole during a nasty work week.
Now I have returned to procrastinating on HN more exclusively again. Everyone wins!
Using && and a command line option - really? I hate to go "you're not OCD enough" on the author, but I basically only ever see people commit+push that way.
But I look for these little optimizations all over the place; it's entertaining. Oddly enough, I'm more successful when off the computer. Like, I can optimize the #$%^ out of unloading the dishwasher, but trying to come up with a 20-second task while I'm coding doesn't often work out. Besides, if I'm working and I have a > 1 minute break, it's more beneficial for me to close my eyes, lean back and just zoom out to make course adjustments.
It's not actually a positive thing for me to fill in every bit of empty space -- the pauses serve a purpose (though admittedly, our build/deploy/test cycle currently is too long, and this is harmful).
But if I'm making tea, I know the tap takes a bit over 5 seconds to run a mug's worth of water, so I can fill the kettle just enough with my right hand, while the left one chooses what tea I'm going to use from the cabinet overhead.
My wife has a related problem - Obsessive Saving Disorder. She always checks the gas prices at every station near our house so she can save a few cents per gallon. If prices are rising or falling rapidly, she'll even try to time when she fills up to get the best price. Maybe she comes out ahead by a buck or two sometimes. This same woman, who I love, also habitually pays bills late - or not at all, resulting in costs that are orders of magnitude larger than what she saves on gas. The only way to understand this behavior is to realize it's all about the obsession, not really about saving money. Gas prices must be optimized. Bills needn't be. It all makes perfect sense as a manifestation of OSD. I'll bet that's another variant that a lot of people here have encountered.
1. start something that makes you wait for 60 seconds 2. Do something else in the mean time. 3. Be distracted by that 'something else' 4. Continue with the original task after 10 minutes, having to read into what you were doing again.
However, staring at a wall for 60 seconds is also not something that will retain your focus. The only way is to find ways to speed up the tasks, so you can stay in your 'zone' or 'flow' and don't have to switch tasks.
Sometimes it's better to just count to 20 and wait and continue instead of letting yourself get distracted with other tasks.
And in a more broader sense, if it makes you feel good - working like this - fine. It may make you just a more efficient worker, earning your due. It may also result in people just piling more work on your shoulders in exchange (as seen from the perspective of a salary man).
I think there is a positive and a negative to this. The positive is that you are constantly moving forward, so you have a lot of practice to sustain a higher level of mental productivity. Sometimes you just want make the high-impact decisions and outsource the mundane details to others, provided you can trust them.
The negative is that you constantly feel that you are pulled somewhere. Which means that you are not really the center of your life but something is always missing, there is somewhere you have to be, there is some unfinished business. So you can never really "stop and smell the roses". This also becomes a habit, to the point where you have trouble settling down and enjoying a moment when you need to.
Both muscles need to be exercised.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/saving-time-with-yo...
I just wanted to expand on the point that several have already made about OCD: It is a serious mental health condition, and more people need to become aware of that.
Most people I have met have no clue that OCD can lead to things such as:
- People losing their jobs and house because they're always late to work from turning around to check the stove or door locks. - People committing suicide because they can't absolutely prove to themselves that they're not a pedophile. (If you're scared/upset about the idea of being a pedophile, you're most definitely not, please go get help.) - People washing their hands until they're cracked and bloody because of contamination fears. - Mothers neglecting their babies because they cannot handle the thoughts they keep having of throwing their baby out the window or stabbing it with a kitchen knife. They're scared they're a monster and that somehow they'll lose control and actually do these horrible things that pop into their mind.
Everybody gets these thoughts from time to time, but OCD sufferers are plagued by them, and the OCD complicates things further by making it very, very, very difficult to accept the fact that these thoughts mean absolutely nothing and that they're most definitely not going to lose control and do something hugely against their morals. They'll ruminate on these thoughts over and over and over again, involuntarily, getting more and more disturbed and upset. Compulsions form as ways to attempt relieving the anxiety from these obsessive and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will do absolutely anything to try to silence these horrifying thoughts: avoiding children, taking pictures of their stove or door locks on their phone, neglecting their children, etc. Here's the thing: Trying to ignore these thoughts only makes them worse, keeping them in your head, and causing a vicious feedback loop that makes OCD very easy to spiral out of control.
It's true that articles like this and modern media in general unfortunately continue to perpetuate widespread misconceptions. I don't point this out because I'm just some overly-sensitive person with OCD and I don't like my condition trivialized — frankly, I couldn't care less about that. The problem is that there are MANY people out there who are suffering from OCD and have absolutely no clue because their understanding of OCD is so far from reality.
I'm a perfect example of this. I'm a 25 year old (software engineer), and was just diagnosed with OCD at the beginning of this month. Prior to my diagnosis, I had NO CLUE what OCD was. All I knew is that I was disorganized and messy, so there's no way I had that "OCD thing"... Oh, how wrong I was. After learning about the condition, it's crystal clear that I've been suffering from this condition as long as I can remember. I now understand that OCD has played a very major role in my life, being responsible for enormous amounts of depression, anxiety, and even suicide attempts. If I would have known what OCD really was and not just how it's portrayed in media, I could have gotten the help I needed much, much earlier.
In closing, I just want to say that there is no permanent cure for OCD. Even with SUCCESSFUL treatment, the thoughts never actually go away. At best, some of us with OCD can get temporary relief by taking SSRI's and/or practicing Exposure Response Prevention and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. More recently, some mindfulness methods have been gaining credibility in the scientific/academic community.
For more information, book suggestions, or even to join a chatroom and talk to some real, live people with OCD, check out the portal I put together a few days ago: http://ocd.community/
Thanks for your understanding.
Cracked.com, of all places, wrote an excellent article on the subject of what actual real-life OCD is like: http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-no-one-tells-you-about-...
"Imagine the feeling of having a song stuck in your head. Now imagine that instead of "It's Raining Men," it's the thought of murdering your best friend. In graphic detail. Over and over again. You're not mad at your best friend, and you've never done anything violent, but it won't stop playing.
You probably feel kind of shitty just reading that. But that's what the "obsessive" part of OCD is like: intrusive, unwanted, disturbing thoughts that won't go away. "
For more information and details of what is or isn't OCD, the OCD subreddit is apparently surprisingly good: http://www.reddit.com/r/OCD
I'm sure that OP didn't mean anything hostile by his/her use of the term. Given it's commonly misunderstood, and that causes genuine suffering, it's worth bringing the nature of OCD up when it's discussed in this fashion!
Last week I actually wrote a very personal blog post about it if anyone is interested in understanding the disorder and what it means. It also talks about how I've personally tried to find meaning in life after dealing with it. Kind of navel-gazey.
Sometimes my feathers get ruffled when people say stuff like "I'm so OCD" and have no idea what they are talking about, but they really don't know any better and I think it is okay to let it slide. Sometimes we do need to trivialize horrible things (as long as we understand the real pain they cause) in order to cope.
A lot of people genuinely don't know what OCD is or why it might be harmful. Hence I do think politely and briefly educating folk is a good thing, if only so that one day if they experience the same symptoms they realise what they are and seek help.
Really glad your OCD is under control, and well done. I'll add that post to my informal list of OCD resources!