I don't know about you, but I admit since my first encounter with Internet, I have had contracted Obsessive Download Syndrome (ODS).
I make up the ODS term. By saying ODS, I refer to a near compulsive urge to download stuff from Internet. In my early years, for some unknown reason I was fond of downloading shareware and competing with my friends to see who would fill up the hard drive first. When we met, we would boast to each other how many programs we each downloaded, installed, and later uninstalled. Until now I have no clue what kick it had on me to go through all the install-uninstall cycles that time, especially the OS of the day was Windows 95, which was very fragile and discriminating on what you put in it. Anything not agreeable to Windows 95 would yield blue screens as penalty. Reinstalling Windows 95 every month or so was one of our silly self-proclaimed rituals to computer wizardry at that time by the way.
Now my syndrome shifts to reading materials mainly on economics, philosophy, and finance. It is very amazing (and interesting) to find out you can get virtually any information, provided you know where to look. However I have been quite indulged in downloading for a while without even step back and evaluate the goals behind all my actions. Today when I was inspecting my folders, I was both delighted and frustrated by the fact I have so many good books sitting in my computer, but I have only read less than 1% of them.
See, instead spending time to peruse the reading materials I have downloaded, I have been wasting my precious time to download more. With the new insight on this, I have stopped all downloads and derived a plan to consume those reading materials. But alas, there are so many attractive books out there!
Maybe I need to live in seclusion for a few years to finish them?
2 comments:
By the time you get to them, they'll be old. JITD is what you need.
Maybe that is what I need, but I have some trouble in limiting the scope of my JITD. :P
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