Madroxtasking

Had I been born a decade later, I would surely have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. In elementary school, I was always moving from desk to desk, talking to different kids, and generally disrupting the teacher's workflow. Often I had to be isolated, and many times I had to stay in at recess to write “I will not talk in class” or some similar phrase hundreds of times on sheets of loose-leaf. My mind was always going, and when I couldn't find enough diversion outside, I sought it inside. Many was the day my pen would become a spaceship, and fly around my desk while the crew had adventures. Sometimes the cap would separate, and the pen would become a deadly rocket to destroy aliens on my desk that looked suspiciously like block erasers while the crew soared off safely in the cap-shuttle. I was in many worlds, and often not THIS world.

When I would watch shows like Muppet Babies or read comics like Calvin and Hobbes, I delighted in seeing imagination take form. My action figures were never pieces of plastic and metal; they were alive, with personalities, histories, and back stories. The alternate realities children create are tangible to them. Who among us DIDN'T want a purple crayon to magically draw what we needed and bring it to life?

I can't watch television unless I'm fiddling with something, whether I'm taking the battery cover off the remote and putting it back together, or I play with a Slinky® or a Rubik's Cube. When I watch DVDs on my computer, I can only keep it fullscreen for so long before I need to minimize the window and surf the web or play a simple flash game that doesn't require TOO much attention. In college, I found I could draw or paint better with tapes of my favorite bands playing, either on a boombox in my studio at home or on a portable player with headphones in class. I always had the radio playing at my first job until I came back from lunch one day to find the bosses had removed it, and by my next job I had a computer that could play CDs as well as a set of headphones so as not to disturb my neighbors. Even then, one once complained that she could hear them and politely asked me to turn it down. White Zombie's Thunderkiss ‘65 was not the same driving force toward creativity and productivity to others that it was to me.

I get bored without multiple stimuli, yet it's a delicate balance. Throw in too many diversions, or just a few that are more appealing than what I should be concentrating on, and my focus is lost. I work in an office where multitasking is more requirement than asset. My workload has doubled and doubled again in the nearly six years I've been there. Needless to say, my attention span being what it is, I often suffer from “What do I do first?” syndrome. Graphic design requires a lot more math and language skills than fine arts. If I'm painting or drawing, I can have a radio or television going in the background and it won't distract me. If anything, it helps me turn parts of my brain “off” so I'm not thinking too much about what I'm doing. For some reason, I get better results when I let myself drift into autopilot. I'm not saying that fine arts are never deliberate, or even that they shouldn't be, but there's more room for things to be random. With design, there are rules. Pages will be printing a certain size. Photographs need to have a certain color balance that reflects and enhances reality. Certain typefaces work better with certain subject matter, and some typefaces should never be combined. There are some things in design that are so mechanical and repetitious that I can tune in to music, or partake in conversations without stopping entirely. Other aspects require me to read the words I'm putting on the page, and measure the position of various elements. Often, design requires the use of both sides of the brain.

Two weeks ago, I was finally upgraded to a (fairly) new computer. Among the many benefits I was looking forward to, I could finally play DVDs at work. I've been bringing in discs from my own collection, shows and movies I've seen before. It was nice to hear in the background and have playing up in the corner, and I found I was more productive than ever. I made the mistake this morning of mentioning to my folks that I was bringing a movie I'd rented, Bullitt, to work with me. I figured I could be efficient and start getting through new movies during the day instead of having to wait until I got home. My mom became very concerned that I wouldn't pay attention to my work, and my dad admonished, “You better not fool around in your shop; they're gonna fire you if you're not careful.” I assured them that it would not be a problem, nor did I think anyone at work would have any objection to it, so long as it was something playing small on the side while I did my job. As it turns out, we were both wrong.

The movie didn't distract me from my job at all, but rather the opposite occurred. I'd finish designing a few pages and glance over at the movie, and wonder who a character was or what had just happened. Several times I had to back up and replay a chapter. Phone calls would come in. People would stop by to ask me questions. Even my friends, normally a welcome distraction, forced me to pause and back up a few times. Ultimately I ended up starting it from the beginning when I was done, and going through it a second time. I definitely appreciated it as THE definitive cop movie from a few years before I was born that laid the groundwork for every similar movie I've loved from within my lifetime. But I'm not certain I watched it under the best of conditions. It was a bad combination of a new movie that I needed to pay more attention to, with a day of left-side brain work.

If I were Jamie Madrox and had the power to create multiple copies of myself, I wouldn't have these problems.