While at work today, I set about a relatively simple task: Write a summary of a new job opening we have to share on Twitter.
What followed was a yak-shaving rabbit hole mixed metaphor of multitasking. Here’s how it went:
- Ok, I want to write a tweet about the new job posting
- I need something to count characters while I write the draft
- Open VS Code, but notice line-wrapping is off – don’t want to change that setting
- Go to open Sublime Text – notice I don’t have it installed on my new laptop
- Download Sublime Text
- Notice it’s not registered, but I think I have a paid registration
- Look in 1Password for Sublime Text registration
- Get a Slack reminder about a whole other thing – do that other thing
- Look in Mail for Sublime Text registration
- Forget why I opened mail and start reading unrelated email
- Realize how far down the rabbit hole I am and start writing this list
- Find the Sublime Text registration email and re-register Sublime Text
- Actually write that tweet
Some of the disjointed nature of this process a reasonable by-product of working in and with digital tools. Some of it is just my own weakness in maintaining focus.
Oh, I did eventually get that job post shared – it’s a great job for a front-end web developer:
Twitter’s UI has a character counter that updates as you type.
Sayin’.
Yeah, the Twitter UI is good at that, but I prefer to draft tweets for the company account in another place so I don’t accidentally publish before I’m ready. If I was just toot’n out brain-farts, what would certainly suffice.