I'm reviewing a large (90+ pages) document for work, and man, I have almost no attention span. Almost at the paragraph level I have to fight myself to not start doing something else, like go print something out, IM a question, or go pick up that print out, or update a wiki page somewhere, or compile some code. I'm like a frickin' ferret over here surrounded by shiny objects.
It's not that the document is boring -- it's actually quite illuminating about what I'm working on in a very positive way -- it's just that I'm overly trained to get derailed with purpose. It's little wonder I can't rarely finish a book or read less than 4 at a time, not include all those half-read magazines.
In a recent ITConversations (this one, I think), Tim O'Reilly talks about the notion of figuring out the ideal "packet" size for information today (for his customers at least). In the past, it was a book or a magazine. Now, it seems to be shifting towards a more essay, even aphoristic, size a la weblogs. He cited the hacks and cookbook series as good examples of an implementation of this theory of shrinking info-packet size.
I think my packet size might be a paragraph, and 3-5 of those if they're really short and well connected. I'm a big fan of bullet lists as well. I saw a document the other day that was pretty much a 5 page bullet list and I loved it.
Yeah...enough navel gazing for the day. I'm getting the urge to do something else real-bad-like.
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