What Did I Come In Here For?

If you're old enough to know who Fonzie is, you've probably done this before: walk into a room to get something and then forget what it was you wanted to get. You might've done this so many times that you know how to walk back to your starting place to remember why you walked into the room initially. And then you'll go back and get it.

Well, I do this with computer programs. I'll open my e-mail to get a quote from a vendor. But it takes at least 15 seconds, so by then I'm already thinking about something else. And when the Inbox pops up, I'll see a message from Mike about some measurements he took that don't look good, and another message about a customer visit for a project that's running three weeks late, and a question about when I'll be done with yet another design. After getting through all that, I'll close the Inbox, having completely forgotten about the vendor's quote. I'll have found something else to work on for a while, until I come back to the previous task, which required the vendor quote. And I'll open the Inbox and start that whole process again. And again.

If there isn't a diagnosis for this, there should be. Maybe this is just your regular old Attention Deficit Disorder jacked up on technology. Or maybe it's early-onset Alzheimer's.