Overflow

I've taken on some jobs in the past where the inevitable description that someone throws out at some point is that it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. You get a mental picture of tons of material going in and only a little bit of it sticking. What doesn't stick overflows, and you assume it's lost.

This keeps happening to me lately. Too much to do or too much to deal with and you can feel it getting past you, missing, not sticking.

For the simplest example, I give you the grocery list. I'm not talking about one where you write down "Milk, Bread, Laundry Detergent..." and so on, neatly on a sheet of paper. I'm talking about the one where you rush around after the end of a busy day and you run to the store because you need one vital thing like diapers or kitty litter. While maneuvering through the day to get to this point, the other things you "need" get on the list as they occur to you, but in my example, you don't write this stuff down. You try to remember it. I find that this list usually ends up with 2 to 4 things on it, no matter how many items you add to the list in your mind. Not writing it down doesn't work. It's like this little spot in your brain with a label over it that says "Grocery List: Short Term Memory" has only 4 spots on it, and these little ejector poles that pop up after so much time to keep the slots clear for action. Try it sometime when you are driving and can't write it down and have someone give you 20 items and then repeat it back to them. It's like the new items beyond 4 just flow over the edge and disappear.

This happens to me at work all the time. Of course, I have a system in place to back me up, a list that things go onto so I can concentrate on what's on my desk at any one time, but each work day is an exercise of things that are trying to pour into an already full vessel. I've found that if you worry about it, it just gets worse.

Then there is the issue of my old laptop. I love my old laptop, which is probably 5 or 6 years old now. At the time, it was this monster with a 100 Gigabyte hard drive that I thought I would never fill up. OK, I knew I would eventually, but I thought that was going to be because programs would fill it up. I never imagined that data would fill it up. Right after I got the laptop two things happened to throw my assumptions out the window. Digital photography and podcasts. I can't download any more photos onto my laptop any more, they have to go to an external hard drive. I also have to go through the podcasts and delete items in order to download more new ones.

I'm terribly resistant to this, I love having access to photographs. With their file ages on them, they are a record of where I was and when, as well as a good way to save information I need later. Not to mention, they are great to set as the screen saver so that you are constantly seeing the photos while you are talking on the phone at work or doing something on paper in front of the computer. Now, the overflow is going into an external storage device and not being lost, but it's not readily accessible, either.

I find that sickness, tiredness, and emotional stress follow this same overflow mechanism. I suppose it's possible to reach a breaking point, but particularly in the military, you learn to get to the point of ridiculous and everything beyond that is just ludicrous. You can't take it seriously, at some point. But this is a survival mechanism, and for some reason I can't really pinpoint, not a satisfying example of the overflow phenomenon.

I find that my personal attention span overflows sometimes. Particularly when someone says something fascinating or thought provoking. I find myself unpacking the circumstances and repercussions of some point that was made, and almost unable to concentrate on the rest of the conversation. This is a situation where you can be aware of it and helpless to resist it. You have to decide whether to let an important or intriguing thought pass you by, or let the rich stream of information pass you by. The overflow has to go somewhere, it just happens to be unavailable.

When I was in the 7th grade, I read this article about hypnotism where it said that everything that happens to you in the course of a day is recorded and captured, but you can't usually access it later, and often don't consciously notice it while it is happening. There was an example of hypnotism being used to make someone an expert witness, forcing them to slow down and notice everything they were seeing and hearing. In the example, the person could be asked the exact question prior to hypnosis and be unable to remember and then under hypnosis, they would have perfect total recall.

It's a cool idea, but impractical on a day-to-day basis. It doesn't stop me from feeling that the overflow is just spilling out and away from me, lost forever.