I was reading the 5 December 2005 post at 43 Folders and discovered that, not only am I a nerd, not a surprise to my husband and daughter, who have both long since accepted their own nerdliness, but that I also suffer from a couple of common but seldom recognized syndromes to which nerds are prone. Both these clusters of behaviors result from certain (nerdy) people's adaptations to the information-rich environment we now inhabit.

Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder (NADD) was first identified by the management advice blogger, Rands in Repose. If you think you're not a nerd, and that, therefore, you must not suffer from this disorder, go and visit the 2003 post in which the disorder was introduced. But since NADD is as much a disability as it is an asset in this nerd heave in which we now find ourselves, I'm less concerned by it than I am about Repetitive Information Injury (RII), a more pernicious complication of NADD that renders affected nerds incapable of making progress on important projects that they are perfectly well capable of completing. Here's the clip from the Rands in Repose post of last month in which RII was introduced:

Know the signs. As described above, RII is when you’re stuck in a consumption loop. Your brain is thinking it’s more important to continue to find something to soak in rather than moving on to your next project. It’s tricking you into continuing with thoughts like, “Hey, it just takes a second to press that Get Email button… or that Refresh Feeds button…. go for it man! You never know when you’ll hit the information gold-mine!” Problem is, those seconds turn into minutes… and you’re suddenly staring at the same pages, listening to the same JUST DO IT advice, and suddenly 30 minutes have passed and you haven’t actually done anything.

Hmm. I never realized it before, but this seemingly innocent nerdly behavior may well be the answer to my plaintive "why me" from my last, self-pitying post.

Could this be you, too? Don't wait to find out.