I’ve had this “issue” for a while but now it’s getting more and more extreme. I would put on a show/tv series or a film and I need to pause it every few minutes.
Either to get another drink, another snack, use the bathroom, make a phone call, check a website, go to the other room to pet the sleeping dog, make a circle around the house, completely pointless stuff. Any excuse to pause it - I’ll take it. I’d spend about 2 to 3 hours watching a 1 hour show. I can’t sit down and just watch the damn thing like a normal person, but I don’t know why. It’s almost as if it’s “too much stimulation” for me to follow dialogues and plot twists for a long perid of time. As if I need to pause it to absorb all the information and then get mentally prepared to focus on the storyline again.
Uhm, so is this ADD? I don’t know much about ADD but I was wondering whether this may be a sign of it. Or if other people are the same.
I don’t know if it is or not, but I’ve had ADD my whole life and pausing a show or movie for any reason takes me out of the continued flow and enjoyment of it. I try to avoid it whenever possible. Doing it to that extent would drive me absolutely batsh*t insane.
Sometimes while watching a show that’s on I will pause it to do something else for a minute or two. That’s mostly because we have DVR and that way I can skip the commercials. Yep, DVR spoiled me.
When I was diagnosed w/ ADD last summer, my doc specifically asked if this was something I do (which it is). That, along with my answers to many other questions, helped him make his diagnosis.
Do you have anything going on in your life that is stressing you out? Not exactly the same thing, but when I am feeling stressed out I tend to find myself changing the radio station, fast forwarding through songs, flipping through the channels on TV, etc, all to keep my brain on edge and not allow my thoughts to wander back to whatever is bothering me.
Yes. It got worse once I went to college and I started getting more and more ADD. It’s particularly bad when I’m watching a movie on the computer, and I think “Oh, I should check my Facebook (and a million other things I do on the internet)”.
One major reason why I only see a few movies (2-4) in theaters every year and watch the rest at home. I can pause for a restroom break, or for food, or because my mind is wandering and I can’t focus, or because the movie is making me uncomfortable and I need to distract myself for a while.
I definitely feel this happening to me during times of stress. But it happens now all the time. For me, I think it’s partly due to the fact that a lot of I watch (on TV) is pretty crappy TV that easily can be turned off/on and still readily understood.
I don’t really do this when I’m reading a book. I don’t mean I sit down and read from cover to cover in one sitting. But I don’t get distracted as easily with a book. It’s a lot easier to “lose myself” in the written word than in a TV show, movie, or even reading on the computer.
I do this at home, but it’s not every couple minutes. It’s only when i need to - the phone rings, the dog wants to go out, the dryer buzzes. I have also put it on closed-captioning and 2x speed to get through stuff quicker. My biggest problem is being at the movies and missing something and automatically thinking I can rewind to see it again. I don’t watch things as carefully as I did before TiVo.
I suffer from distracted viewing syndrome at home; I wish there was a cure for it.
Used to be I could turn off my laptop and get down to seriously watching a DVD. Now I watch ON the laptop, and the I can’t help myself from cllcking on “New Posts” every 10 minutes. Having an iPod Touch handy makes it even worse.
I can’t remember the last time I watched something at home from beginning to end without going online to check something out. I suppose you could call it “multitasking”, but the viewing experience suffers horribly when I don’t devote my full attention to the movie/program I’m watching.
Well I’m often a bit stressed, but then again everyone is at least a bit. I don’t feel like that’s the reason though, because I’m generally in a good mood whenever I decide to watch a movie or something (otherwise I wouldn’t feel like watching it, heh).
Yeah that’s it. It could be the climax of the film, I’m really into it, everything is really interesting and intense and I don’t think twice about pausing it to check my Facebook or some blog (even though I’m not expecting anything new on Facebook). It’s silly.
So based on you guys’ replies I do have some mild form of some condition, cool. :o