Always Distracted: Where Distraction Meets Direction.

I’m always distracted. Some people think that this is my greatest flaw, but I sorta love it.

I love learning about everything; every topic, every pattern, every system, as it helps me make sense of the world. Finding reason and order in chaos brings me energy.

I’ve never really thought about how I do it until I heard Lance Priebe talk about the US Air Force’s OODA loop process. The OODA loop is an acronym for observe, orient, decide, and act. This is something I have done with almost every input I have ever had, and it has driven me in marketing and data to gaming, startups, and even racing cars. However, instead of focusing on just a few relevant data sources to determine an appropriate action, I use my graph of knowledge across many different things to decide on the appropriate action needed.

Maybe it’s my dyslexia, perhaps it’s ADHD. But finding patterns in chaos and understanding how to apply those to improve has been the key to any success I have had. This has been good for me through the years, from the tech boom to the internet bubble, social media, to now the AI revolution, as I have been able to stay at the leading edge and predict change.

Lately, though, doing this has been more of a challenge. The number of inputs, the speed of change, and noise are at an all-time high, and it’s all accelerating. I still observe. I still orient. But deciding and especially acting have proven difficult. There are just too many options, and even putting together a picture of what the next 6 months could hold is proving difficult. I find myself with hundreds of ideas and very little reasoned-out plans or thoughts.

So that’s why I’m starting Always Distracted.

It’s a space for me to slow down, to make sense of what I’m seeing, and ideally to turn observation into action. Each post will capture what my brain is graphing together, what I believe it means, and hopefully what I plan to do about it. My goal is simple: to transform distraction into direction.

With this channel, I will focus on four themes that I feel are networked together.

• Community: How tribalism could kill us
• Education: Why don’t we teach people how to think?
• Leadership: How real leadership is a two-way street.
• Tech & AI: What might the future look like?
• Hope: Without hope, nothing is possible.

I’ll probably veer off course (the name’s a warning), but my goal is to help myself find clarify in the chaos. This project is mostly for me, but I hope it helps you gather your thoughts, too.

I would love to learn with all of you, for you to push back when you feel I am wrong, and to help push me to act when you think I am right. Only by actively discussing things together can we really get to a clear understanding of anything.

So here goes getting back into content creation a bit, if nothing else, it will calm this Always Distracted mind.

P.S. I used AI to help refine this, but it’s still basically my brain dump. I’m also using it to break things into shorter versions for LinkedIn, X, and other platforms. Those might be better for anyone with a distracted mind like mine.