I've always been somewhat compulsive. I don't see that changing. The effort needed (possibly therapy, meds, God-knows-what) it would take to remedy this supposed shortcoming - would be enormous. Instead, I can and do harness this energy.
For what? Why? Well, I have the first 400 albums of my record collection indexed in an Excel spreadsheet, with columns for the label, number, and in the case of musical collections, name of the artist. So if I want to find Besa Me Mucho or Head Cheese, I can. But I said the first 400 records right? The fact that there are more that are not indexed is an indication of moderation, you could argue, but actually there are other obsessions that compete for my time, and I like to sleep.
Commentors to this post, please feel free to say, "I'm so totally OCD (lol)." This is the reaction I get from about half the persons I confide in about this driving force in my life. It's hip to be OCD. It lends an aura of interestingness.
Then again, I have no reason to assume that being obsessed with something is a disorder. Now, I'm as much a believer in having balance in my life as anyone, but what great thing has been accomplished by someone who was not obsessed? Great guitarist _____ didn't carry his Sears Silvertone with him everywhere he went in Junior High? I don't think so. If you want to get something done, you have to focus. And what's another word for focus?
Okay.
I'm just sayin'.
I remember Billy Bob Thornton talking about the Academy Awards - or some other such red carpet event - about how he was lucky to get there because it's so awful hard to drive anywhere when you'll only allow yourself to make right-hand turns. I wondered - aloud probably, as I also talk to myself - whether he really was OCD, or if it was a focus-group-generated marketing ploy to have half the people in the U.S. thrill in having something in common with a movie star. Either way, he's either one of us, or it's a nod to our power as a target market: The Self-Identified, Presumably Obsessed (SIPOs).
A psychological malady, as far as I can tell, is called such because it causes the individual difficulty in coping, such as a person who washes his hands constantly and runs to the Y during his lunch hour to shower and doesn't get back to work for a couple of hours, or someone who impulsively says "___ you!" to the wrong people, exactly because they are the worst possible people he could be saying "____ you!" to.
I'm rather short on classroom instruction in psychology (my apologies), but one of the other ways I see psychosis identified is if it makes someone a "sociopath", meaning he can't get along and is prone to hurt people. I'm not sure this is so much a psychological problem as it is a legal or religious matter. At one time, the ability to bash people in the face made Ogg a leader, and in the realm of international affairs, I'm not so sure those aren't still the rules.
Where was I?
Obsessions.
One's a variation on the old favorite of not stepping on cracks. As I'm walking through a lobby or down a hallway or a street, there are a multitude of imaginary straight lines that continue in a straight line wherever each flat surface makes a turn. I am not permitted to step on those lines. So, as I approach a corner on a building, there's a line there that is not to be stepped on. Similarly, as I walk down a street, each doorway presents two lines that cross the sidewalk into the street, and I am not to step on them. But, there's one more layer. Each 90 degree corner (such as the corner of a building or the edge of a doorway) has a 45 degree line coming out at an angle. Thus, as I'm walking down the street you may notice some of my steps are shorter than others, though I'm pretty good at breaking up a distance into 6 or 7 steps, so it's not that noticeable. You will however see me move to the right or left or step a bit sideways for no apparent reason. These are the diagonals, and they're a lot harder to anticipate 15 or 20 feet in advance. Sometimes a person may smile at me as I'm walking down the street, and I know I'm busted. I've yet to see anyone frown at me for my walking style.
When I was about 7 years old, I commented to my older brother Alan that Mount Hayden looks balanced. "Symmetry", he said. Oh, oh. This began my opinion that things out of balance are wrong, and must be corrected. The easiest example would be tapping the table with my right hand. Shouldn't the left hand get to tap the table? But, of course. So I tap with my left. But right got to go first, so I then tap with my left and then my right. There's no end to this, and it proceeds (partially) as follows:
right left left right left right right left left right right left right left left right
left right right left right left left right right left left right left right right left
left right right left right left left right right left left right left right right left
right left left right left right right left left right right left right left left right
(and so on).
The third example I'll leave you with is my tendency to do things the hard way when there is a readily available easier way. This began when I started playing guitar, 
because I figured I could play an open E chord (easy) or I could play a C chord barred up 4 frets (hard - at least for a beginner). To this day, I'm much more likely to opt for the harder way. This has had its advantages, because I recently learned the classic Perez Prado tune Mambo #5. It is fairly repetitive, but rather than play it all in the same position on the neck, I play it up on the 5th fret, and then move one string up and play it down by the open area of the fret board, back up to the 5th fret, back down to the open position. Actually, playing it all in one place is boring and doesn't sound like anything; zipping up and down the fret board having some of the same notes be alternately open or not open - this makes the song considerably more interesting.
I'm the same way at work, where everyone is looking for a way that something can be done with the least amount of effort, or - ideally - by a computer so you don't actually have to do anything. Here the point of my post finds its resolution. While I'm welcoming more challenging approaches that create situations where I'm learning new things and coming across problems and errors I never would have caught if the computer was doing my work for me, others are becoming more and more, well, lazy and unwilling to make the effort when the easy way actually involves some effort.
Are they wrong to look for a higher return on their investment of effort?
Most would say "No."
Am I wrong to give our office greater flexibility by adding creativity to my everyday tasks?
I would hope most would also say "No."
After all, it's easier not to make all your thankyou calls.
It's easier to misspell words, or rely on the spellchecker to say what you typed were awl reel wards.
It's easier to have other people do your work for you (for the limited amount of time you can get away with it).
But at some point, life will call for you to step up and do exceptional work, and if you've always taken the easy way out, you won't have it in you. In my opinion, if you need someone to walk a long ways and return successfully, ask the guy who pays attention to where he steps.
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Comments: 13
Wonderful! Your last line says it all, and is hard to refute.
I have a milder form of OCD only from the point of view from others - my behaviors tend to be those that are hardly, if ever, noticed by other people. No has noticed how many times I have hit the backspace key to correct each word that I have typed here in this very comment. Nobody tends to notice that I check that my car keys are in my pocket at least 3 times before locking the car doors. No one has ever seen the number of times I have revised a computer program before compiling and releasing it. No one seems to notice my idle rearrangement of restaurant table items. People do tend to notice that I tend to eat more slowly than they do, but they chalk it up to me just taking my time rather than the real reason of chewing every last particle into oblivion before swallowing.
But these are things that don't seem to be threatening my ability to cope in today's world. Therefore I remain untreated. And intend to stay that way!
Great post!
I have a number of compulsive behaviors related to computers, mostly involving unnecessary steps I do just because I suspect they really do affect the speed or accuracy of a process (despite my having some expertise, there's a lot I don't know). I've also been known to write and rewrite an email for a half hour before I realize I'd better not hold forth on that subject at all . . . so I delete it and get back to work.
I also do the same thing when I walk -- I started doing it in New York, and I noticed that it made me happier to do that, otherwise, I would annoy slow-walking New Yorkers with my loping Southern gait, so I started to concentrate on taking shorter steps. This led to the "sidewalk crack avoidance" theory of ambulation. : - )
I'll check and see if you've posted the one about talking to yourself -- we used to say my youngest brother did this because he found it hard to find intelligent people to talk to, so he solved the problem by talking to himself.
Anyway, yes. I think this is that 90% of our brains talking. That capacity is saying, "Use me!"
Sounds like something to which Martha Stewart would say "and that's a good thing.." (She's the one that says that - I think.)