Are any of you compulsive researchers?

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For sure I am a compulsive and obsessive researcher! My obsessive researching tendencies come in super handy at work but my compulsive researching tendencies become a problem at work.

For example, I will be researching something related to my job like alfalfa plants fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere and I will see a link on one of the sites about something related to agricultural engineering practices at big corporations and then that's it! I can't do my actual work research because I will literally spend the next ten hours compulsively researching industrial ag practices and the national and state policies that encourage predatory agricultural practices! It is a real problem. Sigh.

I compulsively research statistics on education, relationships, countries and celebrity etc.

I wiki on the toilette,

I wiki in my bed,

When I don't have my iPod,

I wiki in my head.

When I'm at work,

And think of something,

To wiki that night,

I write it on a post it note,

so I'll remember right.

Seriously though, I do research all the time on stuff, from riboflavin to baobab trees to movie stars.

Yes, me too. My variety includes what I call "truth spotting" - looking for nuggets of truth in the ocean of idiocy and blitherblather.

Research mania is part of the obsessive thought patterns we have. A "symptom" to some, a positive attribute in my opinion. That's why Aspies make good scientists, investigative journalists, whistelblowers and artists. Where would the world be without us?

Yes sure, particularly when something is possibly false or a scam. I'm a professional skeptic,

Jason

I seem to have spent most of my life doing this in one way or another.


Still, beats going up the pub for a night out.

LOOOOVE IT

Seriously I

can't imagine a good day without a bit of research




I learning stuff

Oh god yes!

astrophysics!! !!

I think I qualify as being a bit obsessive with researching everything.

I just can't tolerate not understanding what people are talking about, or how something works.

At my first job (a solicitors) I was actually the company expert on any tech related law. The real lawyers used to come and ask me questions on what the law was around those areas as a starting point to look it up in the law books on the basis I could summarise the entire thing and point out what they needed to know.

As a First Aider I took things seriously enough to virtually memorise the 8th edition First Aid manual, which came in handy when actually faced with a case of anaphylaxis since I dealt with it before things escalated, and listening to the "over the kettle" and canteen chat while working for the NHS (albeit in IT) drove me to extending my understanding of medical matters from a first aiders level to the "I can converse with doctors intelligently" level.

I'd like to go to a university for a couple of weeks just to establish how good my understanding of history is compared to the professors (I think I can at least claim equivalence, if not outright superiority) and having come to the conclusion i'm almost certainly somewhere on the autistic spectrum i'm learning a little on the subject before going for my diagnosis. I think i'm going to be one of those patients who Doctors mutter about for weeks afterwards.

Yes. If I hear about something I don't know much about I will look it up and spend a great deal of time researching it. I used to go for hours but now an hour suffices. Usually after an hour I'm 'over it' so to speak.

As a part of my novel writing I do a lot of researching on my own so it helps with that. Problem is I can get very obsessed with it. I once got so intense with my research on maps of the Blue Mountains I found it hard to take as much information I needed for my writing. I was overwhelmed. But it did help me write a chapter.

When I'm into something, I research endlessly, and love doing it.

Trouble is, I so often forget to stop researching and actually start doing something with the information I've collected.

definitely

When my mom was diagnosed with Cancer, I knew that the day would come when I wouldn't have anyone to talk to anymore - because she was one of the only people who tolerated me.

I was always interested in communications and I wanted to be a Ham Radio Operator from the time I was 10, but my family was either poor or cheap and wouldn't let me participate in activities like that that cost money.

So I decided I had a couple of weeks on my hands with nothing to do, so I borrowed some manuals and I traveled hundreds of miles to go take the exams and in about 8 weeks I went from nothing to a Amateur Extra Class License holder.

Most of the exams I passed on my first try - after I studied all the questions in the question pool.
There is about 1400 questions total in the pool to get all of the licenses.
Most times when I passed the multiple guess exams - I only missed 3 or 4 questions total.

I memorized the FCC Part 97 rule book.
Later when I got my license and was permitted to operate on the repeaters - basically a radio that listens for your radio transmission, amplifies your signal, retransmits it on a different frequency - from a tower on a very high hill - which gives your smaller radio a greater range. It allows your radio to talk to others who can also hit the repeater with their radios - that you normally could not talk to in Simplex. Simplex - is a one way transmission of information on one frequency. While you are talking - you cannot hear others talk.

Full Duplex - is telephone - where you can listen while you talk.

The repeater owners and users were not following the rules according to the Part 97 and when I reminded them that what they were doing was wrong, they got mad at me and threatened to throw me off their repeater system.

Basically they linked up 50 repeaters together with VOIP and other linking methods to make all the repeaters like one big repeater,

When they discovered that they were in fact wrong and I was right, they changed the way that they operated their repeaters and the way that they treated people who were using their repeaters.

I am now a Volunteer Examiner - the person that oversees the examination for Amateur Radio licenses.
I'm also a FCC O/O - Official Observer.

Not bad for a kid that barely passed science in high school.
Anything you would like to know about how communications works - over the air, I can answer.

I also did support work for several of the television stations when the television broadcasters all went digital and I did over 1000 reports - suggestions for anyone that had a situation where they needed to know which type of antenna set up would work best for their location. All free of charge.

If i need something or ordersoething or findsomething that piques my interest i will reasearch it to death. Even the cancer, procedures, outcome of my ow dead father. He had to tell me he didnt want to know all the facts when i used to talk to him.

Yeah, same with me..
I love researching and reading about the strangest topics but somehow I fail to do something with the information I just gathered, or even remember it.
And I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia by clicking every link in an article. Or reading every post in a thread and then it carries me away so that I totally forget what I was supposed to do in the first place.

Just like now. argh.