Ever had an obsession like this?

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Did you ever have an obsession with developing a physical or mental ability which was mostly no use in real life?

One of mine was my reaction time, I would waste hours at a computer on an online visual reflex tester trying to get a lower score.

Another one was tracking objects with my eyes.

Anyone else?

YEP!

I guess videogames would qualify for this definition

How 'bout learning to twirl your fingers in opposite directions? like one hand going one way, the other going the other way.

guess that describes a good number of my obsessions. yep, yep.

I started learning how to calendar calculate, and got quite proficient at it. I once calculated December 31st, 9990 A.D. But, that story is for another time. I don't know if you would count calendar calculation to be useless, or not. I just thought it might fit under the mental ability development.

I studied the F-16 flight manuals and air force tactics and procedures.

I also got very good in Half-Life deathmatch. I was consistently in top 100 on CLQ (out of several million players)

Both skills are oh so very useless.

yes, I've been trying to teach myself to echolocate for a few weeks (after reading this article in Wired). it's useless because I see very well so I don't really need this skill.

but it's kinda fun

You mean like a bat?

Not really, in my opinion. But many of them would be esteemed as being of "no use" by many others.

What about the memory champions? I bet lots of them are Aspies!
Why else would anyone want to learn to remember the exact order of several packs of playing cards?

I had an obsession with this after watching a documentary about a blind teenager who taught himself to echolocate. I tried for a couple of weeks almost non-stop but then I gave up when I realized that unless I was blind, I wouldn't have any use for it. I realized that I had wasted all that time.

I've also had an obsession with learning how to be telekinetic. I was silly enough to believe that I had some kind of special, undiscovered ability locked away in my brain and I wanted to release it.