Obsess Much?

The book I'm reading, Creating a Life Worth Living, has an intriguing little section called "Cashing In on Your Bad Habits."

There is one last little tool I have used to get people thinking in new ways about day jobs. Use your compulsions, your obsessions, and your plain bad habits."

Typical day in the life of Commander Sue: group of friends are out at a restaurant, a debate begins, Sue whips out her blackberry, friends roll their eyes and groan, and she uses her Soogle super-power to locate the correct answer. This obsession with locating information is second nature, I just have faster access to the answers now. Back in the day I had to remember the discussion until I was able to locate a source document that contained the facts. Aforementioned friends can corroborate that I would rarely forget to follow up. And it is never about proving myself right. I'll look up the answer when I didn't even have a stake in the debate and I'm actually quicker to communicate out the correct answer if I was debating and turned out to be wrong.

I even have some specialized tools. As I've mentioned before, I'm a subscriber to the IMDB pro site and I drive my husband slightly crazy because I am usually reading up on the movies and television shows we watch and sometimes I (accidentally) announce things that ruin the cinematic experience.

In Clifton StrengthsFinder parlance, this is actually an expression of my strengths #1 Learning "...a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve...the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them..." and #5 Input "...a craving to know more...like to collect and archive all kinds of information..."

I'd never thought too much about it, but I suppose that someone might pay me for the research skills I've developed to feed by fact-finding obsession. For instance, I found this job listing for an Online Research Librarian. Not many people have taken me up on my Soogle offer yet, but maybe one day they will.

I'm sure that what my friends would like to know is, if I spent more of my work time doing research would I spend less of my personal time doing it? I'm sure they hope so.