Inside Chris’s Head

My plans for total world domination were accidently revealed on Buzz Out Loud episode 669. Sigh. Now who is going to sell me zombies at wholesale. Buying zombies at retail can cost an arm and a leg.

So I am back to the drawing board and having a bit of writer’s block. If you have any suggestions on plans to take over the world that worked or did not work for you, please let me know.

Send your suggestions on plans that worked or did not work for you for total world domination to EvilGeniusPlans [at] gmail.com

Chris (the podcaster) Christensen

P.S. Did you know Zombies do Yoga?

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As I write this blog post I am also watching a movie. It is not that the movie is so bad, in fact it is a movie I like, but I suffer from CPA (Continuous Partial Attention).

CPA has struck the nation with the fervor of an epidemic. We talk on cell phones while driving, surf the web while watching TV, instant message in meetings, text while shopping, and talk in movies. People who live with CPA are never quite present where they are present. There is not a whole lot of there when we are there. It is an affliction that more and more American’s live with. We live with the constant distraction by shiny objects. There is no known cure for those afflicted with CPA. So here are some guidelines for living with the malady.

• Spaces - Create some spaces where there are less distractions. I used to think that I could work in front of the television. I was convinced that I could multi-task. Those who suffer from CPA call it “multi-tasking”. We can do two things at once and do it well we tell ourselves. All my podcasting takes place in a room in the second story of our house away from the TV in the family room.
• Times - Create some times where you can focus. In my house, Saturday mornings are quiet enough to podcast without distractions. Mornings are always quiet when everyone else in the house is a night owl. Limit some activities to certain hours. I try to not check my (500) RSS feeds between 9am and 6pm, if I don’t get to them before “work hours” they can wait.
• Limits - Yes, the web is calling out to you. But make a plan what websites you will check how often. Create a daily folder for web sites you want to check once a day. Only check them once a day. Create another folder for websites that you only need to check once a week. Only check them once a week. Yes, your email is urgent, but you don’t have to check your email every 5 minutes, change your email program to only check once an hour, less often if you can get away with it. Check your RSS feeds daily, but no more.
• Breaks - I have learned that I can’t work 7 days a week without burning out. Pick a day, my day is Saturday, when the work email can stay unopened.
• Edit - I subscribe to about 100 podcasts (yes it is an addiction, but remember people with CPA like to “multi-task”) but finally learned to give myself permission to skip through episodes that don’t grab my attention. If a show sits on my Tivo for 3 weeks before I watch it, maybe I can just delete it. I am still learning that trick.
• Timeouts - If I need to concentrate on a particular project then I know I need to stop the podcasts i am listening to, shut off twitter, quit my email program and maybe even shut down my instance message client.

There is is no known cure for CPA but with help you can learn to live with the… what’s that… ooooo shiny.

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I have a small white box in my house that is labeled as a “microwave” but is known to my family as a “magic tea machine”. The reason for the re-labeling is that in the winter months it is quite common to open the door to this magic box and find a mug of tea, usually quite cold. There are some theories that this box is tied to that alternate universe where socks go from the dryer and the cold mug of tea is some sort of free trade exchange for this far flung hosiery. A more likely excuse is that two minutes and 15 seconds (the time that it takes to heat tap water to the temperature for tea) is longer than my attention span.

This is my life. I own a tea kettle and like the taste of tea when made correctly in a kettle. But the time that it takes to make tea in a kettle and let it steep under a tea cozy does not fit into my hectic lifestyle. Apparently neither does the two and one quarter minutes that it takes to make the tea in the microwave. And so sometime in the middle of the tea heating up I start thinking I can make better use of the time and I am distracted by something shiny. Sometimes I hear the microwave timer go off but have become involved in some other task. I think, I will go and get that in a minute. And so my hot cup of tea cools in the magic tea machine.

Sometimes this process gets repeated. I think “hey I could use a hot cup of tea” and open the magic tea machine to find the very thing there (usually cold by now). This is the “magic” part of the magic tea machine. If the tea is cold, that is not a problem. I can easily reheat it. It only takes two minutes and fifteen seconds.

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I was prompted to post the five things that I am thankful for by a post on Startup Princess: How to Start a Gratitude Journal.

I am thankful for:

• My Faith and a country where I can express my thankfulness to God
• My Family - my wife of almost 26 years and two teenagers that I miss when they aren’t here
• Our Health - as we age and our parents age it becomes more obvious that good health is not a given and does not last forever
• My Work - both a job with people I like to work with and my blogging and podcasting. Although I may not always want to go to work or get the podcasts out it is a gift to be able to do something productive (and even make a living doing so in the case of work).
• The Internet - I have been on the internet even before the World Wide Web. Even years later I still love this thing. It reconnects me with old friends, lets me shop in my pajamas, let’s me meet others with shared interests, gives me a voice and a place to express my creativity.

What are you thankful for?

(This week on The Bible Study Podcast I deal with thankfulness: Episode 43 - The Church is… (called to be) Thankful)

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Yes, I have a listing on IMDB but I have not been involved in any movies. It turns out you can also get listed for working on some games.

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